From: mmt@BEN.DCIEM.DND.CA
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Subject: In the eye of the beholder
Date: 17 Dec 92 17:15:06 GMT
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU

[Martin Taylor 921217 11:30]
(Bill Powers 921213 07:00)

>I'm perfectly aware of my limitations and my ignorance, but the
>fact is that when, as a teenager, I read Einstein's explanation
>of relativity, I may not have known what a tensor was, but I
>understood the idea perfectly well. When I read Norbert Wiener's
>account of control processes in living organisms, I may not have
>seen the relevance of stationary time series or followed his
>arguments about Newtonian and Bergsonian Time, but I understood
>how a control process worked and what it had to do with behavior.
>When people describe a phenomenon of nature and offer a clean and
>simple explanation of it, I usually understand what they are
>getting at. So, I think, do most people.
>
>When I read your post, John, I could not figure out what you and
>the others were getting at. Beneath my surface reaction, I was
>wondering "Why are they making it so complicated? What are all
>these theorems supposed to be about? What makes them think that
>any of this has anything to do with reality? Are these people
>really of such a different order of human intelligence that they
>can see simplicity and order in such seemingly vague and abstract
>conjectures?"

Complexity, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.  You find it
difficult to get people to understand PCT, which to you is very simple.
To someone that does not have the necessary underlying concepts, the
whole network of ECSs, plus the structure of the individual ECS, plus
what it means to control ... all has to be put into a single perceptual
input function, which is very complex.  For people who have a feeling for
control, bnt who use complicated inverse kinematics as an essential element,
the PIF required for HPCT is simpler, but wrong, so it again seems to be
complex.

John Gabriel thinks in terms of mathematics that you and I do not know.
What he says seems complex, partly because we don't understand what to him
are trivial implications.  Many people on this net (Rick and Bruce Nevin
for prime examples) have complained about my uses of Shannon information
theory in connection with PCT, because they bring along with it an incorrect
lower-level PIF that makes the consequences for HPCT seem unnecessarily
complex.  To me, Shannon information makes HPCT intelligible and simple.

>If this work is so fundamental and important, why don't I understand it?

There's no reason why you should, but perhaps there is an implicit social
demand on we who have different backgraunds to explain more carefully why
our view should be helpful to you.  As I said, I don't understand John
any more than you do, and I have reason to believe he doesn't understand
me either.

> as a teenager, I read Einstein's explanation
>of relativity, I may not have known what a tensor was, but I
>understood the idea perfectly well.

Me, too.  The answer is that Einstein is a brilliant writer who
understood his subject so well that he could see just how to relate
concepts in a way that made good sense for normal people.  We aren't
all so gifted.
====================================
On another topic:

>At the risk of alienating friends,

No alienation here...I assume it refers to

> And why,
>beneath this work, does there seen to be such an unthinking
>acceptance of the premises of military philosophers? Would a
>scientific advisor to a torturer find it just as easy to become
>immersed in the technical problems, and to ignore the underlying
>repulsiveness of the whole undertaking?

The short answer to the second quetion is "Yes."  Look at the Nazi
doctors in the concentration camps, or the US teachers of Paraguayan
and other South American torturers.  Their personal high-level references
permit it.

I think you would have a better explanation for this than anyone else.  Is
it your perception of something in the closer world that is not perceived by
the rest of us?  Is it a fact of Boss Reality, that your theory addresses?
I suspect a bit of each.

As an exculpatory statement, let me explain that DCIEM is in the business
of protecting people from stresses of all kinds.  People in the military
are subject to more stress than the average Joe.  We deal with all ways in
which people interact with their working environment, physiological,
mechanical, psychological.  The environment is military, primarily for
peacekeeping purposes (did you know that Canada has been involved in EVERY
United Nations peacekeeping mission).  I don't perceive myself as
"scientific advisor to a torturer," though I willingly try to help
our military to achieve their objectives if they ever get into a situation
where they must fight.

In military terms, "going up a level" is the job of the politicians.  If
they do not succeed (as seems usually to be the case) in finding ways around
a conflict of interest, and one side chooses to fight, the other side had
better be ready to fight or to concede.  Humans are, as we discussed over the
last couple of days, not good at conceding, as compared to other mammals.
So we have the (Bill-P-predicted) escalation of force.  If no-one provides
the technical support for that escalation, then the politicians' failure
leads to a concession after defeat, which is worse (I think) than early
concession.  (I prefer "Better Red than Dead" to "Better Dead than Red").
Did MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) actually keep the peace for 40 years
between the Soviet Union and the USA, while exacerbating all the marginal
conflicts that destroyed only a small part of the world rather than all of it?

I think that military research can be avoided only by the development of
some solid means of resolving international conflicts by agreement.  If the
USA would acknowledge the authority of the International Court of Justice, it
would help a lot.  But the USA acknowledges the ICJ only when their rulings
support the USA, which makes it very hard for the lesser nations to accept
the ICJ as authoritative.  One of the points at which it became very hard
for me to maintain my present job, knowing that the Canadian military is
allied with the US military, was when the USA repudiated the judgment against
it in respect of mining Nicaraguan harbours.

Sorry to get political, but there are reasons for working with the military
that can square with ethical principles.  And I think that you, Bill P,
should be better able than most people to understand that.

Martin
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