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Date:         Fri, 14 Aug 1992 12:20:13 +0200
From:         Oded Maler <Oded.Maler@IRISA.FR>
Subject:      High-level disturbances; Ideology

[From Oded Maler 920814]

(Bill Powers (920813.1400)) -

I agree with most of what you say. There's a sub-sub-branch of AI
called "Reactive planning" dealing with planning in a non-static
world. It seems that *in principle* they might pass you legitimacy
tests even though their building blocks are abstract actions.
Of course, no one knows yet how to implement it for large-scale
problems since servoing in this abstract space is not understood
("If you can't beat it - smash it"..) as we agreed a long ago
while discussing "qualitative" control.

I still reiterate the rhetoric question whether for some reason
it is harder in a non-grounded abstract space than in an abstract
space where the percepts and actions are realized by lower-level
ones. And if so, how?


(Rick Marken (920812)) -

Ok. You make your position very clear. So the next time something like
Beer's work or another is discussed, your claim should not be that
they are wrong but that they are working on non-interesting problems
(for you).

Perhaps my knowledge of PCT is so preliminary so I would be less
determined and not be so sure which behavior is generated for the
"right underlying reasons" and which is not. It is also not
self-evident at all that a world where all people know what control is
will be a better one - but anyway I'm not interested in Ideology
(unless I'm in a historical museum).


Best regards

--Oded
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Date:         Mon, 17 Aug 1992 18:51:54 PDT
From:         Penni Sibun <sibun@PARC.XEROX.COM>
Subject:      Re: PCT vs cognitivism
X-To:         CSG-L%UIUCVMD.BITNET@pucc.princeton.edu
              17 Aug 1992 18:23:35 -0700
              <92Aug17.182441pdt.11526@alpha.xerox.com>

   [From Rick Marken (920817.2000)]

s'cool.  thanks for reminding me about the show!

				--penni
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Date:         Sun, 16 Aug 1992 01:44:15 EDT
From:         Martin Taylor <mmt@BEN.DCIEM.DND.CA>
Subject: Re: Amplification: organism vs environment

[Martin Taylor 920816 01:30]
(Bill Powers 920815.0930)
>
>
>The rest of the environment contains so few instances of significant
>amplification that they're pretty unusual. It's hard to think of a case in
>which the gain of a human controller isn't higher than that of the
>environment by a wide margin.

I don't think the point is worth belabouring, but elasticity has much the same
perceptual effect as an interaction over a physical variable with another
controller that has a different reference.  At one extreme we have a totally
non-resisting medium, in which (apart from disturbances) the physical variable
is readily induced to provide the desired percept.  At the other end of the
scale, we have crystalline elasticity, in which the controller can have only
a trivial effect on its percept, because the world resists strongly any attempt
to deform it.  In between, there is a whole range of impedances, both
resistive and reactive.  Whatever the real-world impedance might be, it affects
the dynamics of control, and the behaviour of the controller is intimately
bound up with the real-world impedance of the provider of the percept.  So it
is difficult to say straight out that the control is totally in the head,
even when there is no identifiable active controller affecting the same
physical complex variable.  (Impedance is a term from linear dynamics, but
consider any nonlinear extension of it, in the above).
>
>As to the mirror diagram, it is an epistemological tool. This diagram could
>be expanded to show the hypothetical world of physical reality between the
>two mirroring hierarchies.
>
My reference to the mirror diagram was not to the one linking two controllers
in the Layered Protocol structure, but to the one depicting the idiosyncratic
structure of the Universe as seen by any one controller.  (Bill, did you ever
get my Paris abstract with these pictures in it?).

Both the mirror diagram and the considerations of loop dynamics as affected
by "real" world impedance argue that there is validity to the view that
the internal and external worlds cannot be completely separated.  All we have
to work with is perception, after all.
>
>My formulation puts a physical world
>running by physical laws between the organisms which are control systems
>running by closed-loop laws. That seems to work passably well.

Yes, mine, too, in the Layered Protocol structure as integrated with PCT.
And before, but not so explicitly.

Martin
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Date:         Mon, 17 Aug 1992 08:55:01 -0600
From:         "William T. Powers" <POWERS_W%FLC@VAXF.COLORADO.EDU>
Subject:      Erasing circles
X-To:         CSG-L@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu

[From Bill Powers (920817.0900)]

Avery Andrews (920816) --

>.. is there any fast & sensible way to erase circles in CGA Hi Res >mode?

No. The method is neither fast nor sensible but it's inevitable. It's the
method you've been hoping to avoid. You have to erase every pixel by
changing it back to the background color.

There are two methods in general:

1. Change color to black (setcolor(BLACK)) and draw the figure in the old
position, then change color back to white (setcolor(WHITE)) and draw it in
the new position. This usually means saving the old arguments for each
instance of a figure, using them with the color set to BLACK to erase all
the old figures, changing the saved arguments to the new arguments, then
with the color set to WHITE drawing the figure again.

2. Change the mode of writing to XOR. This is done with

   setwritemode(1).  (The normal mode is 0)

In the XOR mode, drawing a figure puts it on the screen, and drawing it
again in the same place erases it: it toggles on and off. This is nice
because it doesn't erase intersecting lines -- just reverses the common
pixels, then on erasure reverses them back.

This is a little trickier because you have to make sure to draw the figure
before it's erased (it's erased by drawing again to the same place).
Generally you want to erase then write very quickly to avoid flicker, so
this means doing a preliminary write of all the figures before entering the
loop where you erase before writing. It's slightly faster than the first
method, and as mentioned doesn't destroy overlapping figures.

---------------------------------------------

XOR will work for circles, rectangles, lines, polygons (drawpoly), and
ellipses. XOR does not work for putpixel, which takes a color argument as
its third argument.

NEITHER method works for erasing graphics text! When you write with
graphics text colored black, nothing happens to whatever was there. Black
is evidently treated as transparent if the background color is already
black. I eventually discovered an easy way to do it:

setfillstyle(0,0)
bar(x,y,x+textwidth("string to be erased"), y+textheight('W'));

This is for top left justified text (settextjustify).
---------------------------------------------------------------

Best,


Bill P.
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Date:         Tue, 18 Aug 1992 07:10:29 EDT
From:         "Bruce E. Nevin" <bnevin@CCB.BBN.COM>
Subject:      closing the loop
X-To:         csg-l%vmd.cso.uiuc.edu@bbn.com

[From: Bruce Nevin (Tue 920818 06:59:09)]

A number of us have wondered if there were some way of closing the loop
when we send messages to csg-l.  Why doesn't the listserv software
include the sender among those to whom it sends the sender's message?

I learned from another listserv group that, in order to be included in
the distribution of one's own messages, one can send a message to the
listserver (the host running the listserv software) with the following
text on the first line:

set csg-l repro

(I have substituted csg-l for the other group's list name, of course.
The default is said to be NO REPRO.)

I sent this message to LISTSERV@VMD.CSO.UIUC.EDU (the BitNet address is
LISTSERV@UIUCVMD.Bitnet).  I received a message confirming that the
listserver had accepted the command, and Gary confirms that also.  In a
following message, I will tell you whether or not it worked--that is,
whether or not the listserver send me a copy of this message.

	Bruce
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Date:         Thu, 20 Aug 1992 12:21:34 PDT
From:         Penni Sibun <sibun@PARC.XEROX.COM>
Subject:      injury
X-To:         CSG-L%UIUCVMD.BITNET@pucc.princeton.edu
              20 Aug 1992 07:49:17 -0700
              <92Aug20.075110pdt.11604@alpha.xerox.com>

(penni sibun920820.1100)

   [Martin Taylor 920820 10:30]

   Sorry about your repetitive motion injury.  I do hope you are getting medical
   attention for it and not just trying to cure it by yourself  (end parental
   mode).

yes; thanks.  i'd like to point out that carpal tunnel syndrome is the
fashionable disease of the 90s.  however, most repetitive problems are
*not* cts.  unfortunately, most doctors, as well as lay people, tend
to assimilate any problems with one's upper limbs to cts, which
hinders rather than helps diagnosis and treatment.  so if any of you
have problems, please don't accept a cts diagnosis at face value:
make sure it matches your symptoms and other conditions are ruled out.


				--penni
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Date:         Thu, 20 Aug 1992 09:48:52 EST
From:         Avery Andrews <andaling@FAC.ANU.EDU.AU>
Subject:      Re: Misc catching up

[Avery Andrews 920820.0945]
   (Bill Powers 920819.1500)

Leaning:
I agree with almost everything you say about the environment (and so do Chapman
and Agre, who say that the natural world is much more dangerous than
the artificial one we make for ourselves with culture).  The target of the
`leaning on the environment' slogan are the `planning weenies', who really
seem(ed?) to think that a competent Agent ought to calculate the results
of its actions from first principles.  As to `how many' regularities
there are in nature, I doubt that this is a question that can be profitably
argued about.  At a very minimum, PCT depends on there being consistent
correlations between the direction of gross effort and the direction of
change of net result, & a continuous function relating the magnitudes of
these two quantities.  One is thus `leaning' on everything that causes
these correlations to exist, without having to know anything about these
underlying causes or do any computations involving them (like a conventional
Planning Agent would have to, if what I read about them in Beer, Chapman,
and Agre is true (I haven't really gotten around to Brooks yet)).

Beerbugs:
I'm still confused.  I have on the page before me a diagram of a circuit that
ought to work, and is supposedly based on the actual wiring of a real critter,
and which I believe I described accurately.  Even if Aplysia doesn't actually
work that way, I don't see any reason why some other critter couldn't, &
I don't (yet) see how to apply your description to the actual circuit.

But maybe the light will dawn....

Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au
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Posted-Date: Thu, 13 Aug 92 14:57:19 PDT
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Thu, 13 Aug 1992 14:57:19 PDT
From:         marken@AERO.ORG
Subject:      Disturbances/Appearances

[From Rick Marken (920813)]

Bill Powers (920813.1400) says;

>Just saying "CONTROL WON'T WORK (in the long run) precisely because people
>ARE controllers" is enough to convince anyone who already understands the
>principles of control. To others it just sounds like a slogan.

> That's why I keep harping on
>disturbances -- they're the main reason that control is necessary, and the
>main reason why other non-feedback models can't work in the real world.

OK. I was waxing slogany.

The point of my post, however, was to emphasize the distinction between models
of appearances (which I called imitations) and models of processes (which
I called models). The fact of the matter is that the main reason for this
distinction is the existence of disturbances -- in particular, disturbances
that are not detectable by the behaving system OR by the modeller of the
behaving system. If one does not know that these disturbances are (or
could be) affecting the observed results, then s/he will tend to build models
that simply produce the results -- ie. that imitate what the modeller sees.
But we know (thanks to you) that disturbances (in many different forms) are
always having effects on behavioral results. Thus we know that consistently
produced results must be controlled -- and what is controlled is a perceptual
representation of those results. So we need a control model to produce the
results we see. An imitation model won't work because any change in the
disturbing conditions would lead to inconsistent results. So imitation
models only work in environments where there are no disturbances. Only a
control model will produce consistent results when there are disturbances.
So, indeed, understanding that disturbances can influence every kind of
result that organisms are known to produce consistantly is crucial to
acceptance of the control system as the basic organizing principle of the
nervous system. And it is crucial to seeing what imitation models are and
why they don't really work.

Regards

Rick

     **************************************************************

Richard S. Marken                   USMail: 10459 Holman Ave
The Aerospace Corporation                   Los Angeles, CA 90024
E-mail: marken@aero.org
(310) 336-6214 (day)
(310) 474-0313 (evening)
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Date:         Tue, 18 Aug 1992 18:01:33 EDT
From:         jeff@DRETOR.DCIEM.DND.CA
Subject:      Introducing Jeff

Introducing Jeff Hunter.

	Hello CGS folks. I'm a contractor working within earshot of
Martin. Naturally I have been evangelized about (and converted to) PCT.

	My PCT credentials:
	I've been a lurker on the CSG net for many months. I've also
read Powers' Byte articles, but not any of his books. Martin (Taylor) ,
Allan (Randall), and I have hashed over PCT a fair bit over coffee.
I've also looked over the shoulder of Chris Love while he has built
the Little Baby (the learning Little Man). I hand-coded a set of ECS's
(Elementary Control Systems) that let the Baby put finger to target
(purely for testing the software, not to cheat on the learning side).


	My PCT motivation:
	I am most interested in PCT as a method of partitioning the
learning of medium sized nets (100 nodes) on non-trivial tasks.
To explain: the size of neural nets is hitting a (soft) ceiling. If you
double the number of nodes (to handle a more complex task) you more
than double the training time. The current wisdom on solving this
problem is to divide the net in half, train each half of the net on half
the task, and then add some more net "on top" that takes two half-answers
and makes one whole. Naturally this only works in some domains, but
it seems to be a win.
	The big drawback is that the designer of the net must cut the
problem domain in half "by hand".

	PCT seems to be a natural fit for this technique. We start with
some low-level control systems and train them on simple tasks. Then
we add a higher level control system and train it to use the lower
levels on a more complicated task. Repeat ad nauseum.

	If we can get re-organization figured out we may not even have
to partition the task by hand. (This is a bit optimistic. When teaching
human children we usually start them simple and work up.)


	My projected PCT postings:
	I have a few new contributions (of varying profundity) to the
ongoing debate. I also have a lot of backlogged followups to postings.

	I've done a few quick-and-dirty programs in my spare time.
I may get to spend a while concentrating on PCT models at work.

				... Jeff

--
De apibus semper dubitandum est - Winni Ille Pu
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Date:         Tue, 18 Aug 1992 11:55:42 EDT
From:         mmt@BEN.DCIEM.DND.CA
Subject:      Re: separating action and perception

[Martin Taylor 920818 11:50]
(Penny Sibun 920817)

>  there's just tons of literature on
>perception that suggest that perc. is a *lot* of work; in fact it
>involves action--perhaps to the degree that p. and a. are inseparable.
>(``active vision'' is a current buzzphrase.)

This was cast as a criticism of PCT, but in fact it seems to be a reasonable
description of how PCT says perception works.  An ECS that is trying to
achieve a percept can go only by its error signal.  It doesn't know what
it is doing when it amplifies that error signal into an output that contributes
to the reference signals of unknown lower-level ECSs.  All it knows is that
the connections are such that producing this output normally leads to a
reduction in its error (i.e. a percept more like the percept it is trying to
achieve).  From here, I can continue your quote to describe the sort of thing
that might occur: " if i'm driving into the
sun, i'll have to squint to see anything.  if it's sleeting, i'll have
to peer around the bouncing balls of ice and the flailing wipers.  at
*any* time, my eyes are having to track the road, since the car is
constantly bouncing me around.  "

A good description of the actions of a PCT hierarchy.

Martin

"Statistics are easy to understand.  Unfortunately they are even easier to
misunderstand." (Me)
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Date:         Thu, 20 Aug 1992 12:34:33 PDT
From:         Penni Sibun <sibun@PARC.XEROX.COM>
Subject:      categories
X-To:         CSG-L%UIUCVMD.BITNET@pucc.princeton.edu
              19 Aug 1992 13:09:37 -0700
              <92Aug19.131257pdt.11994@alpha.xerox.com>

(penni sibun 920820.1200)

   [From Mary Powers 9208.19]

   So am I. Word/sentence/paragraph is as pseudo-hierarchical as
   cell/organ/organism/group. They are all at the category level.

i find this statement intriguing, and would be delighted if you would
care to expand on it a bit.

				--penni
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Date:         Tue, 18 Aug 1992 18:36:01 EDT
From:         mmt@BEN.DCIEM.DND.CA
Subject: Re: cognitivism

[Martin Taylor 920818 18:30]

CSG-L readers might be amused by this paragraph from a mailing on the
Usenet newsgroup "sci.cognitive".  I append the author's address in case
someone want to point him here (I don't know the usenet name for the
extension of CSG-L).  Note that this is just one paragraph out of a
longish posting.  I don't know what HDP (hierarchic dynamic programming)
entails, but from a skim of a couple of earlier messages in this thread,
it seems somewhat similar to the higher levels of PCT.  Could be wrong
on that.  Here's the paragraph.
==========


Dr. Thompson also comments that he doesn't see a role for "goals" in the
AI sense in biological systems. In order to have a clear goals in HDP, you
need to be informed when you have reached certain terminal states. I agree
that biological systems do not have those terminal states, however, that
doesn't prevent them from approximating such states. I suspect there is a
calibration process involved.

--
Harry Erwin
Internet: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com

=============
Rick...Don't let the loose canon explode the wrong way, please!

Martin
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Date:         Fri, 14 Aug 1992 20:37:09 CDT
From:         URROBERT@ECNUXA.BITNET
Subject:      Re: Re independent investigator #2
              "PAPANICOLAOU@UTMBEACH

[From Dick Robertson]
Ouch!  That really smarts.  How can they do this to you after you've given up
everything?  Well, I hope it turns for the best, though it sounds grim at the
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Date:         Wed, 12 Aug 1992 10:59:26 -0500
From:         "Gary A. Cziko" <g-cziko@UIUC.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Thar she blows! PR sounding
X-To:         "Control Systems Group Network (CSGnet)" <CSG-L@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu>

[from Gary Cziko 920811.1816]

Bruce Nevin (Tue 920811 08:03:14) let us know that an associate editor for
_Discover_ magazine, Carl Zimmer, has joined the CYBSYS-L group and is
interested in cybernetics topics.

I would be happy to zap him with a bunch of CSG-PCT stuff.  But I will have
to wait until MCI Mail gets its Internet gateway working again.  Any
reservations out there?

>	Thar she blows!  Shall we attempt to take him, Cap'n?
>	I don't know, mate.  We're only rigged for cod . . .
>	But think of what he'd fetch if we succeed!
>	Yep.  Might stove us in too.

And CSGnet, CSG, and PCT is NOT just rigged for cod (apologies to Bill
Silvert in Nova Scotia)--I think we are able to and willing to take on the
whole enchilada (as Rick Marken in LA would say).--Gary
------------------------------------------------------------------
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Educational Psychology           FAX: (217) 244-0538
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1310 S. Sixth Street             Radio: N9MJZ
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