Coercion?

Bruce,

Isaac continues to send copies of your discussion with Rick. I cannot
express the extent of my disappointment over seeing Bill and Rick
deliberately put themselves into such a ridiculous and indefensible
position. On the other hand, I cannot express my delight over seeing the

calm and effective way you are picking their position to pieces.

You are addressing almost all of the points that I think are important
and (sadly) you are leaving Rick to hang and twist on his own
contradictory and sometimes ridiculous claims.

I am preparing a rather long message (or two) for Bill and Rick. In it,
I summarize my thoughts about the entire discussion that began with
their fantasized interpretation of what occurs in Ed Ford's program, and

continues through their ad hoc modifications to core concepts of PCT.
Those modifications, many of which I believe are ridiculous, seem to be
part of their attempt to justify what that say about Ed's program.

One of my few contributions to PCT has been to spend 12 years or so
modeling interactions in pairs of control systems. Very little of my
work is published, but all of it was presented at meetings of CSG. It is

as though Bill and Rick never heard me speak, or if they did, they
discounted everything I said about the importance and the challenge of
modeling *both* participants in any interaction.

The subject disturbs me, but your writing on the subject is delightful
and persuasive.

Tom

Thank you again. At times I feel extremely exposed, and your
characterization of what I am doing is, as I said before, a very heartening
confirmation that I am not missing the mark.

I note that Bill has not replied directly to me in a while. I trust he is
sorting things out.

Didn't he claim that attempts to control another control system's behavior
are doomed to fail? Is that my misunderstanding entirely? Is it only my
fantasy that this current claim (that control of one control system by
another is commonplace and pervasive) is a startling reversal?

  Bruce

Bruce,

I found you! At least, I found a copy of the virtual you. A few nights ago, I
was composing a reply to this message from you. I am learning to use the new
Netscape Communicator. Either it, or the messy Windows95 platform on which it
rides, blew up on me. My system was hung up and my reply was lost, along with
your original message. Just now, I stumbled across an unmarked folder that must
be the graveyard of all messages I thought had been lost under similar
circumstances during the past month. Ah, the wonders of the Information Age!

Thank you again. At times I feel extremely exposed, and your
characterization of what I am doing is, as I said before, a very heartening
confirmation that I am not missing the mark.

And you have remained on the mark -- spot on. I appreciate your reasoned
messages, which seem to be tossed into a dark and foamy sea of unreason.

I note that Bill has not replied directly to me in a while. I trust he is
sorting things out.

I also thought that, when I was trying to reply to you the first time. Some of
his recent messages seem to indicate that, if he was sorting things out, he
decided he and Rick were "in the right."

Didn't he claim that attempts to control another control system's behavior
are doomed to fail? Is that my misunderstanding entirely? Is it only my
fantasy that this current claim (that control of one control system by
another is commonplace and pervasive) is a startling reversal?

You are not the one lost in fantasy. I can think of two who are. From the
earliest days of Bill's work, the idea that one person cannot control another
has been a mantram of PCT. Since 1986, when I began to model interactions in
pairs of perceptual control systems, I demonstrated how easy it is for one
system to control the *actions* of another, but only so long as the controller
allows the controlee to control his or her intended perceptions -- the
controller can control the controlee's actions, but not the controlee's
behavior (which is the control of perception). My simple demonstrations were

···

consistent with what Powers wrote on that subject in B:CP.

Shortly after the CSG Net began, Greg Williams began a thread in which he
argued that a sophisticated controller might go beyond merely controlling the
controlee's actions, if the controller somehow "dominated" the controlee's
access to knowledge about important variables, or if the controller dominated
the controlee's access to those variables so that the controlee could no longer
affect them. Bill and Rick wrote scathing comments in criticism of Greg, who
eventually left the net and dropped out of active participation in CSG. (He
remains a valuable contributor to PCT -- he edits and helps publish all of Ed
Ford's works.)

In the recent discussions on CSGNet about "coercion," you have witnessed what I
think is a startling reversal of their previous position, with nary a word from
them to acknowledge that fact or to explain why they made the shift.

This is a troubling thread for me to watch. I am about to post some comments
about it on Ed's respthink net, in a message that Isaac Kurtzer will forward to
CSGNet. I feel like I am watching two brilliant friends, of long standing,
degenerate into Scholastics, arguing the number of teeth in the horse's mouth
-- neither of them has ever visited a successful RTP school to even look at
what happens. Everything they have written about RTP is out of their
imaginations.

Isaac told me you will be at CSG next month. That is wonderful news! I will see
you there.

Warm regards,

Tom