[From Bill Powers (950809.0900 MDT)]
Since Ed's away in the real world, it's good that he has some defenders
to step in for him!
Avery Andrews (950809.1206) --
>> Repeating back what you have been told to say is
>>not learning to think.
But it might have the function of giving thought-processes
something to work on.
It's only the capitalist lackeys of the military-industrial political
conspiracy who impose their imperialist brainwashing conceptualizations
on the innocent young victims of their insatiable greed. OK, now, say
that back to me, and try to get it right.
It seems to me that large numbers of people are taught what to say
_instead_ of how to think.
My understanding was that the issue of responsibility does not even
arise. Hence no effort to escape, and therefore, from the point of
view of the child, no perception of an adversarial relationship, on
this issue.
Excellent. Then there is no reason to take any special steps to prevent
a child from attempting to escape responsibility, is there? But what Ed
_says_ is that he is trying to teach responsible thinking, implying that
it needs to be taught. If children are not placed in situations where
taking responsibility for their own actions is punished, the question
would not arise. In his actual practices, this is probably what Ed does.
But he describes what he does in a different way.
>> If following rules becomes merely a way
>> of avoiding bad consequences, you haven't taught the child to think
>> about the rules and why they exist.
Maybe this is something they can figure out on their own, once they
have gotten used to coping with the rules.
If they do, they're not problem children, are they? But what about the
children, criminals, and businessmen who figure out the view toward
rules that the only crime is getting caught?
But there's no reason to think that people have any problem per se
with rules enforced by physical power. Children seem to actually
like rules, and really enjoy making up complicated and draconian
schedules of penalties for people who break them.
Aren't they just re-enacting what has been done to them? It's the same
principle that makes abusers out of abusees. One way to resolve the
problems of helplessness that come from being on the receiving end is to
trade places, at least in fantasy, and enjoy the sense of power of being
the controller rather than the controllee for a change. Even playing the
victim can be fun, as long as you can stop playing when you want to; you
can pretend to suffer all sort of horrors, but such things are only fun
when they ARE pretended. When they are real they are not fun.
What people don't like is rules that conflict with their present
reference percepts.
Sit quietly; don't talk unless the teacher tells you to talk. When he
does tell you to talk, speak respectfully and stick to the point. Hand
in your homework at the beginning of the class, neatly written with all
work shown and your name, class, and date in the upper right corner.
When you are not called on, remain quiet and pay attention; do not look
out the windows, send notes to your neighbor, or whisper. Do not
interrupt anyone who is talking. Raise your hand and wait to be called
upon. When the bell rings wait quietly until the teacher dismisses you
and then walk in an orderly way to the door without pushing. Do not run
or talk in the corridors.
Good thing that all these rules are consistent with the children's
reference percepts.
I recall having some difficulty adjusting to the difference between
boarding school, with a rather large number of rules, and home,
with a rather small number of ad-hoc decrees, which were actually
quite few in number and reasonable in content, but seemed much more
irksome than the rules, nonetheless.
One thing about learning to live with a large number of rules is that
you seldom have to think for yourself. When the correct behavior for
every contingency is prescribed, all you have to do is remember the
appropriate rule and you'll know you are safe from criticism or
punishment. Thrown into a larger world where the rules are not already
laid out to cover every eventuality, many people simply fall back on the
rules that used to apply, and go on behaving as if they still had to
follow the same rules. The rules did not help these people to think;
indeed, they made it more difficult to cope with any world but the one
they were trained in.
So I conjecture (yet again ! ...) that a crucial feature of the
program is minimal reliance on exercises of force, and maximal
utilization of the actual properties of the kids' reorganization
systems.
Yes. I presume that this is how Ed's system actually works. My post was
concerned mainly with how Ed _describes_ his system, which comes out
quite differently in some important respects.
Another feature that good rule systems have to have is that it be
easy to see when they are transgressed, and that the penalty have
an appropriate relationship to the crime, so that there isn't a
problem with actually enforcing it.
I guess you advocate operant conditioning, too. The present system has
always been organized around rules, penalties, and rewards. To set up
such a system, there must be a power structure such that basic needs are
not under the control of the people who have the needs, but under the
control of the people who make and enforce the rules. We have all grown
up in exactly such a system, and live in it now. It is like wallpaper:
always there, seldom noticed, taken for granted as a feature of the
natural world; viz:
As a parent, my most (only?) succesful trick was a rule that
`whoever says "me first" first, is last'. Even four year olds
seemed to appreciate its elegance, and had the properties that (a)
the criterion for application was almost always (b) the penalty was
extremely mild, such as an extra fifteen seconds wait to get the
candy, or whatever.
But don't forget that if that penalty did not suffice, there was always
a greater one waiting in the background, which you would, if necessary,
demonstrate that you were willing to use. What's important is to know
that wanting to be first makes you last. Someone else will always be the
head of your department when you grow up.
Actually, I'm split here because we're talking about four-year-olds, who
may be ready to grasp the meaning of a rule but may have no idea of how
to make up a rule. In other words, they're not actually controlling for
having certain rules.
To see rules being followed without the threat of overwhelming physical
force in the background, you have to watch (or remember) children
playing with each other, away from adults. Children playing a game may
argue over what the rule is, but they never argue that the game should
be played without rules. And unless there is a bully in the group, they
don't "enforce" rules except through argument as equals. This makes the
rules into quite a different social phenomenon, more like the rules of
mathematics and physics than means of social control. A game has no
meaning unless played within a structure of logical, self-consistent,
and impartially applied rules.
The game _is_ the structure of rules, a point that young children have
trouble understanding at first. You can see the levels of perception so
easily when watching an older child trying to teach a game to a younger
one. The younger one sees the moves and relationships and even some of
the sequences, but doesn't grasp the logical structure, and so wants to
make moves that look possible but violate the rules -- especially when
losing. When told that a move is illegal, the younger child thinks he
has done something wrong, and may cry. Or the younger way may complain
that the older one always has to win -- there is no sense that the older
one, too, is constrained by exactly the same rules.
One thing I have advocated, without much success, is that children be
taught social rules (when they are ready) in exactly the same way they
are taught and teach each other games. The point is not whether the
rules are right or wrong. Are the rules of 5-card stud poker or
hopscotch right or wrong? It's that we're playing a certain game here,
and there are rules to this game just as in any other game. If you want
to be in the game, then you have to learn how to play it. Different
groups of people play different games (different rules = different
game), so if you want to play in different groups, you have to learn the
games they play. When you develop the levels of understanding above the
rule level, you'll be able to understand all games, and be able to join
in anywhere. You won't be stuck knowing how to play only one game.
My problem with selling this idea is that people tend to think that
their game is the only right one. In fact, being told that they are
playing a game with arbitrary rules is insulting or frightening. They
want to believe that the rules they know are the ones that everyone
ought to play by; they even set up systems of punishment and reward to
make sure that nobody tries to play a different game. They turn the game
into something that is deadly serious, and so my idea simply seems
frivolous instead of liberating.
···
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Bill Leach (950808.21:50 U.S. Eastern Time Zone) --
That's the wrong date for the subject I have in mind, but...
You say that guns don't kill people, people kill people. True, at one
level of understanding. Rocks don't often kill people all by themselves,
knives don't kill people, cars don't kill people, guns don't kill
people, because these things are not control systems and have no goals.
If they, all by themselves, kill people we call it a freak accident.
Only a person can have the goal of killing people and carry it out.
However, the loop gain of a control system is largely determined by its
output sensitivity. The output is the error times the gain of the output
function. Two people who both desire to kill someone will have some
amount of error signal as long as the chosen victim is alive. But their
success in reducing their error to zero will depend greatly on how
effectively the error is turned into a physical effect on the
environment. The one with the highest loop gain will succeed in killing
much oftener than the one with the lowest loop gain.
At the same time that a person has the desire to kill someone or
something else, that person also wishes not to be killed or maimed, or
if possible even hurt, as a side-effect of the process. So the methods
of killing that are chosen must always take this other goal into
account. Probably the least desireable method is hand-to-hand unarmed
combat. This method puts you within reach of the victim and runs the
risk of anything from injury to death. Given that the killer and the
victim are normally equally matched, it is in the killer's interest to
employ a means that will simultaneously reduce the risk to the killer
and increase the risk to the victim. A rock or a club will certainly
fulfil that requirement, provided that only the killer has one. The rock
or club becomes part of the killer's output function and, given the same
motivation to kill, increases the killer's loop gain.
This is the basic principle of hunting animals. Animals, who have a
fixed loop gain since they can't use tools much, constitute an opponent
with predetermined limitations. The task of the hunter is to increase
his own loop gain so as to maximize his output capabilities while
reducing the risk of injury or death to himself as much as possible.
Rocks, clubs, and spears do increase the hunter's loop gain, but they
don't dramatically reduce the risk, since they must all be used at close
range and animals do have a certain basic weaponry in the form of teeth,
claws, hooves, and horns. The ideal method for killing an animal,
therefore, would be one that can be applied at a range outside the
retaliatory efforts of the animal. The thrown spear, although not as
effective in killing as the thrust spear, essentially removes the risk
of immediate injury to the hunter. The bow and arrow, still not as
effective as a close-range thrust with a spear or knife, creates still
greater safety and increases the loop gain relative to that achievable
with a thrown spear.
The ultimate achievement so far is the hand-gun or even better the
rifle. It is possible to kill the quarry from a distance at which the
quarry remains completely unaware of the hunter, and raises the loop
gain to a degree where, with care, the hunter can be almost certain of a
killing or disabling injury of the quarry. The error can be removed with
a single shot, and there is no disturbance of personal safety. All that
the hunter needs to do is decide to take the prey, and the deed is done
with minimal effort other than what is required to get within half a
mile, upwind, of the animal. The only trick is in finding an
unsuspecting animal; the rest is routine.
-----------------------------------
When people kill people, the situation isn't as simple as killing an
animal. If one person uses a rock, pretty soon everyone will carry a
rock, and the killer will have to use a spear. And so it goes until
everyone carries a gun, then an Uzi, then a phaser set to kill, and so
forth as technology progresses. The loop gain and the risk increase
together, without limit in a positive-feedback process.
As this process escalates, people who wish only to protect themselves
will start carrying arms. As this presents a considerable danger to
those who wish or might feel obliged to kill, the strategy of killing
will change accordingly. What would have begun as an armed robbery now
becomes too dangerous, because the victim might pull a gun and shoot the
robber. So the safest thing for the robber to do is simply to shoot the
victim without a confrontation, preferably in the back and from ambush,
and then search the body at leisure and in safety. When stopped by the
police, the safest thing for the armed robber to do is to shoot
immediately with the greatest firepower available.
There still seems to be some constraint in armed confrontations,
possibly due to myths about the fair fights that took place in the Old
West (where most killings were shots the back or from ambush, so I have
heard). These constraints, however, are fading; drive-by shootings are
one example of a totally unfair fight, as are letter-bombings and
poisonings. It has become too risky to engage in a fair fight. Even
accepting a surrender is risky; the person with the white flag, adult or
child, may have several pounds of explosive under his or her belt.
The logic of arms is inescapable and inevitable in its consequences.
Arming for safety is an illusion, since the agressors will simply change
tactics to preserve their own safety and effectiveness: improve their
firepower, expose themselves less to retaliatory fire, and avoid giving
any warning of an attack. In the end there will still be no safety;
anyone, anywhere, any time, can be drilled through by a bullet fired
from such a distance that the killer can simply stroll away at leisure.
This positive feedback process is well-developed in the United States.
It began in England a couple of decades ago, when police began for the
first time to carry loaded guns. Being a feedback process, there is no
way to assign causes to particular groups; it is just as hard to decide
which horse is ahead or behind on a merry-go-round. Each group in the
arms race can justify its need for more armament, and excuse its
progressive abandonment of the rules of civilized life on the basis of
self-preservation. And absolutely nothing can stop the escalation.
Nothing, that is, but going up a level and recognizing the insanity for
what it is.
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Joel Perkin (950809.0945 EDT) --
Glad to hear from you. I think we'd all like to hear more about how Ed
Ford's system is working out in Joe Sirzenga's country. Please don't
mistake my post for a criticism of the system as it is practiced. I am
concerned only that when this system is described, it not be described
in terms that can be confused with older approaches.
What Ed proposes does encompass control, IMHO. Kids aren't born
with the ability to make decisions on the higher levels of
perceptions like you and I have for years. Most elementary kids
don't stop to think about the rules or consequences before they
act.
This brings up the important point that children are not born with all
levels of organization in full working order. As they grow up they
develop the levels more or less in order, and at every stage until some
time after puberty, they can be led in terms of levels higher than those
they already understand and control. The adult can make arbitrary rules
for children without any conflict as long as the children have not
learned how to make their own rules. If the rules are useful, logically
consistent, and impartially applied, the children may decide to adopt
them when they are developed enough to make such decisions.
Problems arise when adults continue to try to control children past the
time when the children are ready to assume control of the same
variables. You can pick up a baby and set it down anywhere, with no
objection from the baby. Not so with a two-year-old. Once the child has
learned to control perceptions up to some level, the adult has lost most
of the ability to control the child at the same level. If adults were
aware of this they could back off when conflict begins to occur and turn
their attention to higher levels. I can envision a very interesting
program of PCT research in child psychology, aimed at learning how to
identify just where an individual child is in this process of developing
levels of control. Frans Plooij and his wife Hedy have done this with
infants up to two years old, using PCT; there is room for much more work
with school-age children.
I'm sure Joe and my mom would love to show you all how the system
works. The results are there in the kids who have learned to
control their behavior.
We most certainly would like to see how the system works, or hear any
interesting tales about it.
However, I would not like to think that these children are learning to
control their _behavior_. In my opinion, it is control of their
perceptions that they are learning, and even if they weren't taught how
to do that, they couldn't do anything else ;-).
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Best to all,
Bill P.