# Bosnia; history and behavior

**URL:** <http://discourse.iapct.org/t/bosnia-history-and-behavior/1924>\
**Category:** CSG1993\
**Created:** [May 1, 1993, 7:50pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/bosnia-history-and-behavior/1924 "1993-05-01T19:50:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![William\_T\_Powers2](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/c67d28/32.png) [@William\_T\_Powers2](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/William_T_Powers2)\
**Post date:** [May 1, 1993, 7:50pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/bosnia-history-and-behavior/1924/1 "1993-05-01T19:50:05Z")

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[From Bill Powers (930501.1200)]

Bob Clark (930430.1520) --

Very nice review of the Bosnia situation. You show very clearly  
that the real cause is trying to control control systems. It may  
take a long time, but the revolt is inevitable: not because  
revolts have occurred before, but because of human nature.

> **···**
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------  
> Bruce Nevin (930430.1305) --
> 
> > The past is brought into the present in ways that do not seem  
> > to be recognized in this discussion. Social arrangements are  
> > historically contingent, and that is independent of our  
> > knowledge of their history.
> 
> Dan Miller, in his beautifully-wrought post, was trying to say  
> that the past is NOT brought into the present. What exists in the  
> present is only a memory, and a memory subject to all the  
> fallibility of human perception, recording, and playback. What  
> REALLY happened in the past is irrelevant; all that matters now  
> is how we remember it, and how we choose to deal with the  
> memories. What we remember IS the past for us, regardless of the  
> accuracy of the memory.
> 
> Your comments about the evolution of language, while interesting  
> for their own sake, don't bear on this problem. It doesn't  
> matter, now, how we came to be using the word "horse" instead of  
> "pferd" or "cheval." Our usage might have come about through many  
> alternate paths, or we might have ended up using a different  
> word. What matters is that we need a way to refer to that big  
> thingamajig over there that makes those funny sounds and runs  
> fast. If the word weren't "horse" it would be something else.
> 
> People often hear words spoken by others and remember them  
> inaccurately. That's how language changes, I claim: through  
> mistakes, not systematically. There may be some system in that  
> hard-to-say words are remembered in an easier-to-say form, but I  
> can't see that there would be any particular abstract rules for  
> transforming one generation of language into the next. Language  
> is just what we remember it to be, and how it got that way makes  
> no difference now -- except to people interested in how it got  
> that way. To a mere user of language, language has no history  
> going back before childhood.
> 
> The point of all this is that everything that matters in human  
> behavior has to exist right now, or it can have no influence on  
> behavior. The past is totally gone, wiped out, nonexistent, with  
> every passing microsecond. What we call the past exists now, in  
> this very instant, or it doesn't exist at all (the same is true  
> of the "future"). How your hands got into their present position  
> over the keyboard is irrelevant to what they are going to do  
> next. The previous sentence is gone forever, all that remains of  
> it being in your present-time memory, unless you go back and read  
> it again, making it a present-time experience again (immediately  
> to be transformed into a memory).
> 
> When we model behavior, we establish initial conditions in the  
> model before we start it running. How we established them, or  
> what the previous conditions were, has no bearing on the way the  
> model runs. It begins from the way we set it up at the start, and  
> for all that it matters to the behavior of the model, the whole  
> universe might have popped into existence at just that moment. It  
> is only the NOW that determines what happens next.  
> ----------------------------
> 
> > To say that in PCT heaven there will be no rigidly held  
> > reference perceptions and all will consequently be well I think  
> > overlooks this matter of social cooperation.
> 
> It also overlooks the fact that having no rigidly held reference  
> perceptions is a reference perception. Should we hold rigidly to  
> it?  
> ---------------------------------------------------------------  
> Best,
> 
> Bill P.