Citations, Predictions

[Martin Taylor 980102 01:02]

Rick Marken (971231.1710)]

My estimate is that I have run into nearly 100 conventional
behavioral scientists -- mainly experimental psychologists
like you -- who learned enough about PCT to know that they
didn't like it -- not one bit. Very few (if any) of these
people would ever come out and say "I am threatened by PCT;
I don't like it".

My experience is that a lot of them say "it can't be that simple. People
are more complicated than that." It's hard to get across the idea that
this complicated world is made up of simple atoms that connect in simple
ways--but there are a lot of them interacting, which is what makes life
interesting. It is even harder to get across the idea that the obvious
complexity and beauty of human experience can come down to the simple
interactions among many simple control systems. And I think even many
people who do have faith that perceptual control is the basic fact of
psychology nevertheless do not appreciate the complexity of what
can happen when a few control systems interact. Which makes it quite
hard to explain to an "expert" in some particular speciality of academic
psychology why either (a) his results are peculiar to his constrained
experimental situation, or (b) his observations of how unconstrained
people act and interact follow from the "too simple" idea of control.

It seems to me that there's less defence of an (as we see it) untenable
position than there is an inability to see that the PCT alternative actually
is better for what the person is deeply interested in and has thought
a lot about.

Happy New Year.

Martin

From Bruce Gregory (980102.1053 EST)]

Martin Taylor 980102 01:02

My experience is that a lot of them say "it can't be that simple. People
are more complicated than that." It's hard to get across the idea that
this complicated world is made up of simple atoms that connect in simple
ways--but there are a lot of them interacting, which is what makes life
interesting. It is even harder to get across the idea that the obvious
complexity and beauty of human experience can come down to the simple
interactions among many simple control systems.

Excellent observation. After all, many chemists were prepared to abandon the
atomic model as late as the middle of the nineteenth century.

Bruce

[From Rick Marken (980102.0925)]

Martin Taylor (980102 01:02) --

My experience is that a lot of them [conventional psychologists]
say "it can't be that simple. People are more complicated than
that."

The people who say this somehow manage to accept models that are
just as simple as (or simpler than) PCT; S-R, information theory,
reinforcement theory, etc -- you can't get much simpler than that.
So I suspect that the people who say this about PCT are just
blowing wind. My own conclusions about why people reject PCT
are based on my observations of what they _control_ for, not what
they _say_ they are controlling for.

The people I have seen who reject PCT are typically controlling
for doing behavioral science in the conventional way. I don't
base this conclusion on what these people say; they often say
"PCT is the greatest thing since sliced bread". Instead, I watch
what they _control_ for (by introducing verbal disturbances to the
variables I suspect that they are controlling). When people resist
(often vehamently) my suggestion that they start doing research
by testing for controlled variables or my suggestion that they
start reevaluateing conventional research in terms of an
understanding of the behavioral illusion and the possibility
of the existence of controlled variables (to give just two, clear
examples), then I know that they don't accept PCT. And, of course,
I can see that the reason they don't accept PCT is because some
tenets of PCT are disturbances to the variables they want to
control -- the variables that constitute "doing psychology as
usual".

It's really rather fun; using PCT to see why people reject PCT;-)

Best

Rick

···

--
Richard S. Marken Phone or Fax: 310 474-0313
Life Learning Associates e-mail: rmarken@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~rmarken/

[From Bruce Gregory (980102.1245 EST)]

Rick Marken (980102.0925)

The people who say this somehow manage to accept models that are
just as simple as (or simpler than) PCT; S-R, information theory,
reinforcement theory, etc -- you can't get much simpler than that.

True, but keep in mind that the proponents of these theories know full well
that they are totally without predictive power. They therefore conclude that
the world is much too complex to understand. If PCT claims otherwise, it
_must_ be wrong.

Bruce

[From Rick Marken (971231.1710)]

Me:

Conventional behavioral scientists don't cite WTP because they
want PCT to disappear or turn into something else (like an
alternative theory of reinforcement;-)).

Bruce Abbott (971231.1305 EST) --

Oh, piffle. Far from being threatened by it

I love it; this from the guy who thinks that PCT is an alternative
theory of reinforcement. If you are not threatened by it, Bruce,
then why do you fight it so hard?

most have never even _heard_ of PCT, and fewer still have
taken the trouble to actually understand it.

This may be true. But quite a few psychologists _have_ heard
of PCT (in the late 1970s nearly every psychologist I asked
at the U. of Minnesota _had_ heard of and/or read B:CP) and
several had made an effort to understand it. My impression
(based on the sample of psychologists I've known who were
familiar with B:CP) is that we should find far more citations
of WTP than we do.

My claim that "conventional behavioral scientists...want PCT to
disappear or turn into something else" is based on over 20
years experience with conventional behavioral scientists
(reviewers, colleagues, aquaintances, psychologists --like you --
who discover CSGNet, etc) who have been willing to learn enough
about PCT to realize (usually unconsciously, as in your case)
that they want nothing to do with it.

My estimate is that I have run into nearly 100 conventional
behavioral scientists -- mainly experimental psychologists
like you -- who learned enough about PCT to know that they
didn't like it -- not one bit. Very few (if any) of these
people would ever come out and say "I am threatened by PCT;
I don't like it". You can tell that they are threatened by
PCT only because they argue so vehemently against certain
aspects of PCT, like the importance of testing for controlled
variables, the importance of re-evaluating all existing
behavioral research that was done without an understanding
of controlled variables or the behavioral illusion, the
non-existance of reinforcement, stimulus control, etc. That's
how I can tell that you are threatened by PCT; you protest
too much;-)

You are an interesting case, though, because, unlike most of
the previous PCT rejectors I've met, you won't go away and do
your own version of PCT (the kind where you can still do
conventional IV-DV research and not worry about testing for
controlled variables) or just go away. I think you must hope
either to convince us that your conventional approach to
behavioral research is perfectly compatable with PCT or,
failing that, at least keep others on CSGNet from being misled
by our anti-conventional psychology message. But, who knows.
I do want to wish you a Happy New Year. And in the spirit of
making you New Year bright, here are my PCT predictions for
1998, just for you:

1. Bruce Abbott will do a conventional IV-DV experiment that
proves that psychologists have been right all along; one can
study living control systems just fine without knowing what
controlled variables are or how to test for their existence.

2. Rick Marken, convinced by Bruce's demonstration, will stop
harping on this "Test for the Controlled Variable" stuff, admit
that psychologists have made many important discoveries over
the last 100 years and start developing Java demos of the effect
of reinforcers on behavior.

3. Bill Powers will complete his bug model and find that it
is exactly the same as Hans Blom's model based control model.

4. Martin Taylor will prove, mathematically, that experimental
tests of PCT are unnecessary.

5. Isaac Kurtzer will change his name to Yitzak so that he
can capitalize it without making a philosophical mistake.

6. The "War on Drugs" will end in a draw.

7. The Social Security system will become solvent.

Happy New Year

Rick

···

--

Richard S. Marken Phone or Fax: 310 474-0313
Life Learning Associates e-mail: rmarken@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~rmarken/