Ensnaring profs, taking responsibility

[From Rick Marken (950206.1230)]

Tom Bourbon (950206.1119) to Bruce Abbott (950203.0845 EST)

This is going far too slowly, Bruce. Your approach to ensnaring your
colleagues leaves them too much time to wiggle free...let them run the
task, show them the data (replete with all sorts of counter-traditionally-
intuitive correlations)

I agree with Tom of course; who wouldn't agree with themselves;-).

I would suggest that you just have them do the tracking task; ask them to
identify the independent and dependent variables -- if they don't identify
cursor and mouse movement, respectively, then report them to the academic
Dean;-).

Then ask them to explain why the cursor stays on the target; the explanation
should be based on the notion that cursor position guides mouse movement; if
not, tell us what how they explain it.

Then show the correlation between cursor and mouse movement; if they are not
surprised by this correlation then they won't be surprised by anything -- say
"goodby, have a nice life in science". If they are surprised, then show the
correlation between disturbance and handle and between disturbance and
cursor. Ask what they make of this and report back to us at once.

Bill Powers (950203.0930 MST) --

When people tell you that you have responsibilities, they are trying to
make you behave in a way that suits their reference levels.

Bruce Nevin (Mon 93026 11:38:51 EST)--

Left out of account here, Bill, is the possibility that members of a
species may need to cooperate in order to survive as individuals,

But Bill's point is valid even when people have agreed to cooperate. Suppose
I have agreed to cooperate with the the other two guys on my touch football
team; the captain of my team tells me: "your responsibility is to cover
Smith, over there". The captain tells me this because he is trying to make
me adopt a reference (behave in a way) that suits his reference -- to have
Smith covered. I will probably adopt the requested reference becuase I want
to cooperate; but it's still me doing the adopting and I might not adopt it
if, for example, I'm scared of being hurt by Smith. If I decide that covering
Smith is just something I can't do (because doing it would conflict with
other "responsibilities" I already have then, if the captain is cooperative
himself, he might revise his request and say "OK, you're responsible for
covering Powers" and I say "No problem", and off I go, intercepting
everything in sight;-) If the captain is not cooperative, he'll just do what
most people in this society do -- he'll say "It's your social responsibility
to cover Smith" or "Loyalty to the team requires that you cover Smith" or
"God said that you must cover Smith". When you have to resort to bullshit
like this, it shgould be clear that we are no longer talking about
cooperation.

As Bill said in one of his earlier posts: "Responsibility can be taken, but
not given away".

When people cooperate, responsibility can be _suggested_ but it STILL can NOT
be given away!

Best

Rick