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Date:         Wed, 30 Dec 1992 09:41:07 -0800
From:         Marken@COURIER4.AERO.ORG
Subject:      Beliefs/Conflicts

[From Rick Marken (921230.0900)]

Eileen Prince (921229)

>I also think that art can stand alone, outside of its political context.

Yes, I agree now -- after long years of being amazed by the ridiculous
beliefs embraced by some of the artists I've loved best.

Bill Powers (921229.2100)

>The greatest mystery of the human mind, in my view, is this
>phenomenon of Belief.

I agree. We should explore this from a PCT perspective. The
problem, of course, is that, when it comes to many of one's own
beliefs, they are not treated as beliefs but as knowledge. I think
many of our most tenacious INTRA - personal and INTER-personal
conflicts are the result of controlling perceptions that based more on
beliefs (replayed reference signals) than Boss Reality.

I think it would be worthwhile to say what beliefs are in the context
of the PCT model; describe examples of the everyday beliefs that
people are walking around with (from the divine, like religious
beliefs, to the profane, like beliefs about the "right" foods to eat); also,
it would be nice to discuss the difference (from a PCT perspective)
between belief and knowledge.  I know this is a difficult discussion to
have -- precisely because beliefs are so important to people. With Bill
I ask "WHY is this so? Why do people "fight and fight to prove that what
they do not know is so?" There must be a reason that this species has
been willing to persecute itself for millenia over fantasies. It must be
an aspect of our nature as control systems. What is it? I think
that this could be a very satisfying (and even theraputic) investigation.

>Or is this a level at which we are all helpless, including me?

No. I think people, like you (and me?), who are willing to consider the
possibility that ANYTHING we think may be just a belief and, more
importantly, are willing to wonder what a belief is, are not helpless
victims of our beliefs (at least, when we are able to keep our awareness
"above" the levels that create those beliefs -- something that I don't
do nearly as often as I would like). I think it requires some effort to
defeat some of the insidious consequences of belief -- but it can be done,
I think.

>It's only people who don't
>ever do any experiments with real people who think that PCT is
>just another belief system handed down from on high. The basis of
>PCT is a set of easily reproducible phenomena that conventional
>science has overlooked.

Here, here.

>Rick Marken (921229) --

>Your experiment with conflict is fundamental and new to our
>repertoire. It is neat and beautiful. The fact that the model
>reproduces the human behavior says that the real control systems
>don't reorganize much until the task starts to become impossible.

Thank you. Thank you.

>Can you give us some numbers from the experiment?

Yes, once I set it up to get them. Right now I'm just using the inter-
ocular trauma test. I plot the x-y position of the mouse over some
period of the experiment; I was using a sine wave disturbance at first
so the mouse movements (due to the coefficients of the conflict) are
an elipse. When you plot the model mouse movements over the
human mouse movements, they fall on top of each other (though the
human's are a bit more ragged). I will get measures of fit of model
to human with different values of D (conflict) over the weekend. I'm
not planning to do any fancy parameter estimation -- but based on my
manual approach (and visual test) I would say that the error of prediction
(as percent of maximum possible deviation of model from human) is not
more than 5%.

Best

Rick