[From Rick Marken (203.12.20.1045)]
Marc Abrams (2003.12.19.2011)--
Bruce Gregory (2003.12.19.1847)--
It seems to me that Rick was successfully controlling his perception
of
personal integrity.
I think that's a pretty fair point. I'd like to hear from Rick on this.
I appreciate Bruce's efforts to say something nice in PCT lingo. I'm
sure he meant it in a nice way.
To accomplish this 'new' goal, he had to change his perceptions of the
situation and you. The old goal possibly was, 'being right' or
'proving you
wrong'.
As I said, I don't think I voluntarily changed my perceptions of the
interchange. The perception of the posts was different when I reread
then, I believe, because the emotional component was not there. It was
there during the interchange because Bruce's posts were pushing my
perception of "what PCT can explain" away from it's reference. This
was the perceptual variable that seemed to be the object in conflict.
It seemed, during the interchange, that Bruce and I had different goals
with respect to the state of this variable. On rereading the posts I
could see that this was not necessarily the case.
On rereading the interchange I became persuaded that there was no
conflict. I could see that Bruce was just trying to understand how PCT
explained the use of a single output (foot position) to accomplish two
different goals simultaneously (accelerating and braking). Whether
there really was a conflict in that interchange or not, it seemed to me
that the interchange was quite civil and productive, except at the end,
when I "gloated" unnecessarily. That last part of the interchange (3
posts maybe) was an unnecessary consequence of my assumption that Bruce
had been intentionally baiting me about what PCT could and could not
explain. Of course, Bruce then reacted pretty strongly to my gloat,
basically saying that my work on PCT was trivial.
So at the end of what you call the "conflict" thread (which actually
involved no conflict at all except at the very end, if my rereading is
correct) Bruce was holding the other "rubber band" in a conversational
analog of the rubber band conflict. The "knot" in that very brief
conflict was probably something like a perception of being seen as
"right all along". That conflict occurred because we were controlling
one perceptual variable ("being seen as right") relative to two
different references ("Rick is right" vs "Bruce is right").
The conflict ended when one of us went up a level and "gave up" the
goal of being seen as having been "right all along". After the
conflict ended, I reread the posts and saw that I didn't need to have
tried to control for being seen as having been "right all along" since
I could see that Bruce was not necessarily baiting me or trying to show
that I was wrong or foolish. Had I been able to perceive things this
way during the conflict, there would, indeed, have been no conflict.
But I don't think it's possible to voluntarily "see things differently"
when one is in conflict. During the interchange I perceived things the
way I perceived them -- as baiting -- probably because of the emotional
tone (a consequence of error signals) created by Bruce's questions (and
assertions) about what PCT could and could not explain.
I don't think it is possible to avoid conflicts by trying to perceive
things differently because what one perceives is what one perceives. I
perceived baiting because that's what my perceptual input functions
were reporting as what was going on. Just as your perceptual input
functions report that you see the word "baiting" in the combination of
letters b,a,i,t,i,n,g, so my perceptual input functions reported seeing
baiting in the combination of Bruce's words and my emotional reaction
to them. While in the interchange, I could not perceive anything other
than baiting any more than you can see anything other than "baiting"
when I write "baiting". After the discussion, when the emotional
component was gone, I could perceive the interchange as involving
questioning rather than baiting because the emotional component was
gone. This is like removing one of the letters from "baiting" so that
you now see it as "bating".
I think the only way to avoid conflicts is by changing one's goals
regarding the perceptions that seem to be in conflict. This is
basically how the conflict was solved -- I just gave up trying to
control for not being baited. Unfortunately, I gave it up only after
offering up my little gloat (which was just a way of pushing back
against what I perceived as Bruce's baiting). But I think it's really
impossible to have discussions about almost any topic without some
degree of conflict. I think that ultimately the best way to deal with
conflict is through understanding and forgiveness.
It's also important, I think, to discriminate conflict from what might
be called "non-conflictive disturbance". I think both occur on CSGNet
and they are often conflated because there are superficial similarities
between the two. They both involve disturbance resistance, for example.
Conflict exists when people are clearly trying to bring the same
variable to different states. I think a recent example of a conflict
on CSGNet is the debate about conflict itself. Some argued that
conflict was about controlling different perceptions; others argued
that conflict was about controlling the same perception relative to
different goals. This is a conflict because people wanted the same
perception (explanation of conflict) in two different states.
"Non-conflictive disturbance" exists when there is disturbance to a
controlled variable but no conflict -- no desire on the part of both
parties to get that variable into different states. A recent example
of "non-conflictive disturbance" is the discussion between Bruce G.,
Bill and I regarding a PCT explanation of getting to work while
stopping for obstacles. There was no conflict because there was no
difference in goals regarding the perception involved: the PCT
explanation of acceleration/braking. Bruce's questions were a
disturbance to this perception and Bill and I reacted to this
disturbance by supplying the PCT explanation. My mistake was assuming
that there was a conflict, that Bruce's goal regarding the PCT
explanation was different than mine. Indeed, I took his goal to be
"there is no PCT explanation", which, of course, differed from my goal,
which was "there _is_ a PCT explanation". In fact, there was no
conflict because Bruce didn't have such a goal. He was really just
asking what the PCT explanation was. This asking is what I call
"non-conflictive disturbance". I think a lot of unnecessary conflict
occurs when "non-conflictive disturbances" are taken to be active
attempts to move a commonly controlled perception to a different state.
Best regards
Rick
···
--
Richard S. Marken
marken@mindreadings.com
Home 310 474-0313
Cell 310 729-1400
