From Tom Bourbon [931019.0829]
From Greg Williams (931019)
Rick Marken (931017.2000)
I attended the Human Factors Society meeting in Seattle last week.
I can report with considerable confidence that our secret is
still safe. There was no talk of people controlling their own
perceptions but plenty of talk about the cues, information, stimuli
and other "factors" that control people.
Greg, I can't speak for Rick, but it is before the commuting hour in
California and he is not on the net. I have had a few recent experiences
talking to people about human factors. (As part of the early song and dance
before we decide whether to submit proposals to a federal agency.) I'll bet
his answers to your questions will be nearly the same as the ones I would
give.
I think I understand what you (as a PCTer) mean by "controlling their
own perceptions." Do you think you understand what the nonPCTers meant
by "control [of] people"?
Had you asked me that question, I would answer, "Yes, I do. They mean
exactly what they (people in the HF community) say: information, stimuli,
cues, error and the like in the environment control our actions." The
HFers even play along with the test, as Rick indicated. All you need to do
is say, or suggest, that people control their own perceptions and you
encounter the corrective actions -- raised eyebrows, restatements of what
you said that "correct" your mistake, indifference, changes of subject, and
so on.
Now that I think of it, there have been some pretty good examples of the
orthodox HF view on this net recently. Rick understood.
Did you avail yourself of this splendid
opportunity for bridge building to attempt to find out what they mean?
Bridges can't be built from the beach into the ocean. There must be another
side. And when people build bridges, isn't it a common practice for the
construction to come from both sides toward the middle, rather thanm from
just one side? Besides, on the issue of the causes of nehavior, most of the
HFers I have met and worked with or those whose work I have read make their
ideas pretty clear -- no need to labor long and hard to decipher what they
mean. (See the answer to your previous question.)
Might their "control" translate to your "influence"?
It is not for us to tell people their words mean something other that what
they insist they mean. Many of them are certain that our phrase, "behavior
controls perception," translates to their "behavior is a response to, or is
controlled by, perception." It is the idea behind the words that counts:
lineal causal systems rather than perceptual control systems.
Do you think what
they mean by "control" is completely incompatible with what you (as a
PCTer) mean by "control"?
Yes. When "they" (the majority of HF people I know of) speak of the
causes of behavior.
To quote you (more or less) on this topic:
what do the their models say, as opposed to what do they say about the
models?
For many of them, the models "say" things like, "environmental information
guides/directs/causes actions," or "error (in the environment)
guides/controls/directs behavior," or "people (as control systems) control
their actions/outputs/behavior." From what I saw in Rick's posts, those
must have been the kinds of things the models said to him.
Greg, have you talked to any "real" human factors people recently who
understood and accepted the idea that people control many of their own
perceptions? Have you read many recent articles and chapters where HF people
state that idea clearly and unambiguously, so the reader does not need to
read the meaning in, or wonder if that might be what the writer intended to
say? If so, pass them along. I haven't come across them during our
discussions with the Feds, and it looks like Rick didn't find them at the
professional meeting he attended.
Until later,
Tom