(Gavin Ritz 2008.10.22.19.53NZT
[From Rick Marken (2008.10.21.2145)]
Martin Taylor (2008.10.21.23.17) --
Actually Rick is correct information theory (or communication theory)
Has nothing at all to do with psychology least of all PCT. The best book
ever written for beginners on this is by John Pierce, An Introduction to
Information Theory- a friend of Claude Shannon). A brilliant piece of work
with simple math, encoding, entropy, noisy channels, and links to physics
and how Claude Shannon put this all together.
The confusion comes in with the cybernetics people (Wiener, Beer, etc) who
tried to use it to explain human and managerial communication, and it failed
miserably. It's just a terrible model cybernetics, how it as any following
beats me.
Not sure how there are any proofs relating to information theory and human
communication.
I'm not going to argue with Rick on this one yet again
Aw, come on. It's been so long;-)
Rick's misinformation on information and information processing has been a
difference between us since I first joined CSGnet in 1992. Simple direct
proofs had no effect on Rick then, and I don't suppose they would now.
Probably not. But it's so much fun to watch.
I suspect he doesn't have the necessary background.
Would that be a background in logarithms?
Certainly the things he
has said about "information" in the context of "information theory"have
been
wildly off the mark.
Wildly?
Suffice it to say that (a) Bagno's economic theory says nothing about
human
psychology, which makes Rick's comment irrelevant,
Not really. I could just change it to:
"How could that be? Since an economy is a collection of people then
how could Bagno's arguments be valid if it says nothing about how people
work?."
(b) information processing is not a model of human behaviour
Actually, it is. Google it: human information processing. Some of the
big names are Newell, Simon, Miller, Attneave, Garner, Neisser and
Norman.
, and (c) every single channel
in the control systems in Fred's brain is an information processor,
I suppose you could say that. I prefer to look at them as functions,
like p = f(e).
as is
the environment through which each control system's feedback circuit is
completed.
Here's where I get off.
Information processing is as fundamental to PCT as is neural
circuitry, perhaps more so.
As for Bagno, his arguments constrain ANY economic theory, whether it be
PCT-based or throughly conventional, whether it be money-based or a study
of
barter behaviour. Those constraints do lead to some predictions, and to a
large extent 50 years of events since his publication have tended to bear
those predictions out, despite that they refer to a closed economy, and
the
only truly closed economy nowadays is the entire world.
Until I get back from the UK in late November, I hope I can restrain
myself
from engaging in any discussion on this topic, and just maybe from further
comment on CSGnet. So far, such attempts at self-restraint have proved
rather futile 
That would be like Kenny trying to restrain himself from responding to
my blasphemies;-)
Best
Rick
···
--
Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com
