Control as Fact and Theory

[From Rick Marken (2017.05.25.2230)]

···

Hi Allie

On Thu, May 25, 2017 at 3:41 PM, Alison Powers controlsystemsgroupconference@gmail.com wrote:

AP: I agree. Wrong thread.

RM: I agree also. So I’m moving your comment to a new thread.

Â

AP: …For Rick to say Behavior is control is not so outrageous so as to warrent your rant. Ranting gets very old. Would you please take a breath and realize that Rick was implying control of perception.Â

RM: I think the problem is that many people have difficulty distinguishing theory from fact. PCT is a theory and behavior is the fact that it explains. But what is “behavior”? The dictionary says it’s “the way in which one acts or conducts oneself”. Well, that’s pretty vague. So let’s look at specific examples of people acting or conducting themselves, like “tying their shoelaces”. This is a behavior that many of us do every morning. So it is something we do consistently; we are always able to get our laces tied.Â

RM: What your Dad realized is that such consistency is remarkable since it occurs in the context of continuously varying disturbances (the varying positions of and resistances of the laces, for example) and, therefore, the consistently produced result – the tied laces – Â must be the result of a process of control, where the person tying the laces is acting so as to perfectly compensate for these often invisibly varying disturbances.Â

RM: So consistently produced behaviors – ones that we can name, like “tying your shoelaces” – are a process of control. That is the fact that is explained by the theory, PCT. The theory shows that the behaviors we see, behaviors like “tying shoelaces”, are our view of an organism controlling its own perceptions; as Rupert Young puts it in the wonderful paper he just published (keeping those peer reviewed PCT papers coming!) the behavior we see can be considered our view of side effects of the behaving system’s control if its own perceptions.Â

RM: So behavior, as control, is the fact that PCT, the theory, accounts for. I think it’s important to understand that PCT is a theory of behavior understood as a process of control because I think this is where PCT has run into problems with conventional psychology. In conventional psychology the informal term “behavior” refers to what could be called “caused output”; operationally defined measures of what we see organisms “doing”. So theories in psychology are aimed at explaining the causes of these outputs; that are not aimed at explaining behavior as control. Since conventional psychologists have no idea that behavior is control, they treat PCT as “just another theory of behavior” where behavior is seen as a caused output. The result is that PCT is not seen as being better than any other theories of psychology.Â

RM: I think that in order for PCT to gain acceptance it will be necessary to convince psychologists that they have been studying the wrong phenomenon (behavior as caused output) and ignoring the right one (behavior as control, also known as purposeful behavior).Â

Best regards

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.�
                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[Martin Taylor 2017.05.26.08.05]

Well put!

Probably not. You would be disturbing a controlled perception, with

unpredictable results, among which is conflict and pushback against
PCT, rather than indifference. I think you need to link PCT to what
they do believe and let them find out how much more it ism as , in
essence, Sean said in a message without a date-line yesterday: "
."
Telling people they are wrong is not a good way to get them to
switch to your opinion. Showing them a way to find out for
themselves might work a little better. After all, everybody gets PCT
wrong sometimes, even Bill, as he himself said more than once.
Someone from a different mindset might well show us all a different
way forward within PCT.
Martin

···

[From Rick Marken (2017.05.25.2230)]

Hi Allie

        On Thu, May 25, 2017 at 3:41 PM,

Alison Powers controlsystemsgroupconference@gmail.com
wrote:

AP: I agree. Wrong thread.

          RM: I agree also. So I'm moving your comment to a new

thread.

Â

              AP: ...For Rick to say Behavior is control is not

so outrageous so as to warrent your rant. Ranting gets
very old. Would you please take a breath and realize
that Rick was implying control of perception.Â

          RM: I think the problem is that many people have

difficulty distinguishing theory from fact. PCT is a
theory and behavior is the fact that it explains. But what
is “behavior”? The dictionary says it’s " the way in
which one acts or conducts oneself". Well, that’s pretty
vague. So let’s look at specific examples of people
acting or conducting themselves, like “tying their
shoelaces”. This is a behavior that many of us do every
morning. So it is something we do consistently; we are
always able to get our laces tied.Â

            RM:

What your Dad realized is that such consistency is
remarkable since it occurs in the context of
continuously varying disturbances (the varying positions
of and resistances of the laces, for example) and,
therefore, the consistently produced result – the tied
laces – Â must be the result of a process of control,
where the person tying the laces is acting so as to
perfectly compensate for these often invisibly varying
disturbances.Â

            RM:

So consistently produced behaviors – ones that we can
name, like “tying your
shoelaces” – are a process of control. That is the fact
that is explained by the theory, PCT. The theory shows
that the behaviors we see, behaviors like “tying
shoelaces”, are our view of an organism controlling its
own perceptions; as Rupert Young puts it in the
wonderful paper he just published (keeping those peer
reviewed PCT papers coming!) the behavior we see can be
considered our view of side effects  of the
behaving system’s control if its own perceptions.Â

            RM:

So behavior, as control, is the fact that PCT, the
theory, accounts for. I think it’s important to
understand that PCT is a theory of behavior understood
as a process of control because I think this is where
PCT has run into problems with conventional psychology.
In conventional psychology the informal term “behavior”
refers to what could be called “caused output”;
operationally defined measures of what we see organisms
“doing”. So theories in psychology are aimed at
explaining the causes of these outputs; that are not
aimed at explaining behavior as control. Since
conventional psychologists have no idea that behavior is
control, they treat PCT as “just another theory of
behavior” where behavior is seen as a caused output. The
result is that PCT is not seen as being better than any
other theories of psychology.Â

            RM: I

think that in order for PCT to gain acceptance it will
be necessary to convince psychologists that they have
been studying the wrong phenomenon (behavior as caused
output) and ignoring the right one (behavior as control,
also known as purposeful behavior).

  •  I believe that lowering switching costs and targeting psychology
    

subgroups that have low switching costs should be the primary
strategic focus for the PCT communit**y*

            Best

regards

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
–Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[Chad Green (2017.05.26.1426)]

RM: What your Dad realized is that such consistency is remarkable since it occurs in the context of continuously varying disturbances (the varying positions of
and resistances of the laces, for example) and, therefore, the consistently produced result – the tied laces – must be the result of a process of control, where the person tying the laces is acting so as to perfectly compensate for these often invisibly
varying disturbances.

CG: Rick, your latest explanation of PCT resonates, as does your quote by Saint-Exupéry.

Cheers,

Chad

···

[From Rick Marken (2017.05.25.2230)]

Hi Allie

On Thu, May 25, 2017 at 3:41 PM, Alison Powers controlsystemsgroupconference@gmail.com wrote:

AP: I agree. Wrong thread.

RM: I agree also. So I’m moving your comment to a new thread.

AP: …For Rick to say Behavior is control is not so outrageous so as to warrent your rant. Ranting gets very old. Would you please take a breath and realize that Rick was implying control of perception.

RM: I think the problem is that many people have difficulty distinguishing theory from fact. PCT is a theory and behavior is the fact that it explains. But what is “behavior”? The dictionary says it’s " the
way in which one acts or conducts oneself". Well, that’s pretty vague. So let’s look at specific examples of people acting or conducting themselves, like “tying their shoelaces”. This is a behavior that many of us do every morning. So it is something we do
consistently; we are always able to get our laces tied.

RM: What your Dad realized is that such consistency is remarkable since it occurs in the context of continuously varying disturbances (the varying positions of and resistances of the laces, for
example) and, therefore, the consistently produced result – the tied laces – must be the result of a process of control, where the person tying the laces is acting so as to perfectly compensate for these often invisibly varying disturbances.

RM: So consistently produced behaviors – ones that we can name, like “tying your shoelaces” – are a process of control. That is the fact that is explained by the theory, PCT. The theory shows
that the behaviors we see, behaviors like “tying shoelaces”, are our view of an organism controlling its own perceptions; as Rupert Young puts it in the wonderful paper he just published (keeping those peer reviewed PCT papers coming!) the behavior we see
can be considered our view of side effects of the behaving system’s control if its own perceptions.

RM: So behavior, as control, is the fact that PCT, the theory, accounts for. I think it’s important to understand that PCT is a theory of behavior understood as a process of control because I
think this is where PCT has run into problems with conventional psychology. In conventional psychology the informal term “behavior” refers to what could be called “caused output”; operationally defined measures of what we see organisms “doing”. So theories
in psychology are aimed at explaining the causes of these outputs; that are not aimed at explaining behavior as control. Since conventional psychologists have no idea that behavior is control, they treat PCT as “just another theory of behavior” where behavior
is seen as a caused output. The result is that PCT is not seen as being better than any other theories of psychology.

RM: I think that in order for PCT to gain acceptance it will be necessary to convince psychologists that they have been studying the wrong phenomenon (behavior as caused output) and ignoring
the right one (behavior as control, also known as purposeful behavior).

Best regards

Rick

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

[From Rick Marken (2017.05.26.1605)]

···

Martin Taylor (2017.05.26.08.05)–

MT: Well put!

RM: Thank you so much!

MT: Probably not. You would be disturbing a controlled perception, with

unpredictable results, among which is conflict and pushback against
PCT, rather than indifference.

RM: I agree. It’s all in how you go about “convincing” people. My preferred approach is what I said earlier; publish high quality PCT research in high impact, peer reviewed journals (on line journals work fine as long as they are, indeed, peer reviewed). Then people can convince themselves (or not).Â

Â

MT: I think you need to link PCT to what

they do believe and let them find out how much more it ism as , in
essence, Sean said in a message without a date-line yesterday: "

  •  I believe that lowering switching costs and targeting psychology
    

subgroups that have low switching costs should be the primary
strategic focus for the PCT communit**y*."

RM: I don’t believe that some people are more “convincable” (have lower switching costs) regarding PCT than others. Some individuals (like me) have been found to be more convincable regarding PCT than others but those individuals are few and far between. And what convinced me was Powers’ peer reviewed published papers on PCT, particularly those that described experimental tests and models. That’s why I advocate publishing high quality PCT research in high impact, peer reviewed journals as the best way to convince people about control theory. These articles are read by a fairly broad academic audience that might include one or two bright young people who will see (as I did) the incredible scientific achievement that is PCT, and act on that discovery by starting to do research on PCT.Â

MT: Telling people they are wrong is not a good way to get them to

switch to your opinion.

RM: Absolutely right. And I never tell people they are wrong in order to get them to switch their opinion. I tell them (and, hopefully, also show them) that they are wrong because I think they are wrong. Indeed, I never really think I am acting to get people to switch their opinion; I know that can’t be done. That’s why the only thing I do for the sake of getting people to consider changing their opinion is try to publish high quality PCT research in high impact, peer reviewed journals.Â

BestÂ

Rick

Showing them a way to find out for

themselves might work a little better. After all, everybody gets PCT
wrong sometimes, even Bill, as he himself said more than once.
Someone from a different mindset might well show us all a different
way forward within PCT.

Martin


Richard S. MarkenÂ

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

            RM: I

think that in order for PCT to gain acceptance it will
be necessary to convince psychologists that they have
been studying the wrong phenomenon (behavior as caused
output) and ignoring the right one (behavior as control,
also known as purposeful behavior).

            Best

regards

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
–Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[From Rick Marken (2017.05.26.1800)]

···

Chad Green (2017.05.26.1426)–

Â

CG: Rick, your latest explanation of PCT resonates, as does your quote by Saint-Exupéry.

RM: Thanks so much, Chad. Nice to hear it!

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.�
                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Hi Rick,Â

Firstly I’d like to say that publishing high end PCT research in high impact peer reviewed journals is absolutely necessary to increase PCT adoption. I don’t dispute that at all, what is in dispute is the sequencing to achieve this. I believe that shooting for this goal without resolving a few fundamental conflicts is radically slowing PCT adoption. Â Â

RM: I don’t believe that some people are more “convincable” (have lower switching costs) regarding PCT than others.Â

SM: I’m leaning toward the opposite viewpoint at the moment. For example take three undergraduate students, two psychology students and an engineering student, all academically sharp and almost finished their degree. Psychology student 1 has only been exposed to general undergraduate course content. Psychology student 2 has read about cybernetics, complex systems theory concepts and system dynamics modelling. The engineering student has completed advanced maths, circuit design and a dedicated course in control theory. Who would you bet on having an easier time to understand PCT? Who would be more likely to adopt it?Â

I would argue that the engineering student would be the easiest to convince because he understands how the math works underneath the theory, he has no doubts about the theoretical foundation. The systems psychology student would have an easier time of it, but as she does not know advanced maths, she is taking it on faith that the foundations of the model are rigorous. The average psychology student would probably give up quickly, confused by the jargon and completely unequipped to even make a critical evaluation on the theory.Â

RM: Some individuals (like me) have been found to be more convincable regarding PCT than others but those individuals are few and far between.

That’s because you are an aberration mate. A special case. PCT is complex, you may have forgotten because you are an old hand now, but for a naive learner it is a very challenging theory to pick up. It requires unlearning a lot. You have to have a high level of motivation to persevere. If the goal is understanding, then PCT creates high levels of disturbance. When a novice population at any discipline meets a high level of disturbance, you get massive drop out rates. They cannot control the disturbances so they cope using avoidance and then make up rationalizations to reduce that avoidance error. I believe the low numbers using PCT are not due to the theory, or intelligence,  they are due to the sharp learning curve. An interesting example is when you learn jiu jitsu. It used to be, that guys would come into the gym off the street first lesson and immediately have to spar (fight) with experienced people. The gym possessed a survival of the fitness mentality, with the guys that won consistently eventually getting a belt, while the rest just got beat on. Over a 10 year period, from 11000 people that trained, only 250 got a blue belt, the rest quit and probably never trained again. Of the people that got belts, it was only the natural athletes or people with a martial arts background that achieved it easy. Everyone else broke fingers, chipped teeth, and generally had to be highly resilient to make it through.Â

I would argue that learning PCT right now is like learning jiu jitsu. Only the people best equipped or motivated bother to learn it. Everyone else washes out and does not go near it again, saying “PCT is not for me”. There is a solution however. To continue the jiu jitsu example, the gym  eventually realized that this was a wasteful strategy and the people that most benefit from the art were actually being selected out. They created a highly structured program to learn the most useful techniques (hundreds down to 37) for street self defense and only introduced sparring after people had a few techniques under their belt. Their retention rate tripled in 12 months, injuries were at zero, and the techniques people learn’t were street ready instead of sport ready. In PCT we have no structured program to bring a novice up to a good understanding, no road map to assist their learning,  I know because I am a novice. Some people assert that the only way people learn PCT is at their own pace and over a long period of time (Like 10 years!). This approach is a survival of the fittest mentality, plain and simple. You will only ever get a small population and because that is how they got there, that is how they believe PCT should be taught. This why I advocate an introductory PCT course that teaches the fundamentals over 10 hours, in order to increase the initial retention rate.   Â

Rick you are the PCT equivalent to a 250 pound wrestler. You were always going to get a belt :slight_smile: Â Â Â

···

On Sat, May 27, 2017 at 9:06 AM, Richard Marken rsmarken@gmail.com wrote:

[From Rick Marken (2017.05.26.1605)]

Cheers,Â

**Sean Mulligan **

**Â Â **

Martin Taylor (2017.05.26.08.05)–

MT: Well put!

RM: Thank you so much!

MT: Probably not. You would be disturbing a controlled perception, with

unpredictable results, among which is conflict and pushback against
PCT, rather than indifference.

RM: I agree. It’s all in how you go about “convincing” people. My preferred approach is what I said earlier; publish high quality PCT research in high impact, peer reviewed journals (on line journals work fine as long as they are, indeed, peer reviewed). Then people can convince themselves (or not).Â

Â

MT: I think you need to link PCT to what

they do believe and let them find out how much more it ism as , in
essence, Sean said in a message without a date-line yesterday: "

  •  I believe that lowering switching costs and targeting psychology
    

subgroups that have low switching costs should be the primary
strategic focus for the PCT communit**y*."

RM: I don’t believe that some people are more “convincable” (have lower switching costs) regarding PCT than others. Some individuals (like me) have been found to be more convincable regarding PCT than others but those individuals are few and far between. And what convinced me was Powers’ peer reviewed published papers on PCT, particularly those that described experimental tests and models. That’s why I advocate publishing high quality PCT research in high impact, peer reviewed journals as the best way to convince people about control theory. These articles are read by a fairly broad academic audience that might include one or two bright young people who will see (as I did) the incredible scientific achievement that is PCT, and act on that discovery by starting to do research on PCT.Â

MT: Telling people they are wrong is not a good way to get them to

switch to your opinion.

RM: Absolutely right. And I never tell people they are wrong in order to get them to switch their opinion. I tell them (and, hopefully, also show them) that they are wrong because I think they are wrong. Indeed, I never really think I am acting to get people to switch their opinion; I know that can’t be done. That’s why the only thing I do for the sake of getting people to consider changing their opinion is try to publish high quality PCT research in high impact, peer reviewed journals.Â

BestÂ

Rick

Showing them a way to find out for

themselves might work a little better. After all, everybody gets PCT
wrong sometimes, even Bill, as he himself said more than once.
Someone from a different mindset might well show us all a different
way forward within PCT.

Martin


Richard S. MarkenÂ

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

            RM: I

think that in order for PCT to gain acceptance it will
be necessary to convince psychologists that they have
been studying the wrong phenomenon (behavior as caused
output) and ignoring the right one (behavior as control,
also known as purposeful behavior).

            Best

regards

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
–Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[From Bruce Nevin (2017.05.27.11:50 ET)]

Bravo Sean! You’re on to something.

There’s plenty of prepared grist for your proposed crowd-sourcing mill, such as online demos like Rick’s at mindreadings.com; tutorials like those of Bill’s at livingcontrolsystems.com/demos/tutor_pct.html, and being organized anew at pct-labs.com; and cribbing from the introductions to numerous papers and articles, such as the web-‘published’ joint paper at http://www.pctweb.org/PCTUnderstanding.pdf.

Warren’s concern about manageability is valid. That last item above was crowd-sourced. Do you have insight or sources of guidance about how to organize and run a crowd-sourced project?Â

···

On Sat, May 27, 2017 at 1:31 AM, Sean Mulligan lack.of.inspiration@gmail.com wrote:

Hi Rick,Â

Firstly I’d like to say that publishing high end PCT research in high impact peer reviewed journals is absolutely necessary to increase PCT adoption. I don’t dispute that at all, what is in dispute is the sequencing to achieve this. I believe that shooting for this goal without resolving a few fundamental conflicts is radically slowing PCT adoption. Â Â

RM: I don’t believe that some people are more “convincable” (have lower switching costs) regarding PCT than others.Â

SM: I’m leaning toward the opposite viewpoint at the moment. For example take three undergraduate students, two psychology students and an engineering student, all academically sharp and almost finished their degree. Psychology student 1 has only been exposed to general undergraduate course content. Psychology student 2 has read about cybernetics, complex systems theory concepts and system dynamics modelling. The engineering student has completed advanced maths, circuit design and a dedicated course in control theory. Who would you bet on having an easier time to understand PCT? Who would be more likely to adopt it?Â

I would argue that the engineering student would be the easiest to convince because he understands how the math works underneath the theory, he has no doubts about the theoretical foundation. The systems psychology student would have an easier time of it, but as she does not know advanced maths, she is taking it on faith that the foundations of the model are rigorous. The average psychology student would probably give up quickly, confused by the jargon and completely unequipped to even make a critical evaluation on the theory.Â

RM: Some individuals (like me) have been found to be more convincable regarding PCT than others but those individuals are few and far between.

That’s because you are an aberration mate. A special case. PCT is complex, you may have forgotten because you are an old hand now, but for a naive learner it is a very challenging theory to pick up. It requires unlearning a lot. You have to have a high level of motivation to persevere. If the goal is understanding, then PCT creates high levels of disturbance. When a novice population at any discipline meets a high level of disturbance, you get massive drop out rates. They cannot control the disturbances so they cope using avoidance and then make up rationalizations to reduce that avoidance error. I believe the low numbers using PCT are not due to the theory, or intelligence,  they are due to the sharp learning curve. An interesting example is when you learn jiu jitsu. It used to be, that guys would come into the gym off the street first lesson and immediately have to spar (fight) with experienced people. The gym possessed a survival of the fitness mentality, with the guys that won consistently eventually getting a belt, while the rest just got beat on. Over a 10 year period, from 11000 people that trained, only 250 got a blue belt, the rest quit and probably never trained again. Of the people that got belts, it was only the natural athletes or people with a martial arts background that achieved it easy. Everyone else broke fingers, chipped teeth, and generally had to be highly resilient to make it through.Â

I would argue that learning PCT right now is like learning jiu jitsu. Only the people best equipped or motivated bother to learn it. Everyone else washes out and does not go near it again, saying “PCT is not for me”. There is a solution however. To continue the jiu jitsu example, the gym  eventually realized that this was a wasteful strategy and the people that most benefit from the art were actually being selected out. They created a highly structured program to learn the most useful techniques (hundreds down to 37) for street self defense and only introduced sparring after people had a few techniques under their belt. Their retention rate tripled in 12 months, injuries were at zero, and the techniques people learn’t were street ready instead of sport ready. In PCT we have no structured program to bring a novice up to a good understanding, no road map to assist their learning,  I know because I am a novice. Some people assert that the only way people learn PCT is at their own pace and over a long period of time (Like 10 years!). This approach is a survival of the fittest mentality, plain and simple. You will only ever get a small population and because that is how they got there, that is how they believe PCT should be taught. This why I advocate an introductory PCT course that teaches the fundamentals over 10 hours, in order to increase the initial retention rate.   Â

Rick you are the PCT equivalent to a 250 pound wrestler. You were always going to get a belt :slight_smile: Â Â Â

Cheers,Â

**Sean Mulligan **

**Â Â **

On Sat, May 27, 2017 at 9:06 AM, Richard Marken rsmarken@gmail.com wrote:

[From Rick Marken (2017.05.26.1605)]

Martin Taylor (2017.05.26.08.05)–

MT: Well put!

RM: Thank you so much!

MT: Probably not. You would be disturbing a controlled perception, with

unpredictable results, among which is conflict and pushback against
PCT, rather than indifference.

RM: I agree. It’s all in how you go about “convincing” people. My preferred approach is what I said earlier; publish high quality PCT research in high impact, peer reviewed journals (on line journals work fine as long as they are, indeed, peer reviewed). Then people can convince themselves (or not).Â

Â

MT: I think you need to link PCT to what

they do believe and let them find out how much more it ism as , in
essence, Sean said in a message without a date-line yesterday: "

  •  I believe that lowering switching costs and targeting psychology
    

subgroups that have low switching costs should be the primary
strategic focus for the PCT communit**y*."

RM: I don’t believe that some people are more “convincable” (have lower switching costs) regarding PCT than others. Some individuals (like me) have been found to be more convincable regarding PCT than others but those individuals are few and far between. And what convinced me was Powers’ peer reviewed published papers on PCT, particularly those that described experimental tests and models. That’s why I advocate publishing high quality PCT research in high impact, peer reviewed journals as the best way to convince people about control theory. These articles are read by a fairly broad academic audience that might include one or two bright young people who will see (as I did) the incredible scientific achievement that is PCT, and act on that discovery by starting to do research on PCT.Â

MT: Telling people they are wrong is not a good way to get them to

switch to your opinion.

RM: Absolutely right. And I never tell people they are wrong in order to get them to switch their opinion. I tell them (and, hopefully, also show them) that they are wrong because I think they are wrong. Indeed, I never really think I am acting to get people to switch their opinion; I know that can’t be done. That’s why the only thing I do for the sake of getting people to consider changing their opinion is try to publish high quality PCT research in high impact, peer reviewed journals.Â

BestÂ

Rick

Showing them a way to find out for

themselves might work a little better. After all, everybody gets PCT
wrong sometimes, even Bill, as he himself said more than once.
Someone from a different mindset might well show us all a different
way forward within PCT.

Martin


Richard S. MarkenÂ

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

            RM: I

think that in order for PCT to gain acceptance it will
be necessary to convince psychologists that they have
been studying the wrong phenomenon (behavior as caused
output) and ignoring the right one (behavior as control,
also known as purposeful behavior).

            Best

regards

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
–Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Ignore that last, wrong thread, putting it in the right one now.

···

On Sat, May 27, 2017 at 11:50 AM, Bruce Nevin bnhpct@gmail.com wrote:

[From Bruce Nevin (2017.05.27.11:50 ET)]

Bravo Sean! You’re on to something.

There’s plenty of prepared grist for your proposed crowd-sourcing mill, such as online demos like Rick’s at mindreadings.com; tutorials like those of Bill’s at livingcontrolsystems.com/demos/tutor_pct.html, and being organized anew at pct-labs.com; and cribbing from the introductions to numerous papers and articles, such as the web-‘published’ joint paper at http://www.pctweb.org/PCTUnderstanding.pdf.

Warren’s concern about manageability is valid. That last item above was crowd-sourced. Do you have insight or sources of guidance about how to organize and run a crowd-sourced project?Â

/Bruce

On Sat, May 27, 2017 at 1:31 AM, Sean Mulligan lack.of.inspiration@gmail.com wrote:

Hi Rick,Â

Firstly I’d like to say that publishing high end PCT research in high impact peer reviewed journals is absolutely necessary to increase PCT adoption. I don’t dispute that at all, what is in dispute is the sequencing to achieve this. I believe that shooting for this goal without resolving a few fundamental conflicts is radically slowing PCT adoption. Â Â

RM: I don’t believe that some people are more “convincable” (have lower switching costs) regarding PCT than others.Â

SM: I’m leaning toward the opposite viewpoint at the moment. For example take three undergraduate students, two psychology students and an engineering student, all academically sharp and almost finished their degree. Psychology student 1 has only been exposed to general undergraduate course content. Psychology student 2 has read about cybernetics, complex systems theory concepts and system dynamics modelling. The engineering student has completed advanced maths, circuit design and a dedicated course in control theory. Who would you bet on having an easier time to understand PCT? Who would be more likely to adopt it?Â

I would argue that the engineering student would be the easiest to convince because he understands how the math works underneath the theory, he has no doubts about the theoretical foundation. The systems psychology student would have an easier time of it, but as she does not know advanced maths, she is taking it on faith that the foundations of the model are rigorous. The average psychology student would probably give up quickly, confused by the jargon and completely unequipped to even make a critical evaluation on the theory.Â

RM: Some individuals (like me) have been found to be more convincable regarding PCT than others but those individuals are few and far between.

That’s because you are an aberration mate. A special case. PCT is complex, you may have forgotten because you are an old hand now, but for a naive learner it is a very challenging theory to pick up. It requires unlearning a lot. You have to have a high level of motivation to persevere. If the goal is understanding, then PCT creates high levels of disturbance. When a novice population at any discipline meets a high level of disturbance, you get massive drop out rates. They cannot control the disturbances so they cope using avoidance and then make up rationalizations to reduce that avoidance error. I believe the low numbers using PCT are not due to the theory, or intelligence,  they are due to the sharp learning curve. An interesting example is when you learn jiu jitsu. It used to be, that guys would come into the gym off the street first lesson and immediately have to spar (fight) with experienced people. The gym possessed a survival of the fitness mentality, with the guys that won consistently eventually getting a belt, while the rest just got beat on. Over a 10 year period, from 11000 people that trained, only 250 got a blue belt, the rest quit and probably never trained again. Of the people that got belts, it was only the natural athletes or people with a martial arts background that achieved it easy. Everyone else broke fingers, chipped teeth, and generally had to be highly resilient to make it through.Â

I would argue that learning PCT right now is like learning jiu jitsu. Only the people best equipped or motivated bother to learn it. Everyone else washes out and does not go near it again, saying “PCT is not for me”. There is a solution however. To continue the jiu jitsu example, the gym  eventually realized that this was a wasteful strategy and the people that most benefit from the art were actually being selected out. They created a highly structured program to learn the most useful techniques (hundreds down to 37) for street self defense and only introduced sparring after people had a few techniques under their belt. Their retention rate tripled in 12 months, injuries were at zero, and the techniques people learn’t were street ready instead of sport ready. In PCT we have no structured program to bring a novice up to a good understanding, no road map to assist their learning,  I know because I am a novice. Some people assert that the only way people learn PCT is at their own pace and over a long period of time (Like 10 years!). This approach is a survival of the fittest mentality, plain and simple. You will only ever get a small population and because that is how they got there, that is how they believe PCT should be taught. This why I advocate an introductory PCT course that teaches the fundamentals over 10 hours, in order to increase the initial retention rate.   Â

Rick you are the PCT equivalent to a 250 pound wrestler. You were always going to get a belt :slight_smile: Â Â Â

Cheers,Â

**Sean Mulligan **

**Â Â **

On Sat, May 27, 2017 at 9:06 AM, Richard Marken rsmarken@gmail.com wrote:

[From Rick Marken (2017.05.26.1605)]

Martin Taylor (2017.05.26.08.05)–

MT: Well put!

RM: Thank you so much!

MT: Probably not. You would be disturbing a controlled perception, with

unpredictable results, among which is conflict and pushback against
PCT, rather than indifference.

RM: I agree. It’s all in how you go about “convincing” people. My preferred approach is what I said earlier; publish high quality PCT research in high impact, peer reviewed journals (on line journals work fine as long as they are, indeed, peer reviewed). Then people can convince themselves (or not).Â

Â

MT: I think you need to link PCT to what

they do believe and let them find out how much more it ism as , in
essence, Sean said in a message without a date-line yesterday: "

  •  I believe that lowering switching costs and targeting psychology
    

subgroups that have low switching costs should be the primary
strategic focus for the PCT communit**y*."

RM: I don’t believe that some people are more “convincable” (have lower switching costs) regarding PCT than others. Some individuals (like me) have been found to be more convincable regarding PCT than others but those individuals are few and far between. And what convinced me was Powers’ peer reviewed published papers on PCT, particularly those that described experimental tests and models. That’s why I advocate publishing high quality PCT research in high impact, peer reviewed journals as the best way to convince people about control theory. These articles are read by a fairly broad academic audience that might include one or two bright young people who will see (as I did) the incredible scientific achievement that is PCT, and act on that discovery by starting to do research on PCT.Â

MT: Telling people they are wrong is not a good way to get them to

switch to your opinion.

RM: Absolutely right. And I never tell people they are wrong in order to get them to switch their opinion. I tell them (and, hopefully, also show them) that they are wrong because I think they are wrong. Indeed, I never really think I am acting to get people to switch their opinion; I know that can’t be done. That’s why the only thing I do for the sake of getting people to consider changing their opinion is try to publish high quality PCT research in high impact, peer reviewed journals.Â

BestÂ

Rick

Showing them a way to find out for

themselves might work a little better. After all, everybody gets PCT
wrong sometimes, even Bill, as he himself said more than once.
Someone from a different mindset might well show us all a different
way forward within PCT.

Martin


Richard S. MarkenÂ

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

            RM: I

think that in order for PCT to gain acceptance it will
be necessary to convince psychologists that they have
been studying the wrong phenomenon (behavior as caused
output) and ignoring the right one (behavior as control,
also known as purposeful behavior).

            Best

regards

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
–Antoine de Saint-Exupery