[From Bill Powers (960422.0700 MDT)]
Hans Blom, 960422 --
Hans, are you going to repy to my post concerning the determination of
goals by disturbances? In your reply to Rick Marken,
In the example, the equations indicate that _nothing but_ the
disturbances vary the goals; all else is constants. So what else
"influences"?
you don't show any indication that you got my point.
Your comment seems to imply that an "influence" can exist only if it
varies. Doesn't the solar constant influence the temperature of the
earth?
What if one of the built-in goals is to alternate between sleeping and
waking once per day? Would that "constant" goal lead to constant
subgoals?
In case my post didn't get through, what I said was that if you consider
control systems with limited output capacity, the maximum output
determines the maximum "normal" disturbance (the largest one that the
system can cope with). If you consider only disturbances with that
maximum value, the amount of effect that the disturbance can have on the
goals depends on the loop gain, and can approach zero. Your conclusions
from your analysis put no practical limit on the size of a disturbance.
Your expression showing how the subgoals depend on disturbances is
mathematically correct, but physically naive.
···
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Best,
Bill P.