# CEV, filibastards, regulations

**URL:** <http://discourse.iapct.org/t/cev-filibastards-regulations/2057>\
**Category:** CSG1994\
**Created:** [August 29, 1994, 5:21pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/cev-filibastards-regulations/2057 "1994-08-29T17:21:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Tom\_BOURBON3](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/85e7bf/32.png) [@Tom\_BOURBON3](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Tom_BOURBON3)\
**Post date:** [August 29, 1994, 5:21pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/cev-filibastards-regulations/2057/1 "1994-08-29T17:21:30Z")

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Tom Bourbon [940829.1011]

> [From Rick Marken (940827.2200)]
> 
> Re: CEVs.
> 
> Martin Taylor (940825 18:30) --
> 
> > If I understand you correctly, this is quite a different concept from the  
> > one I intended when I introduced the label "Complex Environmental  
> > Variable." ... In my view, the CEV is DEFINED by the Perceptual Input  
> > Function, and has no other existence.
> 
> Thanks for a pretty good re-statement of the PCT view of perception, as  
> described on p. 75-76 and 113-114 of "Behavior: The control of  
> perception".

And as described in "Feedback: Beyond behaviorism" in \_Science\_, also in  
1973.

> Tom Bourbon (940826.0807) --

Rick:

> > it's not like these guys [Dole and Gramm (sic)] have taken over the  
> > country by force.
> 
> Tom:
> 
> > Taken over the country? The minority party?

Rick:

> That's my point. They are apparently articulating the goals of a large  
> segment of the population. I just think that the achievement of some of  
> those goals has produced tragic consequences for many people.

For decades much of the social agenda in the USA has been set by a congress  
that has been overwhelmingly democrat and "liberal." The democrats have  
controlled the House of Representatives for forty years. How does that  
square with the idea that republicans have been setting the social agenda?  
(Remember, I am not a republican or democrat.) Liberal democrats  
engineered a extensive restructering of society, in part by way of  
establishing financial rewards and punishments that clearly favor some  
social relationships over others. You and I are both unhappy with the  
consequences of many of those engineered social relationships.

> I believe that  
> Hitler was democratically elected, was he not? Democracy leads to some  
> funny choices, but I'm glad that people get to make those choices.

"Free elections" indeed lead to some silly choices. In Texas, a majority  
elected a liberal democrat as governor. (She also gets prominent play on  
the national scene.) The past few years, she and the state legislature have  
been on a prison-building binge. Now she is running for relection by saying  
she will enact a state-wide curfew for children and adolescents. It's as  
though she is saying, "There are lots of bad kids on the streets at night,  
but never fear, I have a great American solution to the problem. I'll see  
to it that all of the good kids are safely locked up at night." In Texas  
the answer to an increase in crime is that at night all law-abiding citizens  
can lock themselves and their children behind bars (on their own doors and  
windows) and abandon the streets to armed criminals. Is this the liberal  
democrat view of America? So much for the "land of the free and the home of  
the brave."

It looks to me as though the labels and party affiliations politicians adopt  
have very little to do with their intelligence and decency, or vice versa.

Rick:

> While PCT can't tell people what to want, I think it can show what the  
> likely consequences of certain kinds of interactions might be.

Agreed. For example, when I was an adolescent, roaming freely anywhere and  
anytime I wished (not harming any person or property), had someone tried to  
impose a curfew on me like the one proposed by our governor, I would have  
imediately become a criminal and a revolutionary. That is what will happen  
to many young people in Texas if the governor has her way.

> I don't  
> think that PCT will help make the world a better place (and I,  
> personally, do want to make the world a better place for all people) all  
> on its own. I think it's fair to discuss the political implications of  
> PCT because politics is the way people achieve common goals through  
> cooperation, compromise and, sometimes, just plain force.

Agreed. But when we talk about such topics, we must look closely at the  
many ways force is used. Some of the applications come veiled as  
ostensibly well-intentioned social programs enacted by an elite, "for the  
good of the people."

> I don't  
> dislike politicians per se; . . . the one's I  
> like are generally those who share my idea that it is possible to "spread  
> the ability to be in control" more effectively through cooperation and  
> compromise rather than through selfishness and force.

We agree on the \_idea\_ that it is good to spread the ability to control in  
the manner you describe, and we share a \_hope\_ that it is possible to do the  
spreading. But I believe some of the more pressing current social problems  
in the USA stem from failed and heavy-handed attempts to engineer that ideal.  
I do not believe there is even a half-baked perceptual control theorist on  
the political stage.

> I think politics  
> could (and should) be a noble profession; it's the way we come to  
> collective agreement about how we want to live. No matter how  
> skillfully this might eventually be done, a political solution will never  
> please all the people all the time. So politicians might always be a  
> relatively disliked lot.

Yes. That's why I am grateful for a system of government (three branches,  
one of them with two houses each of which is occupied by at least two  
parties) that often ties itself in knots before it can hurry up and do  
something. That's part of the beauty of living in a wildly pluralistic  
society. 😉

Later,

Tom

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**Author:** ![\_Martin\_Taylor](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/_/a9adbd/32.png) [@\_Martin\_Taylor](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/_Martin_Taylor)\
**Post date:** [August 29, 1994, 8:13pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/cev-filibastards-regulations/2057/2 "1994-08-29T20:13:00Z")

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[Martin Taylor 940829 15:40]

> Tom Bourbon [940829.1011]
> 
> > Rick Marken (940827.2200)

> > Thanks for a pretty good re-statement of the PCT view of perception, as  
> > described on p. 75-76 and 113-114 of "Behavior: The control of  
> > perception".
> 
> And as described in "Feedback: Beyond behaviorism" in \_Science\_, also in  
> 1973.

Good. You also reinforce my perception that I got it right. Thanks.

> **···**
>
> =============  
> Not PCT, but worth noting, perhaps:
> 
> > For decades much of the social agenda in the USA has been set by a congress  
> > that has been overwhelmingly democrat and "liberal." The democrats have  
> > controlled the House of Representatives for forty years.
> 
> For most of my life (and probably much earlier) there has not been a  
> politician on the national stage in the USA that would have fit in a  
> left-of-centre party in the rest of the Western world. ALL national  
> politicians in the US have been in the range the rest of the N. Atlantic  
> community before Maggie Thatcher would have called between moderate  
> conservative and extreme right. Without exception! Not one would qualify  
> as "liberal" or "social democrat" elsewhere. (Nowadays, some might, at  
> least in the English-speaking world after Thatcher and Mulroney. The US  
> disease spreads.)
> 
> That, I think, is one reason you now have the situation Tom is riled about:
> 
> > The past few years, she and the state legislature have  
> > been on a prison-building binge. Now she is running for relection by saying  
> > she will enact a state-wide curfew for children and adolescents. It's as  
> > though she is saying, "There are lots of bad kids on the streets at night,  
> > but never fear, I have a great American solution to the problem. I'll see  
> > to it that all of the good kids are safely locked up at night."
> 
> Ah, well. The USA is well accustomed to being correct and alone in its  
> political thought. The decades old and continuing vendetta against Cuba  
> is another particularly puzzling case in point, much like the shorter  
> period of international terrorism against Nicaragua. As far as I know,  
> there isn't another country in the world that does not have normal  
> relations with Cuba. And the US is talking about a Naval blockade!
> 
> And then there was the occasion when NATO voted 16-1 against the US on  
> some policy or other that I forget, and the Secretary of State went to  
> Brussels after a News interview in which he said his purpose was to  
> ensure that the other nations understood the correct NATO position.
> 
> Obviously your Texas governor is correct. They all are, aren't they ☹  
> But none of them is a "liberal democrat." Not in the language used outside  
> the land of the free and the home of the brave.
> 
> Martin
> 
> [PS. Since the second part of this posting is pure opinion, and totally  
> unrelated to the technical aspects or implications of PCT, I don't intend  
> to enter a thread of discussion based on it. If others hold contrary  
> opinions, as I'm sure many do, that's their business, not mine.]