Influence; misc

[From Bill Powers (920919.0900)]

Greg Williams (920919.0800)--

Being careful here, I would want to rephrase this and say that Pat
GUESSES that she is controlling her own perception of the kids'

eating >food she considers healthy if she HAS NOT SEEN an error signal
in that >perception and managed to correct it, but that she has
WITNESSED >successful control of her own perception of the kids'
eating food she >considers healthy only when she HAS SEEN an error
signal in that >perception and managed to correct it. However,
assuming that Pat IS >successfully controlling her perception of the
kids' eating food she >considers healthy, she is accomplishing that
control by INFLUENCING the >kids. Possibly you don't buy this last
claim. If so, please explain >your problem with it.

Also being careful, I want to reserve control to refer to situations
in which the loop is actually closed. The reason is that we often do
things because we _hope_ that they are going to have some effect, a
situation that easily transforms into one where we _imagine_ that the
effect is occurring and forget that we have no actual information
about the results. Until Pat finds a way of perceiving the actual
effects of her nutritional scheme, she is operating open loop.

I don't mean to suggest that she should be operating closed-loop.
That's impossible. The technology and the understanding of the
biochemical systems just isn't there. In areas like this, and there
are many, the best we can do is use the old statistical approach. We
can look at the data about lots of people, assume that the present
situation is typical, and act accordingly, with no proof that our
actions are in fact having the "typical" effect. We will, of course,
have the usual success rate that comes out of this approach. But what
else can we do?

In this case, then, Pat is applying an influence to the kids, but she
does not know what influence she is having. If we put this as you
suggest, saying "Pat is INFLUENCING the kids," then it isn't clear
that she is only manipulating a cause, while the effect is the
resultant of many independent variables which change without her
permission or knowledge. All she can control is what she can perceive:
namely, what the kids are eating. That's true control; what they eat,
or at least have available to eat, is adjustable by her. We don't need
to call that an influence, and indeed shouldn't, because it's a
controlled outcome of the actions she takes.

There WOULD be a problem if Pat gave our kids food which she

considers >healthy AND that tastes bad to the kids.

Right. The problem would not be with the giving, but the eating. The
kinds will eat if it's tasty to them, no problem. So you can control
what they're eating and they won't push back. If they don't like the
taste, they'll push back against the taste, not the eating.

You present a world exactly in the form you
want, which the child is only dimly beginning to perceive.

I don't follow you here. Can you expand on this? It seems to me that
Pat is NOT presenting the world "in the form she wants" to the kids,
but tacitly acknowledging their wants in order to successfully

control >her perceptions which she wants to control.

I don't know the developmental stage of your kids right now, but there
must have been a time when they simply ate what they were given
because they were hungry and it tasted fine to them. From their point
of view that's all that was going on. But to Pat, something else was
going on. She was planning, choosing, and preparing meals controlled
along dimensions that the kids didn't perceive. Tastiness was only one
dimension, picked for practical reasons having to do with the kids'
goals. The other dimensions mattered much more: it had to be food that
was free of poisons, that was nutritionally balanced, and that fit an
aesthetic view of how we should live in relation to nature. None of
these considerations meant anything to the kids, yet by eating the
food Pat gave them, they were fitting into her picture of how to raise
children and how to be in the world. As they get older, they may
gradually come to perceive what's going on in similar terms, and then
what she's doing (and what they themselves are doing at the table)
will take on added meaning in their perceptions. They may, of course,
decide on different reference levels for those new perceptions.

The "trick" of her achieving control of her desired perception is in
her pairing WHAT SHE WANTS with WHAT THE KIDS WANT.

In the context, however, the important thing is that she was
controlling perceptual variables at a higher level than they were.
That means that she can work around their wants as a means of
controlling for what she thinks is important, because their wants are
at a lower level, and many different wants would be consistent with
the higher goal. This isn't just a "pairing," because Pat has much
more flexibility than the kids do. As you pointed out -- if they want
"cool" food, Pat can probably think up something acceptably cool that
still exemplifies her own higher-level perceptions and goals.

Doing something together that neither one could do alone.

Symmetrical (more-or-less) purposive influence?

Not of each others' behavior. It's control of a variable of a special
kind: one that needs two independent control systems to be controlled.
Carrying a bed upstairs is an example. Both want the bed upstairs. But
neither can do it alone. So each one picks one end of the bed to
control, and with just a little mutual interference the bed gets where
they both want it.

When four people try to carry the bed upstairs it gets physically
easier -- less weight for each to carry -- but organizationally
harder. The potential for conflict goes up steeply with the number of
people trying to "help." If each person tries to control for
_position_, then only three of the people can control at the same time
without conflict; three points determine the location and orientation
of a plane. At least one person has to control for _lifting force_
instead of position, contributing only a force and not trying to make
the bed be in a given location.

If you want to help the little old lady who can lift only 40 pounds
pick up her 50-pound suitcase, you will lift with a force of 35
pounds, and let her supply the remaining 15 as well as the reference-
level for position. Then only one of you is controlling for where the
suitcase is. You keep your upward force constant; she varies her
upward force and creates the desired position. No conflict.

This isn't a case of symmetrical purposeful influence _of the other's
behavior_. Whatever mutual influences remain, they are only
disturbances which the other's control system can handle without
difficulty.

ยทยทยท

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Glad you're open to all possibilities for our CSG simulation language.

If any IBMers want more details on the current version of TUTsim,

which >starts at $130 --

It may start there, but doesn't it go up pretty high when you get the
options that make it useful? And does it have a Mac version?
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Ray Jackson (920918) --

First, my apologies for attributing your nice comments about Dag to
Ray Allis.

And my thanks for your encouraging words about keeping up the
struggle, which have meaning to many of us, not just Rick Marken. To
paraphrase an older work on human behavior:

Thunder over the mountain. Perseverance furthers. The superior man
carries an umbrella.
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Best to all,

Bill P.