[from Gary Cziko 940215.1520 GMT]
Mary Powers (940213) said:
12. Rejection from others is not negative feedback. Nor is praise
positive feedback. What others say to you or the way they act
towards you is input. Some of those inputs are perceived by you
as different from what you want to perceive, and the amount of
discrepancy is called error. What you do to reduce that error is
negative feedback. Rejection by a person is error-producing if
you have a reference level for acceptance by that person AND
perceive what he is doing or saying as expressing non-acceptance.
The same actions of the other person, or from a different person,
may be neutral to you, or no disturbance.In the same way, praise is not positive feedback. It reduces a
discrepancy between how you want someone else to think of you
and, apparently, an imagined discrepancy. But too much praise is
a disturbance also, in a lot of people, and they will immediately
try to tone it down.
I basically understand and agree with what you say here. But I'm not sure
why you say that others can provide you only with input and not feedback.
If another person is an intermediary between my actions and the perceptual
consequences of my actions (as when I ask my daughter to straighten up her
room), this person IS part of the feedback loop. If my daughter responds
by making her room tidier, she is in effect part of the environmental link
that allows my control loop to (hopefully) reduce its error, i.e., negative
feedback. If instead she responds by throwing more pizza crusts on the
floor, my error is increased and she becomes part of a positive feedback
loop causing me to perhaps raise my voice or take stronger measures to get
the room organized.
As you say, my internally set reference level will determine whether any
perceptual input leads to increased or decreased error and consequent
action, but it also seems to me that other persons can provide me with
feedback, the good kind being negative (which allows me to control what I
want) and the bad kind being positive (which may lead me to "fly off the
handle").
Can you provide me with some input and feedback on my understanding of the
two concepts?--Gary