Bill’s quote is so amazing social.
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On Wed, Jun 29, 2016 at 8:20 AM, Richard Marken rsmarken@gmail.com wrote:
[From Rick Marken (2016.06.29.0820)]
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Vyv Huddy [1152.29.06.2016]
VH: Thanks for your reply Rick. All makes good sense. Your comments reminded me of a Bill Powers quote that Tim Carey mentioned at the April MOL workshops “t he
childhood of the human race is far from over. We have a long way to go before most people will understand that what they do for others is just as important to their well-being
as what they do for themselves.”
RM: And thank you for that wonderful quote from Powers! It is not going to be my sig quote!!
Best
Rick
From: Richard Marken rsmarken@gmail.com
Sent: 28 June 2016 18:11
To: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Re: Magician’s new clothes
[From Rick Marken (2016.06.28.1010)]
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Richard S. Marken
Author, with Timothy A. Carey, of Controlling People: The Paradoxical Nature of Being Human .
Vyv Huddy (26:06:16.2028)
Rick Marken (2016.06.26.840)
RM: Yes. But control by deception takes advantage of control organizations that are fairly stable – that aren’t reorgnizing. So if you know that people are controlling for being “free” then you can get them to
vote for you by saying that you will remove the rules that have constrained their freedom. It’s just like in the rubber band demo (or operant conditioning); set things up so that the only way people can (or think they can) control for what they want is by
doing what you want them to do.
VH: Many people are experiencing massive material challenges, there are many food banks, high rates of unemployment, poor housing etc. For these people I think it was reorganisation to “change the status quo” (the opposite of
usual behaviour in referendums). But unfortunately this group don’t realise that this is going to increase error not decrease it. Unlike an e coli they can’t tumble again and get chance to regain control.
RM: Yes, I guess it could be seen as reorganization; taking a random swing at change. But I like the control by deception idea better because the vote to exit the EU was not really
a random change in a control system. It was specifically what some people wanted voters to do and they got many of them to do it – vote for exit – by lying to them about what it would accomplish. The “buyer’s remorse” immediately after the vote is what you
get when you act to protect a controlled variable from an imagined (rather than a real) disturbance to a controlled variable. There is an example of this consequence of control by deception in “Controlling People”, p. 82-82.
RM: This discussion dovetails nicely into thoughts about what it means to have “power” in society. I believe a person that we see as having power is someone who is able to get lots
of people to do what they say: they can control other people. And the reason they can do this is because the people they control are controlling for things – like loyalty, adherence to rules, etc – that make them controllable. So social power, to my mind,
is the ability to take advantage of what people are already controlling for as the means of getting them to do what you want them to do. When this is done well it’s called governance; when this is done poorly it’s called oppression; when it’s not done at all
it’s called anarchy (but I would argue that power is always being exerted, even in anarchical societies; it’s just that in those there are more individuals – war lords – wielding power in smaller groups.
RM: I’ll leave it at that for now. Whaddaya think?
Best
Rick
The people who are trying to do that are the usual British officer class, born to rule, idiots who’ve been running my country for most of the last century. I’ve little hope this will work
out and devastated for my children who will now not be able to live and work in other EU countries as European citizens, like my sister and many of my friends do now.
–
Richard S. Marken
Author, with Timothy A. Carey, of Controlling
People: The Paradoxical Nature of Being Human.
RM: I think what happened [with the Brexit vote] was, to a large extent, control by deception;
VH: I wonder if there’s a role for reorganisation.
RM: But I think the best person to kick start this discussion is Rupert Young, who is both British and has been monitoring the situation rather closely.
VH: I’m another very very sad UK resident and I’d be interested to hear what Rupert thinks. I really hope what’s left of the UK government continues to fund the research his lab are doing…
VH: The lesson to all is to beware of populist politicians. I now wish I had done more to fight them in the run up to the referendum. A quote from Einstein is ringing in my ears “The world
is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it”
VH: Bill talked about “hackers” in one great post about money. And they are the ones doing the damage right now. So I’d substitute the word evil for hackers.
JK: I’ll watch this space.
RM: Me too!
Best
Rick
–
Richard S. Marken
Author, with Timothy A. Carey, of Controlling
People: The Paradoxical Nature of Being Human.
Richard S. Marken
“The childhood of the human race is far from over. We
have a long way to go before most people will understand that what they do for
others is just as important to their well-being as what they do for
themselves.” – William T. Powers