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
  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: "
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