[Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au 930425.1604]
It seems to me that maybe `actions', e.g. relatively low level goals
achieved and maintained for the sake of higher level ones, are a bit
more important that people seem to think they are. The problem is that
they often have unwanted side effects, which are often hard to predict,
or require special knowledge. E.g., given that the basic problem in
Yugoslavia is that the Serbs can take whatever they want by force
(having most of the equipment of the former Yugoslav army), and seem to
have no compunction about doing so, one might think that the solution is
to reduce them to the level of the others by blowing up their hardware.
This might be a good idea, but there's this problem that that would make
extra problems for Uncle Boris, since many Russians of the Old School
have a great fondness for Serbia, and volunteer to go there in the
hope that they will get to shoot at Americans.
In general, for low-level motor control, it is probably possible (though
probably not easy) to set things up so that multiple higher level goals
can be satisfied without conflict via the operations of lower level
systems, but in more complicated high-level situations, where strategy
and tactics are called for, this isn't so straightforward, and choice of
appropriate actions is a real issue (the difference between good and
bad `judgement').
Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au