Collective control, conflict, and stabilization

Research Collective Control
21

To set up a false statement as a rather rickety straw man and then demolish it is not a very convincing way to win an argument, easy though it may be.

You objected quite strongly a while back on CSGnet when I described, in the form of an experiment that would be quite possible to do, the soccer situation you suggest observing. I called that kind “stochastic collective control”. Why do you now use it as a counterexample to what you say I insist on as the only possible form of collective control?

That’s just one example of the nonsense you spout in this thread. Why do you need to invent such stuff. Do you expect some readers to believe it?

Now, it would be nice if you could describe what you think is being collectively controlled in the CROWD demos, or in flocking and swarming.

Martin

22

Hi Martin

MT: The “neural current” that most PCT simulations use represent average firing rates over some kind of time window. If a neural current value represents a perceptual value, that perceptual value is as virtual as anything discussed in any thread about collective control.

RM: In the PCT models with which I am familiar, the perceptual signal is assumed to represent the time varying value of a neural current in an afferent neuron (or bundle of neurons). Variations in this perceptual signal are an analog of variations in the function of sensory input that is defined by the perceptual function. As I understand it, in collective control a “virtual reference” is the observed reference state of a controlled variable that could correspond to the reference specification of few or none of the agents who are trying to control that variable. I don’t understand how the value of a perceptual signal is “virtual” in the same way that the reference state in collective control is virtual.

MT: It’s just what Powers used as the controlled variable in PCT, knowing full well what he was doing, and initially not expecting experimental results to be much closer than 10% to observed values.

RM: I’m not sure I get what the “It” refers to when you say “It’s what Powers used”. What is “It” that Powers used as the controlled variable and what did he know “full well he was doing” when he used it?

Best, Rick

23

Hi Martin

RM: My beef (well, one of them) is that the term “collective control” has been hijacked to refer to a particular application of PCT where several controllers are trying to control the same controlled variable.

MT: To set up a false statement as a rather rickety straw man and then demolish it is not a very convincing way to win an argument, easy though it may be.

RM: What was straw man? What did I demolish? In your definition of collective control I thought you said that the characteristic that is common to all versions of collective control was 2 or more agents controlling the same variable. If I got that wrong let me know what the correct definition of collective control is.

MT: You objected quite strongly a while back on CSGnet when I described, in the form of an experiment that would be quite possible to do, the soccer situation you suggest observing.

RM: I don’t see why I would have objected to you using data from a soccer game to demonstrate collective control. But if I did then I heartily apologize.

MT: I called that kind “stochastic collective control”. Why do you now use it as a counterexample to what you say I insist on as the only possible form of collective control?

RM: I was using it as an example, not a counterexample, of what I think collective control means to you. My point, in the exchange from which the quote it taken, was that, if you define collective control that way – as multiple agents controlling the same variable – you leave out a lot of examples of the controlling done by groups of living control systems, such as the controlling studied in Tom Bourbon’s experiments on two-person control and the controlling observed in Clark McPhail and Chuck Tucker’s studies of crowds.

MT: That’s just one example of the nonsense you spout in this thread. Why do you need to invent such stuff. Do you expect some readers to believe it?

RM: Of course. But if you think I’m spouting nonsense I hope you will show up at the IAPCT conference to present the correct view of all the nonsense I spout. When called on, of course.

MT: Now, it would be nice if you could describe what you think is being collectively controlled in the CROWD demos, or in flocking and swarming.

RM: I’d rather you read about it in Chapter 7 of The Study of Living Control Systems.

Best, Rick

24

Rick,

We all agree on that. The same is true of every neural current in the neural part of a control loop. They are all averages perceived by an analyst built from a time-window of firings of neurons belonging to a bundle. They are all virtual values that don’t exist in any specific location in the brain. Does the above help? “It” refers to the virtual “neural current”. What he knew full well was that the neural current was a virtual value of nothing that could be precisely located in physical space such as in a particular neuron. And he knew that being virtual made it no less valid, precise, or useful a measure when used in PCT. Martin

25

Rick,

I think I can answer no better that by referring you to earlier postings
in this thread and on other threads that refer to collective control.
All your pseudo-questions have been answered there. There’s no need for
me to repeat them.

Martin

26

[MT now] What he knew full well was that the neural current was a virtual value of nothing that could be precisely located in physical space such as in a particular neuron. And he knew that being virtual made it no less valid, precise, or useful a measure when used in PCT.

I hope this replay of message 23 is a bit more coherent than the way the forum software mangled my original reply to Rick’s message 21.

My message 24 is a full reply to Rick’s message 22.

Martin

27

MT: I think I can answer no better that by referring you to earlier postings
in this thread and on other threads that refer to collective control.
All your pseudo-questions have been answered there. There’s no need for
me to repeat them.

RM: I find that this discussion format makes it impossibly difficult for me to follow your pseudo-answers to my pseudo-questions. So I’ll just answer your posts in the order received.

28

MT:…They [neural currents] are all averages perceived by an analyst built from a time-window of firings of neurons belonging to a bundle. They are all virtual values that don’t exist in any specific location in the brain.

RM: Neural currents and the reference states observed in collective control are virtual for very different reasons. So, it was quite misleading for you to say that the value of a neural current “…is as virtual as anything discussed in any thread about collective control.”

MT: It’s just what Powers used as the controlled variable in PCT, knowing full well what he was doing…

RM: I’m not sure I get what the “It” refers to when you say “It’s what Powers used”.

MT: What he knew full well was that the neural current was a virtual value…

RM: It is very misleading to say that “Powers used [neural current] as the controlled variable”. Actually, he used neural currents as the perceptual analog of controlled variables. The theoretical options were not what to use as the controlled variables; what you use as controlled variables are controlled variables because they are the facts to be explained by the theory.

RM: The theoretical options regarding what to use as the perceptual analog of a controlled variable were digital neural codes or analog neural magnitudes. The reasons for selecting the latter (in the form of neural currents) are given in the beginning of the Premises chapter of B:CP (1973, pp19-23).

Best, Rick

29

I may start a thread on “Collective Control and Collective Effect” at some point but I’m getting off this stationary cycle here and now. There’s no point in trying to respond to anything Rick says because he is now explicit in what was obvious, his refusal to read what others — apart from Bill Powers — have written about aspects of PCT, and his refusal to answer direct questions posed in response to his postings. Now in this most recent message he is claiming that according to Powers, behaviour is NOT the control of perception!!!

“Resistance is pointless”. It’s a lesson I should have learned years ago, but I always seem to forget, in the hope that some sensible discussion that advances PCT might come of it, That never happens, so I think I might as well leave this forum under Rick’s inscrutable and very flexible decisions as to what PCT means today, not yesterday or last week.

30

Hi Martin

MT: There’s no point in trying to respond to anything Rick says …

RM: Don’t give up hope.

MT: Now in this most recent message he is claiming that according to Powers, behaviour is NOT the control of perception!!!

RM: The controlled variable is a perceptual variable – in actuality in the researcher, in theory in the controller. So behavior is the control of perception in fact and theory.

Best, Rick