Collective Control: Another vexing question (was Re: A Vexing Question)

rsmarken · November 13, 2018, 1:38am

[Rick Marken 2018-11-12_17:38:41]

[From Bruce Nevin 2018.11.11.18:12]

Â

RM: I believe the question at issue was whether there is a variable “out there” that corresponds to the perception that the organism can control.Â Â Â

BN: So the topic of this thread is the relation of perceptions to whatever reality is.

RM: Yes.Â

RM: The PCT model of perception is not "looking for the ‘really real’ ". The PCT model just assumes that there is a real world on the other side of our senses and that this world (the “environment side” of PCT diagrams) is the models of physics and chemistry.Â Â Â

BN: So in your view (and in mine) PCT has nothing to say about the relation of perceptions to whatever reality is.

RM: No, in my view PCT is very explicit about the relationship between perception and reality. According to the PCT model, perceptual variables are a function of the physical variables that make up reality. Those physical variables are assumed to be the variables in the very successful models of the physical sciences.

Â

BN: Science, however, does, because that is the aim of science;

RM: I don’t believe the aim of the physical sciences is to determine the relationship between reality and perception. I think the aim of the physical sciences is to determine the nature of reality itself. This is done by carefully manipulating our perceptions, such as by placing balls at the top of planes of varying inclination and letting them roll down, observing the results of those manipulations and then trying to account for those observations with models, which are guesses about the nature of the reality that resulted in those observations (perceptions).Â

RM:Â Feel free to try again if you like but if you do please avoid using the term “collective control” since it elicits in me a strong urge to throw things at the computer screen;-) But if you just can’t resist, please explain what the hell you mean by the term.Â Â Â

BN: Collective control is “what can happen when two or more people at once make use of the same feedback paths in their shared environment, either physical objects or routine patterns of action, to control their own individual perceptions.”

RM: A feedback path is the connection from a control system’s output to the variable it controls – the controlled variable. Therefore, in order for two or more control systems to use the same feedback path they would would all have to be the same control system; or at least they would all have to exist in the same organism. So the definition of collective control that you quote makes no sense to me – at least , if we are talking about a collection of organisms…Â

RM: Perhaps what you mean is that collective control is when two or more organisms are acting to control variables using the same environmental degrees of freedom (as per Powers’ “Degrees of Freedom in Social Interactions” paper in LCS I).Â Or maybe you mean that collective control is when two or moreÂ

organismsÂ are acting to control the same aspect of the environment (the same degrees of freedom of a controlled variable). Or maybe you mean that collective controlÂ is when two or moreÂ

organismsÂ are all controlling t in the same environment (as in the CROWD) but not controlling the same perceptions or using the same df.Â

RM: What these different examples of “collective control” have in common is that they refer to controlling that involves two or more organisms (controllers) controlling in a way such that the controlling done by eachÂ

organismsÂ may influence the controlling done by the others. I thinkÂ that’s all that “collective control” should mean. All the different ways such collective control can happen must be studied individually.Â Â

Â

BN: It happens “when two agents perceive the same environmental variable and have the same references for controlling it, such that their control actions are additive.”

RM: Ignoring the fact that agents are assumed (by PCT) to perceive aspects of environmental variables, not the physical environment variables themselves, this describes only one kind of collective control (as I note above).Â Â

Â

BN: Kent McClelland (2004, 2006, 2014) has presented computer models that show that “the outcomes of collective control processes depend crucially on the degree of alignment (that is, similarity) between the reference values that the agents use to control their perceptions of the environmental variable. We can describe interactions in which agents use the same reference value as cooperative, but conflict occurs when the agentsâ€™ reference values are not aligned.”

RM: Yes, Kent did some nice modeling of what happens in this particular kind of “collective control”. What he didn’t show is any real world situation where this kind of control takes place. So it’s a model that tells us about something interesting that would happen if a set of independent control systems all acted to control the same variable. But it is not a model that accounts for any data.Â And I can’t think of any situation that I would call collective control (two or more organisms controlling in a way such that the controlling done by each system may influence the controlling done by the others) that corresponds to the situation in Kent’s models. Maybe someone could give me a real world example of this kind of collective control. But I can’t think of any.

BN:…A single aspect of the environment may be part of a number of environmental feedback paths for different agents controlling diverse perceptions. We live in a ‘built environment’ constituted of collectively controlled environmental feedback paths upon which we depend for effective control of myriad other variables.Â The lines painted on the streets, the lights powered by electricity coming into our homes…

RM: Yes, people work together to build the things that serve as the feedback functions (and controlled variables) that people use to get stuff done. But I don’t see how collective control as it’s implemented in Kent’s models can account for any of this. Producing the kinds of feedback functions and controlled variables that you mention (like light bulbs and power stations) that the controlled variables be actually, not virtually, controlled.Â

BN: In the passage that stimulated you to the response of throwing things (a response which evidently was a disturbance that you nobly resisted), I referred to the PCT view that you had articulated… I pointed out that [this view] amounts to saying that the perceptions collectively controlled best by physicists and chemists and more or less ineptly by the rest of us (“the models of physics and chemistry”) are Reality

RM: This makes me want to throw things at the screen because saying “collectively controlled” in this context is unnecessary at best and confusing at worst. It’s unnecessary because it is irrelevant to the substantive point about PCT: that the models of the physical sciences are used in PCTÂ as the model of the environment (reality). It is confusing because, as I noted above, “collective control” can refer to so many different ways groups of organisms can control together. If “collective control” is taken to refer to the situation where several control systems are keeping a variable in a virtual reference state then I can’t see how that kind of “collective control” can account for the models of physics and chemistry.Â Â

Â

BN:Â But a model in physics, however subtle and comprehensive, is not reality, it’s a model of reality.Â Â It’s a complex perception subject to change as it is collectively controlled by physicists in the course of pursuing their purpose of constructing models that correspond as closely as possible to reality.Â

RM: I would say, what is being “collectively controlled” here is the ability of the model to handle all the observations in as parsimonious and logical a way as possible. But this kind of collective control is nothing like the kind of “collective control” done by a group of control systems maintaining a variable in a virtual reference. What you have is a bunch of people collecting data to test the current model and, if necessary, individually varying the model as necessary in order to keep it handling all the old and new observations. And all the control systems are keeping an eye on one another to make sure that they are collecting the data properly and producing a new model only if it is really necessary (and correct).Â

Â

BN: Now what I think you really meant this thread to be about was not the tarbaby of real reality (which I think was the basis for you and Martin talking past each other here), but rather that there is no single environmental variable corresponding to a perceptual variable of any complexity (e.g. the taste of lemonade, the runniness of scrambled eggs, or the visibility of crosswalk lines). I concur. But I go farther. No perception is simple enough to escape. Even intensities are constructs, if only by the locality of sensors (sampling) and the processes for accumulating and discharging ions across membranes (averaging)

RM: Yes!. And I agree that all perceptions are constructs, even those, like intensities (loudness, brightness, etc) that seem to be monotonically related to what the physical model says are the variables “out there”.Â But, again, this is just the PCT model of the relationship between perception and environment; it’s right there in the diagram. If someone thinks it’s wrong all they have to do is produce evidence that that is the case.

RM: But given my complaints about the notion of “collective control” perhaps we shouldÂ continue the conversation by discussing that topic. I’d be interested in hearing what you and others think about this notion of “collective control”: What is it? What are examples of the phenomena?Â What are the variables that are being collectively controlled? How do we know that they are being controlled? How, exactly, does PCT explain the phenomena of collective control?Â

RM: I’ve changed the name of this thread to “collective control” so that we stop wasting time talking about the relationship between perception and reality (the environment) in PCT and start wasting our time talking aboutÂ “collective control”.

BestÂ

Rick

···

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.â€?
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

P0ck · November 13, 2018, 2:16am

[Nick M Kirchberger 2018-11-12_21:07]
Author Paul Watzlawick has some interesting ideas about how control theory might work on the social level.
In his book âChangeâ? he talks about frame game theory where people are said to take roles in social relationships in order to play âgamesâ?.
Now, these games have some kind of homeostasis so as if someone switch role, the game system will compensate by redistributing roles accordingly.
He gives the example of a pessimist and an optimist in a conversation, if the pessimist whine about some aspect of his life as sucking, the optimist will usually try to cheer him up, without any effects.
Now if the optimist take on the role of the pessimist, by being even more pessimistic than the pessimist, an interesting thing happens as the former pessimist will then take on the role of the optimist by trying to cheer up the optimist that fake being pessimistic.
Thatâs an example of the frame game remaining the same while the player change roles. The frame game is then the control system that has some reference state.
Le 12 nov. 2018 20:39 -0500, Richard Marken <csgnet@lists.illinois.edu>, a Ã©crit :

[Rick Marken 2018-11-12_17:38:41]

[From Bruce Nevin 2018.11.11.18:12]

RM: I believe the question at issue was whether there is a variable "out there" that corresponds to the perception that the organism can control.

BN: So the topic of this thread is the relation of perceptions to whatever reality is.

RM: Yes. >>

RM: The PCT model of perception is not "looking for the 'really real' ". The PCT model just assumes that there is a real world on the other side of our senses and that this world (the "environment side" of PCT diagrams) is the models of physics and chemistry.

BN: So in your view (and in mine) PCT has nothing to say about the relation of perceptions to whatever reality is.

RM: No, in my view PCT is very explicit about the relationship between perception and reality. According to the PCT model, perceptual variables are a function of the physical variables that make up reality. Those physical variables are assumed to be the variables in the very successful models of the physical sciences.

BN: Science, however, does, because that is the aim of science;

RM: I don't believe the aim of the physical sciences is to determine the relationship between reality and perception. I think the aim of the physical sciences is to determine the nature of reality itself. This is done by carefully manipulating our perceptions, such as by placing balls at the top of planes of varying inclination and letting them roll down, observing the results of those manipulations and then trying to account for those observations with models, which are guesses about the nature of the reality that resulted in those observations (perceptions).

RM: Feel free to try again if you like but if you do please avoid using the term "collective control" since it elicits in me a strong urge to throw things at the computer screen;-) But if you just can't resist, please explain what the hell you mean by the term.

BN: Collective control is "what can happen when two or more people at once make use of the same feedback paths in their shared environment, either physical objects or routine patterns of action, to control their own individual perceptions."

RM: A feedback path is the connection from a control system's output to the variable it controls -- the controlled variable. Therefore, in order for two or more control systems to use the same feedback path they would would all have to be the same control system; or at least they would all have to exist in the same organism. So the definition of collective control that you quote makes no sense to me -- at least , if we are talking about a collection of organisms..
RM: Perhaps what you mean is that collective control is when two or more organisms are acting to control variables using the same environmental degrees of freedom (as per Powers' "Degrees of Freedom in Social Interactions" paper in LCS I). Or maybe you mean that collective control is when two or more organisms are acting to control the same aspect of the environment (the same degrees of freedom of a controlled variable). Or maybe you mean that collective control is when two or more organisms are all controlling t in the same environment (as in the CROWD) but not controlling the same perceptions or using the same df.
RM: What these different examples of "collective control" have in common is that they refer to controlling that involves two or more organisms (controllers) controlling in a way such that the controlling done by each organisms may influence the controlling done by the others. I think that's all that "collective control" should mean. All the different ways such collective control can happen must be studied individually.

BN: It happens "when two agents perceive the same environmental variable and have the same references for controlling it, such that their control actions are additive."

RM: Ignoring the fact that agents are assumed (by PCT) to perceive aspects of environmental variables, not the physical environment variables themselves, this describes only one kind of collective control (as I note above).

BN: Kent McClelland (2004, 2006, 2014) has presented computer models that show that "the outcomes of collective control processes depend crucially on the degree of alignment (that is, similarity) between the reference values that the agents use to control their perceptions of the environmental variable. We can describe interactions in which agents use the same reference value as cooperative, but conflict occurs when the agentsâ reference values are not aligned."

RM: Yes, Kent did some nice modeling of what happens in this particular kind of "collective control". What he didn't show is any real world situation where this kind of control takes place. So it's a model that tells us about something interesting that would happen if a set of independent control systems all acted to control the same variable. But it is not a model that accounts for any data. And I can't think of any situation that I would call collective control (two or more organisms controlling in a way such that the controlling done by each system may influence the controlling done by the others) that corresponds to the situation in Kent's models. Maybe someone could give me a real world example of this kind of collective control. But I can't think of any.

BN:..A single aspect of the environment may be part of a number of environmental feedback paths for different agents controlling diverse perceptions. We live in a 'built environment' constituted of collectively controlled environmental feedback paths upon which we depend for effective control of myriad other variables. The lines painted on the streets, the lights powered by electricity coming into our homes...

RM: Yes, people work together to build the things that serve as the feedback functions (and controlled variables) that people use to get stuff done. But I don't see how collective control as it's implemented in Kent's models can account for any of this. Producing the kinds of feedback functions and controlled variables that you mention (like light bulbs and power stations) that the controlled variables be actually, not virtually, controlled.

BN: In the passage that stimulated you to the response of throwing things (a response which evidently was a disturbance that you nobly resisted), I referred to the PCT view that you had articulated.. I pointed out that [this view] amounts to saying that the perceptions collectively controlled best by physicists and chemists and more or less ineptly by the rest of us ("the models of physics and chemistry") are Reality

RM: This makes me want to throw things at the screen because saying "collectively controlled" in this context is unnecessary at best and confusing at worst. It's unnecessary because it is irrelevant to the substantive point about PCT: that the models of the physical sciences are used in PCT as the model of the environment (reality). It is confusing because, as I noted above, "collective control" can refer to so many different ways groups of organisms can control together. If "collective control" is taken to refer to the situation where several control systems are keeping a variable in a virtual reference state then I can't see how that kind of "collective control" can account for the models of physics and chemistry.

BN: But a model in physics, however subtle and comprehensive, is not reality, it's a model of reality. It's a complex perception subject to change as it is collectively controlled by physicists in the course of pursuing their purpose of constructing models that correspond as closely as possible to reality.

RM: I would say, what is being "collectively controlled" here is the ability of the model to handle all the observations in as parsimonious and logical a way as possible. But this kind of collective control is nothing like the kind of "collective control" done by a group of control systems maintaining a variable in a virtual reference. What you have is a bunch of people collecting data to test the current model and, if necessary, individually varying the model as necessary in order to keep it handling all the old and new observations. And all the control systems are keeping an eye on one another to make sure that they are collecting the data properly and producing a new model only if it is really necessary (and correct).

BN: Now what I think you really meant this thread to be about was not the tarbaby of real reality (which I think was the basis for you and Martin talking past each other here), but rather that there is no single environmental variable corresponding to a perceptual variable of any complexity (e.g. the taste of lemonade, the runniness of scrambled eggs, or the visibility of crosswalk lines). I concur. But I go farther. No perception is simple enough to escape. Even intensities are constructs, if only by the locality of sensors (sampling) and the processes for accumulating and discharging ions across membranes (averaging)

RM: Yes!. And I agree that all perceptions are constructs, even those, like intensities (loudness, brightness, etc) that seem to be monotonically related to what the physical model says are the variables "out there". But, again, this is just the PCT model of the relationship between perception and environment; it's right there in the diagram. If someone thinks it's wrong all they have to do is produce evidence that that is the case.
RM: But given my complaints about the notion of "collective control" perhaps we should continue the conversation by discussing that topic. I'd be interested in hearing what you and others think about this notion of "collective control": What is it? What are examples of the phenomena? What are the variables that are being collectively controlled? How do we know that they are being controlled? How, exactly, does PCT explain the phenomena of collective control?
RM: I've changed the name of this thread to "collective control" so that we stop wasting time talking about the relationship between perception and reality (the environment) in PCT and start wasting our time talking about "collective control".
Best
Rick

--
Richard S. Marken

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you

···

have nothing left to take away.â?
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery

_Boris_Hartman · November 13, 2018, 2:11pm

Oh Rick you want more on “collective control”. No problem.

RM:

I would say, what is being “collectively controlled” here is the ability of the model to handle all the observations in as parsimonious and logical a way as possible. But this kind of collective control is nothing like the kind of “collective control” done by a group of control systems maintaining a variable in a virtual reference. What you have is a bunch of people collecting data to test the current model and, if necessary, individually varying the model as necessary in order to keep it handling all the old and new observations. And all the control systems are keeping an eye on one another to make sure that they are collecting the data properly and producing a new model only if it is really necessary (and correct).

HB : Well Rick your explanation is so pour (probably because it’s RCT) that I’ll have to give you right explanation of “collective control”. See Kents statements downâ€¦

RM:

But given my complaints about the notion of “collective control” perhaps we should continue the conversation by discussing that topic. I’d be interested in hearing what you and others think about this notion of “collective control”: What is it? What are examples of the phenomena? What are the variables that are being collectively controlled? How do we know that they are being controlled? How, exactly, does PCT explain the phenomena of collective control?

HB : Well Rick your wishes become trueâ€¦ . We don’t need to invent “hot water”. It’s already invented.

Kent M :

…accordding to the mathematics of the control-system equations that Powers presents (1973a: 84-85), the variable actually stabilized in a control loop is the perceptual signal, which, when the control system is operating normally, is kept nearly equal to the reference signal.

Powers emphasizes that human organisms can only control their perceptions.

To understand the sociological implications of this model of human agency as control of perceptions, we need to take a fresh look the relationship between human actors and their environments.

Suppose feedback loops were visible, like gossamer threads stretching from an individual’s body through objects in the environment and back to the individual’s sense organs. Observing an individual in action, we would see an intricate ever-changing web of many thousands of feedback loops, some passing through objects near at hand, like a chair on which the individual sits or computer screen at which the individual gazes. Other feedback loops might travel great distances through conduits of communication, as, for instance, to and from the location of the news story the individual is reading on the Internet. Each perception that the individual is controlling at a given moment, that is, anything in the individual’s current perceptual world that would prove disturbing if arbitrarily changed or anything the individual is currently using to perform an action, would be the target of a feedback loop.

Furthermore, the physical actions involved in the control of a perception tend to stabilize some portions of the environment through which the feedback loops pass.

The fact that our control of perceptions can stabilize variables in the physical environment provides a useful focus for analysis when we turn from considering the actions of isolated individuals to talking about social interactions. If the feedback loops emanating from the individuals who share an environment were all visible, we would often see feedback loops from two people or more intersecting at a variety of locations within that environment.

What does it mean when feedback loops from different individuals intersect in their shared environment?

First, the intersection of feedback loops in the physical environment provides us with a plausible definition for social interaction from the PCT point of view. Whenever active feedback loops from two or more individuals intersect in the environment, we can say that social interaction has occurred. Second, if different parts of the environment intercept different numbers of feedback loops with different amounts of gain, and if the control of perceptions tends to stabilize the parts of the environment through which feedback loops pass, we should be able to observe that some parts of the environment are relatively more stable and less manipulable than others, because the feedback loops of a greater number of individuals or feedback loops with greater loop gain have intersected in those physical locations.

HB : There is much more in Kent’s huge legacy of PCT literature. You are so PCT ignorant Rick,Â Becauseyou don’t read other PCT works. You think that your imagination is enough. Well surprise. It’s not. I advise you to read other PCT literature. And I invite all PCT’ers to read Kents’ literature instead of reading Ricks RCT literature. Speccially Kents 1994 work on CSG meeting is superb. It offers clear understanding of PCT and social interaction, social power and so on… I think that term “collective control” can be explained with “the social properties of Human Control Systems”. Maybe I’m right…Â Â

Boris

···

From: Richard Marken (rsmarken@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2018 2:39 AM
To: csgnet csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Cc: Richard Marken rsmarken@gmail.com
Subject: Collective Control: Another vexing question (was Re: A Vexing Question)

[Rick Marken 2018-11-12_17:38:41]

[From Bruce Nevin 2018.11.11.18:12]

RM: I believe the question at issue was whether there is a variable “out there” that corresponds to the perception that the organism can control.

BN: So the topic of this thread is the relation of perceptions to whatever reality is.

RM: Yes.

RM: The PCT model of perception is not "looking for the ‘really real’ ". The PCT model just assumes that there is a real world on the other side of our senses and that this world (the “environment side” of PCT diagrams) is the models of physics and chemistry.

BN: So in your view (and in mine) PCT has nothing to say about the relation of perceptions to whatever reality is.

RM: No, in my view PCT is very explicit about the relationship between perception and reality. According to the PCT model, perceptual variables are a function of the physical variables that make up reality. Those physical variables are assumed to be the variables in the very successful models of the physical sciences.

BN: Science, however, does, because that is the aim of science;

RM: I don’t believe the aim of the physical sciences is to determine the relationship between reality and perception. I think the aim of the physical sciences is to determine the nature of reality itself. This is done by carefully manipulating our perceptions, such as by placing balls at the top of planes of varying inclination and letting them roll down, observing the results of those manipulations and then trying to account for those observations with models, which are guesses about the nature of the reality that resulted in those observations (perceptions).

RM: Feel free to try again if you like but if you do please avoid using the term “collective control” since it elicits in me a strong urge to throw things at the computer screen;-) But if you just can’t resist, please explain what the hell you mean by the term.

BN: Collective control is “what can happen when two or more people at once make use of the same feedback paths in their shared environment, either physical objects or routine patterns of action, to control their own individual perceptions.”

RM: A feedback path is the connection from a control system’s output to the variable it controls – the controlled variable. Therefore, in order for two or more control systems to use the same feedback path they would would all have to be the same control system; or at least they would all have to exist in the same organism. So the definition of collective control that you quote makes no sense to me – at least , if we are talking about a collection of organisms…

RM: Perhaps what you mean is that collective control is when two or more organisms are acting to control variables using the same environmental degrees of freedom (as per Powers’ “Degrees of Freedom in Social Interactions” paper in LCS I). Or maybe you mean that collective control is when two or more organisms are acting to control the same aspect of the environment (the same degrees of freedom of a controlled variable). Or maybe you mean that collective control is when two or more organisms are all controlling t in the same environment (as in the CROWD) but not controlling the same perceptions or using the same df.

RM: What these different examples of “collective control” have in common is that they refer to controlling that involves two or more organisms (controllers) controlling in a way such that the controlling done by each organisms may influence the controlling done by the others. I think that’s all that “collective control” should mean. All the different ways such collective control can happen must be studied individually.

BN: It happens “when two agents perceive the same environmental variable and have the same references for controlling it, such that their control actions are additive.”

RM: Ignoring the fact that agents are assumed (by PCT) to perceive aspects of environmental variables, not the physical environment variables themselves, this describes only one kind of collective control (as I note above).

BN: Kent McClelland (2004, 2006, 2014) has presented computer models that show that “the outcomes of collective control processes depend crucially on the degree of alignment (that is, similarity) between the reference values that the agents use to control their perceptions of the environmental variable. We can describe interactions in which agents use the same reference value as cooperative, but conflict occurs when the agentsâ€™ reference values are not aligned.”

RM: Yes, Kent did some nice modeling of what happens in this particular kind of “collective control”. What he didn’t show is any real world situation where this kind of control takes place. So it’s a model that tells us about something interesting that would happen if a set of independent control systems all acted to control the same variable. But it is not a model that accounts for any data. And I can’t think of any situation that I would call collective control (two or more organisms controlling in a way such that the controlling done by each system may influence the controlling done by the others) that corresponds to the situation in Kent’s models. Maybe someone could give me a real world example of this kind of collective control. But I can’t think of any.

BN:…A single aspect of the environment may be part of a number of environmental feedback paths for different agents controlling diverse perceptions. We live in a ‘built environment’ constituted of collectively controlled environmental feedback paths upon which we depend for effective control of myriad other variables. The lines painted on the streets, the lights powered by electricity coming into our homes…

RM: Yes, people work together to build the things that serve as the feedback functions (and controlled variables) that people use to get stuff done. But I don’t see how collective control as it’s implemented in Kent’s models can account for any of this. Producing the kinds of feedback functions and controlled variables that you mention (like light bulbs and power stations) that the controlled variables be actually, not virtually, controlled.

BN: In the passage that stimulated you to the response of throwing things (a response which evidently was a disturbance that you nobly resisted), I referred to the PCT view that you had articulated… I pointed out that [this view] amounts to saying that the perceptions collectively controlled best by physicists and chemists and more or less ineptly by the rest of us (“the models of physics and chemistry”) are Reality

RM: This makes me want to throw things at the screen because saying “collectively controlled” in this context is unnecessary at best and confusing at worst. It’s unnecessary because it is irrelevant to the substantive point about PCT: that the models of the physical sciences are used in PCT as the model of the environment (reality). It is confusing because, as I noted above, “collective control” can refer to so many different ways groups of organisms can control together. If “collective control” is taken to refer to the situation where several control systems are keeping a variable in a virtual reference state then I can’t see how that kind of “collective control” can account for the models of physics and chemistry.

BN: But a model in physics, however subtle and comprehensive, is not reality, it’s a model of reality. It’s a complex perception subject to change as it is collectively controlled by physicists in the course of pursuing their purpose of constructing models that correspond as closely as possible to reality.

RM: I would say, what is being “collectively controlled” here is the ability of the model to handle all the observations in as parsimonious and logical a way as possible. But this kind of collective control is nothing like the kind of “collective control” done by a group of control systems maintaining a variable in a virtual reference. What you have is a bunch of people collecting data to test the current model and, if necessary, individually varying the model as necessary in order to keep it handling all the old and new observations. And all the control systems are keeping an eye on one another to make sure that they are collecting the data properly and producing a new model only if it is really necessary (and correct).

BN: Now what I think you really meant this thread to be about was not the tarbaby of real reality (which I think was the basis for you and Martin talking past each other here), but rather that there is no single environmental variable corresponding to a perceptual variable of any complexity (e.g. the taste of lemonade, the runniness of scrambled eggs, or the visibility of crosswalk lines). I concur. But I go farther. No perception is simple enough to escape. Even intensities are constructs, if only by the locality of sensors (sampling) and the processes for accumulating and discharging ions across membranes (averaging)

RM: Yes!. And I agree that all perceptions are constructs, even those, like intensities (loudness, brightness, etc) that seem to be monotonically related to what the physical model says are the variables “out there”. But, again, this is just the PCT model of the relationship between perception and environment; it’s right there in the diagram. If someone thinks it’s wrong all they have to do is produce evidence that that is the case.

RM: But given my complaints about the notion of “collective control” perhaps we should continue the conversation by discussing that topic. I’d be interested in hearing what you and others think about this notion of “collective control”: What is it? What are examples of the phenomena? What are the variables that are being collectively controlled? How do we know that they are being controlled? How, exactly, does PCT explain the phenomena of collective control?

RM: I’ve changed the name of this thread to “collective control” so that we stop wasting time talking about the relationship between perception and reality (the environment) in PCT and start wasting our time talking about “collective control”.

Best

Rick

–

Richard S. Marken

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.â€?
–Antoine de Saint-Exupery

bnhpct · November 13, 2018, 3:03pm

[From Bruce Nevin (2018.11.13.0918 ET)]

Maybe an example will wake one of us from “dogmatic slumber.” Could be me. Show me.

Th prawpar sheyps uhv thez wirdz are collectively controlled variables that are in the feedback paths by which an unknown number of English-speaking people now and indeterminately into the future control their respective perceptions of what I intend by this sentence and of what you might be understanding from this sentence as part of their perceptions of this current dialogue. The improper shapes that I have placed there are disturbances to collectively controlled variables among a large set that can be called “standard American English spelling”.

All the readers in that indeterminately large set are resisting those disturbances at least by controlling in imagination the correct spellings of “the proper shapes of these words”, and perhaps by other means as well, maybe even coloured by a degree of emotion, or a perception of the nationality (or pretentiousness, etc.) of the writer, e.g. for -our vs. -or in a preceding word in this sentence. We want stability in these collectively controlled variables because we use them in the environmental pathway for recognizing perceptions that the writer intends us to control. We want spellings to be transparent (with conscious attention on the meanings, not the spellings). Misspellings are like rain and snow on the windshield, the mental corrections like windshield wipers, all cluttering the environmental feedback path by which the driver controls the heading of the car in the roadway.

If a misspelling occurrs in the midst of ordinary text, don’t you find that a ‘mental editor’ corrects it? (And maybe even perceives something about the carefulness or intelligence of the writer.) Just as managers of a Department of Public Works and their employees monitor the condition of stripes on roads and respond to complaints (the complainers maybe even perceiving something about the carefulness or intelligence of those who are in positions that are collectively controlled as “being responsible for” such things), and just as publishers of newspapers and (alas less commonly now) publishers of books employ copy editors. These are all instances of how individuals’ control of certain perceptions amounts to their participation in collective resistance to disturbances to public variables: collective control.

···

/BN

On Mon, Nov 12, 2018 at 8:39 PM Richard Marken csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Rick Marken 2018-11-12_17:38:41]

[From Bruce Nevin 2018.11.11.18:12]

Â

RM: I believe the question at issue was whether there is a variable “out there” that corresponds to the perception that the organism can control.Â Â Â

BN: So the topic of this thread is the relation of perceptions to whatever reality is.

RM: Yes.Â

RM: The PCT model of perception is not "looking for the ‘really real’ ". The PCT model just assumes that there is a real world on the other side of our senses and that this world (the “environment side” of PCT diagrams) is the models of physics and chemistry.Â Â Â

BN: So in your view (and in mine) PCT has nothing to say about the relation of perceptions to whatever reality is.

RM: No, in my view PCT is very explicit about the relationship between perception and reality. According to the PCT model, perceptual variables are a function of the physical variables that make up reality. Those physical variables are assumed to be the variables in the very successful models of the physical sciences.

Â

BN: Science, however, does, because that is the aim of science;

RM: I don’t believe the aim of the physical sciences is to determine the relationship between reality and perception. I think the aim of the physical sciences is to determine the nature of reality itself. This is done by carefully manipulating our perceptions, such as by placing balls at the top of planes of varying inclination and letting them roll down, observing the results of those manipulations and then trying to account for those observations with models, which are guesses about the nature of the reality that resulted in those observations (perceptions).Â

RM:Â Feel free to try again if you like but if you do please avoid using the term “collective control” since it elicits in me a strong urge to throw things at the computer screen;-) But if you just can’t resist, please explain what the hell you mean by the term.Â Â Â

BN: Collective control is “what can happen when two or more people at once make use of the same feedback paths in their shared environment, either physical objects or routine patterns of action, to control their own individual perceptions.”

RM: A feedback path is the connection from a control system’s output to the variable it controls – the controlled variable. Therefore, in order for two or more control systems to use the same feedback path they would would all have to be the same control system; or at least they would all have to exist in the same organism. So the definition of collective control that you quote makes no sense to me – at least , if we are talking about a collection of organisms…Â

RM: Perhaps what you mean is that collective control is when two or more organisms are acting to control variables using the same environmental degrees of freedom (as per Powers’ “Degrees of Freedom in Social Interactions” paper in LCS I).Â Or maybe you mean that collective control is when two or moreÂ

organismsÂ are acting to control the same aspect of the environment (the same degrees of freedom of a controlled variable). Or maybe you mean that collective controlÂ is when two or moreÂ

organismsÂ are all controlling t in the same environment (as in the CROWD) but not controlling the same perceptions or using the same df.Â

RM: What these different examples of “collective control” have in common is that they refer to controlling that involves two or more organisms (controllers) controlling in a way such that the controlling done by eachÂ

organismsÂ may influence the controlling done by the others. I thinkÂ that’s all that “collective control” should mean. All the different ways such collective control can happen must be studied individually.Â Â

Â

BN: It happens “when two agents perceive the same environmental variable and have the same references for controlling it, such that their control actions are additive.”

RM: Ignoring the fact that agents are assumed (by PCT) to perceive aspects of environmental variables, not the physical environment variables themselves, this describes only one kind of collective control (as I note above).Â Â

Â

BN: Kent McClelland (2004, 2006, 2014) has presented computer models that show that “the outcomes of collective control processes depend crucially on the degree of alignment (that is, similarity) between the reference values that the agents use to control their perceptions of the environmental variable. We can describe interactions in which agents use the same reference value as cooperative, but conflict occurs when the agentsâ€™ reference values are not aligned.”

RM: Yes, Kent did some nice modeling of what happens in this particular kind of “collective control”. What he didn’t show is any real world situation where this kind of control takes place. So it’s a model that tells us about something interesting that would happen if a set of independent control systems all acted to control the same variable. But it is not a model that accounts for any data.Â And I can’t think of any situation that I would call collective control (two or more organisms controlling in a way such that the controlling done by each system may influence the controlling done by the others) that corresponds to the situation in Kent’s models. Maybe someone could give me a real world example of this kind of collective control. But I can’t think of any.

BN:…A single aspect of the environment may be part of a number of environmental feedback paths for different agents controlling diverse perceptions. We live in a ‘built environment’ constituted of collectively controlled environmental feedback paths upon which we depend for effective control of myriad other variables.Â The lines painted on the streets, the lights powered by electricity coming into our homes…

RM: Yes, people work together to build the things that serve as the feedback functions (and controlled variables) that people use to get stuff done. But I don’t see how collective control as it’s implemented in Kent’s models can account for any of this. Producing the kinds of feedback functions and controlled variables that you mention (like light bulbs and power stations) that the controlled variables be actually, not virtually, controlled.Â

BN: In the passage that stimulated you to the response of throwing things (a response which evidently was a disturbance that you nobly resisted), I referred to the PCT view that you had articulated… I pointed out that [this view] amounts to saying that the perceptions collectively controlled best by physicists and chemists and more or less ineptly by the rest of us (“the models of physics and chemistry”) are Reality

RM: This makes me want to throw things at the screen because saying “collectively controlled” in this context is unnecessary at best and confusing at worst. It’s unnecessary because it is irrelevant to the substantive point about PCT: that the models of the physical sciences are used in PCTÂ as the model of the environment (reality). It is confusing because, as I noted above, “collective control” can refer to so many different ways groups of organisms can control together. If “collective control” is taken to refer to the situation where several control systems are keeping a variable in a virtual reference state then I can’t see how that kind of “collective control” can account for the models of physics and chemistry.Â Â

Â

BN:Â But a model in physics, however subtle and comprehensive, is not reality, it’s a model of reality.Â Â It’s a complex perception subject to change as it is collectively controlled by physicists in the course of pursuing their purpose of constructing models that correspond as closely as possible to reality.Â

RM: I would say, what is being “collectively controlled” here is the ability of the model to handle all the observations in as parsimonious and logical a way as possible. But this kind of collective control is nothing like the kind of “collective control” done by a group of control systems maintaining a variable in a virtual reference. What you have is a bunch of people collecting data to test the current model and, if necessary, individually varying the model as necessary in order to keep it handling all the old and new observations. And all the control systems are keeping an eye on one another to make sure that they are collecting the data properly and producing a new model only if it is really necessary (and correct).Â

Â

BN: Now what I think you really meant this thread to be about was not the tarbaby of real reality (which I think was the basis for you and Martin talking past each other here), but rather that there is no single environmental variable corresponding to a perceptual variable of any complexity (e.g. the taste of lemonade, the runniness of scrambled eggs, or the visibility of crosswalk lines). I concur. But I go farther. No perception is simple enough to escape. Even intensities are constructs, if only by the locality of sensors (sampling) and the processes for accumulating and discharging ions across membranes (averaging)

RM: Yes!. And I agree that all perceptions are constructs, even those, like intensities (loudness, brightness, etc) that seem to be monotonically related to what the physical model says are the variables “out there”.Â But, again, this is just the PCT model of the relationship between perception and environment; it’s right there in the diagram. If someone thinks it’s wrong all they have to do is produce evidence that that is the case.

RM: But given my complaints about the notion of “collective control” perhaps we shouldÂ continue the conversation by discussing that topic. I’d be interested in hearing what you and others think about this notion of “collective control”: What is it? What are examples of the phenomena?Â What are the variables that are being collectively controlled? How do we know that they are being controlled? How, exactly, does PCT explain the phenomena of collective control?Â

RM: I’ve changed the name of this thread to “collective control” so that we stop wasting time talking about the relationship between perception and reality (the environment) in PCT and start wasting our time talking aboutÂ “collective control”.

BestÂ

Rick

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.â€?
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

rsmarken · November 13, 2018, 6:06pm

[Rick Marken 2018-11-13_10:06:05]

[From Bruce Nevin (2018.11.13.0918 ET)]

BN: Maybe an example will wake one of us from “dogmatic slumber.” Could be me. Show me.

BN: Th prawpar sheyps uhv thez wirdz are collectively controlled variables that are in the feedback paths by which an unknown number of English-speaking people now and indeterminately into the future control their respective perceptions of what I intend by this sentence and of what you might be understanding from this sentence as part of their perceptions of this current dialogue. The improper shapes that I have placed there are disturbances to collectively controlled variables among a large set that can be called “standard American English spelling”.

RM: I can see that “Th prawpar sheyps uhv thez wirdz” can be considered the state of a variable that could be called “arrangement of letters into English words”. And presumably the reference for this variable is “The proper shape of these words”. But I don’t see how this control is “collective”. I brought this variable to the reference state (controlled it) all by myself.Â

Â

BN: All the readers in that indeterminately large set are resisting those disturbances at least by controlling in imagination the correct spellings of “the proper shapes of these words”,

RM: Yes, but, like me, they are doing it all by themselves, individually.Â

Â

BN: … Misspellings are like rain and snow on the windshield, the mental corrections like windshield wipers, all cluttering the environmental feedback path by which the driver controls the heading of the car in the roadway.

RM: Right, but the driver (like the word spelling controller) does this all by him or herself. I don’t see how this is an example of collective control in any sense of that term, least of all in the sense of Kent’s simulations where several controllers are simultaneously controlling the same variable relative to different references.Â

Â

BN: If a misspelling occursÂ in the midst of ordinary text, don’t you find that a ‘mental editor’ corrects it?

RM: Yes, a big problem. Thank goodness for spell check! But this is an individual phenomenon (which I actually incorporated in my model of prescribing error; https://www.dropbox.com/s/5z6mswgmxdk5dmr/ModelPrioritize.pdf?dl=0). But this is an individual phenomenon; I don’t see where collective control is involved.

BN: Just as managers of a Department of Public Works and their employees monitor the condition of stripes on roads and respond to complaints (the complainers maybe even perceiving something about the carefulness or intelligence of those who are in positions that are collectively controlled as “being responsible for” such things), and just as publishers of newspapers and (alas less commonly now) publishers of books employ copy editors. These are all instances of how individuals’ control of certain perceptions amounts to their participation in collective resistance to disturbances to public variables: collective control

RM: But they certainly aren’t examples of the “collective control” that Kent modeled, where a variable is kept in a virtual reference state by two (or more) controllers controlling that variable relative to different reference specifications.

BestÂ

Rick

···

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.â€?
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

MartinT · November 13, 2018, 6:14pm

[Martin Taylor 2018.11.13.13.08]

          [From
Bruce Nevin (2018.11.13.0918 ET)]

          Maybe an
example will wake one of us from “dogmatic slumber.” Could
be me. Show me.

What follows is well said. In my first draft of Martin Taylor

2018.11.13.09.54] I included a paragraph in which I tried to say
much the same thing, but Bruce said it much better. The same
underlying argument applies to many variables we think of as the
forms of a culture, among which I include the forms of a language at
many levels.

Thanks, Bruce.

Martin

···

          Th
prawpar sheyps uhv thez wirdz are collectively controlled
variables that are in the feedback paths by which an
unknown number of English-speaking people now and
indeterminately into the future control their respective
perceptions of what I intend by this sentence and of what
you might be understanding from this sentence as part of
their perceptions of this current dialogue. The improper
shapes that I have placed there are disturbances to
collectively controlled variables among a large set that
can be called “standard American English spelling”.

          All the
readers in that indeterminately large set are resisting
those disturbances at least by controlling in imagination
the correct spellings of “the proper shapes of these
words”, and perhaps by other means as well, maybe even
coloured by a degree of emotion, or a perception of the
nationality (or pretentiousness, etc.) of the writer, e.g.
for -our vs. -or in a preceding word in this sentence. We
want stability in these collectively controlled variables
because we use them in the environmental pathway for
recognizing perceptions that the writer intends us to
control. We want spellings to be transparent (with
conscious attention on the meanings, not the spellings).
Misspellings are like rain and snow on the windshield, the
mental corrections like windshield wipers, all cluttering
the environmental feedback path by which the driver
controls the heading of the car in the roadway.

          If a
misspelling occurrs in the midst of ordinary text, don’t
you find that a ‘mental editor’ corrects it? (And maybe
even perceives something about the carefulness or
intelligence of the writer.) Just as managers of a
Department of Public Works and their employees monitor the
condition of stripes on roads and respond to complaints
(the complainers maybe even perceiving something about the
carefulness or intelligence of those who are in positions
that are collectively controlled as “being responsible
for” such things), and just as publishers of newspapers
and (alas less commonly now) publishers of books employ
copy editors. These are all instances of how individuals’
control of certain perceptions amounts to their
participation in collective resistance to disturbances to
public variables: collective control.

/BN

      On Mon, Nov 12, 2018 at 8:39 PM Richard Marken > <csgnet@lists.illinois.edu          > > wrote:

[Rick Marken 2018-11-12_17:38:41]

[ From
Bruce Nevin 2018.11.11.18:12]

Â

                            RM: I believe the question
at issue was whether there is a variable
“out there” that corresponds to the
perception that the organism can
control.Â Â Â

                          BN:
So the topic of this thread is the
relation of perceptions to whatever
reality is.

RM: Yes.Â

                            RM: The PCT model of
perception is not "looking for the
‘really real’ ". The PCT model just
assumes that there is a real world on
the other side of our senses and that
this world (the “environment side” of
PCT diagrams) is the models of physics
and chemistry.Â Â Â

                          BN:
So in your view (and in mine) PCT has
nothing to say about the relation of
perceptions to whatever reality is.

              RM: No, in
my view PCT is very explicit about the relationship
between perception and reality. According to the PCT
model, perceptual variables are a function of the
physical variables that make up reality. Those
physical variables are assumed to be the variables in
the very successful models of the physical sciences.

Â

                          BN:
Science, however, does, because that is
the aim of science;

              RM: I don't
believe the aim of the physical sciences is to
determine the relationship between reality and
perception. I think the aim of the physical sciences
is to determine the nature of reality itself. This is
done by carefully manipulating our perceptions, such
as by placing balls at the top of planes of varying
inclination and letting them roll down, observing the
results of those manipulations and then trying to
account for those observations with models, which are
guesses about the nature of the reality that resulted
in those observations (perceptions).Â

                            RM:Â Feel free to try again
if you like but if you do please avoid
using the term “collective control”
since it elicits in me a strong urge to
throw things at the computer screen;-)
But if you just can’t resist, please
explain what the hell you mean by the
term.Â Â Â

                          BN:
Collective control is “what can happen
when two or more people at once make use
of the same feedback paths in their shared
environment, either physical objects or
routine patterns of action, to control
their own individual perceptions.”

              RM: A
feedback path is the connection from a control
system’s output to the variable it controls – the
controlled variable. Therefore, in order for two or
more control systems to use the same * feedback
path* they would would all have to be the same
control system; or at least they would all have to
exist in the same organism. So the definition of
collective control that you quote makes no sense to me
– at least , if we are talking about a collection of
organisms…Â

              RM: Perhaps
what you mean is that collective control is when two
or more organisms are acting to control variables
using the same environmental degrees of freedom (as
per Powers’ “Degrees of Freedom in Social
Interactions” paper in LCS I).Â Or maybe you mean that
collective control is when two or moreÂ
organismsÂ are acting to
control the same aspect of the environment (the same
degrees of freedom of a controlled variable). Or maybe
you mean that collective controlÂ is when two or moreÂ
organisms Â are all
controlling t in the same environment (as in the
CROWD) but not controlling the same perceptions or
using the same df.Â

              RM: What
these different examples of “collective control” have
in common is that they refer to controlling that
involves two or more organisms (controllers)
controlling in a way such that the controlling done by
eachÂ
organismsÂ may influence the
controlling done by the others. I thinkÂ that’s all
that “collective control” should mean. All the
different ways such collective control can happen must
be studied individually.Â Â

Â

                          BN:
It happens “when two agents perceive the
same environmental variable and have the
same references for controlling it, such
that their control actions are additive.”

            RM: Ignoring the fact that agents are assumed (by
PCT) to perceive aspects of environmental
variables, not the physical environment variables
themselves, this describes only one kind of collective
control (as I note above).Â Â

Â

                          BN:
Kent McClelland (2004, 2006, 2014) has
presented computer models that show that
“the outcomes of collective control
processes depend crucially on the degree
of alignment (that is, similarity) between
the reference values that the agents use
to control their perceptions of the
environmental variable. We can describe
interactions in which agents use the same
reference value as cooperative, but
conflict occurs when the agentsâ€™ reference
values are not aligned.”

            RM: Yes, Kent did some nice modeling of what happens
in this particular kind of “collective control”. What he
didn’t show is any real world situation where this kind
of control takes place. So it’s a model that tells us
about something interesting that would happen
if a set of independent control systems all acted to
control the same variable. But it is not a model that
accounts for any data.Â And I can’t think of any
situation that I would call collective control ( two or
more organisms controlling in a way such that the
controlling done by each system may influence the
controlling done by the others) that corresponds to
the situation in Kent’s models. Maybe someone could
give me a real world example of this kind of
collective control. But I can’t think of any.

BN:… A single aspect of the
environment may be part of a number of
environmental feedback paths for different
agents controlling diverse perceptions. We
live in a ‘built environment’ constituted
of collectively controlled environmental
feedback paths upon which we depend for
effective control of myriad other
variables.Â The
lines painted on the streets, the lights
powered by electricity coming into our
homes…

            RM: Yes, people work together to build the things
that serve as the feedback functions (and controlled
variables) that people use to get stuff done. But I
don’t see how collective control as it’s implemented in
Kent’s models can account for any of this. Producing the
kinds of feedback functions and controlled variables
that you mention (like light bulbs and power stations)
that the controlled variables be actually, not
virtually, controlled.Â

                          BN:
In the passage that stimulated you to the
response of throwing things (a response
which evidently was a disturbance that you
nobly resisted), I referred to the PCT
view that you had articulated… I pointed
out that [this view] amounts to saying
that the perceptions collectively
controlled best by physicists and chemists
and more or less ineptly by the rest of us
(“the models of physics and chemistry”) are
Reality

            RM: This makes me want to throw things at the screen
because saying “collectively controlled” in this context
is unnecessary at best and confusing at worst. It’s
unnecessary because it is irrelevant to the substantive
point about PCT: that the models of the physical
sciences are used in PCTÂ as the model of the
environment (reality). It is confusing because, as I
noted above, “collective control” can refer to so many
different ways groups of organisms can control together.
If “collective control” is taken to refer to the
situation where several control systems are keeping a
variable in a virtual reference state then I can’t see
how that kind of “collective control” can account for
the models of physics and chemistry.Â Â

Â

                          BN:Â 
But a model in physics, however subtle and
comprehensive, is not reality, it’s a
model of reality.Â Â It’s
a complex perception subject to change as
it is collectively controlled by
physicists in the course of pursuing their
purpose of constructing models that
correspond as closely as possible to
reality.Â

            RM: I would say, what is being "collectively
controlled" here is the ability of the model to handle
all the observations in as parsimonious and logical a
way as possible. But this kind of collective control is
nothing like the kind of “collective control” done by a
group of control systems maintaining a variable in a
virtual reference. What you have is a bunch of people
collecting data to test the current model and, if
necessary, individually varying the model as necessary
in order to keep it handling all the old and new
observations. And all the control systems are keeping an
eye on one another to make sure that they are collecting
the data properly and producing a new model only if it
is really necessary (and correct).Â

Â

                          BN:
Now what I think you really meant this
thread to be about was not the tarbaby of
real reality (which I think was the basis
for you and Martin talking past each other
here), but rather that there is no single
environmental variable corresponding to a
perceptual variable of any complexity
(e.g. the taste of lemonade, the runniness
of scrambled eggs, or the visibility of
crosswalk lines). I concur. But I go
farther. No perception is simple enough to
escape. Even intensities are constructs,
if only by the locality of sensors
(sampling) and the processes for
accumulating and discharging ions across
membranes (averaging)

            RM: Yes!. And I agree that all perceptions are
constructs, even those, like intensities (loudness,
brightness, etc) that seem to be monotonically related
to what the physical model says are the variables “out
there”.Â But, again, this is just the PCT model of the
relationship between perception and environment; it’s
right there in the diagram. If someone thinks it’s wrong
all they have to do is produce evidence that that is the
case.

            RM: But given my complaints about the notion of
“collective control” perhaps we shouldÂ continue the
conversation by discussing that topic. I’d be interested
in hearing what you and others think about this notion
of “collective control”: What is it? What are examples
of the phenomena?Â What are the variables that are being
collectively controlled? How do we know that they are
being controlled? How, exactly, does PCT explain the
phenomena of collective control?Â

            RM: I've changed the name of this thread to
“collective control” so that we stop wasting time
talking about the relationship between perception and
reality (the environment) in PCT and start wasting our
time talking aboutÂ “collective control”.

BestÂ

Rick

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

                                    "Perfection
is achieved not when you have
nothing more to add, but when
you
have
nothing left to take away.â€?
Â Â
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
–Antoine de Saint-Exupery

MartinT · November 13, 2018, 6:34pm

[Martin Taylor 2018.11.13.13.24]

            [Rick Marken

2018-11-13_10:06:05]

                    [From
Bruce Nevin (2018.11.13.0918 ET)]

                    BN:
Maybe an example will wake one of us from
“dogmatic slumber.” Could be me. Show me.

                    BN:
Th prawpar sheyps uhv thez wirdz are
collectively controlled variables that are in
the feedback paths by which an unknown number of
English-speaking people now and indeterminately
into the future control their respective
perceptions of what I intend by this sentence
and of what you might be understanding from this
sentence as part of their perceptions of this
current dialogue. The improper shapes that I
have placed there are disturbances to
collectively controlled variables among a large
set that can be called “standard American
English spelling”.

RM: I can see that " Th
prawpar sheyps uhv thez wirdz" can be considered the
state of a variable that could be called “arrangement of
letters into English words”. And presumably the
reference for this variable is “The proper shape of
these words”. But I don’t see how this control is
“collective”. I brought this variable to the reference
state (controlled it) all by myself.

A question. Why is the reference state  for you personally       "The proper shape

of these words" rather than " Th prawpar sheyps
uhv thez wirdz" or something quite different?

    One comment. Had history many decades ago been slightly

different, your reference state for the written form of the same
concept might have been “La forma correcta de estas palabras”
(according to Google translate). Why might you personally have
had that as a reference value rather than the reference value
you say you now have for it?

    Martin

rsmarken · November 13, 2018, 11:31pm

[Rick Marken 2018-11-13_15:27:33]

[Martin Taylor 2018.11.13.13.24]

MT: A question. Why is the reference stateÂ for you personally “The proper shape
of these words” rather than " Th prawpar sheyps
uhv thez wirdz" or something quite different?

RM: Because we are carrying on this discussion in English. So I assumed the sentence was a distortion of an English sentence and, sure enough, it was.Â Â

    MT: One comment. Had history many decades ago been slightly
different, your reference state for the written form of the same
concept might have been “La forma correcta de estas palabras”
(according to Google translate). Why might you personally have
had that as a reference value rather than the reference value
you say you now have for it?

RM: I think you are trying to make the point that language results from some kind of collective control and I agree that it does; I learned to speak English in order to control for communicating with my parents and peers. I guess you could call communication “collective control” because it involves interpersonal controlling involving at least two people. But it’s certainly not the kind of “collective control” going on in Kent’s model of multi-person control of a single variable.Â

RM: What I object to is using the phrase “collective control” as though it explains social phenomena. At best, it describes the general nature of social phenomena. Things like light bulbs and power stations and string quartets and iphones and road makings and so on could all be seen as examples of collective control inasmuch as they are all the controlled result of the controlling done by groups of controllers. But the explanations of different examples of “collective control” are likely to be quite different. Kent’s is a model of one type of collective control – “virtual” control resulting from just the right kind of conflict – but I can’t think of any real life example of collective control that fits Kent’s model. Most of what I see as “collective control” – certainly stable collective control – is a result of cooperation, not conflict.Â

Best

Rick

Â

···

Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.â€?
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

bnhpct · November 16, 2018, 3:30pm

Rick Marken 2018-11-13_10:06:05 –

BN: [Example of recognizing improperly written words.]

RM: I don’t see how this control is “collective”. I brought this variable to the reference state (controlled it) all by myself.Â

Â

BN: All the readers … are resisting those disturbances …

RM: Yes, but, like me, they are doing it all by themselves, individually.

BN: Yes, every participant in collective control is controlling individually. No present concept of collective control denies that. It may appear as though a ‘giant virtual controller’ is controlling, but that is avowedly a fiction that is convenient for some descriptive purposes. (And, personally, I don’t invoke it.)

Rick Marken 2018-11-13_15:27:33 –

RM: I learned to speak English in order to control for communicating with my parents and peers.Â

BN: Yes. The missing link to collective control is in our underdeveloped PCT theory of learning.Â

BN: Each individual involved in collective control is controlling according to internally maintained reference values. In cases of social standardization, as with language, the setting of those values is determined, in each individual, by a comparison of “how I do it” with “how ‘the others’ do it”.Â Â Successful control of being understood is just one factor in which such comparison is essential. Notably, many factors are involved in a mutual perception of peer status in a community, which influences others’ judgements and interpretations of what is communicated. The comparisons and the adjustments of reference values for all of these factors involve the individual in collective control. Standardized spelling, for example, does not ‘exist in the environment’ in the same sense as do rutabagas, bagels,Â and Studebakers. It exists only in the reference values that spellers have internalized and in the writings that they produce and read.Â Spelling manuals and dictionaries are not themselves the standardized spelling that they prescribe, they are among the socially instituted means ofÂ collective control of standardized spelling, much as the Department of Public Works is socially instituted to maintain striping of roadways, among other things. Standardized pronunciations and all the other social standardizations by which a common language is maintained are all ongoing products of collective control, but the means of control are less ‘tangible’.Â

BN:Â This collective control depends upon the individuals who participate in it learning the collectively determined reference values, and depends upon the individuals continuing to make comparisons and adjust reference values. In all but the most formally legislated examples individuals adjust their references toward the values controlled by those with whom they are immediately interacting. (Unless a higher level of control contravenes, as in “we don’t talk like that kind of people”.) This is true even with legally enforced standards–drivers go with the flow of traffic, one impatient walker crossing before the light changes is followed by others, etc.

BN:Â And yes, very little of this is reflected in computer models so far. That’s an assessment of our progress with modeling, not of the theory of collective control.

RM:Â What I object to is using the phrase “collective control” as though it explains social phenomena. At best, it describes the general nature of social phenomena. Things like light bulbs and power stations and string quartets and iphones and road makings and so on could all be seen as examples of collective control inasmuch as they are all the controlled result of the controlling done by groups of controllers. But the explanations of different examples of “collective control” are likely to be quite different.Â

BN: What is your basis for this prediction?

···

/B

On Tue, Nov 13, 2018 at 6:31 PM Richard Marken csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Rick Marken 2018-11-13_15:27:33]

[Martin Taylor 2018.11.13.13.24]

MT: A question. Why is the reference stateÂ for you personally “The proper shape
of these words” rather than " Th prawpar sheyps
uhv thez wirdz" or something quite different?

RM: Because we are carrying on this discussion in English. So I assumed the sentence was a distortion of an English sentence and, sure enough, it was.Â Â

    MT: One comment. Had history many decades ago been slightly
different, your reference state for the written form of the same
concept might have been “La forma correcta de estas palabras”
(according to Google translate). Why might you personally have
had that as a reference value rather than the reference value
you say you now have for it?

RM: I think you are trying to make the point that language results from some kind of collective control and I agree that it does; I learned to speak English in order to control for communicating with my parents and peers. I guess you could call communication “collective control” because it involves interpersonal controlling involving at least two people. But it’s certainly not the kind of “collective control” going on in Kent’s model of multi-person control of a single variable.Â

RM: What I object to is using the phrase “collective control” as though it explains social phenomena. At best, it describes the general nature of social phenomena. Things like light bulbs and power stations and string quartets and iphones and road makings and so on could all be seen as examples of collective control inasmuch as they are all the controlled result of the controlling done by groups of controllers. But the explanations of different examples of “collective control” are likely to be quite different. Kent’s is a model of one type of collective control – “virtual” control resulting from just the right kind of conflict – but I can’t think of any real life example of collective control that fits Kent’s model. Most of what I see as “collective control” – certainly stable collective control – is a result of cooperation, not conflict.Â

Best

Rick

Â

    Martin

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.â€?
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

bnhpct · November 16, 2018, 11:27pm

[Bruce Nevin 2018.11.16.14:00 ET]

Here’s a lovely example of collective control which is of import to physics, chemistry, engineering, commerce, etc.

https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/the-kilograms-long-slow-climb-to-harmony

···

"The supreme arbiter of mass for humankind is a polished cylinder of platinum alloy just smaller than a golf ball. It was cast in London in 1879, unveiled a decade later in a ceremony in France, and now resides beneath three nested bell jars in a vault outside Paris, somewhere in a manor overlooking the Seine. (Its handlers prefer not to disclose its precise location.) Every scale on earth is calibrated to this artifact. Every dumbbell, every microdose of medicine, and every sack of cement weighs what it weighs, in effect, because the lump of metal weighs what it weighs. The lump is called the International Prototype Kilogram, or I.P.K. As its name suggests, it weighs, precisely and always, by definition, one kilogram.

“By international consensus, the kilogram is the worldâ€™s universal base unit of mass, the ur-unit from which all others are derived. … This is not to suggest that the kilogram possesses some inherent authority. Like all units of measure, it is a tool entirely of manâ€™s making. It exists in nature no more than a pound does, or a unicorn. It is an invented abstraction defined by an invented object. The object is the I.P.K.”

On Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 10:30 AM Bruce Nevin bnhpct@gmail.com wrote:

Rick Marken 2018-11-13_10:06:05 –

BN: [Example of recognizing improperly written words.]

RM: I don’t see how this control is “collective”. I brought this variable to the reference state (controlled it) all by myself.Â

Â

BN: All the readers … are resisting those disturbances …

RM: Yes, but, like me, they are doing it all by themselves, individually.

BN: Yes, every participant in collective control is controlling individually. No present concept of collective control denies that. It may appear as though a ‘giant virtual controller’ is controlling, but that is avowedly a fiction that is convenient for some descriptive purposes. (And, personally, I don’t invoke it.)

Rick Marken 2018-11-13_15:27:33 –

RM: I learned to speak English in order to control for communicating with my parents and peers.Â

BN: Yes. The missing link to collective control is in our underdeveloped PCT theory of learning.Â

BN: Each individual involved in collective control is controlling according to internally maintained reference values. In cases of social standardization, as with language, the setting of those values is determined, in each individual, by a comparison of “how I do it” with “how ‘the others’ do it”.Â Â Successful control of being understood is just one factor in which such comparison is essential. Notably, many factors are involved in a mutual perception of peer status in a community, which influences others’ judgements and interpretations of what is communicated. The comparisons and the adjustments of reference values for all of these factors involve the individual in collective control. Standardized spelling, for example, does not ‘exist in the environment’ in the same sense as do rutabagas, bagels,Â and Studebakers. It exists only in the reference values that spellers have internalized and in the writings that they produce and read.Â Spelling manuals and dictionaries are not themselves the standardized spelling that they prescribe, they are among the socially instituted means ofÂ collective control of standardized spelling, much as the Department of Public Works is socially instituted to maintain striping of roadways, among other things. Standardized pronunciations and all the other social standardizations by which a common language is maintained are all ongoing products of collective control, but the means of control are less ‘tangible’.Â

BN:Â This collective control depends upon the individuals who participate in it learning the collectively determined reference values, and depends upon the individuals continuing to make comparisons and adjust reference values. In all but the most formally legislated examples individuals adjust their references toward the values controlled by those with whom they are immediately interacting. (Unless a higher level of control contravenes, as in “we don’t talk like that kind of people”.) This is true even with legally enforced standards–drivers go with the flow of traffic, one impatient walker crossing before the light changes is followed by others, etc.

BN:Â And yes, very little of this is reflected in computer models so far. That’s an assessment of our progress with modeling, not of the theory of collective control.

RM:Â What I object to is using the phrase “collective control” as though it explains social phenomena. At best, it describes the general nature of social phenomena. Things like light bulbs and power stations and string quartets and iphones and road makings and so on could all be seen as examples of collective control inasmuch as they are all the controlled result of the controlling done by groups of controllers. But the explanations of different examples of “collective control” are likely to be quite different.Â

BN: What is your basis for this prediction?

/B

On Tue, Nov 13, 2018 at 6:31 PM Richard Marken csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Rick Marken 2018-11-13_15:27:33]

[Martin Taylor 2018.11.13.13.24]

MT: A question. Why is the reference stateÂ for you personally “The proper shape
of these words” rather than " Th prawpar sheyps
uhv thez wirdz" or something quite different?

RM: Because we are carrying on this discussion in English. So I assumed the sentence was a distortion of an English sentence and, sure enough, it was.Â Â

    MT: One comment. Had history many decades ago been slightly
different, your reference state for the written form of the same
concept might have been “La forma correcta de estas palabras”
(according to Google translate). Why might you personally have
had that as a reference value rather than the reference value
you say you now have for it?

RM: I think you are trying to make the point that language results from some kind of collective control and I agree that it does; I learned to speak English in order to control for communicating with my parents and peers. I guess you could call communication “collective control” because it involves interpersonal controlling involving at least two people. But it’s certainly not the kind of “collective control” going on in Kent’s model of multi-person control of a single variable.Â

RM: What I object to is using the phrase “collective control” as though it explains social phenomena. At best, it describes the general nature of social phenomena. Things like light bulbs and power stations and string quartets and iphones and road makings and so on could all be seen as examples of collective control inasmuch as they are all the controlled result of the controlling done by groups of controllers. But the explanations of different examples of “collective control” are likely to be quite different. Kent’s is a model of one type of collective control – “virtual” control resulting from just the right kind of conflict – but I can’t think of any real life example of collective control that fits Kent’s model. Most of what I see as “collective control” – certainly stable collective control – is a result of cooperation, not conflict.Â

Best

Rick

Â

    Martin

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.â€?
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

rsmarken · November 17, 2018, 10:31pm

[Rick Marken 2018-11-17_14:27:45]

···

On Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 7:31 AM Bruce Nevin csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

RM:Â What I object to is using the phrase “collective control” as though it explains social phenomena. At best, it describes the general nature of social phenomena. Things like light bulbs and power stations and string quartets and iphones and road makings and so on could all be seen as examples of collective control inasmuch as they are all the controlled result of the controlling done by groups of controllers. But the explanations of different examples of “collective control” are likely to be quite different.Â

BN: What is your basis for this prediction?

RM: It’s not really a prediction; it’s based on my experience with models of what I would call examples of “collective control.” One of these is the CROWD model of the behavior of collectives of individual controllers. Each individual controls three possible controlled variables: collision (with a reference of 0, hence “collision avoidance”), destination position and following another individual. Depending on which of these perceptions are being controlled by each individual you get all kinds of different patterns of behavior of the collective – patterns that are actually observed in group behavior (such as the “arcs and rings” that form around the “guru”; LVS II, p.154-155).

RM: So the different patterns of group behavior that are observed when a collective of controllers are controlling in the same space can be accounted for by a model that has each individual controlling the appropriate perceptual variable. Other kinds of collective control, such as that seen when people intentionally cooperate to produce a result that could not be produced by any individual alone – such as nearly everything produced by people in our built environment --Â would have to have the systems controlling for cooperating, rather than each doing their thing whenever they wanted to. I believe Tom Bourbon developed a nice demonstration of collective control of a computer screen display that required that the individual controllers cooperate in this way in order to produce the intended result.Â

RM: I think what is needed in the study of “collective control” is the same thing that is needed in the study of individual control: a clear (preferably quantitative) description of the behavior to be explained and some reasonable hypotheses about the variables controlled by the individuals in the collective – variables that, when controlled, will result in the collective behavior that is observed. That’s how Powers came up with the CROWD program; McPhail and Tucker described the collective control behavior to be explained and Powers guessed at the perceptual variables that, when controlled by the individuals in the collective, might result in the observed behavior; and his guesses proved to be quite good.

BestÂ

Rick

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.â€?
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

MartinT · November 18, 2018, 5:03am

[Martin Taylor 2018.11.17.17.42]

···

[Rick Marken 2018-11-17_14:27:45]

        On Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 7:31 AM Bruce Nevin
<csgnet@lists.illinois.edu >
wrote:

RM:Â What I object to is using
the phrase “collective control” as
though it explains social phenomena. At
best, it describes the general nature of
social phenomena. Things like light
bulbs and power stations and string
quartets and iphones and road makings
and so on could all be seen as examples
of collective control inasmuch as they
are all the controlled result of the
controlling done by groups of
controllers. But the explanations of
different examples of “collective
control” are likely to be quite
different.Â

                          BN: What is your basis

for this prediction?

        RM: It's not really a prediction; it's based on my
experience with models of what I would call examples of
“collective control.” One of these is the CROWD model of the
behavior of collectives of individual controllers. Each
individual controls three possible controlled variables:
collision (with a reference of 0, hence “collision
avoidance”), destination position and following another
individual.

  What one variable are all the individuals in the CROWD demo

controlling? How is this more than an example of a bunch of
controllers controlling in a largely common environment in which
the motion of any individual disturbs perceptions in other
individuals? It’s certainly an interesting example of looking for
the observable actions of individual controllers in a social
environment, but when you talk about “collective control” of
something, you have to specify what single variable that something
is.

…

        RM: I think what is needed in the study of "collective
control" is the same thing that is needed in the study of
individual control: a clear (preferably quantitative)
description of the behavior to be explained and some
reasonable hypotheses about the variables controlled by the
individuals in the collective – variables that, when
controlled, will result in the collective behavior that is
observed.

  Exactly the same as is required in individual control, except

that the last “collective” should be replaced by “environmental
variable”. The behaviour to be observed is what happens when a
single variable in the environment behaves under test in the same
way as does a variable controlled by a single controller, but the
observer/experimenter can see that it is influenced by more than
one simple controller.

  How the collective (meaning the set of individuals) behaves is of

no interest except insofar as they jointly influence the
collectively controlled variable in the environment.Â
Quantitatively, the explanations were previewed by McClelland in
1993 for a case in which the two controllers in his example were
in conflict, but the same solution of the addition of gains and
weighted averaging of the apparent reference value applies in the
absence of conflict, though the additions must be vectorial if the
precise perceptual vectors that define the relevant perceptual
functions differ.

The CROWD situation is not an example of collective control.

Martin

        That's how Powers came up with the CROWD program; McPhail
and Tucker described the collective control behavior to be
explained and Powers guessed at the perceptual variables
that, when controlled by the individuals in the collective,
might result in the observed behavior; and his guesses
proved to be quite good.

BestÂ

Rick

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

                                "Perfection
is achieved not when you have
nothing more to add, but when you
have
nothing left to take away.â€?
Â Â Â Â
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â --Antoine de
Saint-Exupery

rsmarken · November 18, 2018, 5:20am

[Rick Marken 2018-11-17_21:12:51]

[Bruce Nevin 2018-11-17_23:06:19 UTC]

BN: In the ‘crowd’ example, the collective result of individual control (arcs and rings around a common point of interest) is an emergent byproduct of individual control.

RM: Correct.Â

Â

BN: It would be an example of collective control as we have been discussing it if the stabilized presence of rings and arcs of people were part of the environmental feedback path by means of which the individuals were able to control whatever else they were controlling.

RM: Ok, so for you “collective control” refers only to the control of some variable by a collective of control systems. (By the way, you could lhave left out the phrase “part of the environmental feedback path” in the sentence above and it would more elegantly say what you intended. That’s because the rings and arcs can only be the means of controlling some variable (“whatever else”) if they are connected to that variable via a feedback path).Â

BN:"Cooperative control of an intended result is also different. Once that aspect of the built environment has been created, cooperative achievement of that goal is the end of the phenomenon to be modeled.

RM: Well, for me, cooperative control is the most interesting and important group control phenomenon; I also think it is the most important one for human survival. And if you eliminate cooperative group production (of the “built environment”) as a “collective control” phenomenon to be studied then what do you have left?Â

Â

BN: Collective control, in the sense under discussion, would be the continued use of that part of the environment as a link in the several environmental feedback paths of various controllers, who thereby come to depend upon its maintenance in order to control effectively (by that path).

Â RM: I take it that the “part of the environment” you refer to is the stuff produced by cooperative control, such a an automobile. So in plain English what you are saying is that “collective control” refers only to things like automobile maintenance. But such maintenance is often done cooperatively by groups of individuals. Does collective control only refer to maintained that can be done by one person?

BN: If Tom’s computer display image were useful in this way for one or more purposes, then degradation of that image, if it were to interfere with controlling for such purposes, would be a disturbance that would be resisted by actions intended to restore and maintain it ‘in proper working order’.

RM: I’m lost. What does this have to do with collections of people?Â

Â

BN: In the case of street striping, a stop sign knocked over, a street light out, drivers and pedestrians might complain to the DPW, people employed to do that maintaining would be notified, and they might well have already noticed it in their rounds and begun to address it.

RM: This looks like cooperative control to me: The people complaining to the DWP are controlling for cooperating with others in the society by controlling for keeping the public streets n “good repair”; these citizens are accomplishing this control by calling people at the DWP who will respond to the call by going out and fixing what is broken; the DWP people respond to the call because they are controlling for cooperating by being responsive to the public that uses the streets. It looks to me like it’s cooperation all the way down!

RM: This kind of cooperation is not limited to humans. Obvious examples can be seen in the behavior of social insects like bees and ants. The difference between us and those insects, I think, is that the control systems that result in cooperative behavior are built into insects with a fixed reference for the perception that results in cooperation; in humans (and other primates, I imagine) the reference for these “cooperative” perceptions can obviously be varied as the means of controlling other perceptions. The DWP ants, for example, have a fixed reference for answering the call to fix things, even if going out to fix it means the ant is going to its doom; the DWP person, on the other hand, can vary the reference for answering the call if doing so would prevent control of higher level perceptions.Â Â

RM: Anyway, I think the important thing to study about human “collective control” is control that can only be achieved by the cooperative controlling done by groups of individuals. And the way to study it is to determine what perceptual variables are being controlled when people are controlling cooperatively.

Best

Rick

Â

But there is no control of the computer displayÂ being maintained for some purposeÂ (except for the transient purpose of the demonstration), no more than there is control ofÂ a perception of the emergent and ad hoc rings and arcs being maintained for some purpose, other than the conflict of purposes which gave rise to them.

Â

···

/Bruce

On Sat, Nov 17, 2018 at 5:32 PM Richard Marken csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Rick Marken 2018-11-17_14:27:45]

On Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 7:31 AM Bruce Nevin csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

RM:Â What I object to is using the phrase “collective control” as though it explains social phenomena. At best, it describes the general nature of social phenomena. Things like light bulbs and power stations and string quartets and iphones and road makings and so on could all be seen as examples of collective control inasmuch as they are all the controlled result of the controlling done by groups of controllers. But the explanations of different examples of “collective control” are likely to be quite different.Â

BN: What is your basis for this prediction?

RM: It’s not really a prediction; it’s based on my experience with models of what I would call examples of “collective control.” One of these is the CROWD model of the behavior of collectives of individual controllers. Each individual controls three possible controlled variables: collision (with a reference of 0, hence “collision avoidance”), destination position and following another individual. Depending on which of these perceptions are being controlled by each individual you get all kinds of different patterns of behavior of the collective – patterns that are actually observed in group behavior (such as the “arcs and rings” that form around the “guru”; LVS II, p.154-155).

RM: So the different patterns of group behavior that are observed when a collective of controllers are controlling in the same space can be accounted for by a model that has each individual controlling the appropriate perceptual variable. Other kinds of collective control, such as that seen when people intentionally cooperate to produce a result that could not be produced by any individual alone – such as nearly everything produced by people in our built environment --Â would have to have the systems controlling for cooperating, rather than each doing their thing whenever they wanted to. I believe Tom Bourbon developed a nice demonstration of collective control of a computer screen display that required that the individual controllers cooperate in this way in order to produce the intended result.Â

RM: I think what is needed in the study of “collective control” is the same thing that is needed in the study of individual control: a clear (preferably quantitative) description of the behavior to be explained and some reasonable hypotheses about the variables controlled by the individuals in the collective – variables that, when controlled, will result in the collective behavior that is observed. That’s how Powers came up with the CROWD program; McPhail and Tucker described the collective control behavior to be explained and Powers guessed at the perceptual variables that, when controlled by the individuals in the collective, might result in the observed behavior; and his guesses proved to be quite good.

BestÂ

Rick

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.â€?
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.â€?
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

rsmarken · November 18, 2018, 5:27pm

[Rick Marken 2018-11-18_09:19:27]

[Martin Taylor 2018.11.17.17.42]

        RM: I think what is needed in the study of "collective
control" is the same thing that is needed in the study of
individual control: a clear (preferably quantitative)
description of the behavior to be explained and some
reasonable hypotheses about the variables controlled by the
individuals in the collective – variables that, when
controlled, will result in the collective behavior that is
observed.

  MT: Exactly the same as is required in individual control, except
that the last “collective” should be replaced by “environmental
variable”. The behaviour to be observed is what happens when a
single variable in the environment behaves under test in the same
way as does a variable controlled by a single controller, but the
observer/experimenter can see that it is influenced by more than
one simple controller.

RM: This behavior must have been observed before the model that explains it was developed, right? So it should be easy to give real world examples of a single variable in the environment behaving “under test in the same way as does a variable controlled by a single controller, but the observer/experimenter can see that it is influenced by more than one simple controller”. So could you describe one such real world example.

  MT: How the collective (meaning the set of individuals) behaves is of
no interest except insofar as they jointly influence the
collectively controlled variable in the environment.Â
Quantitatively, the explanations were previewed by McClelland in
1993 for a case in which the two controllers in his example were
in conflict, but the same solution of the addition of gains and
weighted averaging of the apparent reference value applies in the
absence of conflict, though the additions must be vectorial if the
precise perceptual vectors that define the relevant perceptual
functions differ.

Â RM: This seems to me to be a case of a “theory first” as opposed to a “phenomena phirst” approach to science gone wild. Kent demonstrated what would happen in theory if two control systems with properly adjusted relative gains controlled the same variable relative to different references. It was a very interesting demonstration. But it didn’t “explain” any actual real world observations of social phenomena (at least when he presented it).Â

RM: Now you are claiming that the “virtual reference state” model does explain a lot of social phenomena but all this explanation sounds like verbal hand waving to me. If Kent’s model actually explains the type ofÂ “collective control” phenomena that you say it does, then you should be able to show me that the model behavior fits observations of social behavior where a variable is being kept in a virtual reference state by two or more controllers. Until I see that, I’m afraid I have to consider this whole “collective control” thing a theoretical explanation sans a phenomenon to be explained.

MT: The CROWD situation is not an example of collective control.Â

RM: OK, but it is an excellent example of what would be my preferred “phenomena first” approach to the application of PCT to social phenomena. McPhail and Tucker had data on the phenomenon to be explained – crowd behavior – and Powers provided the explanation for at least some of these observations in the form of a relatively simple model of individuals controlling 2 or 3 different perceptual variables in an environment consisting of other controllers of the same type as well as inanimate obstacles. Bill hoped that the CROWD program would be the seed for the development of a PCT based sociology. But apparently it was not planted in receptive soil.

Best

Rick

···

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.â€?
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

MartinT · November 18, 2018, 7:52pm

[Martin Taylor 2018.11.18.14.23]

···

[Rick Marken 2018-11-18_09:19:27]

[Martin Taylor 2018.11.17.17.42]

                  RM: I think what is needed in the study of
“collective control” is the same thing that is
needed in the study of individual control: a clear
(preferably quantitative) description of the
behavior to be explained and some reasonable
hypotheses about the variables controlled by the
individuals in the collective – variables that,
when controlled, will result in the collective
behavior that is observed.

            MT: Exactly the same as is required in individual
control, except that the last “collective” should be
replaced by “environmental variable”. The behaviour to
be observed is what happens when a single variable in
the environment behaves under test in the same way as
does a variable controlled by a single controller, but
the observer/experimenter can see that it is influenced
by more than one simple controller.

        RM: This behavior must have been observed before the
model that explains it was developed, right? So it should be
easy to give real world examples of a single variable in the
environment behaving “under test in the same way as does a
variable controlled by a single controller, but the
observer/experimenter can see that it is influenced by more
than one simple controller”. So could you describe one such
real world example.

  A famous example is the monument representing the raising of the

Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima. Four soldiers push on a flagpole to
raise a flag than none of them could have raised alone.

            MT: How the collective (meaning the set of individuals)
behaves is of no interest except insofar as they jointly
influence the collectively controlled variable in the
environment. Quantitatively, the explanations were
previewed by McClelland in 1993 for a case in which the
two controllers in his example were in conflict, but the
same solution of the addition of gains and weighted
averaging of the apparent reference value applies in the
absence of conflict, though the additions must be
vectorial if the precise perceptual vectors that define
the relevant perceptual functions differ.

        RM: This seems to me to be a case of a "theory first" as
opposed to a “phenomena phirst” approach to science gone
wild. Kent demonstrated what would happen in theory if
two control systems with properly adjusted relative gains
controlled the same variable relative to different
references.

  No he didn't. "Properly adjusted gains" didn't come into it. The

gains could be anything, linear or nonlinear. Anyway, every
fairground tug of war provides an example, if you want. The
handkerchief on the rope stays more or less in the same place
despite two sets of controllers trying to move it to different
places, until they reach a condition also described by Kent in
which the combined output of one overwhelms that of the other, who
are then unable to contribute to control of the position of the
handkerchief.

        It was a very interesting demonstration. But it didn't
“explain” any actual real world observations of social
phenomena (at least when he presented it).

        RM: Now you are claiming that the "virtual reference
state" model does explain a lot of social phenomena but all
this explanation sounds like verbal hand waving to me.

  So far as I am aware, this is the first time that anyone in this

thread has brought up the possibility that a “virtual reference
state” might explain a lot of social phenomena. Would you like to
explain how the hypothesized “real” reference state for any one
controlled variable explains a lot of phenomena of any kind?

  Yet I do believe, as I think do you, that perceptual control DOES

explain a lot of phenomena, social and otherwise. The “actual
reference state” for any given perception does not.

  And yeah, we know that mathematics all sounds like verbal

handwaving to you. That’s a given, but it doesn’t mean that
mathematical analyses are irrelevant to figuring out what is
possible and what is not. They are not irrelevant to figuring out
what happens when the effects of a lot of individual controllers
influence a common variable in the environment.

        If Kent's model actually explains the type of 
“collective control” phenomena that you say it does, then
you should be able to show me that the model behavior fits
observations of social behavior where a variable is being
kept in a virtual reference state by two or more
controllers.

  I guess you don't believe that compromise ever happens. But there

are people and occasions on which opponents settle for something
that is not exactly what either wanted, but that gives something
for each. And as in the Iwo Jima example, when they all want much
the same thing, their combined efforts (using the same maths) make
it happen more easily than would be the case for any one alone.
Why else would people join political parties?

        Until I see that, I'm afraid I have to consider this
whole “collective control” thing a theoretical explanation
sans a phenomenon to be explained.

            MT: The CROWD situation is not an example of collective

control.

      RM: OK, but it is an excellent example of what would be my
preferred “phenomena first” approach to the application of PCT
to social phenomena. McPhail and Tucker had data on the
phenomenon to be explained – crowd behavior – and Powers
provided the explanation for at least some of these
observations in the form of a relatively simple model of
individuals controlling 2 or 3 different perceptual variables
in an environment consisting of other controllers of the same
type as well as inanimate obstacles. Bill hoped that the CROWD
program would be the seed for the development of a PCT based
sociology. But apparently it was not planted in receptive
soil.

  Like most of PCT, perhaps because of the apparent emphasis by the

more prolific writers on PCT on tracking single variables that are
disturbed. Who is interested in pursuing that, a topic that was
apparently played out in the 1950s as far as most of the world is
concerned? But I don’t think CROWD will be easily forgotten if and
when PCT becomes mainstream among professional sociologists (and
economists and linguists).

[Aside } Thinking of the linguistic application, I think
the CROWD example combined with collective control offers a
potentially useful approach to both individual learning of a first
language and the drifting and splitting of languages that have a
common root. But that’s for a different conversation.

Martin

bnhpct · November 18, 2018, 8:43pm

[Bruce Nevin 2018-11-18_13:49:02 UTC]

Rick Marken 2018-11-17_21:12:51–

BN: If Tom’s computer display image were useful in this way for one or more purposes, then degradation of that image, if it were to interfere with controlling for such purposes, would be a disturbance that would be resisted by actions intended to restore and maintain it ‘in proper working order’.

RM: I’m lost. What does this have to do with collections of people?Â

You introduced Tom’s demo as an instance involving a collection of people. You said it illustratesÂ collective control.Â It’s an example of cooperative control. Cooperative control involves several controllers in synchronizing their individual perceptions, reference values, and control activities so as to achieve control of a result that they all perceive, while minimizing mutual disturbance of control. Once that result is achieved, cooperative control in that matter ends.Â

BN: In the case of street striping, a stop sign knocked over, a street light out, drivers and pedestrians might complain to the DPW, people employed to do that maintaining would be notified, and they might well have already noticed it in their rounds and begun to address it.

RM: This looks like cooperative control to me

I agree that Tom’s demo (as you describe it) demonstrates cooperative control. What is the definitive distinction between cooperative control and collective control?Â

In Tom’s demo, once they achieved the computer image as specified their cooperative control ended, ending the demo. When the image was no longer on the screen, if anybody cared and took action to restore it, that was beyond the scope of the cooperative control by which it was created…

Now, if people did care (not necessarily the same population as those who created it, but some or all of them could be included), and if consequently those people did act to maintain the image (if the screensaver came on or the computer went to sleep they woke it up, if something started removing or fading parts of the image they acted to restore them or called for the original team to rebuild the image, etc.), that would be collective control. In that case, we would have to ask why these people cared. One is mentally reviewing the process by which it was created. Another is enjoying an esthetic appreciation of it. A third has noticed that the image has revealed a defect in the screen which she wants to analyze and report for repair of the screen. The possibilities are rather limited for an image on a computer screen that I haven’t seen and can’t accurately imagine, but you get the point. People could have diverse purposes that they can accomplish only (or best, or preferentially) while the image is visible and intact on the screen.

Here’s a definitive distinction between these two phenomena: Collective control does not cease whenÂ the collectively controlled variable is in its reference state. Cooperative control does. The piano movers go away, and then maintenance of the location of the piano is up to the people who stay in or pass through the house or studio or church or concert hall where the movers put it, if and when its location matters to them as means of controlling whatever they are controlling.

Here’s another distinction. The phenomenon of cooperative control is continuous for all participants for the duration of the cooperation until the goal is attained and verified. The phenomenon of collective control is also continuous, but active participation inÂ it isÂ episodic and ad hoc for any given participant, occurring whenever any of those who from time to time depend upon the given variable have difficulty controlling by means of it (by a ‘gossamer thread’ feedback path that passes through it). (I’ll talk about those who have the ‘job’ of maintaining such a variable presently.)

Collective control of a variable C (a given state of affairs in a shared environment) is ongoing so long asÂ controllers x1, x2, … xn independently employÂ CÂ in their respective environmental feedback functions for controlling other variables that matters\ to them. There is no purposeful synchronization of these control loops and control actions, control is episodic, depending on other purposes of the several controllers, and generally none of them employs C as means of control all the time.Â The several controllersÂ x1, x2, … xnÂ could be each controlling a different variable {X1, X2, … Xn}. Indeed, using the same aspect of the environment in different feedback paths for different purposes may in fact be typical of collective control.Â What the variables X1, X2, … Xn are, which the controllersÂ Â x1, x2, … xnÂ severallyÂ happen to control via feedback paths that pass through that which they each perceive as the variable C, is not relevant to the definition of collective control. What is relevant to collective control is that they perceive C, and that any influence on the variable C which consequently interferes with control of Xn by controller xnÂ (for for any controller x and variable X) is a disturbance which Xn resists so as to re-enable control of variable xn by way of C.

So it is characteristic of a collectively controlled variable that disturbances to it are resisted by various controllers whenever they happen to need it as means of controlling something else.Â

Institutionalization is another phenomenon. When a collectively controlled variable is socially institutionalized, people care about it even when they are not at that moment actually employing it in a feedback path for controlling something. Its continuous availability in the environment for such episodic purposes has itself become important to each of a population of users. There are degrees of formality to social institutions, ranging from social conventions to the appointment or hiring of maintainers and guardians and the construction of buildings to house and organize them and their equipment, regulations to guide them, etc.

Adoption and internalization of socially institutionalized values as reference values (conformity) is means of controlling systems concepts that together make up or contribute to what we imprecisely call a self concept, self image, presentation of self, etc.

···

/Bruce

On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 12:21 AM Richard Marken csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Rick Marken 2018-11-17_21:12:51]

[Bruce Nevin 2018-11-17_23:06:19 UTC]

BN: In the ‘crowd’ example, the collective result of individual control (arcs and rings around a common point of interest) is an emergent byproduct of individual control.

RM: Correct.Â

Â

BN: It would be an example of collective control as we have been discussing it if the stabilized presence of rings and arcs of people were part of the environmental feedback path by means of which the individuals were able to control whatever else they were controlling.

RM: Ok, so for you “collective control” refers only to the control of some variable by a collective of control systems. (By the way, you could lhave left out the phrase “part of the environmental feedback path” in the sentence above and it would more elegantly say what you intended. That’s because the rings and arcs can only be the means of controlling some variable (“whatever else”) if they are connected to that variable via a feedback path).Â

BN:"Cooperative control of an intended result is also different. Once that aspect of the built environment has been created, cooperative achievement of that goal is the end of the phenomenon to be modeled.

RM: Well, for me, cooperative control is the most interesting and important group control phenomenon; I also think it is the most important one for human survival. And if you eliminate cooperative group production (of the “built environment”) as a “collective control” phenomenon to be studied then what do you have left?Â

Â

BN: Collective control, in the sense under discussion, would be the continued use of that part of the environment as a link in the several environmental feedback paths of various controllers, who thereby come to depend upon its maintenance in order to control effectively (by that path).

Â RM: I take it that the “part of the environment” you refer to is the stuff produced by cooperative control, such a an automobile. So in plain English what you are saying is that “collective control” refers only to things like automobile maintenance. But such maintenance is often done cooperatively by groups of individuals. Does collective control only refer to maintained that can be done by one person?

BN: If Tom’s computer display image were useful in this way for one or more purposes, then degradation of that image, if it were to interfere with controlling for such purposes, would be a disturbance that would be resisted by actions intended to restore and maintain it ‘in proper working order’.

RM: I’m lost. What does this have to do with collections of people?Â

Â

BN: In the case of street striping, a stop sign knocked over, a street light out, drivers and pedestrians might complain to the DPW, people employed to do that maintaining would be notified, and they might well have already noticed it in their rounds and begun to address it.

RM: This looks like cooperative control to me: The people complaining to the DWP are controlling for cooperating with others in the society by controlling for keeping the public streets n “good repair”; these citizens are accomplishing this control by calling people at the DWP who will respond to the call by going out and fixing what is broken; the DWP people respond to the call because they are controlling for cooperating by being responsive to the public that uses the streets. It looks to me like it’s cooperation all the way down!

RM: This kind of cooperation is not limited to humans. Obvious examples can be seen in the behavior of social insects like bees and ants. The difference between us and those insects, I think, is that the control systems that result in cooperative behavior are built into insects with a fixed reference for the perception that results in cooperation; in humans (and other primates, I imagine) the reference for these “cooperative” perceptions can obviously be varied as the means of controlling other perceptions. The DWP ants, for example, have a fixed reference for answering the call to fix things, even if going out to fix it means the ant is going to its doom; the DWP person, on the other hand, can vary the reference for answering the call if doing so would prevent control of higher level perceptions.Â Â

RM: Anyway, I think the important thing to study about human “collective control” is control that can only be achieved by the cooperative controlling done by groups of individuals. And the way to study it is to determine what perceptual variables are being controlled when people are controlling cooperatively.

Best

Rick

Â

But there is no control of the computer displayÂ being maintained for some purposeÂ (except for the transient purpose of the demonstration), no more than there is control ofÂ a perception of the emergent and ad hoc rings and arcs being maintained for some purpose, other than the conflict of purposes which gave rise to them.

Â

/Bruce

On Sat, Nov 17, 2018 at 5:32 PM Richard Marken csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Rick Marken 2018-11-17_14:27:45]

On Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 7:31 AM Bruce Nevin csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

RM:Â What I object to is using the phrase “collective control” as though it explains social phenomena. At best, it describes the general nature of social phenomena. Things like light bulbs and power stations and string quartets and iphones and road makings and so on could all be seen as examples of collective control inasmuch as they are all the controlled result of the controlling done by groups of controllers. But the explanations of different examples of “collective control” are likely to be quite different.Â

BN: What is your basis for this prediction?

RM: It’s not really a prediction; it’s based on my experience with models of what I would call examples of “collective control.” One of these is the CROWD model of the behavior of collectives of individual controllers. Each individual controls three possible controlled variables: collision (with a reference of 0, hence “collision avoidance”), destination position and following another individual. Depending on which of these perceptions are being controlled by each individual you get all kinds of different patterns of behavior of the collective – patterns that are actually observed in group behavior (such as the “arcs and rings” that form around the “guru”; LVS II, p.154-155).

RM: So the different patterns of group behavior that are observed when a collective of controllers are controlling in the same space can be accounted for by a model that has each individual controlling the appropriate perceptual variable. Other kinds of collective control, such as that seen when people intentionally cooperate to produce a result that could not be produced by any individual alone – such as nearly everything produced by people in our built environment --Â would have to have the systems controlling for cooperating, rather than each doing their thing whenever they wanted to. I believe Tom Bourbon developed a nice demonstration of collective control of a computer screen display that required that the individual controllers cooperate in this way in order to produce the intended result.Â

RM: I think what is needed in the study of “collective control” is the same thing that is needed in the study of individual control: a clear (preferably quantitative) description of the behavior to be explained and some reasonable hypotheses about the variables controlled by the individuals in the collective – variables that, when controlled, will result in the collective behavior that is observed. That’s how Powers came up with the CROWD program; McPhail and Tucker described the collective control behavior to be explained and Powers guessed at the perceptual variables that, when controlled by the individuals in the collective, might result in the observed behavior; and his guesses proved to be quite good.

BestÂ

Rick

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.â€?
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.â€?
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

rsmarken · November 18, 2018, 10:43pm

[Rick Marken 2018-11-18_14:41:42]

[Bruce Nevin 2018-11-18_13:49:02 UTC]

Rick Marken 2018-11-17_21:12:51–

BN: If Tom’s computer display image were useful in this way for one or more purposes, then degradation of that image, if it were to interfere with controlling for such purposes, would be a disturbance that would be resisted by actions intended to restore and maintain it ‘in proper working order’.

RM: I’m lost. What does this have to do with collections of people?Â

BN: You introduced Tom’s demo as an instance involving a collection of people. You said it illustratesÂ collective control.Â It’s an example of cooperative control. Cooperative control involves several controllers in synchronizing their individual perceptions, reference values, and control activities so as to achieve control of a result that they all perceive, while minimizing mutual disturbance of control. Once that result is achieved, cooperative control in that matter ends.Â

RM: I don’t remember which of Tom’s experiments I was referring to. But it doesn’t matter. I guess I think it’s important to understand a phenomenon like what I call cooperative control even though it ends. Indeed, all things must end but that doesn’t rule them out as objects of study.Â I think this theory first approach has blinded you to what is interesting about social behavior.Â

BN: In the case of street striping, a stop sign knocked over, a street light out, drivers and pedestrians might complain to the DPW, people employed to do that maintaining would be notified, and they might well have already noticed it in their rounds and begun to address it.

RM: This looks like cooperative control to me

BN: I agree that Tom’s demo (as you describe it) demonstrates cooperative control. What is the definitive distinction between cooperative control and collective control?Â

RM: Don’t ask me. I am interested in studying phenomena, regardless of what you call them.Â

BN: Here’s a definitive distinction between these two phenomena:

RM: Again., I’m interested social phenomena and how to explain them; I’l not interested in trying to classify them.Â

BN: Adoption and internalization of socially institutionalized values as reference values (conformity) is means of controlling systems concepts that together make up or contribute to what we imprecisely call a self concept, self image, presentation of self, etc.

RM: So you say. But what makes PCT science interesting to me is the fact that I can demonstrate the success of an explanation by showing how well the model fits the data. If there is no data to be explained then I’m not interested. Give me some data on control of system concepts and the model that purports to explain the data viaÂ the “adoption and internalization of socially institutionalized values as reference values” and then we can talk;-).Â

BestÂ

Rick

···

Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.â€?
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

bnhpct · November 19, 2018, 12:45am

[Bruce Nevin 2018-11-18_23:28:01 UTC]

Rick Marken 2018-11-18_14:41:42–

RM: I don’t remember which of Tom’s experiments I was referring to. But it doesn’t matter. I guess I think it’s important to understand a phenomenon like what I call cooperative control even though it ends. Indeed, all things must end but that doesn’t rule them out as objects of study.Â I think this theory first approach has blinded you to what is interesting about social behavior.

At what point did I rule out the phenomenon of cooperation and Tom’s experiments as objects of study?

RM: Give me some data on control of system concepts and the model that purports to explain the data viaÂ the “adoption and internalization of socially institutionalized values as reference values” and then we can talk;-).Â

OK. The attached paper reports the first of a long series of investigations by Bill Labov. Bill was an industrial chemist before he came to this field, no stranger to working meticulously with data. Over time, his publications and those of his students provide increasingly rich data of various kinds (dealing with e.g. Black English, social stratification in New York City, etc.) but this piece isÂ easily accessible to me to attach to email.Â

I’ll attempt a summary. Any reply based solely on this summary can hardly be taken seriously. It is no substitute for the paper.

In this study, because of the insular location, system concepts are reflected in an essentially binary choice of future location and career options, which in turn is represented by which of two collectively controlled (ranges of) reference values are employed in pronouncing /ai/ and /au/ diphthongs in words that contain them in the course of using those words (which are collectively controlled variables) for the various purposes for which talking is done. Some teenagers make one choice and adopt and internalize one range of reference values, other teenagers make the other choice and adopt and internalize the other reference values. The two career/location/dialect complexes are aspects of two system concepts of social identity that are collectively controlled and well recognized as such in this location (though of course no one that I know of uses that phrase to denote that recognition). Because the teenagers overshoot the mark in emulating the models that they perceive for one of these choices (taking as models the speech of individuals esteemed as exemplars of one social identity or the other and, crucially, the speech of those of their peers who are evincing the same choice), their collective control in doing so gradually shifts the shared reference values for the new generation rising to adulthood and making that choice, and therefore (through each successive generation of teenagers as they forge their adult identity)Â ultimately for the population. Data are in the formant placements of the first part of the diphthongs /ai/ and /au/ in the speech of members of the two populations. (The “moving away” population probably also overshot their mark, but that had no direct effect on the local norms, except of course for also increasing the contrast between them.) Dialect geography records show that this change began around the turn of the century and later (when my parents were children in this location), at the same time that tourism began ramping up, juxtaposing two contrasting system concepts and making fundamental changes in economic life and social interaction.Â

As to the model that you want me to show you in order for you to be willing to talk further, that requires a methodology and techniques of modeling such that a population of autonomous control systems, each controlling through a hierarchy that includes a system concept level, interact in a shared environment, represent a self image system concept by the manner in which they control variables that are used to communicate information among them (which by the way they must be able to do), and adjust the references for that by observing and emulating the manner in which others who meet certain criteria control those variables. Did you want me to diagram that, or what?

I would think that by now you would know, Rick, that I have been concerned with such phenomenaÂ for over 50 years, and it is only 27 years ago that I began learning the only theory I have found that has any hope of accounting for it, by which I of course and obviously mean PCT. For you to suggest that I am not interested in phenomena, and to attribute to me a “theory first approach”, is gratuitous insult in a reply that is already dismissive and evasive.Â

Again, if you do want to discuss the phenomenon and the data here, do not reply just based on my summary above. Read the paper. If you want to talk about other things, fine. I’ll understand that it’s a lot of work, and one has to pick one’s battles. If you want me to understand something else by a refusal to engage in further discussion, you’ll have to tell me what that is, because that’s what I’ll go with. Some would say I’m being too charitable.

The Social Motivation of a Sound Change.pdf (1.89 MB)

···

/Bruce

On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 5:44 PM Richard Marken csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Rick Marken 2018-11-18_14:41:42]

[Bruce Nevin 2018-11-18_13:49:02 UTC]

Rick Marken 2018-11-17_21:12:51–

BN: If Tom’s computer display image were useful in this way for one or more purposes, then degradation of that image, if it were to interfere with controlling for such purposes, would be a disturbance that would be resisted by actions intended to restore and maintain it ‘in proper working order’.

RM: I’m lost. What does this have to do with collections of people?Â

BN: You introduced Tom’s demo as an instance involving a collection of people. You said it illustratesÂ collective control.Â It’s an example of cooperative control. Cooperative control involves several controllers in synchronizing their individual perceptions, reference values, and control activities so as to achieve control of a result that they all perceive, while minimizing mutual disturbance of control. Once that result is achieved, cooperative control in that matter ends.Â

RM: I don’t remember which of Tom’s experiments I was referring to. But it doesn’t matter. I guess I think it’s important to understand a phenomenon like what I call cooperative control even though it ends. Indeed, all things must end but that doesn’t rule them out as objects of study.Â I think this theory first approach has blinded you to what is interesting about social behavior.Â

BN: In the case of street striping, a stop sign knocked over, a street light out, drivers and pedestrians might complain to the DPW, people employed to do that maintaining would be notified, and they might well have already noticed it in their rounds and begun to address it.

RM: This looks like cooperative control to me

BN: I agree that Tom’s demo (as you describe it) demonstrates cooperative control. What is the definitive distinction between cooperative control and collective control?Â

RM: Don’t ask me. I am interested in studying phenomena, regardless of what you call them.Â

BN: Here’s a definitive distinction between these two phenomena:

RM: Again., I’m interested social phenomena and how to explain them; I’l not interested in trying to classify them.Â

BN: Adoption and internalization of socially institutionalized values as reference values (conformity) is means of controlling systems concepts that together make up or contribute to what we imprecisely call a self concept, self image, presentation of self, etc.

RM: So you say. But what makes PCT science interesting to me is the fact that I can demonstrate the success of an explanation by showing how well the model fits the data. If there is no data to be explained then I’m not interested. Give me some data on control of system concepts and the model that purports to explain the data viaÂ the “adoption and internalization of socially institutionalized values as reference values” and then we can talk;-).Â

BestÂ

Rick

/Bruce

On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 12:21 AM Richard Marken csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Rick Marken 2018-11-17_21:12:51]

[Bruce Nevin 2018-11-17_23:06:19 UTC]

BN: In the ‘crowd’ example, the collective result of individual control (arcs and rings around a common point of interest) is an emergent byproduct of individual control.

RM: Correct.Â

Â

BN: It would be an example of collective control as we have been discussing it if the stabilized presence of rings and arcs of people were part of the environmental feedback path by means of which the individuals were able to control whatever else they were controlling.

RM: Ok, so for you “collective control” refers only to the control of some variable by a collective of control systems. (By the way, you could lhave left out the phrase “part of the environmental feedback path” in the sentence above and it would more elegantly say what you intended. That’s because the rings and arcs can only be the means of controlling some variable (“whatever else”) if they are connected to that variable via a feedback path).Â

BN:"Cooperative control of an intended result is also different. Once that aspect of the built environment has been created, cooperative achievement of that goal is the end of the phenomenon to be modeled.

RM: Well, for me, cooperative control is the most interesting and important group control phenomenon; I also think it is the most important one for human survival. And if you eliminate cooperative group production (of the “built environment”) as a “collective control” phenomenon to be studied then what do you have left?Â

Â

BN: Collective control, in the sense under discussion, would be the continued use of that part of the environment as a link in the several environmental feedback paths of various controllers, who thereby come to depend upon its maintenance in order to control effectively (by that path).

Â RM: I take it that the “part of the environment” you refer to is the stuff produced by cooperative control, such a an automobile. So in plain English what you are saying is that “collective control” refers only to things like automobile maintenance. But such maintenance is often done cooperatively by groups of individuals. Does collective control only refer to maintained that can be done by one person?

BN: If Tom’s computer display image were useful in this way for one or more purposes, then degradation of that image, if it were to interfere with controlling for such purposes, would be a disturbance that would be resisted by actions intended to restore and maintain it ‘in proper working order’.

RM: I’m lost. What does this have to do with collections of people?Â

Â

BN: In the case of street striping, a stop sign knocked over, a street light out, drivers and pedestrians might complain to the DPW, people employed to do that maintaining would be notified, and they might well have already noticed it in their rounds and begun to address it.

RM: This looks like cooperative control to me: The people complaining to the DWP are controlling for cooperating with others in the society by controlling for keeping the public streets n “good repair”; these citizens are accomplishing this control by calling people at the DWP who will respond to the call by going out and fixing what is broken; the DWP people respond to the call because they are controlling for cooperating by being responsive to the public that uses the streets. It looks to me like it’s cooperation all the way down!

RM: This kind of cooperation is not limited to humans. Obvious examples can be seen in the behavior of social insects like bees and ants. The difference between us and those insects, I think, is that the control systems that result in cooperative behavior are built into insects with a fixed reference for the perception that results in cooperation; in humans (and other primates, I imagine) the reference for these “cooperative” perceptions can obviously be varied as the means of controlling other perceptions. The DWP ants, for example, have a fixed reference for answering the call to fix things, even if going out to fix it means the ant is going to its doom; the DWP person, on the other hand, can vary the reference for answering the call if doing so would prevent control of higher level perceptions.Â Â

RM: Anyway, I think the important thing to study about human “collective control” is control that can only be achieved by the cooperative controlling done by groups of individuals. And the way to study it is to determine what perceptual variables are being controlled when people are controlling cooperatively.

Best

Rick

Â

But there is no control of the computer displayÂ being maintained for some purposeÂ (except for the transient purpose of the demonstration), no more than there is control ofÂ a perception of the emergent and ad hoc rings and arcs being maintained for some purpose, other than the conflict of purposes which gave rise to them.

Â

/Bruce

On Sat, Nov 17, 2018 at 5:32 PM Richard Marken csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Rick Marken 2018-11-17_14:27:45]

On Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 7:31 AM Bruce Nevin csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

RM:Â What I object to is using the phrase “collective control” as though it explains social phenomena. At best, it describes the general nature of social phenomena. Things like light bulbs and power stations and string quartets and iphones and road makings and so on could all be seen as examples of collective control inasmuch as they are all the controlled result of the controlling done by groups of controllers. But the explanations of different examples of “collective control” are likely to be quite different.Â

BN: What is your basis for this prediction?

RM: It’s not really a prediction; it’s based on my experience with models of what I would call examples of “collective control.” One of these is the CROWD model of the behavior of collectives of individual controllers. Each individual controls three possible controlled variables: collision (with a reference of 0, hence “collision avoidance”), destination position and following another individual. Depending on which of these perceptions are being controlled by each individual you get all kinds of different patterns of behavior of the collective – patterns that are actually observed in group behavior (such as the “arcs and rings” that form around the “guru”; LVS II, p.154-155).

RM: So the different patterns of group behavior that are observed when a collective of controllers are controlling in the same space can be accounted for by a model that has each individual controlling the appropriate perceptual variable. Other kinds of collective control, such as that seen when people intentionally cooperate to produce a result that could not be produced by any individual alone – such as nearly everything produced by people in our built environment --Â would have to have the systems controlling for cooperating, rather than each doing their thing whenever they wanted to. I believe Tom Bourbon developed a nice demonstration of collective control of a computer screen display that required that the individual controllers cooperate in this way in order to produce the intended result.Â

RM: I think what is needed in the study of “collective control” is the same thing that is needed in the study of individual control: a clear (preferably quantitative) description of the behavior to be explained and some reasonable hypotheses about the variables controlled by the individuals in the collective – variables that, when controlled, will result in the collective behavior that is observed. That’s how Powers came up with the CROWD program; McPhail and Tucker described the collective control behavior to be explained and Powers guessed at the perceptual variables that, when controlled by the individuals in the collective, might result in the observed behavior; and his guesses proved to be quite good.

BestÂ

Rick

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.â€?
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.â€?
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.â€?
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

rsmarken · November 19, 2018, 1:11am

[Rick Marken 2018-11-18_16:59:19]

[Martin Taylor 2018.11.18.14.23]

            The behaviour to
be observed is what happens when a single variable in
the environment behaves under test in the same way as
does a variable controlled by a single controller, but
the observer/experimenter can see that it is influenced
by more than one simple controller.Â

        RM: This behavior must have been observed before the
model that explains it was developed, right? So it should be
easy to give real world examples of a single variable in the
environment behaving “under test in the same way as does a
variable controlled by a single controller, but the
observer/experimenter can see that it is influenced by more
than one simple controller”. So could you describe one such
real world example.

  MT: A famous example is the monument representing the raising of the
Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima. Four soldiers push on a flagpole to
raise a flag than none of them could have raised alone.

RM: OK, so collective control is many people lifting what could not be lifted by a single person. It doesn’t seem like the most important social phenomenon of all time but it certainly could be modeled as four control systems simultaneously exerting the force needed to bring the angle of the heavy flagpole to vertical.

        Â RM: This seems to me to be a case of a "theory first" as
opposed to a “phenomena phirst” approach to science gone
wild. Kent demonstrated what would happen in theory if
two control systems with properly adjusted relative gains
controlled the same variable relative to different
references.

MT: No he didn’t. “Properly adjusted gains” didn’t come into it.

RM: OK. But my main point was that he didn’t develop the model to account for any particular social phenomenon.Â

  MT:Â  Anyway, every
fairground tug of war provides an example, if you want.

RM: Ok, so his model was developed to account for behavior in a tug of war. But even in that case there is cooperation involved in setting up the “war”; people have to be assigned (or assign themselves) to sides so that there are at least an equal number of people on each team, ensuring that they all follow the rules, etc.

        RM: Now you are claiming that the "virtual reference
state" model does explain a lot of social phenomena but all
this explanation sounds like verbal hand waving to me.

  MT: So far as I am aware, this is the first time that anyone in this
thread has brought up the possibility that a “virtual reference
state” might explain a lot of social phenomena.

RM: I didn’t say that the “virtual reference state” is being used to explain social phenomena; I said that the “virtual reference state” modelÂ – Kent’s model of control systems controlling the same variable relative to different reference specifications – is being used to explain social phenomena.Â Â

  MT: Would you like to
explain how the hypothesized “real” reference state for any one
controlled variable explains a lot of phenomena of any kind?

RM: Reference states are phenomena to be explained; they don 't explain.Â The PCT model explains the existence of reference states of the variables controlled by living systems.Â My impression is that what you call the “collective control” model views “stable social structures” as the virtual reference states of collectively controlled variables. But it’s hard to keep up with what you guys are talking about when there is no data to be accounted for. You can say that the collective control model explains all social phenomenaÂ and if I say I don’t think it does it’s just my word against yours. Without data there is no PCT science.

  MT: Yet I do believe, as I think do you, that perceptual control DOES
explain a lot of phenomena, social and otherwise. The “actual
reference state” for any given perception does not.

RM: Of course it doesn’t. The actual reference states of controlled variables are DATA; they are the most important phenomena that perceptual control THEORY explains.

  MT: And yeah, we know that mathematics all sounds like verbal

handwaving to you.

RM: Only when it is. Powers’ use of mathematics was clear, clean and revelatory; yours, not so much.Â

Best

Rick

···

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.â€?
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

rsmarken · November 19, 2018, 1:49am

[Rick Marken 2018-11-18_17:48:55]

[Bruce Nevin 2018-11-18_23:28:01 UTC]

RM: Give me some data on control of system concepts and the model that purports to explain the data viaÂ the “adoption and internalization of socially institutionalized values as reference values” and then we can talk;-).Â

BN: OK. The attached paper reports the first of a long series of investigations by Bill Labov…

Â

RM: OK, thanks. I’ll take a look.Â

BN: I’ll attempt a summary. Any reply based solely on this summary can hardly be taken seriously. It is no substitute for the paper.

OK, I have read your summary and I’d love to reply.Â But I won’t say a word until I’ve read the paper.Â

BestÂ

RickÂ

···

Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.â€?
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â --Antoine de Saint-Exupery