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Date:         Sun, 6 Sep 1992 21:52:40 -0600
From:         "William T. Powers" <POWERS_W%FLC@VAXF.COLORADO.EDU>
Subject:      control/influence discussion

[From Bill Powers (920906.1900)]

Greg Williams (920906 - 2) --

If we can manage to boil down these long posts into some simple
issues, we may finally get somewhere. I'll try to be brief.

1. I have said that control by disturbance is not important, doesn't
matter, to the controllee. This is because this mode of control DOES
NOT DISTURB ANYTHING THAT MATTERS TO THE CONTROLLEE, one way or the
other (harming or helping). The effect of the disturbance on the
controlled variable is canceled by the action that the controller
perceives and controls. If taking these actions (changes in lower-
order reference signals) produces side-effects in other higher-order
control systems in the controllee, those side-effects are also
cancelled. So there is no important effect on any controlled variable
in the controllee. IF THESE CONDITIONS ARE NOT MET THEN THE CONTROLLEE
WILL PUSH BACK AND THERE WILL BE CONFLICT.

2. Now, "don't-care" variables and perceptions. If a perception is
truly a don't-care perception, then changing it causes no error of any
kind in the controllee: the change neither violates a goal nor
satisfies one. The controllee considers the result neither good nor
bad, judgements which always take place relative to a reference level.
If, however, the perception is an uncontrolled component of a
successfully-controlled perception (the position of a mouse when a cat
is chasing and catching it), then changing it (which is easy to do
because it is not directly controlled by the other) will produce a
disturbance of the controlled perception, and the effect of the
disturbance (the mouse's relative position) will be canceled before it
becomes significant, through altering the other components of the
perception (the position of the cat, which the cat can control). This
will entail changes of reference signals at lower levels, but not at
the level where the disturbance is actively opposed.

To sum up so far:

  A controller is free to control the actions of another person
without conflict if and only if neither the controlling influence nor
the elicited actions cause uncorrectable errors in the controllee.

  A controller is free to control [environmental variables
corresponding to] uncontrolled perceptions in the controllee without
conflict only if the perceptions in the controllee are truly don't-
care cases -- that is, not components of controlled perceptions and
therefore not related to any goal of the controllee.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
To go on.

3. Purposeful influence on another that does not involve control of
the influencee (or violence in some form) can be purposeful only in
the sense that the influencer purposefully controls environmental
variables on which perceptions in the influencee are thought to
depend. As long as these environmental variables are not involved in
the influencee's own control actions, this can be done without
conflict.

4. There are only two ways in which external influences (purposefully
manipulated or naturally-occurring) can have an effect on the
influencee: through altering sensory information, or through affecting
the physiology of the influencee directly. Effects on physiology fall
in two classes: sensed effects, and intrinsic effects. These classes
may have a nonzero intersection.

5. If the effects are sensory, the results are covered in numbered
paragraphs 1 and 2 above.

6. If the effects are intrinsic, then the influencer is actually
applying coercive force to the influencee, inducing malaise, pain,
injury, hunger, thirst, suffocation, or other signs of malfunction.
This almost certainly will require overriding the efforts of the
influencee to prevent these changes. This violates the condition that
we are discussing non-coercive influence of another's behavioral
system.
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The argument so far thus leads to the conclusion that while a putative
controller can control certain actions of the controllee, and can
control environmental variables not related to any goal of the
controllee, in no case can the effects disturb any variable under
control by the controllee without inducing conflict between controller
and controllee.

This sums up what HPCT has to say about the possible interactions of
people with respect to their controlling each other without coercion.
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I wrote a lot more, but this is enough to talk about. I don't think
there is any ideology in the above: it is, as far as I could make it,
a straight deduction from the principles of HPCT as they stand today.
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There is one passage in your post to note before quitting for now:

>... the ideology of some PCTers which denies any "importance" to a
>person of the influences (current and historical) of other people.

I have never said any such thing. The influence of other people on me,
current and historical, has been of tremendous importance to me. But
assigning and defining that influence and its importance was my act,
never theirs. Just as you decide for yourself what importance to give
my offerings concerning HPCT, and what influence to allow them to have
on you.
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Best,



Bill P.
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU