Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Wed, 7 Oct 1992 20:10:00 GMT
From:         Hortideas Publishing <0004972767@MCIMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Give me a (smart) lever to move the psychological world?

From Greg Williams (921007 - 2)

-----

Chuck: Sorry, I know NOTHING about FAX equipment.

-----

>Bill Powers (921007.0800)

>You have a lever....

This is a lovely analogy. I believe I understand your point and emphasis (in
fact, I believe I have understood all along!), and I have no major quibbles
with your claims, other than that many others seem to be more interested in
my "slant" on the subject than in your "slant." The big problem FROM YOUR
POINT OF VIEW (as I see it) is that the analogy doesn't speak to what you have
been claiming REALLY matters: CHANGES in the control apparatus. So, how did
the smart lever come to be so smart? With absolutely NO environmental
influence? The big problem FROM MY POINT OF VIEW comes here:

>If we want to understand relationships among people, we have to attack
>the problem in this way. We can't get hung up on "good" influences and
>"bad" influences; we can't take it for granted that satisfying some
>people's goals (like educating children) is better than satisfying
>other people's goals (like the childrens' goals for what they would
>like to be doing). We have to see this problem of human interaction as
>just that, an interaction among independent systems. The laws of
>social interaction that we come up with must not have anything to do
>with PARTICULAR goals and PARTICULAR behaviors, or with side-effects
>of this interaction that can appear, depending on your point of view,
>as control of or influence on another person. From any individual's
>point of view, ALL interactions with others are control of their
>behavior or influences on their behavior. But that is true of all the
>others, too; that's how they see you.

You think I disagree with all this. But I do not, with the sole exception that
I think what you call "side-effects" can be extremely important, sooner or
later, for the organism currently seeing them as unimportant.

And here:

>The people you are trying to influence or control are also trying to
>influence or control you, by the very actions and changes of properties you
>see as having been caused by you.

I DO disagree with this, if it is meant to be a general claim that everyone
ALWAYS tries to control perceptions dependent on a co-interactor's actions.
Certainly, many interactions DO involve simultaneous control by all parties of
certain of their respective perceptions which depend on actions of the others.
But, as well, there certainly exist many instances of (sometimes highly!)
assymetric controlling, where party A is trying (with high loop gain) to
control his/her perceptions of party B doing such-and-such, and where party B
doesn't even CARE about controlling ANYTHING A is doing (and might not even be
aware of A; sometimes, I must add, until it is "too late"!).

And, especially, here:

>To take any one side in an interaction is to miss the essence of what is
>going on: interaction.

I have been trying NOT to "take one side," but rather to show (based on PCT)
how ANYONE who is attempting to control his/her perceptions dependent on
another's actions, IN GENERAL, must be constrained IN PARTICULAR WAYS, because
of the other being a controller, too.

Time to get back to issues in learning/reorganization?

Best wishes,

Greg
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU