freedom, positive feedback

CSGnet Archive CSG1995
1

[Rick Marken (950208.1110)]

Martin Taylor (950206 15:30) --

Does everyone have the freedom to buy a 60ft yacht and keep it >moored in

Cannes?

If "freedom" means the ability, in principle, to control a result, then I'd
say "yes". Unlike controlling for travel faster than the speed of light, one
can control for "yacht at Cannes"; and it's been done. Of course, in
practice, most people are not free to control this result, either because
they lack the skill or the inclination. Lack of skill means that they don't
know how to produce this result -- they don't know how to rob, steal, cheat,
or exploit, for example, in order to get the money that gets the yacht. Lack
of inclination means that they have other goals (like being a Monk) that
either prevent the "yacht at Cannes" goal from being selected or that prevent
selection of the means necessary to achieve that goal.

Freedom 's just another word for "haven't got no goals":wink:

Freedom is also just another word for "red herring"; the one that traditional
psychologists bring out as the alternative to the cause-effect model of
behaivor because 1) they have no idea that the cause-effect model IS a model
(rather than a scientific necessity) and 2) they are completely clueless
about the nature of control.

A control system is not free, but it is autonomous (it selects it's own
goals) and responsible (for the inputs it controls).

Lars Christian Smith (950208 12:30 CET) --

The example with driving on the right side of the road is an example >of

spontaneous order.

Spontaneous? Looks like it results from the fact that all the drivers are
control systems.

Such order may be the outcome of a positive feedback process.

If you've ever seen a positive feedback process in action, you'd know that
"order" is not the first thing that would come to mind when you watched it
behave; maybe som ething more like "catastrophe".

It is, of course, true that underlying this process there is a negative >

feedback process, people are avoiding accidents.

Correct! You've got it!

Do you have a disagreement with the characterization of this process >as a

flip-flop positive feedback process?

I have a disagrement with it. As you said, the left-right organization is a
side effect of people avoiding accidents. Where is the positive feedback
process. A positive feedback process is one where all variables in a causal
loop have positive effects on one another -- leading to a runaway increase in
all the variables. I don't see that happening in the traffic example (or any of
your otehr examples).

Maybe you could draw a diagram of the "flip-flop positive feedback" process
that you think is involved in the traffic example?

Best

Rick

2

[Martin Taylor 950208 17:10]

Rick Marken (950208.1110)

Martin Taylor (950206 15:30) --

Does everyone have the freedom to buy a 60ft yacht and keep it
moored in Cannes?

If "freedom" means the ability, in principle, to control a result, then I'd
say "yes". Unlike controlling for travel faster than the speed of light, one
can control for "yacht at Cannes"; and it's been done. Of course, in
practice, most people are not free to control this result, either because
they lack the skill or the inclination. Lack of skill means that they don't
know how to produce this result -- they don't know how to rob, steal, cheat,
or exploit, for example, in order to get the money that gets the yacht. Lack
of inclination means that they have other goals (like being a Monk) that
either prevent the "yacht at Cannes" goal from being selected or that prevent
selection of the means necessary to achieve that goal.

You got part of my point, but there's more. It has to do with social
interaction. The environment of any person includes other people. At least
so far as we understand the situation (which isn't very far, I grant),
it seems that not everyone in the world COULD simultaneously be rich
enough to buy a 60 ft yacht to park on the Cannes waterfront. For some
to do so, others must not. So I would argue that even though any ONE
person may be free to do so, given skill and inclination, "everyone" is
not free to do so, no matter what skills and inclinations everyone has.
(And even if everyone could get rich enough, there isn't enough room
in Cannes harbour, so there again, any ONE can do it, but not everyone
at once). One's freedom is limited by the freedom of others, and by
the conflict that entails.

Freedom is also just another word for "red herring"

Yes, but for more reasons than you bring out. Like "responsibility," it
is a word, and in using it one is either trying to persuade or to inform.
If the latter, the meaning has to be carefully circumscribed. If the former,
"red herring" is what persuasion is all about, if you don't have good
reason and evidence on your side.

Lars Christian Smith (950208 12:30 CET) --

The example with driving on the right side of the road is an example
of spontaneous order.

Spontaneous? Looks like it results from the fact that all the drivers are
control systems.

There's a red herring! Everyone here agrees that "it results from the fact
that all the drivers are control systems." Why does that make it not an
example of spontaneous order?

Such order may be the outcome of a positive feedback process.

If you've ever seen a positive feedback process in action, you'd know that
"order" is not the first thing that would come to mind when you watched it
behave; maybe som ething more like "catastrophe".

Depends where the limit of the positive feedback system is. They all wind
up in stable states, even if there is an explosion on the way! But not
all of them have explosive or catastrophic consequences (except in the
technical mathematical sense, in which sense they all DO have catastrophic
consequences).

A positive feedback process is one where all variables in a causal
loop have positive effects on one another -- leading to a runaway increase in
all the variables. I don't see that happening in the traffic example (or any of
your otehr examples).

"All" is an overstatement, if by that you mean that a positive feedback
loop could not have negative feedback loops as components. All that's
necessary is for ONE variable to be situated so that fluctuations in its
value cause those same fluctuations to be magnified.

Imagine a state without roads (like an enormous parking lot) in which everyone
could drive in a straight line from start to goal. People would have to
avoid one another's cars by dodging one way or the other. If there ever
happened to be a region in which significantly more people, by chance,
happened to dodge to the right more often than they dodged to the left,
then people in that region would come to anticipate that when they met
someone the other would dodge right, so they also would dodge right,
enhancing the tendency. In some other region, by chance, the opposite
might happen, with more people dodging left than right. Either fluctuation
would influence its later magnitude so as to increase the deviation from
dodging either way at random.

Once such a fluctuation had grown sufficiently, it would runaway fast, to
a point at which almost everyone would dodge right and it would be expected,
and perhaps codified into law, that they should do so. A convention would
have come into being. But there would be a boundary area of conflict and
difficulty between regions in which the "left" convention had developed
and in which the "right" had stabilized. If the regions were large enough,
it would be hard for either to change, because of the positive feedback
that pushes both AWAY from the middle. The stabilization comes about
not because of negative feedback, but because you can't get more than 100%
of the people obeying any specific convention.

But of course, the people who obey the convention do so through negative
feedback.

Martin

3

<[Bill Leach 950210.05:22 EST(EDT)]

[Martin Taylor 950208 17:10]

Depends where the limit of the positive feedback system is. They all
wind up in stable states, even if there is an explosion on the way! But
not all of them have explosive or catastrophic consequences (except in
the technical mathematical sense, in which sense they all DO have
catastrophic consequences).

I assume that you are not talking about the positive feedback situation
with a loop gain of >1 and where there is a physical limit to the maximum
output which occurs prior to destruction ie: Oscillator.

-bill