From [Marc Abrams (2005.02.04.2345)]
Hi Csgnet and dear friends of mine. (not necessarily the same people )
I’m sure most on CSGnet are very happy to see me post again and to those who aren’t, I would suggest you cut and run now, because what I am about to say may not appeal to you.
Bill Powers, I hope you are reading this, if not, I hope someone gets this to him. Bill, you said a year ago you ‘expected’ ‘big’ things from me in PCT, maybe I am about to deliver on that expectation.
With the main thrust being a control model and the very good work of yourself, Jay Forrester, Karl Weick, Chris Argyris, Adam Smith, and Rodolfo Llinas, I believe I have something to add to the discussion.
Let me begin with an analogy I think important. Most know of it and heard of it as the three blind men and the elephant. I am going to provide a revised enhanced version.
There were once three very wise, but blind old men who were experts in their respective fields of study. One was an expert in ivory, one an expert in animal skins, and the third was an expert in cloth making.
One day all three were introduced to a new entity. The first blind man was given an elephant tusk and as he marveled at the fine grain a broad smile crossed his face and thought to himself; “Ah, so this is the essence of what an elephant is all about, what a fine set of utensils and tools can be made from this wonderful material”. The second expert went through a similar experience in feeling the skin of the animal and thinking what fine armor and protection this skin could afford. The third then felt the fine hair of the tail and felt it similar to silk with all it’s fine properties.
This analogy is important because I believe it point out the problem we have experienced in the study of human behavior and cognition.
Each blind expert felt he understood the essence of the animal by understanding the importance the animal played in his area of expertise.
What all three lacked however was an understanding of the whole elephant and the relationship each part had on the whole and what the whole had on the environment. Each was concerned with their own areas of expertise.
If I ‘transform’ the three blind men into a sociologist, a psychologist, and an economist, and all the various sub specialties, I believe that you have the same problem of each discipline thinking they understand the ‘essence’ of human behavior and that the others don’t. Or, that the others have nothing to ‘add’ to your knowledge since their area’s of expertise are ‘different’ then yours.
I think this is wrong headed. I believe EVERYONE, has had some very valuable and important input into our understanding of human behavior and this will continue long after we are all gone. I also believe that everyone has missed the big picture because of this specialization.
To begin, I’d like to use another analogy, one that is used a great deal with control systems and that is the ubiquitous thermostat.
A thermostat is just PART of a control process. In order for a thermostat to provide any control it must be able to ‘sense’ the environment and have a plant to ‘correct’ for temperature variations it senses and needs to maintain and change according to a ‘set point’, or ‘reference condition’, that is set by a human inhabitant.
I don’t think I will get any objections to this from anyone here, will I?
I also believe that control processes in humans are an evolutionary response for our needs for adaptability in a variable environment, and I believe this is accomplished by ‘controlling’ our ‘perceptions’.
‘Environmental’ in this case being inside as well as outside the human body, and ‘perceptions’ being of the 21 different kinds rather than the 5 most notable ones, but we’ll get to all that a bit later
So, our ‘behavior’, or actions are used to maintain or reach certain perceptions about certain ‘goal’ states we have inside our heads and maintain them or reach them in lieu of ‘environmental’ disturbances.
Quite simply, we have intent in our heads, and a variable and ‘disturbing’ environment that continually interferes with our ability to reach and maintain 'that ‘intent’. Our behavior and actions are used to ‘counter’ the environment and allows us to reach and hopefully maintain our intent.
Again, I don’t believe I will get many objections to what I have just said. If so, I’d like to hear about them.
If not, then what comes next might surprise a few folks.
Returning to our old friend the thermostat.
In order for a thermostat to effectively, and efficiently maintain temperatures in a reasonable range several things must be present.
The temperature INPUT must be _anticipated_to within a reasonable range. If the temperature input could range anywhere from one million degrees Fahrenheit to absolute zero, I don’t think any thermostat could deal with that range.
So fortunately for us, evolution came to the rescue and provided us with a way for us to reduce the variability of input into our control systems.
It’s called consciousness, and it provides us with the ability to ANTICIPATE, or ‘predict’. what we might expect from the future, in various environments
Bruce Gregory and I tried talking about this awhile ago, but got rebuffed in our attempt. Llinas and Jeff Hawkins focuses on this aspect, and a key point it is. Without it, I don’t believe our control systems would have a chance of working as efficiently as they do. (Or at least for some of us, )
In empirical terms this means that although I can’t look out the window and ‘predict’ what the exact temperature might be, if I hear the weather forecast I might have some idea of what kind of clothing to wear in order to ‘counter’ the weather ‘disturbances’ I might encounter.
This notion and concept of ‘prediction’ and ‘anticipation’ is ubiquitous throughout science. In fact, ‘prediction’ is at the heart of scientific discovery. It is one of the main reasons we do science, and the reason we want to understand how and why things work the way they do. It is very simple, the better we can ‘predict’ and/or anticipate’ the future, the better the chance we have of controlling successfully and efficiently
So to review and summarize Part A; ‘Anticipation’ and ‘prediction’ is an important component of a control PROCESS that is used in order to reduce the variability of input. Our ‘perceptions’ provide useful inputs so our control processes can react accordingly, and our consciousness provides us with the ability to ‘frame’ or ‘filter’ what we perceive.
Now, we all know that we are very poor predictors of the future for of any number of reasons, and because of that, and for many other reasons as well, we can anticipate encountering many ‘errors’ in our attempts at reaching our goals and interacting with the environment.
Again, fortunately, we have consciousness to thank for our ability to deal with ‘error’ and that is the high degrees of freedom a control system needs and has in order to counter the high variability of input with our ability to make choices and learn from experience
Alan Ashby, with his law of ‘Requisite Variety’ understood this a long time ago. He maintained that any system needs to have an equal number of choices in it’s output as it has in its input in order for a system to maintain its stability.
So to summarize Part B; A control process needs a high df’s in order to ‘correct’ for error. That is, high degrees of freedom for the Output function provides the requisite variety to match the variability of the input.
Please do not take me literally here. I am not suggesting there needs to be an exact equal amount. I am suggesting large enough to cover.
Empirical research will have to determine the details involved, as it will for all of my ideas.
Now things are starting to get a bit interesting. Given these ‘Parts’, what ‘drives’ the system?
I believe it is ‘error’. I believe ‘Error’ has TWO manifestations. One, is with ‘feelings’ and when consciously felt, emotions, and second is the concept and notion of ‘anxiety’. ‘Error’ is partly a chemically based phenomenon and varies from person to person.
That is, each of us has different thresholds for pain, the levels of anxiety we can tolerate, and our sensitivity to it. We also produce different amounts of peptides and we each react differently to the various peptides.
‘Error’, can be ‘generated’ from our consciousness and from anyone of the 21 senses I mentioned above. For a look at the 21 senses I suggest you look at the Jan 29th issue of the ‘New Scientist’ magazine for a pop look.
So Part C is ‘error’ and the level of ‘anxiety’ we have ‘drives’ the system. That is, we try to reduce anxiety and keep it at a ‘manageable’ level. For each of us that will be different.
These three things I believe provide the basis for understanding why people do what they do. That is, the sensitivity people have, or desirability people have for ‘consistent’ or ‘predictable’ levels of Input, or perceptions, the sensitivity people have for sustainable levels of ‘anxiety’, and the sensitively and desire people have for flexibility and consistency of output or high df’s, and here is how I think it all works.
I also talked about anxiety being the result of chemical and neuronal actions to error in our bodies and is the ‘driving’ force behind control, and all of these things provide us with the IMPLICATIONS of the control model.
I am going to use the colors Blue, Red and Purple to signify a spectrum. It is NOT intended to represent political divisions of any type. Liberals and conservatives could both be ‘Blue’, or ‘Red’. Purple of course being in the middle
I use ‘Blue’ to represent people who desire ‘predictable’ or ‘consistent’ INPUTS, or perceptions and ‘Red’ for those who really are much less concerned with the consistency and predictability of their inputs or perceptions. Of course most of us are ‘Purple’ in that we ‘prefer’ various levels depending on the ‘importance’ of the perceptions and goals involved.
‘Blue’ and ‘Red’ signify the same thing for the OUTPUT function, or our actions. That is, ‘Blue’ folks like ‘consistent’ results and ‘Red’ folks like ‘choice’. Again, most of us I believe are ‘Purple’, depending on importance.
ALL of this of course must be shown empirically.
To summarize; People need to control their perceptions. In order to do this both effectively and efficiently I say they need consciousness in order to reduce the variability of our input and allowing us the flexibility in choosing our output in order to correct for the error we experience in our control processes.
Each of us has a different chemical make-up and different tolerance levels for ‘error’ or anxiety. We learn from birth what we ‘like’ and what we ‘dislike’. We learn what causes us ‘pain’, and we try to avoid those things and we know what provides us with relief and we attempt to do those things.
For example, laughter is nothing more than the release of anxiety, and ‘excitement’ is sometimes artificially induced so we can ‘experience’ the ‘release’ of that ‘anxiety’; or as we might like to think about the ‘release’ of anxiety’ in another way, as pleasure for instance.
Sex is a great example of this.
Now, at this point, I too must say that I too am one of the ‘blind men’. I only 'know human behavior from a perspective I have spent 25 years investigating. But I certainly don’t know everything and what I do know is limited. Others might have important information I am not currently aware of or haven’t even thought of.
There are of course many ‘holes’ to fill and much work to be done.
So this is NOT an attempt by me to sell or push a specific theory. I hope this post will get some folks thinking about what I posted and hopefully respond in some thoughtful and constructive ways. I don’t really expect this to happen on CSGnet but one never knows.
As I hope you can see I am not in ‘competition’ with anyone. I have developed my own tapestry based on the work of others and from my love of history, economics, and human behavior
But I do believe I have reached a milestone. I believe I am finally on a path that I can start to generate some reasonable questions, have some productive and meaningful discussions, and generally have one helluva great time diving into this stuff, and the most wonderful thing about all this is that
frankly I can’t possibly lose. I am interested in working toward a better understanding of why we do what we do, and working with people who have a similar interest.
I can’t possibly lose because if someone can show me why my thinking is wrong-headed I might be able to correct it and ‘corrections’ provide me with the ability to stay on course, and toward a better understanding of why we do what we do then I am doing exactly what I want to do. Which is gain as good an understanding of why we do what we do.
Marc