HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
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Date:         Tue, 8 Sep 1992 12:44:36 CST
From:         Thomas Baines <bainest@SMTPLINK.EID.ANL.GOV>
Subject:      RE: Sciences and Ideologies - I

          My wife & I have three children.  Girl, boy, boy.  All are
          out of college & are "responsible adults"...as far as we
          know.  All three are doing well in professions & seem to be
          sane.  We know of no serious anti-social behavior.
          What I am about to say will probably mortify some folks, but
          I believe it to be accurate.  Our kids were raised much the
          same way we raise our dogs.  First they are housebroken &
          taught the rudiments of personal hygene & responsibility for
          personal actions.  With the kids its a little easier,
          because the language barrier is not as difficult.  The dogs
          learn faster up to a point, however.  The next thing is
          learning how to learn.  This requires figuring out what the
          kid (or dog) pays attention to, then using that as the
          channel through which to impart knowledge & stimulate
          curiosity.  Next, necessary limits on curiosity and behavior
          must be imparted.  Both kids & dogs must be socialized lest
          they get killed crossing the road or someone dangerous.
          Also, they must be socialized so that they do not become
          unable to learn how to recognize when their behavior is
          likely to result in their not being able to obtain adequate
          food, clothing, shelter & affection.  In order to make any
          progress on these latter points, one must, again, establish
          reference signals that are personnaly meaningful to the
          child/dog.  Any insistance on my part to force the kid or
          pup to see things my way have been pretty fruitless.  I
          have to see things their way, then establish why their
          viewpoint is in error.  By the way.  I am an ex-Army Special
          Operations Officer.  I don't think I'm a patsy.  BUT!! I
          have NEVER had to resort to "Because I said so."  Both kids
          & dogs will come to respect your judgement about things if
          you have established a way of expressing that judgement in
          referrence to things they value, & the result of which is an
          experience that they can rely on for making their own
          judgement in the future.  Inconsistant messages or behavior
          on my part always causes more problems than the kind of
          working through the situation so that both of us are
          satisfied.
          The lastest dog, by the way, fetches the paper (in the
          snow), closes the door behind herself, brings her leash when
          its time to go for a walk, leaves the kitchen or dining room
          when the humans sit down to eat, & is generally a great
          pleasure to share time with.
          Whatever we're doing, it works.
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Date:         Fri, 11 Sep 1992 20:22:19 -0600
From:         "William T. Powers" <POWERS_W%FLC@VAXF.COLORADO.EDU>
Subject:      Blathering

[From Bill Powers (920911.2230)]

Gary Csiko (920911.1253) --

I knew while I was writing that thing about "sink-or-swim" language
learning that I was blathering. Sorry. No self-discipline.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Best,


Bill P.
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Date:         Wed, 9 Sep 1992 12:19:21 -0500
From:         "Gary A. Cziko" <g-cziko@UIUC.EDU>
Subject:      Fileserver News

[from Gary Cziko 920909.0545]

Bill Silvert has reorganized the CSG directory of his fileserver.  The
fileserver is on biome.bio.ns.ca and the directory in which these files are
located is pub/csg/.

There are two main types of files--program and document.  Document files
can be obtained by anonymous FTP or by sending a mail message to
server@biome.bio.ns.ca with the command "get file-id" as the first line of
the message.  For example, to obtain the latest PCT bibliography compiled
by Greg Williams send the following command to server@biome.bio.ns.ca:

get csg/documents/biblio.pct

and you will receive the bibliography via e-mail (longer documents may be
sent as a set of several smaller ones).

To obtain program and other binary files, anonymous FTP (file transfer
protocol) should be used since I have found that converting binary files to
ASCII for mailing and then back to binary is a real pain and there is no
standard way of doing this.  If you are at an educational institution or
high-tech commerical establishment, someone there can probably show you how
to use FTP.  You probably cannot use FTP if you use CompuServe, MCIMail,
ATTMail or other commercial service for e-mail.

The two most important programs (I think going through each of these is
essential for anyone wanting to participate intelligently on CSGnet) are
Bill Powers's Demo1 and Demo2.  Their
file-id's are pub/csg/programs/msdos/dem1a.exe  and
pub/csg/programs/msdos/dem2a.exe.  To get Demo1 using anonymous FTP, use
the following commands:

cd pub/csg/programs/msdos
binary
get dem1a.exe

The fileserver can also be accessed using the Gopher program.  To do this,
telnet to biome.bio.ns.ca as gopher.  This is an experimental gopher
server, but it may not always be functioning.--Gary

P.S.  Thanks to Bill Silvert for setting this all up for us and for
checking the accuracy of this message.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary A. Cziko                    Telephone: (217) 333-8527
Educational Psychology           FAX: (217) 333-5847
University of Illinois           E-mail: g-cziko@uiuc.edu
1310 S. Sixth Street             Radio: N9MJZ
210 Education Building
Champaign, Illinois 61820-6990
USA
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Date:         Fri, 11 Sep 1992 10:32:48 -0500
From:         "Gary A. Cziko" <g-cziko@UIUC.EDU>
Subject:      Education as Manipulation

[Gary Cziko 920911.1000]

Greg Williams (920911) said in response to Bill Powers (920910.1100):

>I am still tantalized by the possibility that a manipulator might actually
>succeed by fostering conflict at some point(s) in an elaborate manipulative
>ruse -- even to the point of "inducing" reorganization.

Isn't this what education is?  Isn't this what Socrates did with his
students?

Here's a nice example.  When time for my first sabbatical came up, I
decided that I wanted my kids (then going into the 1st and 3rd grades) to
learn another language.  So I packed up our stuff and carted the family off
to France.  The kids wound up in a two-room country school in the Alps
where nobody spoke English.

Talk about error and manipulation!  They had no friends, couldn't
understand a word of anybody, but had two very understanding and kind
teachers (both males, by the way) and wanted very much to understand what
was happening and be understood.  I had predicted that they would
reorganize and be speaking French well by the end of the school year.  In
fact, by Christmas my son (1st grader) was hardly distinguishable from
native speakers of French and my daughter was not far behind.

This certainly required lots of error and reorganization, but I was
nonetheless able to predict quite well the outcome.  I suppose they could
have both become autistic and catatonic, but they didn't.

So I think Greg is right when he considers education as (his nice) form of
manipulation.  The only was to push reorganization is to cause error in
students.  It doesn't always work, but in some situations its pretty
reliable.--Gary
------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary A. Cziko                    Telephone: (217) 333-8527
Educational Psychology           FAX: (217) 333-5847
University of Illinois           E-mail: g-cziko@uiuc.edu
1310 S. Sixth Street             Radio: N9MJZ
210 Education Building
Champaign, Illinois 61820-6990
USA
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Posted-Date: Fri, 04 Sep 92 14:35:56 PDT
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Fri, 4 Sep 1992 14:35:56 PDT
From:         marken@AERO.ORG
Subject:      Sciences and Ideologies - I

[From Rick Marken (920904.1430)]

Greg Williams (920904) --

> Skinner was
>model-less; PCT is based on models. And those models, aside from confirming
>folk notions of how organisms "work," are constructed in such a way as to make
>the two mutually incompatible "complementary" world-views described above fit
>together in a plausible way. I think the science could heal that ideological
>rift, and lead to a new sort of ideology noting the importance of BOTH history
>and the present situation.

Talk about synchronicity. I had just posted my last post on using models
to heal our apparent rift on "control of behavior" and then I read this.
Sounds good to me, Greg.

> Yet there is the tendency of Bill (also Rick, and others)
>to see PCT science as supporting the ideology of radical autonomy and denying
>an ideology of radical environmentalism. I have little hope of changing their
>opinion on this; but others without ideological axes to grind might see some
>merit in my arguments. I would not like to see the potential of PCT science
>sacrificed on the altar of ideology, as Skinner sacrificed his "science of
>behavior."

I don't want to see PCT sacrificed on the alter of ideology either! Help.
Stop me before I sacrifice again! Tell me what I am doing that's
wrong. How can I stop?

I swear. I am (at least, I think I am) only trying to describe
(verbally) what I think is implied by the PCT model of behavior
(at least, as far as control of behavior goes). I agree that you
can control behavior -- via deception, disturbance to controlled variables
(including changes in the feedback function -- ie operant conditioning),
asking, etc. It's just that you can't do it arbitrarily (you might pick
a variable to control that the other person is also controlling) or for
long (the controllee might eventually catch on). That's all. My only ideology
(that I know of) is that I believe (based on my understanding of the nature of
control) that controlling is not a very good way for controllers to interact,
my own behavior notwithstanding. (As I always say to my kids, "do as I say,
not as I do; better yet, do as your mother says; even better yet, do what
you want").

Best 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:         Mon, 14 Sep 1992 12:09:14 PDT
Reply-To:     sibun@parc.xerox.com
From:         Penni Sibun <sibun@PARC.XEROX.COM>
Subject:      Re: turing test; autonomy & reorganization
              14 Sep 1992 10:45:10 -0700
              <92Sep14.112829pdt.11603@alpha.xerox.com>

Penni Sibun (920914.1200) --


   [From Bill Powers (920914.0900)]

   With communication limited to a teletype, we can only test the other
   entity at the higher levels of organization. At the strictly rule-
   driven level, I doubt whether we could distinguish a program from a
   person if the program were complex enough. But what would happen when
   we try to see the principles or system concepts that the other
   "person" is working from? Is it possible, for example, to write a
   program that follows principles of humility, arrogance, caution, and
   so on? I don't doubt that a program could make use of vocabularies
   constructed from the speech of people judged to exhibit these
   principles, but could a program in itself generate any new principle?
   And if it could, would its principles be indistinguishable from the
   ones human beings adopt and control for? Could a computer program
   think up something like the Turing test? Could a computer program be
   devised to carry out the Turing test with another entity?

right.  without having read it, i think this is the kind of thing the
article that prompted rick's post was saying.  a program that can
actually pass the original turing test would be impressive, but we
probably still wouldn't want to ascribe intelligence to it when push
came to shove.  we'd want to see more, we'd want to see versatility.

the first ``official'' (it's got a lot of publicity and money
attached) turing test was held last year.  i've seen some transcripts
and the system that won seemed pretty credible (it ws judged human
about half the time).  however, the task was limited not only to
teletype conversation, but to a particular topic.  all very
interesting, though.  (see ``AI magazine'' 13(2), summer 92, pp80-95
for a report.)

   Would you be surprised to learn that I am really an 80486/33 with 4
   Megs of memory?

very.  ;-}

cheers.

				--penni
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Date:         Mon, 14 Sep 1992 09:08:02 EDT
From:         eric harnden <HARNDEN@AMERICAN.EDU>
Subject:      stella for pct, cont'd

from: eric harnden (920914.0900)

i plugged the two level system suggested by mr powers into stella
over the weekend, and can report that it does just fine. s and t
converge to s* and t*. i need to bring binhex home so i can send
a copy of it to mr cziko, as a modeling example.
on the subject of simultaneous equations...
there is a slight terminology difference here (as usual, it seems).
stella is perfectly capable of being set up to model solutions to
systems of equations such as those provided by mr powers. the compiler
effectively treats the existence of a level variable as a delay of one
dt interval. variables dependent on level state are calculated first,
and then the level (which is dependent on those values) is calculated
for the end of the timestep. what is disallowed (and i believe is the source
of mr cziko's error) is the following:

    source/sink<-----------valve------------>level----------
                            /\                              
                                                           
                                                           \/
                                            ------------->v1
                                                          
                                                          
                                                          \/
                           rate<-------------v3<------------v2


where v1,v2, and v3 are mutually dependent variables which must be
calculated at the same time. in that loop there must be a delay of
some kind (preferably a level).
one thing i can suggest to anyone trying to model with stella is to
at least obtain "introduction to system dynamics modeling with dynamo",
by george richardson and alexander pugh. the stella docs do not go into
the principles very deeply, and getting a look at the underlying
assumptions of what constitutes a 'good' model is very worthwhile. even
though the book is written as a dynamo text, it is immediately applicable
to stella (since stella basically just compresses two steps of dynamo
programming into one, at the cost of some flexibility).

-----------< Cognitive Dissonance is a 20th Century Art Form >-----------
Eric Harnden (Ronin)
<HARNDEN@AUVM.BITNET> or <HARNDEN@AMERICAN.EDU>
The American University Physics Dept.
4400 Mass. Ave. NW, Washington, DC, 20016-8058
(202) 885-2748
---------------------< Join the Cognitive Dissidents >-------------------
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Date:         Mon, 14 Sep 1992 08:14:19 EDT
From:         Chris Love see mmt <cdlove@BEN.DCIEM.DND.CA>
Subject:      For: Thomas Baines

Hi Thomas,
  Would you please send me your e-mail address, since I
have some mail for you.  Thanks,
Chris Love. (DCIEM)
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Date:         Thu, 10 Sep 1992 13:56:41 EDT
From:         Chris Love see mmt <cdlove@BEN.DCIEM.DND.CA>
Subject:      Missing mail From T. Baines?

[From: Chris Love (920910.1400)]
[To: Thomas Baines (920909)]

 Hi Thomas,
  Thanks for the response.  However, for some reason or
another I am missing your mail in response to Child
care magic, which Bill posted a few days ago.  Some other
mail from my colleagues here, never appeared either, in
particular my message yesterday.  That is to say, it appears
I may not be getting everything.  If you could summarize
what this topographic folding concerns I would be happy to
comment on it if I can.

  I did find two posting from you over the last few days;
one concerns your child upbringing titled [920909.1020],
Sciences and ideoligies - I and another short one
[920909.12:22] - Dealing with children, but neither talks
about this folding topographies, etc. that you mention in
your response posting to me [920909], Imagination objectives.

  Hope to hear from you soon,
Best,
Chris Love. (DCIEM)
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Date:         Sat, 5 Sep 1992 20:37:00 GMT
From:         Henry James Bicycles Inc <0005096370@MCIMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Our Flat Earth Brothers & Sisters

[From Hank Folson (920905)]

To All:

A couple of times now disparaging remarks have been made on the
net about the the Flat Earth Society. Twenty years ago I watched
an interview on TV with a member of the Society. As I understand
now, the interviewer was controlling to show how smart he was and
how out of touch with reality the Flat Earther was. But the quiet
very in control elderly gentleman talked more about not taking
our view of everything for granted. In spite of the interviewer's
pushing for details about how the earth could be flat, he
continued to make his main point: the obvious, what we take as
truth, may not be true. Some time later, his real message finally
soaked in.

If this group had formed before 1492, the name would then have
been the Round Earth Society. Everyone would have made lots of
fun of them, until of course, 1492.

The Flat Earth Society has much in common with the position
CSGNet and PCT are in now. They are our brothers. They too are
doing some very useful, if unappreciated, work.

It's all perception...

Hank

Hank Folson, Henry James Bicycles, Inc.
704 Elvira Avenue, Redondo Beach, CA 90277
310-540-1552 (Day & Evening) MCI MAIL: 509-6370 Internet: 5096370@MCIMAIL.COM
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Date:         Tue, 8 Sep 1992 10:29:00 GMT
From:         Hortideas Publishing <0004972767@MCIMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Does this clarify?

From Greg Williams (920910)

>Bill Powers, recent posts

No time to look at most recent posts now -- headed for Lexington to take th
Sept. HI to the printers. But I woke up with a clear vision of how what I
have been terming "manipulation" goes beyond rubber-banding.

Throwing caution to the winds (i.e., being unpicky about absolute precision of
wording):

Rubber-banding-type control of another involves disturbing a variable which
you know to be controlled by another so they will "correct" for your
disturbance by performing actions which you want to see.

Manipulation involves changing another's uncontrolled perceptions so that
they will control in a way so as to perform actions you want to see. They
will control in that way (assuming your model of the way they control is
adequate) because, given the situation you have led them to perceive, that
is the way they "naturally" control.

In rubber-banding, control works best when the controlee doesn't pay
attention to the actions you want to see. Manipulation can be aided by
the manipulee having a high gain for, and paying close attention to, the
actions you want to see.

Does this clarify? See you tonight or tommorrow morning.

Best,

Greg
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Date:         Sun, 13 Sep 1992 18:30:00 GMT
From:         Dag Forssell <0004742580@MCIMAIL.COM>
Subject:      One or two texts, Progress report

As I post this, I see Dennis response. What subject did you mean to ask about
Eileen?  Here is my reply.

[From Dag Forssell (920913-1)]

>Eileen Prince (920913)

>  I am writing this to request suggestions on one or two texts.
>That is, the old question of if you could only read oner or two
>books about ..., what would you choose.

Without question, the first text I recommend is FREEDOM FROM STRESS by
Ed Ford. Ask him for it!  Or ask me for my intro/demo package with Ed's
book included. Either way, your snail mail address is required.

Perhaps Gary Cziko could re-post the introductory message (usenet intro),
which includes a brief PCT book list with commentary. It's been a long
time, Gary.
-----------------------------------------------------------

Progress report:

You all know Christine and I got our first booking. When the Director of
Personnel and Engineering Manager called with instructions from the
Chairman to sign us up, we agreed on a pilot presentation to half the
engineering department, about 15 people. They know they are our first
commercial customer. I immediately sent FREEDOM FROM STRESS in addition
to an extra set of all my intro information to the personnel manager, who
was designated our contact person. That was two weeks ago. Now, the two
are issuing the following memorandum to the WHOLE group of 30 engineers,
including a few marketing people.

                              MEMORANDUM

DATE:      September 10, 1992

TO:        Distribution

FROM:      (Personnel Mgr) / (Engr Mgr)

SUBJECT:   Purposeful Leadership training

Every once in a while something new comes out and you feel it is worth
the risk to give it a try. In our opinion, Purposeful Leadership is such
an opportunity. We have read the background literature that Dag Forssell,
the provider, has supplied and his line of thinking parallels many of the
concepts we have been trying to engrain at [Company].

You have been selected to participate in a "beta test" of this new
approach to management thinking that offers some excellent possibilities.

The course covers three full days (three consecutive Wednesdays, ...).
It is held...

If this course is as valuable as we feel it may be, we will be following
up your training with training for managers and supervisors.

The attached pamphlet will give you an idea of the course content.

DISTRIBUTION:



THEY HAVE UNDERSTOOD!!!!!   (And I believe they will help me because they
now understand what is in it for them).

Now, it is just the small matter of delivery on the promises.

As many of you know, I have been preparing for this as an enthusiast for
several years and full time for a year and a half. We will deliver.

All the PCT literature has been very helpful to me. I thank all the
members of CSG and CSGnet for support and encouragement along the way.

PCT *will* come of age and gain acceptance, and soon!

Dag
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