[From Bill Powers (2010.04.16.0818 MDT)]
Bruce Gregory (2010.04.16.0707 EDT) –
Bruce, you’re getting into that strange mood again. I don’t think it
makes you any happier. How about regrouping?
BP earlier: Notice the
declarative statements that might be taken as descriptions of directly
observed processes, though they are really predictions from theory.
newcomer wouldn’t know which they are.
BG: A point of clarification. Can we now assume that Rick Marken will
cease to make declarative statements that might be taken as descriptions
of directly observed processes, though they are really predictions from a
hypothetical theory? I say hypothetical because there are no quantitative
models of higher order control. The clarity would be most
appreciated.
I’m not against using declarative statements that assume the truth of a
theory; I do it myself. But I try to include a reasonable number of
disclaimers, such as “according to PCT” and “The standard
PCT diagram shows” and so on. I think disclaimers help newcomers
sort out what can actually be observed from what is only imagined. They
remind us, too, of what remains to be accomplished. The imaginary part
forms a bridge between observables and helps us find intermediate
observables (or at least tells us where too look – not finding them is
also informative). The point of science is not what we imagine but what
we actually experience. Everything hypothetical is iffy until nailed down
by an observation. And then only the observation can be deemed real. I
can observe dark and light bands on that screen behind the slits, and
nobody can tell me I don’t see them. Even when they’re only Mach bands.
Any theory that says I don’t see them is wrong – even if I’m the only
one who can see them.
There are times when we all resist inserting the disclaimers, because it
weakens the conviction behind what we’re saying. The theory, as Gilbert
and Sullivan (once), and Bob Clark (incessantly) have said, “lends
an air of verisimiltude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing tale.”
In some circumstances, these disclaimers would be positively denounced:
“Oh, God, from whom, according to the God theory, all blessings
flow…”. When we treat a theory as a truth, it becomes a belief,
and this gives beliefs entirely too much weight in our thinking.
Instead of defending quantum mechanics, why not just take it for what it
is, an attempt to make sense of observations by imagining processes and
entities that we can’t observe? Wavefronts, photons, probabilities,
entanglements, and all the rest of such paraphernalia of quantum (and
standard) mechanics are inventions of the human imagination, and are not
observable. Like electrons, protons, neutrons, neutrinos, and quarks,
they belong to a model of that which we can’t observe. If reality
contained such things and all the proposed relationships among them, then
it would necessarily react to our experimental probes by making our
perceptions change in the specific ways that we observe. But while 2 + 2
= 4, it also is true that 3 + 1 = 4, so the same predicted outcome can
occur in ways different from what we imagine.
Maybe the world of the small does work according to the baroque ad-hoc
rules of quantum mechanics. But it’s also possible that the way it works
has a far simpler explanation that we just haven’t stumbled across yet. I
remember that my friend Walter Weller, while a graduate student at the
Dearborn Observatory, used the new computer in the back room, an IBM 650,
to compute the positions of planets in the sky using epicycles, and they
worked very nicely (though Wally incurred Dr. Hynek’s wrath). All those
crystalline spheres spinning within spheres were equivalent to a Fourier
series. We know now, as Ptolemy didn’t, that any waveform however complex
can be expressed as the sum of a series of sine and cosine waves, and
that is what Wally did. Ptolemy was basically right, although the
imagined crystalline spheres didn’t have counterparts in reality. The
explanation we accept today, which has pretty much been proven by sending
spacecraft and people where theory says the planets and satellites are,
remains a theory, but hardly ever requires a disclaimer, except perhaps
“at velocities small compared with the velocity of light.” And
it’s a whole lot simpler than the crystalline spheres idea, with its
plenitude of unexplained properties.
It’s always been something of a disappointment to me that the observable
aspects of PCT get less attention than the theoretical aspects. I have
suggested, for example, that there are 11 levels of perception and
control which are related to one another in very specific,
observable, ways. I found them mostly by observing, not
theorizing. Even though it took me decades to discover those eleven (nine
without anyone else’s help), I’m sure they can’t be exactly right or in
exactly the right order or the only levels there are. If other people
would examine these proposals and compare them with their own
perceptions, some of the defects and lacks might be remedied and we could
be more sure that these are the right levels, and real, meaning common to
all of us. We have ways of setting up models and testing them, at least
for one level at a time, and with enough people doing the investigating I
think we could really get somewhere. But how many people are looking at
their own perceptions with the intent of checking out my descriptions?
And how many have just thanked me politely for the nice theory and
adopted it as a belief system?
The observed levels have nothing to do with PCT, which is an attempt to
explain how such observations might be accounted for by a model of what
we (carefully) imagine goes on inside the brain.
Fortunately, I’m now working with Henry Yin, a real neuroscientist, and
there is a good chance we will actually find things inside brains that
both account for what we observe in direct experience and correct the
interpretations that are off the mark. I doubt that this task will be
completed by only two of the hundreds of thousands of people who might
also be looking into this matter, but maybe we can get the process
started.
Bruce, every theory, including quantum mechanics and PCT, should be
assumed wrong until proven right. We shouldn’t accept any theory until we
have run out of ways to prove that it can’t be true. It’s trying
systematically, experimentally, to prove the theory wrong that teaches us
what its strengths are, and weeds out the nonsense (and in some cases, as
with phlogiston, the entire theory).
Best,
Bill P.
