[Martin Taylor 2005.11.06.10.31]
[From Bjorn Simonsen (2005.11.04,15:25 EUST)]
What PCT-ers know.
Believe?
People control their perceptions, not their actions. People have references
for what they wish to do. These references are compared with their
perceptions and the error result in actions. Remember continuity. Actual
perceptions are a result of feedback signals and disturbances. When the
perceptions are like the reference, there are no actions.
People have more or less references for law-abiding behavior. If they don't
have references for law-abiding behavior it is possible to reorganize.
Also remember that nobody other than the person concerned has any access to the perceptions or the references you mention.
My questions.
Should newspapers stop telling us about peoples actions?
What does "should" ask about? It usually carries the implication that there is some absolute reference standard for right and wrong. I know that there are people who believe this, but from a PCT perspective, rightness and wrongness can be assessed only with respect to one's own personal references. So I think you "should" rephrase the question as "Would you prefer newspapers to stop telling us about people's actions."
To address the question, let's follow the implications of a "yes" answer.
Firstly, all we can ever perceive about another person comes from observing (or being told about) their actions. We may try to perceive what they are controlling for by acting to disturb perceptions we guess they might be controlling, but we can't do that with most people. We can only observe what might be the environment from which they create their peceptions, and their actions in that environment. From those observations, we can guess which effects on the environment they might be intending, and from that we might infer something about what perceptions they might be controlling. It's not much, but if we can't directly interact with someone, it's the best we can do.
If we don't observe someone directly with our own senses, we can infer what they are controlling for only if someone tells us about their environment and their actions in that environment. You are asking, then, if we would like not to be able to know about what people are "doing" (what peceptions they are controlling and at what reference levels) if we can't observe them directly.
My own answer is that since the actions of quite a lot of people I never met may affect my own ability to control, I want to be able to know something about those actions, and more than that, I'd like to have some indication as to whether the effects on my environment of those actions are likely to be intended by the actor, or to be side-effects.
In other words, my answer is that newspapers "should" tell us about people's actions, but should tell us more about the environment in which those actions occurred than they usually do at present.
Should the judicial system not pass sentences viewed in the light of what we
call criminal actions?
In judicial systems based on English law, "intent" matters. Also, criminal actions often are seen as criminal not because of the action, but because of the environmental consequence of the action. If your finger pulls the trigger of a gun, that's an action. If it happened that the bullet killed someone, that's an environmental consequence. One can't tell if it's criminal without looking further into it. Did your finger pull the trigger because you slipped or someone bumped you when you were putting the gun in its storage place? Did you know the gun was loaded (you should have known, perhaps, but that's a different question). If you controlled a perception of your finger pulling the trigger, and you knew the gun was loaded, did you know that someone was in the line of fire? If you did, and you intended that the bullet hit that person, did you intend that it hit them in a lethal place?
Supposing that all of the things an outside observer can perceive lead that outside observer to perceive criminal intent, the action still isn't criminal if the environmental situation differs. The shooter might be in a war, and the killed person an enemy, for example.
But given that all the circumstances say that the action was criminal, the question is whether the judicial system should pass some sentence, meaning that the criminal's ability to control is reduced in some way. A fine reduces the criminal's ability to control using the actions of other people; a jail sentence reduces the physical range of the effects of the criminal's actions. (I don't consider the death penalty, as almost no countries in the developed world still permit it, even though it does rather reduce the criminal's abiity to control).
The question then resolves into what effects reducing the criminal's ability to control will have on MY ability to control. The answer to that depends rather on how the particular criminal's activities affect me directly, and on how the criminal's sentence influences the actions of other potential criminals. As a rule, I _know_ the answer to neither question, but I have beliefs based on prejudice, intuition, and analysis. The same applies to you, so we may give different answers to your question. My own answer is that is is likely that if the judicial system failed to pass any sentences, my ability to control would be much more affected than if it passed some, but that if the sentences tended to be too severe or too liberally handed out (as in a police state), my ability to control would also be more likely to be substantially reduced.
Should the journalists learn how to Test for Controlled quantities and tell
people about criminal's purposes?
How would they do that?
Should the judicial system test the Criminals and offer organized and
controlled systems for reorganizing?
I would change the last word "reorganizing" to "learning other ways to control", and answer "yes." Prisons provide criminals with a great deal of training in how to be better (more effective) criminals, and very little in how to be more effective actors in a cooperative society. We spend a lot of money in simply housing criminals an schools for crime, an making sure they can't get out, but almost none in demonstrating and teching more effective ways for the criminals to control whatever perceptions they were controlling in criminal ways. Random reorganization isn't the only means of learning.
Is it correct that if the judicial system knew about PCT, they would not
punished peoples bad actions?
No. See above.
Does it help to punish peoples bad actions?
Does it help whom, or what, and on what time-scale? That's a very ill-defined question.
There aren't easy answers to any of your questions, but I return to my basic premise. You can only tell what people are controlling for by observing their actions, whether or not you interact with then to disturb their perceptions. You can only affect what they control by affecting their environmental feedback paths (by altering the path or by adding disturbances). And you can only control your own perceptions, not anyone else's.
Martin