Collective control as a real-world phenomenon

[rsmarken]

@Kent

@rsmarken

All of the examples you give are of phenomena that I am completely comfortable describing as “collective control”. My problem with your work has nothing to do with the term collective control; it has to do with the fact that I have never seen your “virtual controller” model of collective control tested against any data.

Great! That you can accept these examples as instances of collective control means that some real progress has been made toward a meeting of minds on this issue, since you previously appeared assume that when I talked about collective control it was only in reference to interactions like the arm-wrestling example.

I never assumed that “collective control” was only in reference to interactions like arm-wrestling. What I thought (and still think) is that your “virtual controller” model didn’t seem to apply to any of the examples of collective control that I could think of, other than arm wrestling and tug of war. For example, it doesn’t seem to apply to the examples of collective control that I describe in the Social Control chapter of The Study of Living Control Systems (SCLS): cooperative control, flocking, etc.

@Kent

As to your old and tired argument that you have never seen my “virtual controller” model tested against any data, my response is, why don’t you test it yourself?

It may have been old and tired but it wasn’t an argument. It was a request. I asked to see how your model accounts for one of the non-arm wrestling examples of collective control that you describe. And I have done some work on testing the model. It’s described in this thread on Discourse. It was kind of universally panned. Maybe if you describe a test of your model yourself it would get a better reception.

@Kent

You are a self-proclaimed expert on doing experimental psychology with control theory.

You must be thinking of Henry Yin’s blurb on the back cover of SLCS;-) I don’t think I ever touted myself as an expert at doing experimental psychology from a control theory perspective. But, now that you mention it, I do think I am.

@Kent

Why don’t you set up a lab experiment with two people controlling their perceptions of the same variable using different references for it and see what happens?

Actually, my Cost of Conflict demo demonstrates the existence of a virtual reference state for a variable that is in conflict. Before conflict the true reference state of the cursor can be held at the intercept of the x and y axes of the display. When the demo goes into conflict mode the virtual reference state is the diagonal path of the cursor that passes through this intersection.This behavior could certainly be handled by your virtual controller model.

@Kent

If Tom Bourbon more than thirty years ago could figure out a way to attach two joysticks to the same computer, the technology to do that must still be available.

I’ll ignore the cattiness and just say that Tom developed those demos at my suggestion. This was in about 1985 and I was doing the research that was to become my paper titled Perceptual Organization of Behavior, which described data from a model of a two-handed control task. I did the research on a Commondore 64 computer (ah, the good old days) which was connected to two separate game paddles.

Tom (who coincidentaly, like me, had gotten his PhD in experimental psychology with a speciality in auditory perception) wanted to start doing some research testing Powers’ control model (not yet called PCT) and asked me if I had any ideas about what kind of research he might do. I realized that he could easily adapt the two-handed control task to a two-person control task, with each of the two hands coming from two different people rather than the same person. Tom liked the idea and the rest is history!

@Kent

In any case, if you can come up with the data from a well-constructed lab experiment that disproves my model, I will concede (maybe not cheerfully) that you’ve been right all along. I’m not particularly worried that might happen.

I am not interested in disproving your model. Your work on testing properties of the model is great and it is a fine model of what will happen in certain conflict situations (like arm wrestling and tug of war). I just can’t see how that model applies to all the other examples of collective control that seem more societally relevant, such as traffic flow, contract negotiation, etc, etc. Maybe that’s not the model you are using to explain all the other examples of what we both agree can be called collective control. If not, I’d like to know what model you are using because the “virtual controller” model is the only one I’ve seen you write about and present at conferences.