[From Bjorn Simonsen (2005.08.28, 10:10 EST)]
[From Rick Marken
(2005.08.26.1000)]
I think one aspect of Western
liberalism (a la Dickens, Ibsen, and FDR, for
example) is the belief that
social circumstances cause misbehavior (crime,
drug abuse, discrimination,
etc). So liberals who want to do good
tend to
favor what are basically
behavioral solutions to social problems: solutions
aimed at changing the
socio-economic environment (the social stimuli) in
order to produce a change in
behavior (less crime, drug abuse and
discrimination). The best known
behavioral psychologists in the US - Watson
and Skinner – were both, I
believe, political liberals.
People behave the way they
behave, but all people behave in accordance with PCT. I know many people insist
other people ought to change their behavior to change the sosio-economic
environment. (In Norway we shall have an election for a government 09.12.)
They believe that people control
their actions, but they don’t know PCT.
You say:
…………………. PCT
shows that the difference between
liberals and conservatives was simply a difference in the part
of the control loop at which one focused their attention.
I thought we only focus our
attention at our perceptions (matrices of perceptual signals) and not in other
parts of the loop. If we perceive what we wish to perceive, the error is zero
and our perception is the nearest representation of the environment we
perceive. If we control our perceptions and, at the moment, not perceive what
we want to perceive, our perceptions are not the nearest representation of the
environment we perceive. Because the error is not zero and the feedback signal
is a part of the input quantity. – Am I wrong?
The way you describe how the
conservatives think, I think is more PCT-ish.
I think conservatives tend to
believe that people themselves rather
than their social circumstances are responsible for misbehavior.
So conservatives who want to
do good tend to favor policies aimed at
changing the person rather than the social circumstances as the
means of reducing misbehavior. The current conservative approach
to changing people seems to be trying to get people to be religious,
under the assumption, I suppose, that people who
get religion will start
making good choices – they will stop choosing
crime, drug abuse,
discrimination, etc.,
but I neither think most of them
know PCT.
I think both liberals and conservatives often control
their (political) perceptions at the Program level. When thy do that they also
control their perceptions at the very high System concept level.
(Allan Randall said: “Take for example, the act of driving to work in your
car. You are continually controlling for perceiving yourself near the centre of
the road by acting on the steering wheel percept. But why are you doing that?
Examine yourself very carefully, and you will discover that you are in fact
controlling for getting to work, only on a somewhat longer time scale. On an
even longer time scale, you are controlling for making money, and ultimately
for being happy.)
In the same way, liberals control
different programs than the conservatives because they at the same time control
different perceptions the System Concept Level. When we perceive their actions
(what they do and what they say), we say they behave different because those disturbances
will activate different parts of our control system. The perceptual signals
activate earlier established control systems, earlier established by earlier
experiences and reorganization.
As a PCTer I am neither a
liberal nor a conservative, or perhaps I am both.
That was the point of my
discussion in the paper. I am a conservative
because I know that people
are autonomous and select, to some extent, their
own goals. However, I am also
a liberal because I know that a social
system
that does not provide people
with the degrees of freedom needed to keep
their perceptions matching
their goals will end up with many people doing
things to achieve their goals
that prevent others from achieving theirs.
[From Rick Marken
(2005.08.26.1315)
So I am a liberal/conservative
hybrid who wants people to be able to freely
(i.e., autonomously) select
their goals in an environment that provides the
degrees of freedom that _lets
them reliably achieve those goals (i.e.,
control)_.
You may call yourself whatever
you wish. I read your description above and I perceived what I wish to perceive,
and I like it.
But I wish to say something more
about the concepts liberal and conservative.
If I carry out a political test, some
scientists good at statistical procedures have modeled a large bunch of
questions IV. My answers are the DV. In a sophisticated way they describe me as
liberal or conservative.
If they do the same with 2000
people, they say that those people answered so and so. The may gladly call them
liberals and conservatives. But problems arise
when stories about them are created. (Tim A. Carey)
So liberals who want to do good tend to
favor what are basically
behavioral solutions to social problems: solutions
aimed at changing the
socio-economic environment (the social stimuli) in
order to produce a change in
behavior (less crime, drug abuse and
discrimination).
NB. You didn’t tell stories about
liberals because you said “So liberals who
want to do good”
We PCT-ers know better. All person
control their own perceptions
when they answer the test. Therefore we
test each person separate if we want to know which perceptions they control.
I think the problem we create if
we make stories about liberals and conservatives are the same problem we create
many System Concepts as “the United States Army”, “Los Angeles Dodgers”, “physics”,
“the government”, “the family” and “The System” (BCP).
bjorn
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