[from Gary Cziko 930101.1623 GMT] (I had to go back and change 92 to 93 on
this one)
Rick Marken (921229.0800) boasts:
By the way -- all this work (including the modeling) was done in HyperCard
with HyperTalk (inspired by some offline discussions with Rich Thurman).
Take THAT, C freaks.
Rick, could you say a bit more about the relative tradeoffs of using "real"
languages like Pascal and C compared to HyperTalk? I am always looking for
easy ways for me and my students to do real PCT research. STELLA seems
fine for setting up systems and letting them run but has no provision for
real-time human interaction which you seem to be able to do with HyperTalk.
One study I would like a music student to do is to look at children's
ability to control aspects of musical melodies. In particular, I would
like to have the Mac play a simple song like Happy Birthday, but with
disturbances to the pitches of the notes. The disturbance would be a
continually varying "expansion" factor. A value of 1.00 would make things
sound normal while a value of .50 would half the frequency. This would be
done in relation to an anchor note that would never change. The
disturbance would in effect "expand" or "contract" the pitch contour of the
song while keeping the ordinal relations of the notes intact. I would be
interesting to see how people (particularly developing) could control the
song.
Could HyperCard be used for a study like this?
P.S. When your stack is polished up to your satisfaction, I would also
like a BinHexed copy sent to me.
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Powers, Marken, Williams, and Ford have been discussing beliefs. In the
original post to bring this up, Bill Powers (921229.2100) wonders:
The greatest mystery of the human mind, in my view, is this
phenomenon of Belief. Nazis are easy to deal with, because their
beliefs are threatening to our physical safety and we can flatly
reject them. But what about other belief systems, invented and
accepted apparently at random? Is the human mind just naturally
susceptible to any belief that comes around, no matter how
childish and full of holes? Is there something about our highest
levels of organization that demands some belief, any belief, to
fill the vacuum?
Since beliefs seem to be one defining aspect of culture and since I am very
interested in culture, I have wondered about this, too.
Doesn't the overall structure of PCT give some clues as to the origin and
function of beliefs? If it sits at the top of the hierarchy, doesn't it
imply that this ability to believe somehow evolved and was found to be
advantageous in the development of our species? Beliefs make it possible
for people to put off concerns for their own immediate needs and make
sacrifices for the community. Don Campbell refers to this as extending our
"hedonistic calculi." Men leave their families unprotected to fight
neighboring groups because of their beliefs concerning country or God or
the emperor, etc. Don't these beliefs allow collective action that would
make one group having them more likely to survive compared to a group where
everyone was just looking out for number one?
What is also fascinating about discussing beliefs is that by doing so we
seem to be moving up yet another level, and if we can do this on CSGnet,
doesn't it mean that EVERYONE can potentially do this? Perhaps PCT will be
a tool by which humankind can socially evolve to a level where instead of
varying actions to control our beliefs we will start to vary our beliefs to
control higher level reference levels for things such as peace and a
healthy planet. A nice thought for the first day of 1993.--Gary
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Gary A. Cziko Telephone: 217.333.8527
Educational Psychology FAX: 217.244.7620
University of Illinois E-mail: g-cziko@uiuc.edu
1310 S. Sixth Street Radio: N9MJZ
210 Education Building
Champaign, Illinois 61820-6990
USA
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