HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
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Date:         Sun, 24 Jan 1993 11:03:17 EST
From:         Avery Andrews <andaling@FAC.ANU.EDU.AU>
Subject:      camps

[Avery.Andrews 920123.1050]
 Rick Marken (930123.1100)

 >"Feedback informaiton enables a system to react to events after they
 >have occurred.

So here we have the event blunder. I'd say something along the lines
that events are useful for certain purposes, but we can't assess their
overall role adequately without properly understanding the continuous
aspect of things.


 >However, for a system to adapt efficiently in a variable
 >environment, it must also be able to anticipate what is likely to happen
 >in the future. Most human behavior is anticipary in nature.

I'd be happy with this if they replaced `most' with `much'.


 >"Behavior patterns are a function of the informational-behavioral
 >transations with the environment"

Gobbledeygook (we agree here, I think)


 >"Human sensori-perceptual capabilities are designed to collect information
 >useful for GUIDING PRACTICAL ACTION in the physically structured and
 >dynamically varying terrestrial environment in which humans evolved"
 >p 22 emphasis mine

Hmm.  This sounds fine to me, at least if `are designed to collect' is replaced
by `have been selected for success in collecting'.




Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au
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Date:         Sun, 24 Jan 1993 04:35:37 EST
From:         Avery Andrews <andaling@FAC.ANU.EDU.AU>
Subject: Re: Good, good, and good

[Avery.Andrews 930124.0435]

I don't think I'm halfway there to a feedback too slow paper at all.  The
literature is huge, I've looked at only a tiny portion of it, & there
are people out there in CSGNet with much better backgrounds for
interpreting it than I have.  Also, linguistics can't wait much longer,
since teaching starts up again in a month down here.  So I can do some
of it, but not all of it.

Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au
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Date:         Mon, 25 Jan 1993 15:34:53 EST
From:         Avery Andrews <andaling@FAC.ANU.EDU.AU>
Subject:      Re: camps, Reviews

[Avery Andrews 920125.1529]

 (Rick Marken (930124.1000)


 > If anything is "guiding practical
 >action" in a control loop, it is the net effect of the disturbance on
 >the controlled perceptual variable.

Well, that's pretty much what I interpreted them as saying, but you
actually say it, rather than just allowing me to read you that way.
The vagueness and ambiguity of a lot of this literature is certainly
a major problem with it, which deserves a lot of attention.

Another likely devil's bib entry is:

  Adams, J.A. (1971) `A Closed Loop Theory of Motor Control', Journal
   of Motor Behavior 3:111-149.

A survey of recent theories of motor behavior that I've been looking at,
and may report on shortly, cites this as the origin of the (supposedly
defunct) `closed loop' paradigm.

Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au
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Date:         Mon, 25 Jan 1993 08:31:20 -0800
From:         Marken@COURIER4.AERO.ORG
Subject:      formulations

[From Rick Marken (930125.0800)]

Avery Andrews (930125.1610) --

>The bad guys say:

>  Perception guides action

>What Rick Marken says may (I hope) be paraphrased as:

>  Perception of the net effects of disturbances on a controlled
>    variable guides action

I hate to be a pain in the ass about this, but that's not quite
what I meant either. I meant:

Perception (of ANYTHING) does not guide action: action
guides (controls) perception.

All this is just based on the two basic laws of control system
operation:

1)  p = r

2)  o = -kd

The equals signs are actually approximations (which I can't
easily notate on the net) but VERY VERY CLOSE approx-
imations when loop gain is HIGH.

Law 1 says that perception depends on the setting of the
reference signal: perception is a dependent variable, the
reference signal is the independent variable. This law (fact)
of control is the basis of the title of Bill's book Behavior:
The control of perception. This is because we usually think
of behavior as a dependent variable that the actor is in
some sense "responsible" for. In a control loop, the only
dependent variable that fits this description is perception.

Law 2 says that output (or action) is negatively related to
the disturbance. The disturbance is the net influence of the
environment on the controlled perception, p; the action is
the net influence of the actor on the controlled perception.
The important  (and AMAZING) thing to notice about
equation 2 is that p does NOT appear in it (on the left
OR right). The output (in a high gain, negative feedback
loop) depends ENTIRELY on the disturbance, which in
many cases (such as compensatory tracking) CAN NOT
EVEN BE PERECIVED. But whether d can be perceived
or not is irrelevant; the fact of the matter is that action
(output) depends ONLY on the disturbance AS AN UN-
SENSED ASPECT OF THE ENVIRONMENT.

From a conventional (S-R) point of view, law 2 is
just flat out magic or mysticism. As I said, it is just
something that you have to accept (like mass attract-
ion) even though it seems to completely contradict
everyday experience.

This is why modelling (even in very simple situations)
is so important for understanding and accepting PCT;
it helps if you can see with your own eyes that Law 2
really does hold for a high gain closed negative feedback
loop.

Best

Rick
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Date:         Fri, 22 Jan 1993 10:43:48 EST
From:         Avery D Andrews <ada612@CSCGPO.ANU.EDU.AU>
Subject:      kugler et al

It might be worth figuring out where Turvey et. al. get the following
absurd idea from:

  "In control theory, the command-algorithm is separate from the power-flux
   that it modulates;  in the neurophysiology of movement, the central
   nervous system is held conceptually separate from the skeletomuscular
   apparatus that peforms the movement"

  Kugler, Scott, Kelso and Turvey (1980) `On the Concept of Coordinative
   Structures as Dissipative Structures', in Stelmach & Requin (eds)
   Tutorials in Motor Behavior, North Holland 3-48.

Absurd because people like Rack, etc. go to great lengths to establish
the physical properties of the power-generators,  and their effects
on the properties of feedback loop.

Probably out of the same vein as the PCT criticisms that Rick regales us
with.

Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au
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Date:         Thu, 28 Jan 1993 09:22:43 EST
From:         Avery Andrews <andaling@FAC.ANU.EDU.AU>
Subject:      economics & PCT

[Avery Andrews 930128.900]
 (Robert Clark 930127)

 >When I finally worked my way
 >through the details, I realized that it could have been greatly simplified
 >by using the standard second order differential equation and its
 >solutions.  This kind of thing could be revised and up-dated to good
 >advantage.  Once again, application of the hierarchical concept would
 >surely be very helpful.

I think it would be excellent if a short discussion of how to do this
could be written up and archived somewhere - there's no way I can
look into it myself, but it's exactly the sort of thing that ought
to be available as a resource to people interested in developing PCT.

Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au
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Date:         Fri, 22 Jan 1993 21:03:13 EST
From:         "CHARLES W. TUCKER" <N050024@UNIVSCVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Request for names of book reviewers
              22 Jan 1993 14:49:24 -0700 from <POWERS_W%FLC@VAXF.COLORADO.EDU>

This note is very interesting in that John Harvey was a student in my class
and also a student of my colleague, Bob Stewart (he may have taken a class
from Clark McPhail also).

One reviewer that we might suggest is there at the University of Iowa
who is Carl Couch in the Department of Sociology another in the same
department is Mark Markosky (sp?).

The journal that Harvey edits has a very wide distribution.

Regards,
                   Chuck
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Date:         Sun, 24 Jan 1993 09:51:57 EST
From:         Avery Andrews <andaling@FAC.ANU.EDU.AU>
Subject:      throwing stones from glass houses

[Avery Andrews 930123.930]

One problem with my writing the contra-feedback myths article is that
in many respects I'm in the same situation as the people I'd be criticizing.
E.g. in my post about the Schmidt article I said that you needed a
high-gain system to correct small errors, but while walking the dog
this morning I realized that the magnitude of the disturbing forces
is what matters, not the absolute size of the errors.

One of the obstacles to PCT understanding is perhaps that it is a
profoundly Newtonian theory, while most people's world views
are pre-Newtonian, and the Newtonian picture is *hard* to acquire.

Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au
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Date:         Thu, 21 Jan 1993 14:14:36 -0600
From:         CZIKO Gary <g-cziko@UIUC.EDU>
Subject:      McClelland Paper

[from Gary Cziko 930121.2000 GMT]

re Kent McClelland (930121)

Sure am sorry  to hear about your paper being turned down.

I once had a similar problem (oversell) several years ago with a language
acquisition paper.  Somehow I convinced the editors to publish it anyway
followed by two or three critics to whom I responded.  This actually turned
out to be more interesting than just the paper itself.

I'm not saying this would also work for you, but it may be worth a try.  I
suppose your first step would be to write back commenting on the criticisms
of your reviewers.  If you do this in such a way  as to respect the
critiques and point out that their problem is to be expected in that PCT
turns lots of established perspectives upside-down and inside-out, then
maybe you could your paper published with critical comments and then with
your rejoinder.

Perhaps you could get some support and assistance on this from CSGnet by
posting the reviews.  As you know, we are always on the lookout for more
devils who need to be bathed.

On a more technical note, I wonder if you could send me two files.  I
assume that your paper was typed using Word on the Mac.  So send me the
binary file binhexed as you know how to do.

Also, I would like to experiment with sending formatted texts using RTF
(rich text format; also called "Interchange format") which is an ASCII
encoding of the binary file.  This should be theoretically be readable by
quite a few word processors, both Mac and IBM based.  Do do this, "save as"
and choose this format.  Then send the resulting file to me.

I would also like to find out how many CSGnetters who would like to receive
Kent's paper can also import  RTF files.  You may have to check your word
processor documentation under "importing files."  If you can import RTF
files, let me know what computer and software you are using.  You should
send this to me personal e-mail address and I will send you the RTF version
of Kent's paper if I think this will work.

--Gary

P.S.  There is work on a standard for the transmission of both text and
graphics over Internet.  It is called MIME and promises to make our sharing
of information much easier in the future.
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Date:         Mon, 25 Jan 1993 16:07:21 -0700
From:         "William T. Powers" <POWERS_W%FLC@VAXF.COLORADO.EDU>
Subject:      Monkeying around with heads

[From Bill Powers (930125.1600)]

Avery Andrews (930125.0800) --

>But, for both groups, applying a constant load cause the head
>to fail to attain its final position, (though it almost gets
>there), attaining the final position when the load is removed.

This sounds like a proportional control system. The loop gain
could be calculated if we knew some numbers. At least we could
get the error sensitivity: newton-meters of torque per radian of
error. Considering that the head normally doesn't experience any
torque disturbances beyond the small amount due to offset of the
axis of rotation from the center of gravity, this control system
doesn't need very much static error sensitivity. It's not really
sufficient to say that the head "fails" to attain its final
position. The amount by which it fails, and under what magnitude
of disturbance, makes a lot of difference. Also, the dynamics of
control are very important: how fast does the head accelerate and
decelerate? I'll bet the angular accelerations are pretty large
during a sudden movement. And how's the stability? Does the head
oscillate back and forth around the final position a few times,
or is it a strongly damped movement, approaching the final
position asymptotically?

The problem I always have with articles like this is that the
authors aren't thinking in terms of control theory, so they don't
record the kind of data you'd need to evaluate the control
system.


Best,

Bill P.
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Date:         Tue, 26 Jan 1993 07:52:50 -0800
From:         Marken@COURIER4.AERO.ORG
Subject:      Non-Gaian Margins

[From Rick Marken (930126.0730)]

Greg Williams (930126) --

>Gary, I'm continuing to keep my margins under control, even though
>Rick obviously cannot.

I am really sorry about that last post. I just get so carried away with the
writing I forget to control the margins -- it's an attention phenomenon
(or lapse of attention phenomenon).

>Neat recent paper for PCT-cum-evolution freaks: George C. Williams,
>"GAIA, Nature Worship and Biocentric Fallacies," QUARTERLY REVIEW OF
>BIOLOGY 67, December '92, 479-486. Some quotes follow.

Yes! That was a wonderful quote -- it definitely provides nice, non-rev-
olutionary [ how'd you like how I controlled that margin!]  common
ground with mainstream evolutionary biology.

Best

Rick
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Date:         Mon, 25 Jan 1993 12:26:12 EST
From:         mmt@BEN.DCIEM.DND.CA
Subject: Re: formulations

[Martin Taylor 930125 12:15]
(Rick Marken 930125.0800) to Avery Andrews

>>  Perception of the net effects of disturbances on a controlled
>>    variable guides action
>
>I hate to be a pain in the ass about this, but that's not quite
>what I meant either. I meant:
>
>Perception (of ANYTHING) does not guide action: action
>guides (controls) perception.
>
>All this is just based on the two basic laws of control system
>operation:
>
>1)  p = r
>
>2)  o = -kd
>
>The equals signs are actually approximations (which I can't
>easily notate on the net) but VERY VERY CLOSE approx-
>imations when loop gain is HIGH.

A lot of the confusion might perhaps be removed if these laws were always
accompanied by "in the limit of infinite time."  In practice, at the levels
of our experiments, infinite time is reasonably well approximated in seconds
or parts of seconds.  But the dynamic behaviour of the control loop is
important.  And dynamically, some part of the disturbance DOES appear in p.
That part is what leads people to think in S-R terms.

You can look at a closed loop starting anywhere, provided you get back to
where you started before you quit.  Rick showed how one can get various
flavours of psychology by looking only at parts of the loop, in his
Blind Men and Elephant paper.

The fact that you can start anywhere carries with it the implication
that effects inserted anywhere have implications all round the loop.
We prefer to see that changing the reference results in changing the
percept (which is the point where the loop closes, starting at the
reference injection at the comparator).  One could equally see the
effects as starting at the disturbance, which is compensated by the
results of the output on the world.  And that's what an outsider
(experimenter) can see.  The basis of The Test is the fact that the
disturbance has no long-term result in the world.  But it does have
a dynamic effect that depends on the delays, gains, and impedances
around the loop.  That dynamic effect is easily, but misleadingly,
seen as the effect of stimulus on response.

>From a conventional (S-R) point of view, law 2 is
>just flat out magic or mysticism. As I said, it is just
>something that you have to accept (like mass attract-
>ion) even though it seems to completely contradict
>everyday experience.

It would be mystical, if there were no way for perception to be
controlled (if changes in perception were not reflected as error
that affected output that affected perception).  It's the dynamics
that removes the mystical quality.

Martin
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Date:         Tue, 26 Jan 1993 05:48:09 EST
From:         Avery Andrews <andaling@FAC.ANU.EDU.AU>
Subject:      engineers & psychologists

[Avery.Andrews 930126.0530]

Whether or not the arm demo is a piece of routine robotics or something
completely different, it does seem to me to be a flat-out refutation
of some ideas that psychologists (or at least kinesiologists) have
gotten from engineers, for example the Smith quote that Greg
Williams pulled out:

 >210 - "Engineers can design robots and other machines to behave... using what
 >they call POINT-TO-POINT COMPUTATION methods. The position of the limb at each
 >point in space and at each time in the movement is represented by a reference
 >for correctness, and the system can be made to track this set of positions
 >across time to produce an action with a particular form. But the system must
 >be very 'smart,' and it must process information very rapidly, even for the
 >simplest of movements. All of these references for correctness must be stored
 >somewhere, and each of the points will be different if the movement begins
 >from a slightly different place or if it is to take a slightly different
 >pathway through space.

(Still present in the 1988 edition, but on pg. 163)

The arm circuitry is of course very dumb, has no trouble in processing
the required information extremely rapidly, & it doesn't store references
for `correctness' in anything like the manner suggested (there is the
vkmap, but that's different).  Schmidt doesn't cite any engineering
works, so I don't know where he got this idea from (though I've seen
it elsewhere, in a 1987 JMB article by Darling & Cooke, but maybe they
were just copying it off him).

The passage also illustrates many features of non-dynamical thinking -
it seems to be assumed that the `references for correctness' have to
be prefabricated and stored somewhere, rather than just spat out in
real time by a smoother, or perhaps some more sophisticted device,
and that they actually have to be attained, rather than just accelerated
towards.

Of course at this point I have no idea whether some engineers actually
thought along these lines, or whether psychologists misunderstood them,
but the consequences have clearly flowed through to the late 80s.

Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au
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Date:         Mon, 25 Jan 1993 10:55:30 -0800
From:         Marken@COURIER4.AERO.ORG

[From Rick Marken (930125.1030)]

Martin Taylor (930125 12:15) --

I said:

>From a conventional (S-R) point of view, law 2 is
>just flat out magic or mysticism. As I said, it is just
>something that you have to accept (like mass attract-
>ion) even though it seems to completely contradict
>everyday experience.

Martin replies --

>It would be mystical, if there were no way for perception to be
>controlled (if changes in perception were not reflected as error
>that affected output that affected perception).  It's the dynamics
>that removes the mystical quality.

Thanks. That's absolutely right.

Control is marvelous -- but mystical no more.

Best

Rick
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Date:         Mon, 25 Jan 1993 13:37:37 EDT
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From:         "Bill Cunningham, ATCD-G (8" <CUNNINGB@MONROE-EMH1.ARMY.MIL>
Subject:      Acceptance sermon

Bill Cunningham 920125.1310
(Bob Clark 920125)

Amen and Amen.  Very good advice, as should be self evident.

Last November, John Gabriel and I were "peddling" our approach to
an official moderately high in federal officialdumb.  He was very
polite, said "that's nice" and wondered what he was to do the
information.  I called him the next day to say that the real test
of a new paradigm claim was whether it helped him solve problems
heretofore intractable, and that we would welcome a chance to
work on his "top ten".  The response was immediate and friendly.
He said that made great sense and invited us return in March when
he would have a better feel for his "top ten", given change in
administration.  I'm not sure he'll have it by then, but I do
think we'll get in the door when it's time.  We're lucky he accepted the
followup phone call.  I feel pretty stupid for not having started our
presentation with that point.  Lesson learned, hopefully only once.

Or to paraphrase Bill P:  I can lead a horse to water because that's my
business, but I can't make him drink because that's his business.  Moral:
If you want to sell water, find horses when they are thirsty.

Bill C.
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Date:         Thu, 21 Jan 1993 12:38:00 GMT
From:         Hortideas Publishing <0004972767@MCIMAIL.COM>
Subject:      The Arm Challenge

From Greg Williams (930121)

Regarding the ongoing discussion about modeling pointing behavior,
I think it is clear that PCTers apparently could be looked up to
by (at least some) roboticists if they successfully make a fast
PCT model (endpoint control) with six or seven degrees of freedom.
So, if that's what it takes, why not try to do it? I say: go to
it, Bill! Even if the attempt fails, it will be instructive to
all. But I don't think it will fail.

As ever,

Greg
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