Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Fri, 11 Sep 1992 12:07:00 GMT
From:         Hortideas Publishing <0004972767@MCIMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Kinds of Manipulation

From Greg Williams (920911)

>Bill Powers (920910.1100)

GW>>There are four kinds of manipulation (I claim): those which, if
GW>>successful ... result in the manipulee's ... judging them ... harmful
GW>>["exploitation"], neutral ["?"], good ["facilitation"], or mixed/who
GW>>knows/can't say ["?"].

>These aren't kinds of manipulation; they're judgements about the
>outcomes of manipulations.

Sounds fine to me. I was just trying to emphasize that my "manipulation"
doesn't ALWAYS have to have "bad" results (NOTE: FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF
THE MANIPULEE!!!)

>Any single manipulative act of any kind
>could be judged in all four of these ways by different people.

Yes, but I think judgement by the MANIPULEE (sometime after a successful
manipulation, or after being apprised of all relevant facts about a failed
manipulation) is most telling. PCTers like to take the point of view of the
organism, don't they, for "true" explanation of behavior?

>What I'm trying to sort out is the NATURE of manipulation, not its
>situation-dependent effects.

Me too -- I want to sort out its "nature and limits" as revealed by PCT
notions. That's what I've been saying all along. Welcome aboard!

>Judging the effects gets us into the subject of "importance," which I still
>want to postpone for a while. I'm still concerned with establishing what
>kinds of manipulation are POSSIBLE.

Fine.

>We've established one kind of manipulation, which is controlling a
>person's action by applying a disturbing influence directly to the
>variable that the action is being used to control. For short, this is
>"rubber-banding."

Yes.

>Another kind involves the manipulator having control of part of the
>environment on which the manipulee's controlled perception depends, in
>a case where that part of the perception is NOT under direct control
>by the manipulee, but only contributes one variable to a multi-input-
>variable perception. For short, this is "manipulation of action
>through disturbance of uncontrolled perceptions"  or just
>"manipulation through uncontrolled perceptions" (OK?).

I think so. You've spooked me about agreeing to anything with "control" in it
because I still don't know exactly how you mean it all the time. Manipulation
IS control in the sense that the manipulator is controlling some of his/her
perceptions, but I'm not so sure any more whether saying it is "control of
something else" makes anything less muddy.

>In the final analysis, both of these forms of manipulation are
>manipulation through disturbance of controlled variables. In the
>"rubber-banding" case, the disturbance is applied directly to the
>controlled variable. In the "manipulation through uncontrolled
>perceptions" case, it is applied to a higher-level variable through
>disturbing an uncontrolled component of that variable. Both cases
>result in the manipulator being able to exert predictable and
>quantitative control over the actions of the manipulee, with the usual
>provisos about not violating other goals of the manipulee. I assume,
>of course, that the manipulator has correctly identified all pertinent
>controlled variables.

Possibly. Just yesterday morning, Pat and I were discussing the possibility
that "rubber-banding" is just a special case of the broader class of
manipulation which I've been trying to convince you is ubiquitous (and not
necessarily "statistical"/"unimportant"/always "bad"), lo, these many days.
Perhaps the largest part of my problems were due to you not being able to
generalize from the notion of "rubber-banding" to a broader class of
manipulation? At any rate, I need to consider this more before coming to the
conclusion that "rubber-banding" IS a special case of the broader class of
manipulation I've been talking about.

>Can we agree, then, that we have established one method of
>manipulation, which we can call "manipulation of action through
>disturbance of controlled variables"? The nature of this method
>(although not its success) is independent of what the manipulee thinks
>of the results.

For now, I'm willing (provisionally) to accept your suggestion that applying a
disturbing influence DIRECTLY to the variable that the action is being used to
control is just a special case of manipulation as I see it. Ultimately, the
issue of distinguishing the two might hang mainly on pragmatics (what does it
get me to say that the one is a subclass of the other vs. that they are
"different").

>There is another type of manipulation that you've brought up
>previously. We could call it "manipulation by altering the properties
>of the environment." This is what Skinner referred to as altering a
>"schedule of reinforcement."

Here you are being too specific. Skinner would have said that ANY (actual)
manipulation of ANY kind would HAVE to be done by altering the properties of
the other's environment. He, of course, did not believe in direct mental
communication between individuals, and so (for him) it was obvious that the
only way anybody can be influenced in ANY way by another is through changes in
the influencee's environment. THEN he would have gone on to claim (rightly,
wrongly, or (I think) confusedly) that altering a reinforcement schedule is
ONE way an influencee's environment could be altered.

>We can call this "manipulation by altering properties of the environment."

I call it a broader view of how ANY manipulation could be accomplished.

>Purposeful manipulation of actions is possible only when reorganization does
>not result from the manipulation. If there is reorganization, the outcome
>can't be predicted.

I doubt this as a GENERAL statement. Of course, my first question would be:
when does "correct" count when predicting? Ruling out "absolutely correct"
prediction as an absurd demand (even PCTers seem satisfied with 99.999999%
accuracy at least some of the time!), we are in the realm of subjective
"correctness." I suspect that some (good) con men wouldn't miss a beat in
actually FOSTERING reorganization in a mark and still taking him/her. But we
have yet to come to a serious consideration of what is and is not entailed by
reorganization, right? So I must respectfully decline to answer at this time,
because I can't do so in an intelligent way until I have more give and take
from you on reorganization models. In particular, I am skeptical about whether
the random part of reorganization is really very important (for manipulators)
relative to the systematic part (when it stops): the solutions of some (many,
I'll hazard!) problems require a very narrow range of actions.

>There is no possibility of purposeful manipulation unless there is a
>systematic relationship between the manipulative action and the behavioral
>outcome.

Yes, or a series of systematic relationships over time.

>I can think of one exception: the case when the manipulator is using
>the E. coli method of acting. If the manipulator chooses a
>manipulative act randomly, but changes the action immediately if the
>observed behavior of the manipulee departs further from the desired
>action, eventually the manipulator will arrive at an effective
>manipulation (or die of old age). This, however, would not seem to be
>a markedly effective method, particularly if the manipulee is also
>reorganizing.

I think you're on the trail of something big here. If you start endowing the
manipulator with abilities going beyond the rather poverty-stricken ones of E.
coli, then you might just find that allowing more human-like "second-
guessing," "anticipation," "intuition" (no, I don't mean anything
supernatural), etc., goes a long way toward reducing the "dying of old age"
problem.

>If we stick to cases in which systematic manipulative action has a
>systematic and reliable effect on the actions of the manipulee, we are
>left with

 (a) Manipulation by disturbance of controlled perceptions, and

 (b) Manipulation by altering properties of the environment.

Why isn't (a) a kind of (b)? Be that as it could, I suspect, a third kind
having to do with reorganization.

>Another type of manipulation can be called "giving new information."

Still a kind of (b), isn't it? In fact, still a kind of (a), isn't it. In
fact, (hypothetically) still a type of my suspected third kind, too.

>To give NEW information is not the same as disturbing an already-existing and
>already-controlled perception by either method (a) or method (b).

To me, it sounds like a kind of (b) and also a kind of (a), but somewhat
less direct than "rubber-banding."

>New information can alter the way behavior looks, in a predictable way.

Certainly.

>This form of manipulation becomes far more reliable if the manipulee
>REQUESTS the new information.

Or, more generally, if the manipulator has ANY kind of means of learning about
what the manipulee wants to control (or will want to control, given altered
context), i.e., he/she applies The Test.

>Asking a question has already been covered under "manipulation by
>disturbance of controlled perceptions."

So has "giving new information," I think!

>My last entry is "manipulation to see what the other person will do."

To my thinking, another kind of (b). But here I get a glimmer of (horrors!)
recursion in manipulation: the possibility of manipulating in one way to
better achieve manipulation in another way. Oh boy, what a (potential) can of
worms. Just what I like to play with, intellectually. Well, nobody ever said
that talking about human relationships isn't messy....

>Like the other methods, it depends for its success on doing nothing that
>prevents the manipulee from maintaining control of all variables for which
>the manipulee has reference levels.

Exactly my point over the past week about why (from the PCT standpoint)
successful manipulation MUST not involve generating conflict. Nevertheless, 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.

>Note that nothing has been said about whether the manipulee later
>judges the results to be good, bad, or neutral, or whether the
>application of a method of manipulation succeeds.

Yes. Now, will you buy the notion that there can be SOMETHING "good" (for the
manipulee!) in SOME successful manipulations? I am perfectly willing to
change the name to "suggestion"; I'm just tired of saying over and over in my
posts that MY definition of manipulation DOESN'T require "badness" for the
manipulee.

>Can you think of any more?

My "long-term" manipulation idea, involving reorganization, as noted briefly
above. But that's all besides your (a) I've been able to come up with so far.
Still, there might be better ways of making subcategories.

Best wishes,

Greg
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