[Martin Taylor 981229 20:25]
[From Rick Marken (981229.1400)]
Me to Bruce Gregory:
Here's a list. See if you can answer "yes" to any of these.
1. I believe for every drop of rain that falls a flower grows.
...
4. I believe that Rick Marken is obsessed with being right.
Rikki Westerschulte (981229) jumps right in with:
I believe in #4!!!!!!!!!!!
For those of you who are interested, Rikki is my adorable
sister-in-law who has a great sense of humor (and great
taste in sweaters; thanks!). Leave it to Rikki to come
up with something completely off the wall like me being
obsessed with being right;-)
I think a lot of people might not take it as a joke... But I don't believe
#4 in the obvious way that Rick's original question list suggested. And
it raises some very interesting points about belief, and about being right.
Firstly, if you believe something, it is, for you, right. Always. It's
when you are uncertain about something that you may "be obsessed with
being right" -- which is to say that you are controlling your perception
of uncertainty about something to a reference level of zero, with high gain.
But that's not what the question seems to mean, is it?
The question seems to mean "I believe Rick is obsessed with being
acknowledged to be right." That belief is more subtle. Taken at face
value, to believe this would be to believe Rick to be a person one would
not wish to know. But that's wrong. He's a very nice person to know.
It could also mean "I believe Rick is obsessed with getting people to
understand as right what he believes to be right." That may be correct,
but it's inadequate. It explains nothing.
Let's consider a few levels of this.
I'm sticking to my notion that a "belief" is a perception of some state of
the world, usually of the way the world works. Proposition 4 is a possible
state of a perception of the way Rick works.
If "the way Rick works" is that he is controlling at high gain to be able
to perceive that CSGnet readers understand PCT the way he does (which is a
restricted form of "being acknowledged to be right"), one may ask where
this reference level comes from. One might guess that he might believe that
a person who "correctly" understands PCT would then be better able to control
his or her own perceptions, and therefore be happier. That belief, along
with a reference of "high" for the perception of "number of happy people"
would lead to actions consistent with "obsession for being seen to be right."
The belief that a person who correctly understands PCT will be happier is
a perception of the way the world works. If there is a reference perception
for seeing more and more people happy, then the belief presents a mechanism
for action to bring the perception of number of happy people nearer its
reference.
Of course, one could be less charitable, and believe that "the way Rick works"
is that he controls at high gain to be seen as an infallible guru. Without
applying the Test, one can't distinguish these two (and a myriad of other)
possibilities. Having informally applied the Test in face-to-face
conversation, I judge that the "infallible guru" self-perception is not one
Rick controls for, but I cannot say that he is not controlling the "perceive
CSGnet readers as understanding PCT" to a high-valued reference level.
But another belief comes in, here. It is the belief that one does/does not
understand PCT well. And there we come to the question of what is meant by
PCT? Is it a set of canon laws promulgated by an authority, like a religion,
or is it a description of the way the world works--in other words, a set
of beliefs, beliefs that define what would happen if one were to act in
certain ways on the world...to experiment? If PCT changes, is it still PCT?
If one believes that one truly understands PCT, and that anyone who has a
different interpretation does not, then one is treating PCT as a religion,
not a science. But if one believes that one has some uncertainty about
the implications of PCT, or about ways of looking at it, then one cannot
control at a very high gain for having other people understand it as one
does oneself. For the others might in some cases have a more correct
understanding, and if one sustains and wins a conflict, the others
would reduce the correctness of their understanding of the world.
No scientist can be "obsessed with being acknowledged to be right." All
scientists should be "obsessed with being right" (finding out in what ways
they are wrong).
Martin
