Creating an On-Line PCT Course

[From Rick Marken (2017.05.28.1045)]

This was in the “Control as Fact and Theory” thread. I changed the subject line to better reflect what it’s about.

···

On Fri, May 26, 2017 at 10:31 PM, Sean Mulligan lack.of.inspiration@gmail.com wrote:

SM: 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.

RM: In the early years of CSGNet (early 1990s) we had a control engineer join the discussion. He became one of the most vigorous opponents of PCT. About 10 years ago Bill and I engaged with some control engineers, demonstrating how a hierarchical control system could account for the apparent “adaptation” that was observed  to changes in the order of the control loop (proportional to integral, for example). The control engineers vigorously opposed the elegant PCT solution, which, by the way, became Chapter 5 in Powers’ Living Control Systems III: The Fact of Control. I think the evidence, limited as it is, argues strongly against your prediction.Â

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

SM: 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.

RM: In my experience, it’s not perseverance but just the opposite, maybe call it flexibility, that allows some individuals to  “get” PCT. Everyone I know who gets PCT (and there are not very many of them) gets it, not because of a willingness to persevere but because of a willingness to abandon all their cherished preconceptions that conflicted with an understanding of PCT.Â

SM: 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.

RM: Avoidance is a way to protect existing ideas from the effects of disturbance.Â

Â

SM: I believe the low numbers using PCT are not due to the theory, or intelligence, Â they are due to the sharp learning curve.

RM: I think that’s highly likely. PCT is no more difficult to learn than, say, computer programming. Yet there are tons of computer programmers. I think you analysis above gives the actual reason; the low numbers of people using PCT are a result of the fact that PCT is a disturbance to all kinds of things that people care about: their careers, their employment, their credibility with their peers, etc. The only way to get around PCT being a disturbance to these kinds of perceptions is to change it into something that is not disturbing, which is what Carver and Scheier and their apostles have done.Â

Â

SM: This why I advocate an introductory PCT course that teaches the fundamentals over 10 hours, in order to increase the initial retention rate. Â

RM: I think it would be great to have such a course. I would be nice to try to create such a course and make it interesting – lots of pictures and conversations – and fun. Also, publicize it and make it available as an internet course. Perhaps release it through one of the on-line course distributors like teaching company. It would have to be scientifically accurate so a small board of experts on PCT have to have final say on the content.Â

RM: I am in favor of getting PCT in front of as many people as possible: academics as well as intelligent lay people (clearly not many of those in the US any more but with an attractive on-line course we can get to a larger population of such people in Europe and Asia). I just don’t like to think of it as “selling” PCT. I just want to put the ideas out there and let those who find them interesting run with it.Â

Best

Rick

 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


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

Cheers,Â

**Sean Mulligan **

**Â **

[Martin Taylor 2017.05.28.14.41]

[From Rick Marken (2017.05.28.1045)]

If you are talking about Hans Blom, I don't think he was at all

opposed to PCT. What he was opposed to was a voluble and dogmatic
refusal to permit expression of the thought that it is appropriate
to use with PCT some mathematical tools that he believed could be
useful. His opposition was to dogmatism, not PCT.

As has been the case, to my first-hand knowledge, for several others

who tried to use CSGnet to improve their understanding of PCT or to
offer different viewpoints on it, but left in frustration over the
same dogmatic opposition to looking at PCT in anything but the
officially approved way. None were “opposed to PCT”, or they
wouldn’t have joined CSGnet and tried to contribute. People come to
CSGnet presumably to learn and possibly to contribute. They don’t
come to “oppose” PCT, but all too often their attempt to contribute
have been met not with reasoned analysis of why the contribution is
misguided, but with the moral equivalent of “We don’t want your
nasty ideas here. Forget them or go away.” I think, for example, of
Peter Small, who was interested in the dynamical implications of
perceptual control, but was sneeringly blown off every time he tried
to explain what he was trying to get across.

I realize it must be difficult for you to allow the possibility that

people might usefully apply to PCT tools you don’t understand, but
it’s no benefit to the future development of PCT to treat them the
way such people have been treated on CSGnet (and I include myself as
one who has persevered in CSGnet despite dogmatic opposition to
using common mathematical tools).

Over the last decade or two, I have refrained from posting to CSGnet

a lot of interesting aspects of PCT that I have worked on – most
recently, for example, the tensegrity properties of the hierarchy
that give it resilience – because of my expectation of being
subjected to mindless criticism, which basically comes down to “It
isn’t PCT, because I don’t understand it”. I have, however,
discussed many of them with small groups of researchers interested
in PCT who also don’t want to talk about interesting novel points on
CSGnet.

Quite recently you told Bruce and me that we were S-R behaviourists

opposed to PCT because we pointed out the mathematical fallacy in
your supposed demonstration that the curvature power law was a
behavioural illusion. Suggesting you made a mistake in maths was
sufficient to declare us to be opposed to PCT – like Hans Blom,
whose suggestion that some mathematics you didn’t understand might
be useful in analyzing control systems was enough for you to say he
was “a vigorous opponent” of PCT. “Opposed to PCT” appears to be a
synonym for “questioning Rick Marken”.

            SM:

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.

I agree. I guess I am further evidence against Sean's thesis,

because I nearly became a graduate student in control engineering,
and you frequently call me an opponent of PCT. So is Bill Powers,
come to that, since control engineering was part of his background.
I guess you would have predicted that he could never “get” PCT.

Control engineers obviously are not the kind of people one should

try to attract. They might try to use what they know in analyzing
the behaviour of hierarchic feedback systems. Since Official PCT
already understands all there is to know about that, their efforts
would necessarily be opposed to PCT, by definition.

I think you need both. They aren't opposites. They are complements.

To rebuild a house that is perfectly livable, but perhaps a little
rickety, requires the flexibility to see how a redesign could
improve its livability while avoiding more of the patch jobs you
have for a long time been doing to keep the house standing. Along
with that flexibility, perseverance is required, to learn all the
building codes to which the new house must conform, not to mention
the techniques needed to design and construct it when you have
discovered some of the possibilities of the site. If you know
something of carpentry, you don’t throw that away when you are
framing your new house. The real problems arise, however, when you
have a friend that says “houses must be built exactly like this” and
is inflexible in insisting that no other kind of house or
construction technique is admissible, no matter how useful the
technique or how well built the resulting house.

I would call that, as Sean does, "unlearning".

Not everyone's understanding of PCT is the same, even among those

who do not get it wrong. Fred’s understanding seems correct to me,
but there’s lots about his application that I don’t understand, and
lots about the mathematics and dynamics of control that he doesn’t
understand. Bill not infrequently let us know that there was a lot
about PCT he didn’t understand, and he thought it might take decades
or centuries of patient “persevering” research to find all its kinks
and hidden possibilities. Is there anyone who claims to really
understand PCT? Perhaps there is – just one!

PCT is dead simple at heart. Where it gets complicated and difficult

is when you get into the details of the behaviour of interlinked
feedback systems. For example, how does the tolerance zone affect
the speed with which a control loop corrects for a step change in
the disturbance? That’s not easy to analyze, and complex to
parameterize by a series of experiments. That’s a simple question.
Others are more complicated. But the basic idea is so simple that
one of the biggest difficulties I had when I first learned about PCT
was that I couldn’t believe it was as simple as it is. That may be a
characteristic of powerful theories; they have to be simple, because
any complexity would indicate a dependence on special circumstances,
limiting the range of their application.

Feedback systems are not obvious to the general public. For example,

everyone want lower taxes, but they don’t want to lose what those
taxes pay for because if they lost those, they would have less money
available to pay taxes. It’s a feedback loop, but people act as
though money paid in taxes vanishes from the economy, and their
success in having a good lifestyle is due to their own hard work –
and so they vote for politicians who advocate for lower taxes (but
never mention the resulting impoverishment of living conditions for
everyone except the rich).

That's just one example. It's not hard to find examples where people

think of something as cause and effect without noticing that the
“effect” is also a cause of the “cause”. It is very hard for most
people to understand that higher taxes just might mean less total
expenditure and a better quality of life. That’s because they can’t
imagine the effects of feedback loops.

I would hope it would be more scientifically accurate than your

“peer reviewed” publication on the power law effect of curvature. By
the way, have you yet asked the editor of that journal to get
someone mathematically capable to check the specific point where the
problem occurs – the confusion between derivatives with respect to
time and derivatives with respect to distance?

Martin
···

RM: In the early years of CSGNet (early 1990s) we had
a control engineer join the discussion. He became one of
the most vigorous opponents of PCT.

            RM. About 10 years ago Bill and I engaged with some

control engineers, demonstrating how a hierarchical
control system could account for the apparent
“adaptation” that was observed to changes in the order
of the control loop (proportional to integral, for
example). The control engineers vigorously opposed the
elegant PCT solution, which, by the way, became Chapter
5 in Powers’ Living Control Systems III: The Fact of
Control. I think the evidence, limited as it is, argues
strongly against your prediction.

                  RM: Some

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

SM: Th at’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.

            RM: In my experience, it's not perseverance but just

the opposite, maybe call it flexibility, that allows
some individuals to “get” PCT.

            Everyone I know who gets PCT (and there are not

very many of them) gets it, not because of a willingness
to persevere but because of a willingness to abandon all
their cherished preconceptions that conflicted with an
understanding of PCT.

                    SM: 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.

            RM: Avoidance is a way to protect existing ideas from

the effects of disturbance.

                    SM: I believe the low

numbers using PCT are not due to the theory, or
intelligence, they are due to the sharp
learning curve.

            RM: I think that's highly likely. PCT is no more

difficult to learn than, say, computer programming.

            RM: I think it would be great to have such a course.

… It would have to be scientifically accurate so a
small board of experts on PCT have to have final say on
the content.

[From Rick Marken (2017.05.30.1130)]

···

Martin Taylor (2017.05.28.14.41)–

MT: If you are talking about Hans Blom, I don't think he was at all

opposed to PCT.

RM: No, I was thinking of a guy named Izhak Bar-Kana who was on CSGNet  for a short time at the very beginning of the listserve’s existence, in 1990.Â

Â

MT: What he  [Blom] was opposed to was a voluble and dogmatic

refusal to permit expression of the thought that it is appropriate
to use with PCT some mathematical tools that he believed could be
useful. His opposition was to dogmatism, not PCT.

RM: I could go find the thread but just from your description it sounds like Blom (and apparently you as well) equate “dogmatic refusal to permit expression of a thought” with “disagreeing with the thought”. Like everyone on CSGNet, Hans was “permitted” to express his thoughts and, as I recall, he did express them rather copiously. It seems to me that you think that the only way we (I think it was mainly Bill Powers, Tom Bourbon and myself) could have appeared to permit Hans to express his thoughts was to have agreed with them.Â

Â

MT: As has been the case, to my first-hand knowledge, for several others

who tried to use CSGnet to improve their understanding of PCT or to
offer different viewpoints on it, but left in frustration over the
same dogmatic opposition to looking at PCT in anything but the
officially approved way.

RM: PCT is a scientific theory and there are right and wrong answers about what the theory says. Different viewpoints on the theory are certainly of interest but if the viewpoint is technically incorrect then it will be corrected. Bill usually did this correcting very tactfully; I am told I did it less tactfully. But it turns out people don’t like to be corrected, period, (it’s a disturbance, whether presented tactfully or not) especially when they are corrected about a viewpoint on PCT that is very important to them (that they control for with high gain). So when they get such corrections they often leave CSGNet or PCT altogether.Â

Â

MT: None were "opposed to PCT", or they

wouldn’t have joined CSGnet and tried to contribute. People come to
CSGnet presumably to learn and possibly to contribute. They don’t
come to “oppose” PCT, but all too often their attempt to contribute
have been met not with reasoned analysis of why the contribution is
misguided, but with the moral equivalent of “We don’t want your
nasty ideas here. Forget them or go away.”

RM: This is a very different impression than what I got. Bill Powers certainly presented some very reasoned analyses (using modeling and data) to show why certain “contributions” Â were incorrect. I believe I did too.Â

MT: I think, for example, of

Peter Small, who was interested in the dynamical implications of
perceptual control, but was sneeringly blown off every time he tried
to explain what he was trying to get across.

RM: I re-read some of the discussion with Peter Small and I didn’t see anything in them where it appeared that he was being “sneeringly” blown off.Â

MT: I realize it must be difficult for you to allow the possibility that

people might usefully apply to PCT tools you don’t understand, but
it’s no benefit to the future development of PCT to treat them the
way such people have been treated on CSGnet (and I include myself as
one who has persevered in CSGnet despite dogmatic opposition to
using common mathematical tools).

RM: Your perseverance has been quite impressive.

Â

MT: Quite recently you told Bruce and me that we were S-R behaviourists

opposed to PCT because we pointed out the mathematical fallacy in
your supposed demonstration that the curvature power law was a
behavioural illusion.

RM: I hope I didn’t say you were S-R behaviorists; that would be name calling. I might have said that you were looking at the power law of movement from an S-R point of view. And I was obviously unconvinced by your “pointing out” of my “mistakes”.Â

RM: Since virtually everyone who posted about the power law of movement agreed with you and Bruce’ that my analysis was all wrong – and not consistent with PCT – Â I was kind of in the same position as the people who you say were driven away from CSGNet by PCT dogmatism. But rather than pick up my marbles and leave I put my argument into a paper, had it reviewed by mathematical experts and submitted it for publication for review by some peers. The satisfying result was that all those who reviewed it thought it was a great paper and it was accepted for publication with only relatively minor revisions.Â

Â

MT: Suggesting you made a mistake in maths was

sufficient to declare us to be opposed to PCT

RM: No, it was sufficient to show me that you didn’t understand some basic facts about the nature of control and how PCT explains these facts. I don’t think you are opposed to PCT; I just think you don’t understand some basic things about it.Â

MT: I would hope it would be more scientifically accurate than your

“peer reviewed” publication on the power law effect of curvature.

RM: And I will do what I can to make it as scientifically accurate as my power law paper.

Â

MT: By

the way, have you yet asked the editor of that journal to get
someone mathematically capable to check the specific point where the
problem occurs – the confusion between derivatives with respect to
time and derivatives with respect to distance?

RM: That would be kind of silly, wouldn’t it. Â “Dear editor, Please get someone mathematically capable to check our “Power Law of Movement” paper because I’m pretty sure I confused derivatives with respect to time with derivatives with respect to distance. I really shouldn’t have submitted the paper, having made this egregious mistake, but now that it’s there in your possession – and it’s been accepted for publication, even – I think you should find someone who can tell you that the paper should have been rejected. Thanks. Sincerely…”

RM: Actually, I did get another friend of mine from RAND – an internationally renowned mathematical economist (student of Nobelist Kenneth Arrow) – to review the published paper and he thought it was great. I was kind of nervous about having him read it because he had given me a hard time when I interviewed for the position at RAND.Â

RM: I suggest that if you really think the power law paper is not scientifically accurate you write a rebuttal to it for publication in Experimental Brain Research. For all I know, Alex may be doing that right now. Shortly after the paper came out he asked me for the data on which I based the analysis in the paper. At the same time I asked him for his “fly larva” data, which was available on the net but I couldn’t use because it was in Matlab format. Alex said he would send me a tab limited version of the data; that was two months ago. I think the analysis in the power law paper is pretty iron clad but maybe Alex will be able to find the mistake and I’ll have learned something quite amazing.Â

Best

Rick


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: In the early years of CSGNet (early 1990s) we had

a control engineer join the discussion. He became one of
the most vigorous opponents of PCT.

            RM: I think it would be great to have such a course.

… It would have to be scientifically accurate so a
small board of experts on PCT have to have final say on
the content.Â