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From: Bruce Nevin (bnhpct@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2018 4:54 PM
To: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Re: Collective Control: Another vexing question (was Re: A Vexing Question)
[Bruce Nevin 2018-11-21_15:29:23 UTC]
Boris Hartmann Nov 21, 2018, 5:21 AM –
[It would be helpful, Boris, if you would put the conventional name and timestamp at the top of your posts as everyone else does. We use it in order to cite a previous post in a clear way when we quote it, so that the source can be found. Failure to do this suggests that inconveniencing others does not bother you.]
HB : Sorry Bruce I don’t understand what do you want. All I know is that I push “reply” and “Outlook” does what it does. You are accusing me again as usual without any knowledge what I’m aware of or what I’m not. You simply charge me being guilty. That’s what you are. Trouble-maker. You should think a little about your acts. Start thinking first what you’ve done wrong. Or you are perfect ?
BN : Your points of detail are well taken.
HB : It’s not about details but about wrong concept.
BN : It is difficult to get every persnickety bit of PCT-ese into a sentence and still write intelligibly, and when we are writing to colleagues who we expect have a good understanding of the fundamentals sometimes the gain on control of persnicketiness gets reduced in the interests of getting the main message communicated in the time available.
HB : It’s not about “getting every persnickety bit of PCT-ese” but it’s about understanding the main message of your posts being wrong in relation to PCT. And I still think so.
It seems that you want to transfer “reference signal” or “reference values” or “whatever” you are inventing, from social environment into individuals, so it seems that you want to introduce Ricks idea that “people control people”.
People can’t control others, because individuals form their reference signals and make comparison with perception of disturbances that are produced by “references” of others and effects of their own actions are added. That’s how PCT control loop works. I don’t see any sign in PCT that any “reference values” are transffered from one individual to another and on that basis individual “internal references” are formed and behavior produced. This means that “stimulus” from environment in the form of “perceived reference values” cause forming of “internal reference values”. It’s obvious “cause-effect” model.
HB earlier : It’s good that “social interactions” or “collectively determined reference values” don’t exist in enviroment as you wrote above so that they could be “transffered” into individuals and modelled because they wouldn’t survive in normally functioning society with individuals producing their own references. That’s probably why is so rare so far. It doesn’t feet into human nature and thus in PCT.
BN: You are conflating reference values with reference signals.
HB : Really ? Well if I’m honest I don’t understand how your statement above is connected with mine (the whole post) I wrote before. It seems that you invented the problem so that you could explain your BNCT.
But we can check what you are saying. What is reference signal for you ? You already gave “definition” for “reference value”.
BN: Reference values are observations from which an investigator infers numerically analogous reference signals in a model of observed behavior.
HB : If “reference values” are automatically and generally perceived (observed) why do we need TCV ? I really don’t know where did you get this definition, but I’m sure I can’t find it in any PCT literature. And it sure does’t fit into PCT diagram (LCS III). It seems that you are saying that there is some “special perceptual signal” in observer which carries “reference values”. Interesting. Can you show us how this works through PCT diagram and definition of perceptual signal in PCT.
Bill P (B:CP) :
…it si even more apparent that the first order perceptual signal reflects only what happens at the sensory endings : the source of the stimulation is completely indefined and unsensed. If any information exists about the source of the stimulus, it exists only distributed over millions of first order perceptual signals and is explicit in none of them.
![cid:image001.jpg@01D37ABE.36063DF0]()
HB : If I try to sum up your BNCT “invention”. You seemed to write that “reference value” is observation and thus some special kind of perceptual signal in any observer. So for you this “perceptual signal” is somehow differrent from general perceptual signal in PCT diagram and of course different from perceptual signals in other Living beings), because observer somehow sees in the head of other people “reference values” and such observations are transfered through perception as some “reference value”, causing formation of "internal reference values"Â and then modeled ??? Do I understand right what you are saying ?
I think that you are again selling your BNCT theory about different LCS perceiving some strange “perceptual signal” with “reference values” as you already did before. Where afterall did you get this definition of observers perceiving “reference values” ?
BN: You type words and sentences that an English-speaking reader can read. You do this by controlling perceptions of what the words and sentences are supposed to look like. You can do this because you have produced and you maintain reference signals for those perceptions.
HB : So far so good.
BN : But you were not born with your brain generating those reference signals.
HB : I was born with my organisms functioning as the basis for generating those perceptual signal.
I’d advise you that you rethink what is inborn about generating referece signals ? It seems that you don’t understand at all. Speccially part about “genetic reference signals” in organism. It seems that you don’t understand general “picture” how PCT organisms are functioning. I all the time keep saying that diagram on p.191 (B:CP) has to be finnished. But nobody listen. Nobody don’t want to accept “my reference values” through perceptions although Bruce Nevin claims that “perception with reference value” from others is automatic and general. Why is that so ?
![cid:image001.png@01D119FD.595FDCD0]()
BN : (Though my friend Noam Avram Chomsky believes you were, so you can go along with him if you like, and I won’t bother you further.)
HB : Sorry I don’t know him. Even if I do, who knows if his disturbances would mean anything to me, so that I could perceive his “reference values” and “learn to set my reference values” upon his. He is simply not the person who I would listen to and give any meaning to his thoughts. But you already wrote it for yourself :
BN earlier : 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.)
HB : So I can conclude that observer with “pereception containing references values” which are transffered from “giant virtual controller” is a fiction. And also that “transfering” of “reference values” from environment into individuals is a fiction.
BN : Perceptions of reference values are the basis for children and others learning how to produce and maintain their own internal reference signals…
HB : Sorry to say it Bruce but this is one of the biggest nonsense I ever heard. Are you saying that people are perceiving “reference values” and set their references upon those “perceived reference values” and that this is generally the basis for people to learn ? It seems that you are saying that “Reference values” are transffered into other people as stimulus (although there is no “giant controller”) and on that basis people generally set their own references and produce behavior. And this is generally the way (basis) how people learn ??? So behaviour by your logic is produced by internally set references on the basis of external “stimulus” (reference values). It looks like S-R “cause-effect” logic.
If your general theory of learning is right, explain to us how children “learned” to cry ???
HB : If I understand right you are saying that people control other people practically all the time as people by your BNCT are “uotputing reference values” all the time (generally) and others are perceiving them and set internally produced reference values in accordance to “perceived reference values” and that is how they learn ? So pepople control other people through “learning” ?
We can conclude upon your construct that behavior is controlled from outside as it is clearly produced by “sending reference values” and perceiving of “reference values” upon which processes in organism are determind. So if I understand right you are saying that others can perceive “reference values” of any kind generally and that generally people learn in that way ??? Or it’s just specific case ?
BN : …¦such that their control of perceptions input from the environment results in their perceiving that others have understood their words and sentences.
HB : It’s a real mess. As I wrote before. You should study diagram on p. 191 (B:CP) and understand how basic “learning” in LCS function, so what are the basis for producing internal references. Whatever you are writing can’t be confirmed with PCT means and some others like physilogical… specially that “reference values” are perceived and aree “basis for setting internal reference signals…” in generral sense.
So if I understand right the final conclussion is that the only way (basis) people can learn is to “perceive reference values” from others and on that basis people (children) “form” internal reference signals and behave.
Perceived “reference values” (even if such thing would exist) can’t be the basis for producing and maintaining internally produced reference signals. The basis is in organisms functioning. Organisms functioning always “decide” about internal references but “decissions” can be influenced (disturbed) from outside. There is no automatic “control” of other people and learning achieved on the basis of “transfering reference values”. Where did you see this in real life ?
O.K. Go on street and start shouting that all people should immediatelly stop. And than report to us how many people did learn on the basis of your “sending of reference values” to other people. If you are right they should all stop, because they will “adjust” their internally produced reference signals to “perceived reference values” from you. Maybe some will stop and think “what this lunatic is doing”. Anyway you are using wrong “Cause-effect” logic. Â
How many people in your life do “learn from you” with listening to you and transforming your “reference values” into their internal reference signals ??? When did you last time saw that anybody did it on CSGnet.
I think that your main problem is the same as Ricks. You are wrongly building your BNCT theory on one case.
HB : And think of how organisms function with producing their own references to maintain homeostasis what is concered by Bill to be the basic kind of learning. And this basic kind of learning is entirelly produced by organism. It’s even completely inherited (inborn). It can’t be produced and maintained with “reference values” imported from others, because that could generally mean that people always (basically) accept control through “outputting and perceving reference values” upon which individuals set corresponding “internal references”. It’s pure BNCT which has nothing to do with PCT where organisms function so that with internally produced references keep homeostasis on optimal possible internal control level. And these references can’t be set from outside. And any kind of learning has basis in “basic kind of learning”.
As I wrote before. As I see it, you are trying to support Ricks RCT social theory about “people controlling people all the time” with “transfering reference values” between people.Â
HB : I think that you should keep all the time in mind what you wrote :
BN earlier : Each individual involved in collective control is controlling according to internally created and maintained reference values.
HB : … not to externally imported “reference values”;.
HB : Every individual is basically controling and learning to control own homeostasis. Other forms of learning are built upon this basic kind of learning. Everything for the benefit of better control in homeostatical functioning of organism.
I don’t say that you are all wrong Bruce. I’m just saying that what you wrote is not in accordance with PCT. You are clearly presenting some other theory (BNCT) and you want to present it as PCT. It’s not working. Say it that you have your own theory about how “references values” are transffered among people and we’ll understand that it’s your personal oppinion. Hidding your oppinion behind PCT like Rick is doing with his RCT doesn’t make any sense except that you two are hiding your real intentions : promoting your theory behind PCT.
HB : And you didn’t answer a question…>How and where PCT theory of learning is underdeveloped ? It is “underdeveloped” but I think it’s not there where you think it is.
It would be good if you’ll watch video about “What school is for” again and again, until you’ll understand the basic message that teachers basically can’t control students through “transffering reference values” into them, because pupils and students are setting (creating) their own references. All references are created inside organism. Reference values for lower level system will be created from higher level inside organism. Even for references on highest level Bill didn’t predict that “reference values” could enter from external environment. “Question mark” is inside organism.
HB : There is other mechanism for creating (constructing) internally determined reference signals. Diagram on p. 191 (B:CP) has to be finnished so to understand that mechanism and “question mark” can be removed.Â
Boris
/Bruce
On Wed, Nov 21, 2018 at 5:21 AM “Boris Hartman” csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:
Bruce
From: Bruce Nevin (bnhpct@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2018 4:30 PM
To: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Re: Collective Control: Another vexing question (was Re: A Vexing Question)
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.
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.)
HB : O.K. Stick to this.
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.
BN: Yes. The missing link to collective control is in our underdeveloped PCT theory of learning.
HB : What’s wrong with it ? Where is underdeveloped ? I’m quite sure that you don’t understand it ?
BN: Each individual involved in collective control is controlling according to internally maintained reference values.
HB : Right. Maybe it’s better to say : …is controlling to internally produceed and maintained reference values. It’s more “adjusted” to Bills definition of control.
Bill P (B:CP):
CONTROL : Achievement and maintenance of a preselected state in the controlling system, through actions on the environment that also cancel the effects of disturbances.
BN : 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”.
HB : It’s unclear what you wrote, but concluding from you wrote later in the post, IT’S WRONG. See diagram (LCS III).
BN : 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.
HB : Which can influence others’ judgement and interpretation. Influence of people on others is not determined….
BN : 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, and Studebakers. It exists only in the reference values that spellers have internalized and in the writings that they produce and read.
HB : There is no “internalization” in PCT. Where did you see this in Bills literature ? It seems that you are promoting BNCT again.
BN : Spelling manuals and dictionaries are not themselves the standardized spelling that they prescribe, they are among the socially instituted means of 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’.
BN: 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.
HB : It seems that you never worked in school. Students do make sometimes comparison with teachers’ but not in the sense you think. It seems also that you don’t understand difference between “learning” and “educating”. “Colective control” which should depend upon individuals who participate in learning the “collectivelly determined reference values” IS USUALLY NOT HAPPENING IN SCHOOLS. See video… What school iss for ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PsLRgEYf9E
BN : In all but the most formally legislated examples individuals adjust their references toward the values controlled by those with whom they are immediately interacting.
HB : Look at the control loop (LCS III). Where do you see this ?
People acting with each other can also “adjust their references toward the values controlled by those with whom they are immediately interacting” It’s not necessary. People will act in accordance to PCT diagram (LCS III).
BN : (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.
There are also impatient drivers, imaptient policeman, impatient fathers and mothers, impatient patients, and so on. This is just the evidence we need that people are producing their references for immediate action in accordance to how succesfully they control and they can act also with no concern to “collectivelly determined references”. It’s always up to individuals. You wrote it for yourself.
BN: Each individual involved in collective control is controlling according to internally maintained reference values.
BN: 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.
HB : It’s good that “social interactions” or “collectively determined reference values” don’t exist in enviroment as you wrote above so that they could be “transffered” into individuals and modelled because they wouldn’t survive in normally functioning society with individuals producing their own references. That’s probably why is so rare so far. It doesn’t feet into human nature and thus in PCT.
Boris
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.
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 state 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.
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.
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.
Best
Rick
Martin
–
Richard S. Marken
"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
–Antoine de Saint-Exupery
