[From Rick Marken (950904.0930)]
Me:
Bill, your posts on competition have been sensational. It was
competition that was my own undoing in the recent exchanges on the
net. We can't stop being control systems but it really helps if we
understand PCT; it sure helped me.
Marc Abrams (950902.1730) --
Interesting. Are you actually attributing something other then
yourself for those exchanges. Please explain.how competiton was your
undoing.
I am not attributing my competitive behavior to anyone but myself,
though when you are in competition it can seem like you are being
made to act competitively by another person.
Competition is just another word for conflict. Conflict occurs when
two (or more) control systems try to control the same (or a similar)
perceptions relative to different references. It can be difficult to tell
that you are in conflict when you are in it. When you are in conflict, all
you care about is achieving your goal; you might notice that there seems to
be active resistance to your attempts to achieve it, but that is usually
just perceived as an annoyance.
In discussions on the net, I get into conflict because I want to perceive
people saying the "right" things about PCT. Of course, those people are
already saying what is "right" from their perspective, so there is conflict:
I try to correct my perception by saying all kinds of "brilliant" things to
correct what, to me, is the "wrong" perception -- a perception that is wrong
because of what the other person said. My corrections are just a disturbance
to the other person who tries to cancel out my corrections by producing
even more brilliant corrections of their own. This process accelerates
quickkly into tougher and tougher talk, each person tryng to get his or her
perception into the "right" state; things can get ugly fast.
PCT doesn't say, by the way, that there is anything "wrong" with this
kind of competition. Only the individual participants can determine whether
competition (conflict) is right or wrong from their perspective. PCT
just explains what is going on.
You can't see that you are in a conflict until you mentally step out of it
(go up a level). As long as you are just interested in achieving your own
goal (the one that is in conflict with the other person's goal) you won't see
the conflict; you will just see yourself as having a hell of a time getting
your point across.
Once you see that you are in a conflict, you can also see ways to solve it (if
you want to solve it).There are usually many ways to solve a conflict and they
(unlike the conflict itself) are all under your control (one nice thing about
solving conflict is that it puts you back in control, which many people find
to be a pleasant experience); you can avoid the conflicted goal, or change to
controlling an unconflicted goal or lower the gain on control of the
conflicted goal, or defer achievement of the conflicted goal (assume
that the other person will eventually get it), etc.
One of the interesting "real world" problems we have here on CSG net is that
we are teaching a view of human nature that shows us things that are bound
to conflict with many of our existing beliefs and goals. Many of us will
find that some of the revelations of PCT are a disturbance to our most
cherished beliefs. For example, you (Marc) and, I'm sure, many others (like
Robert Radford (9509021800)) find the PCT view of competition (conflict) a
disturbance to a cherished belief (that competition is essential to the
health of an economy). So there is bound to be conflict when we discuss PCT.
The question is what each individual
wants to do about that conflict.
I was trained -- by my teachers, parents, peers -- to be very competitive.
So, naturally, I have taken a very competitive approach to discussions on
the net; conflict was ok with me. I thought I was just trying to be
scientifically honest and correct; what I was really doing was trying to
browbeat people into seeing things my way. I was trying to win.
I now see (having gone up a level and seen the nature of the conflict I was
in) that the best I can do (on this net and in real life) to teach PCT
is just lay out my position, present the evidence and the models as
clearly and as accurately as possible and hope that those who are
interested in PCT come around (as far as they can) to seeing it my way.
You can't force a control system to control the way you want . I have
been acting as though you could. The result of trying to force a control
system to control in a particular way is conflict; and conflict is neither
pleasant nor productive.
People (control systems) will voluntarily learn control theory or they
won't. You can't make someone learn control theory. All you can do is
keep putting the latest and greatest control theory goods in the window
and hope that people will come into the shop and try them out.
Bruce Abbott (950902.2155 EST) --
What it is NOT a model of is the fish.
Yes, that's what I meant to say.
The control-system model is more fundamental...But that does not
make the physicists' model incorrect.
But isn't the physicist's model an incorrect model of the internal
organization of the fish? Isn't it incorrect to view external forces
as the cause of fish behavior, is it?
Me:
Conventional behavior theorists seem to treat modelling as a game:if
a reinforcement model fits the data that's nice but it doesn't mean,
apparently, that all living systems are controlled by reinforcement all
the time (witness how Skinner, for example, exempted himself from
this control).
Bruce:
I'm not defending reinforcement theory here, but I'm not aware that
Skinner did this. Citations, please?
We discussed this earlier and you were not convinced. But I'll repeat it
in case you've had a change of heart.
Skinner claimed that it was his (and our) obligation to systematically
control human behavior because behavior is controlled by environmental
contingencies (reinforcements) anyway. But an understanding of control shows
that it is impossible to exert control (in the PCT sense) if you are
controlled by reinforcement. So Skinner's claim is hollow unless he is
exempt from control by the contingencies that control everyone else.
Best
Rick