Loop gain, Imagining reference signals

[From Rick Marken (940524.1045)]

Bill Powers (940523.1100 MDT)--

WHAT?!!!

There is less than one percent deviation of k from its mean value
over these three conditions. If we assume an approximately 2:1
change in gain in the external part of the loop, we would deduce a
2:1 change in the true value of k in the output function in order to
keep the overall loop gain from changing. In other words, the true
value of k seems to be changing in order to maintain an almost
exactly constant overall loop gain!

Does this mean that the k you are measuring is not the true k but one that
includes the external loop gain? I guess so if you were expecting this
measured k to change with the changes in external loop gain.

Bill Powers (940523.2020 MDT) --

Tom and Rick, or anyone else, what are your experiences when you get
ready to do something? Do you get any sense of knowing what you're
going to perceive ahead of time?

Yes. But, like you say, it is generally pretty abstract. When I'm about to
dive in the pool, for example (hey, it is California, folks) I'm anticipating
the feeling of cold; I sort of feel it but it's not quite what I actually
feel when I finally get myself to dive in (and have all my thigh cream wash
off).

When I actually do go through anticipatory perceptions, they are usually
NOT from the perspective from which I will actually be perceiving them. So I
couldn't really be perceiving reference signals for what I will be doing. For
example, when I was a high school gymnast (loooong ago) I would visualize my
routine before doing it but, as I recall, it was always from the perspective
of an observer of the routine; I didn't have, in advance, anything like the
perceptions that I had during the routine simply because they were from a
perspective that I could not possibly have had during the routine; but these
anticipatory perceptions were quite vivid (and, apparently, quite a bit
better than any present time perceptions the judges ever had).

Is there any difference in the detail of this "knowing" when you think of
controlling different modalities of perception?

I'm pretty good at all modalities, with the possible exception of touch and
smell. I think I have (or can have, if I try) pretty clear anticipatory
auditory perceptions, especially with music. I can hear the notes (though
probably not in the right key), timbres, dynamics, chords, rhythms, many
simultaneous parts (I can get at least three voices of a fugue going on at
the same time), long phrases. I don't think I can really get entire pieces --
I realize, when I try to listen to it in my head, that I'm fuzzy on much of
the first movement of Mozart's mind boggling G minor string quintet, for
example, even though I think I know every note.

The bottom line is that I think what I do when I imagine something that I
will do in the immediate future is not quite the same as what I do (in terms
of setting references for perceptions) when I actually do it. So I still
think that we can only infer the state of the reference signals that
actually guide our behavior (the state of our controlled perceptions) from
the state of those perceptions themselves; not from imaginings about what we
"would" or "will" do.

Best

Rick