[From Fred Nickols (2010.05.23.1526 PDT)]
I’m a gambler of long-standing (although I’m not a
roulette player) so I’ll hazard a guess as to why the roulette player
wants the ball to drop into a red pocket: He (or she) wants to experience
the elation of winning; in particular, winning against the odds.
Why? Because doing so is evidence that you are “lucky.”
Why do you want evidence that you’re “lucky”? So you
can justify continued gambling.
Poker, which I play a lot, is a different matter. There is
some skill involved in how you play your cards, reading other players, reading
the betting patterns, and in betting your own hand. As Kenny Rogers sang,
“Knowing when to hold ‘em and knowing when to fold ‘em.”
That might not be the case with another particular
gambler/roulette player. The gambler in question might want to lose
(which I’ve done when I was in an “Aw f… it” mood).
Why does anyone do anything? Who knows? What I have
come to believe is that our behavior has direct and immediate effects –
what I’m calling “proximate outcomes” – and these
direct and immediate effects also fan out or ripple through the structure of
the situation and make themselves felt elsewhere, later on. These I call “ultimate
outcomes.”
In terms of workplace performance, which is where I focus,
managers, ordinary employees and executives are all to some extent profitably
viewed as interventionists; that is, they change things here and now so as to
realize some other result elsewhere, later on.
PCT does a dandy job of explaining and accounting for “proximate
outcomes” but I’ve struggled in using it to get at “ultimate outcomes.”
To my own way of thinking, there are linkages between the two and, as
interventionists, you need a grasp of those linkages if your immediate actions
are to have any hope of realizing those downstream results.
Now it may be the case that the method of levels will prove
useful in getting at those ultimate outcomes – at least as far as the
performer can be said to hold them as a reference value for some downstream
target variable. But, I’m a little wary of hierarchy in this
context; I prefer instead to think in terms of linkages, often in terms of
means-ends chains.
Anyway, my experience with gambling and with other gamblers is
that it isn’t so much the winning that matters as it is being viewed as a
winner – by yourself and by others.
Regards,
Fred Nickols
Managing Partner
Distance Consulting LLC
1558 Coshocton Ave - Suite 303
Mount Vernon, OH 43050-5416
www.nickols.us | fred@nickols.us
“Assistance at a Distance”
···
From: Control Systems
Group Network (CSGnet) [mailto:CSGNET@LISTSERV.ILLINOIS.EDU] On Behalf Of Bruce
Gregory
Sent: Sunday, May 23, 2010 11:20 AM
To: CSGNET@LISTSERV.ILLINOIS.EDU
Subject: Re: Gambling and PCT
[From Bruce Gregory (2010.05.23.1420 EDT)]
[From Bill Powers (2010.05.23.0852 MDT)]
Bruce Gregory (2010.05.23.0948 EDT)
BG: I assume the gambler has many reference levels, but I am
not interested in his preference for cross dressing or single malt scotch, so
I’ll stick with the color red and the wheel.
BP: I was referring to other controlled variables having to do with “how
to gamble”, one of them being placing chips in a red square or diamond so
they clearly indicate which color is being bet on. Another would be forming a
stack of chips, another would be sliding the stack toward the red-black
squares, and so on. Those are all control processes having to do with spatial
relationships among configurations and transitions from one configuration to
another. Somewhere around those levels. They’re part of the mechanisms of
gambling.
BG: Indeed.
BP earlier: Another direction to go is to ask what is the
immediate purpose of setting a reference level for “chips on red” and
actually bringing it about. By asking for the immediate purpose, I mean to try
to take the smallest step we can that leads up a level. If the gambler puts his
chips on red, what outcome does he intend to produce by doing this, if he can?
What would you suggest?
BG: I suspect he would like to see the ball drop into
a red pocket. He may take a variety of acts such as calling to the ball, or
praying silently, but none of these is likely to improve the likelihood he will
see the ball wind up in a red pocket.
BP: If he wants the ball to drop into a red pocket, why doesn’t he reach out,
stop the wheel, intercept the spinning ball, and drop it into a red pocket? Is
there some procedure or rule that he is maintaining or adhering to? Or that
someone else insists on? You indicate that he may actually be using some
methods to “improve the likelihood that he will see the ball wind up in a
red pocket.” Without evaluating the effectiveness of the method, can we
say he is trying to control the fall of the ball – that he would do so if he
could and it were permitted?
BG: He is obeying a large number of rules, both spoken and
unspoken. (I doubt there is a formal rule: Don’t spit in the face of the
croupier. Or Don’t expose your genitals to the other players. I don’t see that
the actions I described require one to explore all these other conventions.
And anyway, I was asking why he has set the goal of the ball dropping into the
red pocket, whether or not he has any way of getting to that goal. Wanting the
ball to fall into a red pocket is at the same level as wanting the chips to be
on the red or black square or wanting the chips to be in a neat stack, or
wanting to the chips to be in place before the ball drops. The next level up
would have to do with what he want to happen as a result of the ball dropping
into the red pocket – why he wants the ball to drop in that pocket.
Bruce, I’m asking these questions so you can provide the answers instead of my
doing it. They seem like obvious, dumb questions because there are obvious
answers – I could answer them easily, but that would be my understanding at
work, not yours. Maybe you’re not a gambler and don’t do any of these things,
or haven’t done them in the past (I have, twice). In that case we could talk
about why your reference value for putting chips you have purchased on colored
squares of any kind is zero, and then what not doing it accomplishes for you,
and so on.
BG: We could, but what would the point be? We normally do
not ask the subjects in an experiment to detail their life histories in order
to explain why they are participating in this particular experiment at this
particular time, do we?
BP earlier: If the gambler you’re thinking of simply likes
to put chips on red squares for the sake of doing so, we’ve gone as far as
possible up the levels. We could list other controlled variables at the same
level, but I can’t help feeling that there is some kind of immediate purpose
which would not be achieved if this control process were not carried out. What
do you say?
BG: Nothing. Since the gambler comes back to the casino
whenever he can, he clearly is controlling strongly for putting chips on red
squares. Since I have no evidence to the contrary, I’ll assume this reference
level was established by reorganization.
BP: This is why I say this would be better if we could ask questions of a real
gambler, or if you were talking about yourself instead of having to make
guesses about some indefinite other person. If you were gambling at the wheel,
would you be placing chips just for the sake of placing chips? Some people
might be using the placement of chips to teach someone else how to play
roulette, or might be an undercover agent checking to see if the wheel is
honest, and so forth. But as I understand the term “gambler,” a
gambler’s purpose would be something else, which I don’t want to guess at
because you’re working out the answers, not I.
BG: I’m not that interested in the answers. Besides PCT is
about the “how” rather than the “why” as far as I can tell.
There are only two answers to “why” questions, either because of a
perception being controlled at a higher level or because of reorganization.
Unless I have missed something. Determining which is operative would require a
lot more experimentation, and in most cases the ultimate answer would be
reorganization, would it not?
Am I leading you somewhere you don’t want to go? Just say so and I’ll quit – I
know the answers I would come up with, but you would have no reason to believe
them. You might believe answers you arrive at yourself. But we don’t have to go
on with this if you don’t think it’s getting anywhere.
BG: You are not leading me anywhere. I’m happy with the
situation as I described it.
Namaste,
Bruce