[Martin Taylor 950828 11:30]
Bill Powers (950825.1710 MDT)
I don't want to get into another Oxbridge argument. If you think that
the trial-and-error method is the best way for science to be conducted,
I doubt that any argument I make will sway you.
You initially argued against using drugs in therapy. In fact, you seemed
quite angry with the idea that David Goldstein might use them, and suggested
that he was a PCT-renegade, an apostate, an unbeliever. I questioned why
you would take the position that to use drugs was in contradiction to PCT,
and suggested several effects the drugs might have that are totally in
harmony with PCT. I also proposed that a PCT-knowledgable therapist
(or theorist) observing what worked might be able to get a handle on what
was really happening. You now take that to be an "Oxbridge" position,
whatever that might be, and to be a statement that I don't believe science
should work by understanding the mechanisms. How you make these leaps
(something you do very often) is a bit beyond me, but there it is.
I'm trying to paint a picture of a science of life in which system
models are cumulatively proposed, tested, refined, and expanded. I
consider this approach to be far superior to the methods that have been
used in the past by the behavioral sciences and by medicine.
Agreed.
I don't
doubt that pure empiricism coupled with pure conjecture has had its uses
and will continue to have them. But I'm just not interested in varying A
to see what happens to B, even if B is something like loop gain or the
rate of reorganization.
Without...
I want to understand the _connection_ between A
and B, to have a model that makes sense of it not only behaviorally but
neurologically and biochemically.
what would be the point of making the observations? Only the fact that
science, as with personal perception (which science is, after all) works
in a feedback loop. One discovers, both in low-level perception and in
high-level (scientific) perception, how the world works by acting on it.
You normally complain that I use too much of "understanding the _connection
between A and B, to have a model..." while ignoring the data. Now you
complain that I want only the data, ignoring the model. All I propose is
that both be used in conjunction: if you have a model, use it to propose
expected data; if you have data but no model, propose models that might
account for it.
When you have no model, and a reference to ameliorate the circumstances
of someone's life, what can you do but apply the e-coli approach? If
something has been found to work in similar cases, do more, until it
fails, and then shift direction.
In the drug situation, we have a model (HPCT). Hierarchic control systems
have several modes in which they can fail to control effectively. By
observing the effects of drugs, in conjunction with the models, one has
a chance of seeing what they are doing, IN CONTRAST TO "the methods that
have been used in the past by the behavioral sciences and by medicine."
Using the model, one might be able to determine, when things get better,
whether the problem was in one area or in another. And that might help the
science as well as the patient.
Maybe others want something else, and
maybe I won't get it, but that's what I want.
Yeah. Some people, such as David Goldstein's patient, want a happier life
now, rather than an understood life some decades down the road.
As a scientist, I want what you want. As a practitioner (of human factors)
I want better interfaces NOW, just as Rick said, some time back. And PCT
is a way to get them NOW, even if we don't know all the interactions that
are involved. You don't have to analyze the intimate behaviour of each control
loop, any more than you have to track every atom in a boiling liquid and a
condensing gas to understand how a refrigerator works.
ยทยทยท
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On rules:
Nobody has commented on my post (Martin Taylor 950821 11:00) describing a
mechanism whereby people may appear to be acting according to unperceived
social rules, and the difference that occurs when the rules are perceived
and codified.
Rick was praised for a posting three days later, noting that such a difference
exists, but without a mechanism. Did my posting not get distributed
generally? It did get back here, in the normal way.
Martin