I suppose this ought to lead to
a thread on conflict analysis, but I won’t do that just yet. I’ll just
sketch my concept of it, which clearly differs from yours.
Firstly, I’m assuming that a conflict exists when there are two or more
perceptions that cannot all be brought simultaneously to their reference
values, whether or not any of them are at a given moment being actively
controlled.
[From Bill Powers (2007.11.18.0530 MDT)]
Martin Taylor 2007.11.17.16.44 –
Why don’t you do that Wiley article Dick Robertson is asking
about?
Yes, this is definitely different, since there is no way to find out if
the perceptions are in conflict without trying to bring them to their
respective reference states. In fact, simply sequencing perceptions can
often do away with the conflict – let the other person go through the
door first, then go through yourself. Is that a conflict under your
definitions anyway?
You appear to be
working on the principle that if a perception is not being actively
controlled, it cannot be party to a conflict.
Yes, that is definitely my concept of a conflict: an active conflict.
Since there are millions of perceptions that are potentially in conflict,
I don’t think there’s any point about talking about “hidden” or
“covert” conflicts. I’d settle for “potential”
conflicts if we could agree than they don’t cause any harm.
Economists are really talking
about conflicts, and conflicts indicate that something isn’t organized
right.
If so, then we have
a difference of definition, which could be resolved by using terms such
as “active” conflict, and “hidden” or
“covert” conflict.
Not necessarily so. Resource (degrees of freedom) limitations ensure
conflict.
Yes, and when the system is organized to try to control more variables
than there are degrees of freedom, the conflict will be observed. That’s
bad organization, and the system will (one assumes) reorganize to correct
that design flaw. Trying to accomplish the impossible is not good
planning.
You also have an infinity of
other choices to make at the same time, if you say that a choice is
simply all the other things you could do instead.
Whether the
conflict becomes covert because the person decides a particular
perception is less worth controlling than another, or whether it remains
active, is another question.
We are talking about transactions, here, not about the myriads of things
you might do with the money if you refused to buy the
offering.
But that’s exactly what you’re talking about. The money is simply a
variable that is affected by more than one controlled variable, creating
a link between them: buying N1 units of one variable when the budget is B
dollars means you can buy only
B - P1*N1
N2 <= ---------
P2
units of the other. If you set the reference level for number N2 that
way, N2 can be any number you want in that range: there’s no conflict. If
you believe that people always want to acquire an unlimited numbers of
every kind of good, you’e simply making a false assumption; I can point
right now to at least one person who doesn’t. He’s right here, typing.
Anyone who does want an unlimited amount of any good is necessarily in
conflict as soon as the attempt is made, because that’s impossible. So
that’s a design flaw and the person needs to reorganize. Such a person
would never have enough of anything, and would constantly be wasting his
energy fighting his own conflicting desires, not to mention those of
other people who want the same things in unlimited amounts.
The potential
conflict for the purchaser is between the controlled perception(s) that
might have their error(s) reduced by making the purchase and the
controlled perception of the amount of money you have (assuming the
reference level to be higher than the amount you do have, which is not
the case for all people at all times).
Yes, we agree about that. But such conflicts exist between all controlled
variables; if you expend all your resources trying to bring one variable
to its maximum possible value by any means, whether money is the means or
not, that will prevent your doing the same with any other variable. An
organism organized to behave that way can’t survive.
The purchaser will
make the purchase if the “marginal utility” (there’s the
measuring word) of the decreased error is larger that that of the
increased error of the controlled perception of the amount of money on
hand.
Now you’re talking about the case where the demands are finite and the
gains are low. Such systems are not in conflict; they are simply in
equilibrium, and neither one is at a limit. Both can still correct
errors, though the range of maximum resistance to error is reduced.
Neither one can be a high-gain control system or an integrating control
system, because raising the gain would drive one or both of them to a
limit, and that would be a conflict implying loss of control.
The seller
will make the sale if the marginal utility of the increased error of
losing the good or that derives from the resources expended in providing
the service is less than the decreased error in the perception of the
money on hand.
You will notice that this applies only to the goods actually being
offered and considered for purchase. But it doesn’t involve any conflict
under your terms because both systems can still vary their actions as
needed to oppose disturbances.
I’m sure you will
notice that the above is either tautological or circular. What it does is
to propose a measure and then to use that measure. The resolution of the
circularity is in the PCT resolution of
conflict.
???
In the more general
case, you have only a few dozen degrees of freedom for action at any one
moment, but myriads of perceptions you could be controlling and for which
you have reference values. It is normal and necessary that you choose not
to control most of them (which leads to anothe thread, on tolerance,
which I have long been thinking of starting).
When you say “freedom for action” you imply that there are some
actions you’re not free to take. Why not? Isn’t it because those actions
will be prevented by conflicts, or by hitting limits? Surely there are
more than a “few dozen” degrees of freedom for action at all
levels above, say, configurations (thinking of skeletal d.f.).
How do you
select which perceptions to control actively at any
moment?
Your question gets raised periodically. Several answers are concievable.
One is that, all neural control systems necessarily being one-way, you
turn off a control system of the standard kind by lowering its reference
signal to zero. Since the perceptual signal is inhibitory, no error
signal will ever appear, and thus the system will never act. That
would mean that higher systems can select variables to control simply by
setting nonzero reference levels for them, the rest being left at zero
and thus creating no action under any circumstances.
Another is that higher systems directly reduce the gain of the output
function without altering the reference signal, so even though if is an
error signal, there is no action. In the inverted kind of control system,
where the perceptual signal is excitatory, the reference signal has to be
set to maximum to prevent any action. If the range of the perceptual
signal is larger than the range of the reference signal, however, error
signals can still be generated for very large perceptual signals. Neither
of these solution is quite as nice as the first one.
However that
happens, it is conflict resolution, making potentially active conflicts
become covert. And it comes back to the question of “marginal
utility”. You control those perceptions that matter most at the
moment.
OK, as long as you will admit that the number of covert conflicts is
infinite, or at least equal to the number of all control systems of a
given level factorial. Reorganization continues until conflicts are
resolved, creating a range within which reference signals can be varied
freely and independently without conflict. This can happen, of course,
only if one’s economonic reference signals are organized to stay within
the range that does not cause more than the available money to be spent.
Most of us like to stay well clear of that limit, keeping a pad in
savings to allow for counteracting unexpected disturbances. As long as
that limit is avoided, the quantities of goods purchased are independent
of one another – all that matters is how much of each one you want.
Higher systems learn the practical limits on what lower systems can
effectively be told to want. I don’t think economists have a clue about
that kind of thing.
It’s not obvious
how to determine, as an analyst, what error in perception A will matter
as much as a given leve of error in perception B. But it usually seems
obvious to the person controlling both A and B. And so it is when
perception A is level of money and perception B is one for which the
error would be reduced (for the purchaser) by the transfore of goods and
services.
!!!
I suppose I should delete all my comments up to here, since the
exclamation points indicate where I finally realized something about our
discussion. You are talking strictly about conflicts between different
people. I am talking about those, but more about conflicts within one
person. If I spend all my money on one thing, I can’t spend it on
anything else, so that creates conflicts between different wants that I
have. That has nothing to do with buyers and sellers, except for the fact
that I have to spend money on things to get them. Something similar
happens between buyers and sellers, but that is a matter for negotiation;
no one person can reorganize to resolve a social conflict when
transactions are involved.
My goodness, thinking back over a number of years on CSGnet, I wonder how
many disagreements have come about because of not recognizing which kind
of conflict was being discussed. The equation I wrote above defines the
conditions for avoiding an internal conflict, given that prices are what
they are. N1 and N2 are the reference levels for good 1 and good 2. Given
the prices, higher systems learn to confine the combinations of reference
levels to the ranges that avoid conflict and thus allow continued
control. The prices (and income) determine what those conflict-free
ranges are. When the prices are too confining, conflicts start occurring
even for subsistence levels of N1 … Nn. People start resisting the
prices or searching for alternatives, because they are losing control of
the things important to them. So now interpersonal conflicts between
sellers and buyers begin to arise, and are resolved by people searching
for ways to get what they need without getting into internal
conflict.
I think I’ll stop there to see what you (and Richard K.) think of this
unexpected development.
Best.
Bill P.
agram The diagram above show the indifference curve touches the budget line in A. Then the price on the Giffen good, Weapon, increases. And if we imagine an increase of wages in such a way that we make use of the same indifference line, we move to another point of the indifference curve, B. I have sketched the tangent to the curve in B. This shows the substitution effect and we can see that this effect lower the demanded amount of weapon from x1 to x2. Remember we just imagined an increase of wages equivalent the lowering of purchasing power.