Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Mon, 16 Nov 1992 18:01:06 EST
From:         mmt@BEN.DCIEM.DND.CA
Subject: Re: standards

[Martin Taylor 921116 17:30]
(Rick Marken 921116.1300)

Angel-free tread zone ahead--->

We are indeed talking about cultural evolution in the setting of standards.
No genes need apply (though some probably will).

>It sounds like you are saying that there are certain standards which are
>adopted because not doing so creates internal conflict.

Adopted by an individual, yes.  But the point is a little more subtle than
that.  You are correct, but incomplete when you say:
> I interpret
>this to mean that only by setting their reference for certain standards
>perceptions at a certain level can people avoid internal conflict.

When there is conflict, there may be reorganization, and as Bill has often
pointed out, that reorganization will tend to drive the conflicting systems
into less conflict.  If I do not conform to your standards, we both experience
conflict if you care enough to try to make my actions conform (you can't see
what I am "doing" but you can see my actions), and if your efforts make me
unable to satisfy some references.  So, point 1, it is not just me that
experiences conflict and may reorganize.  You may, too.

If a community has developed/evolved a set of standards that results in low
levels of conflict when everyone adopts those standards for their actions
(again, not for what they are "doing"), the standards will be rather stable.
They work, because whatever people are "doing", their actions permit them
to control their percepts adequately.  That's what is meant by low levels of
conflict.  If the "standards" don't have this effect, and people find that
they experience high levels of error when acting according to the standards,
some people will reorganize one way, some another (it's random, after all),
and the standards will disintegrate, perhaps to re-form as a new set of
standards that provide lower overall error rates.  Sets of standards that
lead to sustained high error levels in many people are not stable.  So point 2
is that if many people adhere to standards, it is because those standards
do not conflict with the ideal of low intrinsic error.

> By I don't belive that there
>are ANY standards perceptions which, if controlled at a particular
>reference level, would be intrinsically internal conflict producing;
>conflict depends on what other perceptions a person is controlling and
>at what level.

I agree that there probably are no standards that we could call "intrinsic,"
but there are probably some reference levels that cannot be components of
stable community standards.  These will not be found in the standards of
viable communities.  But sets of standards probably fit together in clusters
that are stable as a group that can be taken into or left out of a total system
of standards.  Different sets of precepts based on the teachings of long-lasting
religions probably form such groups.  I would imagine that the number of
such sets that could be stable is unlimited, but the societies of the world
may have found only a few tens of them.

If an individual lives in a community with stable standards, but does not
use them to set the relevant reference levels, that individual will find
conflict in many of his/her interactions with other members of the community,
whereas the other members will find conflict only in interactions with the
deviant.  The deviant is more likely to reorganize than are the other members,
and if the standard set is truly stable, this reorganization will continue
until the deviant acts according to the standards and at the same time finds
his/her reference levels generally attainable by non-deviant actions.

I suspect that most sets of social standards are not truly stable, and perhaps
there are no possible sets of standards that lead always to zero error as
a consequence of interactions.  In a non-stable, or conflict retaining set
of standards, all members of the community are liable to reorganization, and
the standards themselves will drift in a way directly comparable to linguistic
drift and for the same reason.  The result may be the breakoff of heretical
groups, or a more or less unconscious shift of mores, or other shifts.

Serious problems arise, as I said earlier, when individuals who belong to
different communities with incompatible standards have to interact.  The
incompatibility of the standards sets is defined by the existence of conflict
when one individual uses one set and the other the other set.  One or both
must reorganize.  When you have large numbers of individuals from each
community meeting, then either one community will loose its standards (its
"culture") to the other, or both will have to develop supplementary standards
to deal with the interactions.  That way lies stereotyping of members of
"other" communities, but it may be a necessary way to handle the modern
possibilities for world-wide interaction.

It's all based on the iterated interactions of individuals, and one-on-one
reorganization based on the conflict that occurs.

Martin
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