Measuring freedom (was Cause versus mechanism...)

[Martin Taylor 2011.04.14.17.13]

[2011.04.16.23.47] Developing the ideas in this message has become

too long for a single posting, and the initiation has been too much
delayed, so I am posting an unfinished proposal. I hope it is enough
that the general direction of thought can be clear enough for
comment.

···
I thought that the "Cause versus Mechanism..." thread had moved a

long way from the discussion Bill had hoped to engender with his
original posting on this topic, and that the 'ts-'tisn’t discussion
on libertarian concepts was unlikely to come to any resolution
relevant to PCT, so I altered the subject line to what I (vainly)
hope might be a direction in which one might begin to consider the
libertarian ideals (which I think we all hold though we may not
agree with the libertarian mechanisms).

The following quotes are intended only to set the theme, not for

individual comments.

[From Adam Matic, on or about 2011.04.14.15.44]
    On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 10:57 PM, Bill > Powers <powers_w@frontier.net> >         wrote:
        BP: Yes, I was initially attracted to Mises' writings

because of those similarities and the recognition of
purposiveness. But I was gradually turned off by the uses to
which these principles were put…

AM:

      The anarchist among libertarians hold that the government

uses too much coercion and that protection and judging could
be transferred to private companies who could compete and
invent new ways of resolving conflict between two clients.

        BP: ...The "subjective theory of value" sounds very

impressive, but it’s nonsense when examined in detail.

AM:

      The subjective theory of value is just the part that says

value is not inherent to a product. It might sound trivial,
but some other theories of value say that a product is worth
the amount of labor it took to produce it or the sum of prices
of commodities used to produce it or some combination of
those.

      Only if the exchange is agreed upon between both parties

and if there was no fraud in the process, it could be said
that it’s a win-win situation.

      If a company sells things people want to buy, and people

are satisfied with their products, that we could say everyone
wins.

          BP: I don't think libertarians pay

much attention to the problem of Bad Guys. …
Libertarians don’t seem to care much about what happens to
people who end up on the short end of the stick. Maybe the
losers deserve to be weeded out as unfit.

AM: I didn’t get that impression about libertarians. …

      It wouldn't be an ideal system with milk and honey flowing

and lambs playing with wolfs, just a more free system.

      BP: How is malinvested money lost? Isn't it paid to

someone? What happens to it then?

AM:

      It doesn't make more wealth. If the government makes, say,

a bridge just to employ people and the bridge doesn’t get used

  • the money is lost.

And so forth.

Before I get to measuring freedom, I'd like to ask Adam how the

money is lost if the bridge isn’t used? Doesn’t it just get
transferred into other people’s pockets to be used for things they
value more than the money itself? So far as I can see, money is lost
only when someone defaults on a loan. What is lost when the unused
bridge is built is the labour used to design the bridge, manage its
funding and construction, and physically build it. That effort is
lost only in the sense that it might have been deployed elsewhere,
to provide environmental affordances for other people to control
more perceptions than they might otherwise be able to control.

Which provides a segue into how we might go about measuring freedom.

FREEDOM FROM vs FREEDOM TO

An important distinction is the difference between freedom FROM and

freedom TO. Libertarians tend to talk about freedom FROM – freedom
from coercion, freedom from taxation, freedom from legal regulation,
and so forth. Freedom TO, on the other hand, is seldom mentioned
explicitly, even though the primary effect of increased freedom from
regulation, taxation, (etc.) is to increase one’s freedom to control
more perceptions over a wider range of possibility. In my opinion,
the critical measure is freedom TO, whereas freedom FROM is of
concern only because it affects freedom TO.

In what follows, I identify "freedom" with freedom TO. The more I

can do, the more free I am. I do not suppose that everybody wants
unlimited freedom. In what follows, I am assuming that it is a “good
thing” that each person be able to set their own reference level for
how much freedom they want, including levels far above the degree of
freedom they actually could achieve. Hence, the underlying
assumption is that it is desirable for as many people to have as
much freedom as is possible to achieve. This statement is, I think,
the only place in the discussion where that underlying assumption is
made explicit, and I mention it only to point out that the degree of
freedom available to someone may be greater or less than the degree
of freedom they would like to have.

UNITS of Freedom

What might be a unit of freedom? I suggest that the minimal unit is

the ability to control any one perception over some minimal range of
attainable reference values. In 19th and early 20th century
psychophysics, such a “minimal range” was called a “Just Noticeable
difference” (JND), which later research showed to be a rather labile
value. Nevertheless, for our purposes here, we can (sloppily) use a
similar concept as the minimal range of perceptual control – the
“just controllable difference” (JCD), below which one cannot
reliably control a perception. A more precise specification might be
based on something such as the magnitude of disturbance for which
the correct direction of countervailing action is chosen 75% of the
time. But JCD will suffice for the argument that follows.

More freedom exists when a perception can be controlled over a wider

range of reference values, or when more different perceptions can be
controlled over a minimal range of reference values. The limits on
range have many possible sources: physical constraints (someone in a
hospital bedl has a smaller range of reference values for which his
perception of his location can be controlled than does a man in a
jail cell, and still less than a CEO with access to a private jet),
skill or strength constraints, availability or lack of environmental
aids such as lenses or supportive robots, or, importantly, other
people willing to follow your wishes. When Bell was a monopoly
supplier of telephone service, most people had a smaller range of
achievable reference values for the perception of the supplier of
telephone service than they do now.

If you accept this two-dimensional approach to "measuring" freedom

(in quotes because it’s not a true measure at this point), then the
quantity of freedom available to a person is analogous to an area,
defined by its extent in two different dimensions (number of
controllable perceptions multiplied by ranges in JCDs). The quantity
of freedom available to a society is analogous to a volume, the
summation of the freedom available to the individuals in the
society. More total freedom in the society could result from more
people having a given amount of freedom or from some people having
more freedom individually.

Let me use a politician's phrase: "I want to be very clear about

this", and emphasise that this definition of freedom refers to what
one is ABLE to control, not what one is ALLOWED to control. To
illustrate the difference, almost every US citizen is ALLOWED to fly
first class to Europe and take a holiday using only luxury hotels.
Very few US citizens are ABLE to take such a holiday.

LIMITS on Freedom

Ignoring all social interactions, what limits one's freedom? Within

an order of magnitude or so, we are all endowed with more or less
the same sensory and muscular systems, and similar (as compared to
other species) mental capacities, though some of us are
unfortunately limited by birth or by accident in these respects. Yet
there are vast differences in what some of us can control as opposed
to what others of us with equal sensory, muscular, and mental
endowments can control. Where do these differences come from?

Since the parts of the control loops internal to all individuals are

fairly similar in capability, the difference must lie in the
environment. Some of us have access to mechanisms that are not
available to others. If I have a car and you don’t, I can control my
perception of my location over a much wider range than you can, even
if you use public transportation. In this dimension, I have more
freedom than you. My car is an environmental affordance not
available to you. Likewise, if I live in a semi-desert part of
Africa, and you live in England, you can successfully control a
perception of having roses growing in your garden, whereas I cannot.
You have more freedom than me in that you have a controllable
perception that I cannot have. Environmental affordances matter.

VALUE as change in quantity of Freedom

Now let's include the simplest of social interactions, a trade of

money for some good or service. As Adam notes, in the absence of
fraud, this is a win-win situation. The buyer gets perceives the
good or service to be of greater value than the money, while the
seller loses something perceived to be of less value than the money.
But as Bill notes, this may not be true under a wide range of
condition, such as that the seller has more power to influence the
buyer than the buyer has to influence the seller. However, even in a
“money or your life” coercive situation, the choice by the victim
does argue that there is a balance of values. The mugger’s offer not
to kill the victim is of more value to the victim than is the money,
but of less value to the mugger than the money.

Setting aside (for the moment) Bill's limiting case objections,

there remains a problem with any instance of trade, and that is the
notion of “value”. Why does a person feel that one otion has a
greater value to her than does another option? I propose that the
“value” is exactly the perceived change in the quantity of freedom
available to the person.

If I buy a car, not having had one, I now have a wider range of

possibility for control of my perception of my location than I did
before. But I have less money that could have been used to buy a
wide range of other things, which also could have given me a wider
range of possibility for control. Whether that loss of money
substantially alters my freedom in the dimension “number of
controllable perceptions” depends on how much money remains
available to me. If I don’t have much money, the reduction of
freedom in controllable perceptions may be substantial. If I do have
a lot of money, it may be negligible.

This last observation is important when considering the amount of

freedom a person has. The amount of money one has makes a big
difference on how free one is. The value of a dollar is normally
less to a rich person than to a poor person because gaining or
losing a dollar makes very little difference either to the range or
to the number of controllable perceptions available to the rich
person (though there could be occasions when the rich person needs
one more dollar to achieve some objective, in which case the dollar
might have great value to that rich person). The function relating
monetary wealth to freedom as defined above is not a linear
function, by any means. For one thing, everyone has to eat if they
are to control any perceptions at all, and unless one has the
environmental affordances to grow all one’s own food, to eat costs
money. At the very least, the cost of eating has to be subtracted
from the money available to enhance one’s freedom.

There is another, more significant, way that the function relating

money to the quantity of freedom is nonlinear. As the number of
perceptions controllable by way of using money as part of the
feedback path increases, a different limit becomes increasingly
important. That is the limit everyone has on the degrees of freedom
for output. We time multiplex (do one thing then another) to get
around this intrinsic limitation, but there is a limit to how
rapidly one can shift from controlling one perception to controlling
another. We call it “being run off one’s feet.” If one had an
infinite supply of money, this internal limit would bound one’s
available freedom.

Let's consider non-linearity a little further, and go a little way

out on a limb. As Bill Powers and Rick Marken showed a long time
ago, the well-known Stevens’ Power Law (x = y^r) will be found if
the perceptual value of x (call it p(x)) is a logarithmic function
of x (p(x) = alog(x)), while p(y) is a logarithmic function of y
(p(y) = b
log(y)). The exponent “r” of the power law is then b/a.

Consider this in the context of the relation between perceived

wealth and perceived freedom. As a first approximation, it seems
reasonable to suppose that the perceived value of an extra dollar is
proportional to the percentage increase in wealth that it
represents, or in other words, perceived value of wealth is a
logarithmic function of actual dollars.

The situation is a little different for perceived freedom. The

dimension “range of available control” for a given perception may
well be perceived logarithmically. If you can get a car, that’s
good. If you can get two, that’s better, but not as much better as
getting the first one. In fact, how good it is depends on your
reference level for number of cars you own, so there is no possible
function relating the number of cars you own to the perceived value
of those cars. But “range of available control” doesn’t treat that
case. It deals with how many cars you could get if you actually
wanted that number. So the question is how differently you would
perceive the ability to get 2 cars as opposed to being limited to
being able to get only one, or to be able to get 26 as opposed to
being able to get only 25. Here, I think it plausible to suggest
that for most perceptions, the perceived value of the range of
control in JCDs is likely to be logarithmically related to the
range.

The other dimension of freedom is the number of different

perceptions one is able to control. When one takes this into
account, it becomes obvious that the ranges in JCD are likely to be
very different for the different controllable perceptions.
Nevertheless, by assumption, each will have a logarithmic relation
between the perceived and the environmentally measured range. I will
return to this point later.

The remaining consideration is the perceived value of increasing the

number of controllable perceptions. Above, the concept of “being run
off one’s feet” was suggested as showing that there is a point
beyond which there is no value in adding more controllable
perceptions. The function clearly cannot be logarithmic, but must be
some function that approaches an asymptote, whether it be linear,
logarithmic or anything else when the number of controllable
perceptions is small.

SOCIAL effects on Freedom

At this point in the argument, we have not considered limits on

available freedom imposed by conflict. Conflict means that at least
one, and possibly both conflicted parties cannot effectively control
any perception that depends on the source of the conflict, thus
reducing the number of controllable perceptions for one or both, and
certainly reducing the total freedom of the dyad. Nor have we
considered limitations on freedom imposed by limits on the range of
control for individual perceptions.

And most importantly, we have not considered the implications of

Kent McLelland’s conjecture [From Kent McClelland 2010.11. 5.1130
CDT] : “I would guess that on balance the massive stabilizations of
the environment associated with modern civilization have increased
the degrees of freedom available to everyone on the planet.”

All of these, and particularly the last, invalidate a naive idea

that one might readily derive from the non-linearity of the relation
of freedom with money, that the overall total quantity of freedom in
a dyad would always be enhanced by transferring money from the
richer to the poorer. Instead, we should look for the ways in which
the total available quantity of freedom is maximized. If this
analysis leads to some statement about how money might most
effectively be distributed, so be it. If not, also so be it.

The key to the continuation of the argument is that physical

constructions such as bridges, cell-phones, houses, roads, and so
forth all provide environmental affordances that extend the range
and in many cases the number of controllable perceptions for more
people than the number for whom they reduce the range or number of
controllable perceptions. Likewise, social constructions such as
shops, businesses, church groups, political parties and the like
increase the possibilities for controllable perceptions for some
people while reducing it for others. Kent McLelland argues that the
environmental (physical and social) rigidity that occurs when many
people control many perceptions through a common space in itself
provides a net increase in the possibilities for control, and hence,
in the definition above, an increase in total freedom.

It is impossible to determine just what social structures enhance,

and what structures decrease the total freedom of a population. To
say that more government means less freedom is to assert that one
has done a thorough analysis of the possibilities. Likewise, to
assert that to be constrained by the limitations imposed by the CEOs
of unregulated companies necessarily implies a reduction of freedom
is to assert that one has done the required analysis. Both positions
seem to me to be untenable, and to be based on nothing more than
intuition.

The point of this message is to suggest a direction in which

research could be directed using the base concept of PCT and a
formal measure of “freedom”, to discover whether there exists any
one kind of economic-political system that would maximize the
overall freedom of the population. I would like to be able to
further with this, but as I said at the top, the message has become
too long delayed within the thread that started it. I would be
interested in any comments on the general thrust, less interested in
comments on the speculative detail.

UNSUPPORTED BELIEFS (for what they are worth)

I believe (without data to support this belief) that the happiest

people are the most free. I also believe (again without supporting
data) that such a society as is proposed by libertarians would
result in freedom being concentrated in very few people, so that the
population as a whole would be much very less free than the optimum.

Martin

[Martin Lewitt 16 Apr 2011 2305]

[Martin Taylor 2011.04.14.17.13]

*** snip ***
            BP: I don't think libertarians pay

much attention to the problem of Bad Guys. …
Libertarians don’t seem to care much about what happens
to people who end up on the short end of the stick.
Maybe the losers deserve to be weeded out as unfit.

BP's error here ties into your discussion of  "freedom from" and

“freedom to”. Libertarians think first and foremost about Bad
Guys. This is the very reason the “freedom to”, which they also
value highly, must not include the “freedom to” coerce.

*** snip ***
  SOCIAL effects on Freedom



  At this point in the argument, we have not considered limits on

available freedom imposed by conflict. Conflict means that at
least one, and possibly both conflicted parties cannot effectively
control any perception that depends on the source of the conflict,
thus reducing the number of controllable perceptions for one or
both, and certainly reducing the total freedom of the dyad. Nor
have we considered limitations on freedom imposed by limits on the
range of control for individual perceptions.

  And most importantly, we have not considered the implications of

Kent McLelland’s conjecture [From Kent McClelland 2010.11. 5.1130
CDT] : “I would guess that on balance the massive stabilizations
of the environment associated with modern civilization have
increased the degrees of freedom available to everyone on the
planet.”

  All of these, and particularly the last, invalidate a naive idea

that one might readily derive from the non-linearity of the
relation of freedom with money, that the overall total quantity of
freedom in a dyad would always be enhanced by transferring money
from the richer to the poorer. Instead, we should look for the
ways in which the total available quantity of freedom is
maximized. If this analysis leads to some statement about how
money might most effectively be distributed, so be it. If not,
also so be it.

  The key to the continuation of the argument is that physical

constructions such as bridges, cell-phones, houses, roads, and so
forth all provide environmental affordances that extend the range
and in many cases the number of controllable perceptions for more
people than the number for whom they reduce the range or number of
controllable perceptions.

Marginal utility is possible with infrastructure also, and not just

with a “bridge to nowhere”. The opportunity costs might be high.

  Likewise,

social constructions such as shops, businesses, church groups,
political parties and the like increase the possibilities for
controllable perceptions for some people while reducing it for
others.

Are you implying a difference from the previous listing?  We can

assume that in both cases, those constructed with private financing,
were wanted by those who were so willing to forgo other consumption
to make them happen.

  Kent

McLelland argues that the environmental (physical and social)
rigidity that occurs when many people control many perceptions
through a common space in itself provides a net increase in the
possibilities for control, and hence, in the definition above, an
increase in total freedom.

  It is impossible to determine just what social structures enhance,

and what structures decrease the total freedom of a population. To
say that more government means less freedom is to assert that one
has done a thorough analysis of the possibilities.

No, one might have just learned something from the past, one might

easily decide that the types of things that happened in the past and
are often still happening elsewhere are among “the possibilities”,
and are reason enough to reduce the risk. Historically, more
government means less freedom. One could argue that past
performance is not guarantee of future performance. F.A. Hayek in
“Road to Serfdom” laid out a case for why the worst rise to the
top. The difference between B.P. and libertarians, is that
libertarians realize that the bad guys are us, not somebody else.
We can’t allow the “freedom to” coerce. If coercion is to be
allowed at all, it must not be free, but subjected to checks,
balances and standards.

  Likewise, to assert that to be constrained by the limitations

imposed by the CEOs of unregulated companies necessarily implies a
reduction of freedom is to assert that one has done the required
analysis. Both positions seem to me to be untenable, and to be
based on nothing more than intuition.

There seems to be a wide range between "necessarily implies" and

“intuition”, that you aren’t considering. Look at the arguments
and the evidence.

  The point of this message is to suggest a direction in which

research could be directed using the base concept of PCT and a
formal measure of “freedom”, to discover whether there exists any
one kind of economic-political system that would maximize the
overall freedom of the population.

I suggest there is a worship of "one" here. There doesn't have to be

just “one” if the system is free enough to allow multiple systems,
sustainable subsistence farming, communes, religious communities,
market based exchange, etc.

  I

would like to be able to further with this, but as I said at the
top, the message has become too long delayed within the thread
that started it. I would be interested in any comments on the
general thrust, less interested in comments on the speculative
detail.

  UNSUPPORTED BELIEFS (for what they are worth)



  I believe (without data to support this belief) that the happiest

people are the most free. I also believe (again without supporting
data) that such a society as is proposed by libertarians would
result in freedom being concentrated in very few people, so that
the population as a whole would be much very less free than the
optimum.

Why is happiness the standard?  Humans took a different direction

than bonobos, who may well be more happy, even though less free in
the materialistic control sense that you have put forward. Of
course, humans may value control more than bonobos, but I thought
PCT assumed that all animals were controlling perceptions. People
may value material “freedom to” to different extents. Many people
would rather go to a movie or chill out on pot or gamble in a casino
or hang glide than work overtime, study supply chain management or
defer current consumption.

Given the subjective theory of value, the rich or middle class

person may, contrary your assumption, value the marginal dollar more
than a poor person, despite the general principle of decreasing
marginal utility.

The "freedom to" which allows freedom to coerce would allow those

more willing to coerce to be the ones that get “ahead” and get more
“freedom to”, and in the presence of coercion, there is usually less
willingness to invest, save and produce.

-- Martin L
···

On 4/16/2011 10:35 PM, Martin Taylor wrote:

  Martin

[Martin Taylor 2011.04.17.11.11]

[Martin Lewitt 16 Apr 2011 2305]

[Martin Taylor 2011.04.14.17.13]

I'm perfectly willing to concede that much of my posting was pretty

speculative. That’s why I finished by saying: “I would be interested
in any comments on the general thrust, less interested in comments
on the speculative detail.” I’ll try to address your comments, but
not with much interest.

I'd be more interested if you had some argument as to why I might or

might not be right to think that “freedom” could be a measurable
quantity for an individual, based on a joint function of the number
of perceptions the person is in a position to control and the range
of reference values over which that control can be effective.

Also, since you profess to be a libertarian, would you agree that a

libertarian objective is the greatest freedom for the greatest
number, and that if freedom for an individual is a measurable
quantity, the freest (and hence most desirable) society is the one
for which the average freedom per capita is the greatest?

Now for your comments on the speculative detail.
  *** snip ***
              BP: I don't think libertarians

pay much attention to the problem of Bad Guys. …
Libertarians don’t seem to care much about what
happens to people who end up on the short end of the
stick. Maybe the losers deserve to be weeded out as
unfit.

  BP's error here ties into your discussion of  "freedom from" and

“freedom to”. Libertarians think first and foremost about Bad
Guys. This is the very reason the “freedom to”, which they also
value highly, must not include the “freedom to” coerce.
How would you define a “Bad Guy” in PCT language? If they are first
and foremost in Libertarian thinking, they must have a clear
definition that can be put into PCT terms. By the way “coercion”
doesn’t have a specific PCT definition so far as I know, other than
the use of physical force that can overwhelm the output of the
coercee.

  *** snip ***
    SOCIAL effects on Freedom



    At this point in the argument, we have not considered limits on

available freedom imposed by conflict. Conflict means that at
least one, and possibly both conflicted parties cannot
effectively control any perception that depends on the source of
the conflict, thus reducing the number of controllable
perceptions for one or both, and certainly reducing the total
freedom of the dyad. Nor have we considered limitations on
freedom imposed by limits on the range of control for individual
perceptions.

    And most importantly, we have not considered the implications of

Kent McLelland’s conjecture [From Kent McClelland 2010.11.
5.1130 CDT] : “I would guess that on balance the massive
stabilizations of the environment associated with modern
civilization have increased the degrees of freedom available to
everyone on the planet.”

    All of these, and particularly the last, invalidate a naive idea

that one might readily derive from the non-linearity of the
relation of freedom with money, that the overall total quantity
of freedom in a dyad would always be enhanced by transferring
money from the richer to the poorer. Instead, we should look for
the ways in which the total available quantity of freedom is
maximized. If this analysis leads to some statement about how
money might most effectively be distributed, so be it. If not,
also so be it.

    The key to the continuation of the argument is that physical

constructions such as bridges, cell-phones, houses, roads, and
so forth all provide environmental affordances that extend the
range and in many cases the number of controllable perceptions
for more people than the number for whom they reduce the range
or number of controllable perceptions.

  Marginal utility is possible with infrastructure also, and not

just with a “bridge to nowhere”. The opportunity costs might be
high.
Yes. I had mentioned this in an earlier draft, and I thought I had
left it in my message, but I seem to have edited it out. It isn’t
really relevant to the text you quote, though.

    Likewise,

social constructions such as shops, businesses, church groups,
political parties and the like increase the possibilities for
controllable perceptions for some people while reducing it for
others.

  Are you implying a difference from the previous listing?  We can

assume that in both cases, those constructed with private
financing, were wanted by those who were so willing to forgo other
consumption to make them happen.

I'm not clear what you mean by "previous listing". I have said

nothing about methods of financing or how they are constructed. What
I mean here is that all of these constructions, whether physical or
social, have the potential to increase the total freedom of some
people while reducing it for others. Whether any single one of them
does either for a particular person depends on the specific
circumstances. For example, a road constructed through a pristine
wilderness increases the possibilities for car travel, and generates
money income for the builders (and toll gatherers, if any), while
reducing the abilities of people to control for perceiving wildlife
and for perceiving sounds free of the noises of civilization. Some
gain freedom, some lose it.

    Kent

McLelland argues that the environmental (physical and social)
rigidity that occurs when many people control many perceptions
through a common space in itself provides a net increase in the
possibilities for control, and hence, in the definition above,
an increase in total freedom.

    It is impossible to determine just what social structures

enhance, and what structures decrease the total freedom of a
population. To say that more government means less freedom is to
assert that one has done a thorough analysis of the
possibilities.

  No, one might have just learned something from the past, one might

easily decide that the types of things that happened in the past
and are often still happening elsewhere are among “the
possibilities”, and are reason enough to reduce the risk.
Historically, more government means less freedom.

You are arguing exactly as do the mainstream psychologists against

whom much of PCT is directed. Actually, your basis of argument is
less supportable than theirs. They conduct controlled studies in a
laboratory with many observations and under controlled conditions,
and then extrapolate their observations using “Ptolemaic” mechanisms
that don’t necessarily apply to the new conditions any more than
Ptolemaic epicycles apply to cometary orbits. Your argument is less
supportable than theirs because your base of observation is far
smaller, while the contexts are much less under control. PCT offers
the analogue of Newtonian mechanics, within which cometary orbits
can be readily described.

  One

could argue that past performance is not guarantee of future
performance. F.A. Hayek in “Road to Serfdom” laid out a case for
why the worst rise to the top. The difference between B.P. and
libertarians, is that libertarians realize that the bad guys are
us, not somebody else. We can’t allow the “freedom to” coerce.
If coercion is to be allowed at all, it must not be free, but
subjected to checks, balances and standards.

You are talking about mechanism here, without first describing what

the mechanism is intended to achieve. All I ask in my posting is
that we consider whether what we are trying to achieve is
maximization of freedom as a measurable quantity, defined as I
proposed it might be defined.

    Likewise, to assert that to be constrained by the limitations

imposed by the CEOs of unregulated companies necessarily implies
a reduction of freedom is to assert that one has done the
required analysis. Both positions seem to me to be untenable,
and to be based on nothing more than intuition.

  There seems to be a wide range between "necessarily implies" and

“intuition”, that you aren’t considering. Look at the arguments
and the evidence.

Yes, there are many arguments and much selection of evidence on all

of the many sides of the issues. If you look at all of the arguments
rather than only the ones that support your preferred ideas, I think
you will find little secure ground between “necessarily implies” and
“intuition”.

    The point of this message is to suggest a direction in which

research could be directed using the base concept of PCT and a
formal measure of “freedom”, to discover whether there exists
any one kind of economic-political system that would maximize
the overall freedom of the population.

  I suggest there is a worship of "one" here. There doesn't have to

be just “one” if the system is free enough to allow multiple
systems, sustainable subsistence farming, communes, religious
communities, market based exchange, etc.

Absolutely! That solution might well be the "one". But we can't know

until we determine whether there is “a direction in which research
could be directed using the base concept of PCT and a formal measure
of “freedom”, to discover whether there exists any one kind of
economic-political system that would maximize the overall freedom of
the population.” And do the research.

    I would like to be able to further with this, but as I said at

the top, the message has become too long delayed within the
thread that started it. I would be interested in any comments on
the general thrust, less interested in comments on the
speculative detail.

    UNSUPPORTED BELIEFS (for what they are worth)



    I believe (without data to support this belief) that the

happiest people are the most free. I also believe (again without
supporting data) that such a society as is proposed by
libertarians would result in freedom being concentrated in very
few people, so that the population as a whole would be much very
less free than the optimum.

  Why is happiness the standard?  Humans took a different direction

than bonobos, who may well be more happy, even though less free in
the materialistic control sense that you have put forward.

Materialistic control? Who said anything about that? The perceptions

you try to control may be your nearness to Christ, your perception
of yourself as a “Good Guy”, and so on. I talk only of perceptions
that are available to you to control, no matter of what kind.

Does your question "Why is happiness the standard" imply that you

have an alternative? Personally, I think it preferable that people
be happy than that they be miserable, though I should perhaps
mention that I once had a lab assistant who I thought had seemed
miserable for a time. I tried to cheer her up, but her response was
“I like being miserable.”

  Of

course, humans may value control more than bonobos, but I thought
PCT assumed that all animals were controlling perceptions.
People may value material “freedom to” to different extents.
Many people would rather go to a movie or chill out on pot or
gamble in a casino or hang glide than work overtime, study supply
chain management or defer current consumption.

Sure. How is this relevant? You seem to cast it as a counter-example

to my proposal. However, I would point out that a person could not
control the perceptions in your earlier list unless they had the
environmental affordances supplied by the availability of sufficient
money. Nor could someone in an African Sahel community be likely to
be able to control their perception of “being at a movie” or
“gambling in a casino” or “hang gliding”, unless they had a lot of
money to travel.

  Given the subjective theory of value, the rich or middle class

person may, contrary your assumption, value the marginal dollar
more than a poor person, despite the general principle of
decreasing marginal utility.

Yes. Didn't I point out that there are cases in which this might be

so. The argument is that overall, those cases contribute less to the
average than do the cases in which an increase of wealth by a dollar
has less effect on one’s freedom the more dollars one already has.
It’s irrelevant to the argument whether a particular person is
controlling for the amount of money they have. That’s just one
controllable perception among myriads of possibiities.

  The "freedom to" which allows freedom to coerce would allow those

more willing to coerce to be the ones that get “ahead” and get
more “freedom to”, and in the presence of coercion, there is
usually less willingness to invest, save and produce.

That's pure intuition. You may well be correct, but I'd like to see

your assertions based on analysis of the PCT interactions that lead
to them.

···
As an aside, I think one approach to treating PCT in a social

context of very many interacting people might be to take a leaf out
of the meso-scale analyses of thermodynamic phenomena and neural
networks, and to develop some analogue of mean-field theory. Rick
actually does this, though without formal underpinnings, when he
talks about the composite producer and consumer.

--------------

Setting aside the speculative detail, is a reasonable starting point

for a politico-economic analysis the expression F = F(N,R) where F =
freedom, N = number of controllable perceptions, and R = range of
effectively possible control for the individual controllable
perceptions, and the function is monotonically increasing in N and
R?

Martin T

[Martin Lewitt 17 Apr 2011 1212 MDT]

[Martin Taylor 2011.04.17.11.11]

[Martin Lewitt 16 Apr 2011 2305]

[Martin Taylor 2011.04.14.17.13]

  I'm perfectly willing to concede that much of my posting was

pretty speculative. That’s why I finished by saying: “I would be
interested in any comments on the general thrust, less interested
in comments on the speculative detail.” I’ll try to address your
comments, but not with much interest.

In order to give you more comments on your general thrust, I will

have to be speculative, because you are challenging me to more
rigorously define at a level of detail that I have thought of for
awhile.

  I'd be more interested if you had some argument as to why I might

or might not be right to think that “freedom” could be a
measurable quantity for an individual, based on a joint function
of the number of perceptions the person is in a position to
control and the range of reference values over which that control
can be effective.

I think that captures just one aspect of freedom.  Under that

materialistic version of freedom the most free humans to ever live
were the likes of Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, Kim il Jong,
ante-bellam southern plantation owners and various absolute
monarchists and emperors of the past. There is little in todays
western world to match the wealth and freedom of having other
peoples lives or your own country to play with. How does freedom
sum? Does the nearly unlimited freedom of a few outweigh the paltry
poor excuse for freedom that might exist if that freedom were
broadly distributed. The greeks had leisure to lay the foundations
of western philosophy, the monarchs were able to patronize the arts
with what they sucked out of their populations, would the wealth of
human experience be poorer if no-one had ever gotten to experience
one of Saddam’s rape rooms? Is it really fair that there are joys
that some of us will never know?

There is a sense of freedom that the materialistic definition of

freedom doesn’t capture and that many, not just libertarians are
willing to sacrifice a bit of the material freedom for, and that is
autonomy and independence. I know many, most not libertarians,
that would love to live “off the grid”, and not just for
environmental reasons, and they’d be willing to be a little poorer
(but not a lot poorer) for it.

  Also, since you profess to be a libertarian, would you agree that

a libertarian objective is the greatest freedom for the greatest
number, and that if freedom for an individual is a measurable
quantity, the freest (and hence most desirable) society is the one
for which the average freedom per capita is the greatest?

I agree that libertarians want to be free, but their concern about

the freedom of others is more of a concession rather than an
objective. The goal of that concession is the minimization of
coercion for all, it is a social contract for mutual defense.

  Now for your comments on the speculative detail.
    *** snip ***
                BP: I don't think libertarians

pay much attention to the problem of Bad Guys. …
Libertarians don’t seem to care much about what
happens to people who end up on the short end of the
stick. Maybe the losers deserve to be weeded out as
unfit.

    BP's error here ties into your discussion of  "freedom from" and

“freedom to”. Libertarians think first and foremost about Bad
Guys. This is the very reason the “freedom to”, which they also
value highly, must not include the “freedom to” coerce.
How would you define a “Bad Guy” in PCT language? If they are
first and foremost in Libertarian thinking, they must have a clear
definition that can be put into PCT terms. By the way “coercion”
doesn’t have a specific PCT definition so far as I know, other
than the use of physical force that can overwhelm the output of
the coercee.

It isn't the use of force, but the initiation of the use or threat

of use of force. The use of force in self defense or in defense of
others against coercion is not coercion.

How are violations of social norms and obligations under contracts

put into PCT terms? It is definitely a problem for PCT if these
things that humans control for can’t be represented. Bad guys
should be recognizable at a distance when coercing others.
Communication should aid in transmitting that information.

    *** snip ***
      SOCIAL effects on Freedom



      At this point in the argument, we have not considered limits

on available freedom imposed by conflict. Conflict means that
at least one, and possibly both conflicted parties cannot
effectively control any perception that depends on the source
of the conflict, thus reducing the number of controllable
perceptions for one or both, and certainly reducing the total
freedom of the dyad. Nor have we considered limitations on
freedom imposed by limits on the range of control for
individual perceptions.

      And most importantly, we have not considered the implications

of Kent McLelland’s conjecture [From Kent McClelland 2010.11.
5.1130 CDT] : “I would guess that on balance the massive
stabilizations of the environment associated with modern
civilization have increased the degrees of freedom available
to everyone on the planet.”

      All of these, and particularly the last, invalidate a naive

idea that one might readily derive from the non-linearity of
the relation of freedom with money, that the overall total
quantity of freedom in a dyad would always be enhanced by
transferring money from the richer to the poorer. Instead, we
should look for the ways in which the total available quantity
of freedom is maximized. If this analysis leads to some
statement about how money might most effectively be
distributed, so be it. If not, also so be it.

      The key to the continuation of the argument is that physical

constructions such as bridges, cell-phones, houses, roads, and
so forth all provide environmental affordances that extend the
range and in many cases the number of controllable perceptions
for more people than the number for whom they reduce the range
or number of controllable perceptions.

    Marginal utility is possible with infrastructure also, and not

just with a “bridge to nowhere”. The opportunity costs might be
high.
Yes. I had mentioned this in an earlier draft, and I thought I had
left it in my message, but I seem to have edited it out. It isn’t
really relevant to the text you quote, though.

      Likewise,

social constructions such as shops, businesses, church groups,
political parties and the like increase the possibilities for
controllable perceptions for some people while reducing it for
others.

    Are you implying a difference from the previous listing?  We can

assume that in both cases, those constructed with private
financing, were wanted by those who were so willing to forgo
other consumption to make them happen.

  I'm not clear what you mean by "previous listing". I have said

nothing about methods of financing or how they are constructed.
What I mean here is that all of these constructions, whether
physical or social, have the potential to increase the total
freedom of some people while reducing it for others. Whether any
single one of them does either for a particular person depends on
the specific circumstances. For example, a road constructed
through a pristine wilderness increases the possibilities for car
travel, and generates money income for the builders (and toll
gatherers, if any), while reducing the abilities of people to
control for perceiving wildlife and for perceiving sounds free of
the noises of civilization. Some gain freedom, some lose it.

The previous listing included a higher proportion of publicly

financed infrastructure. I knew and noticed things you didn’t
mention but seemed to infer, since you only mentioned “reducing it
for others” in the second context. Public ownership of resources
does lead to the tragedy of the commons, such as we see at
Yellowstone and Yosemite. The tolls the government collects at
entrances don’t improve things much.

      Kent

McLelland argues that the environmental (physical and social)
rigidity that occurs when many people control many perceptions
through a common space in itself provides a net increase in
the possibilities for control, and hence, in the definition
above, an increase in total freedom.

      It is impossible to determine just what social structures

enhance, and what structures decrease the total freedom of a
population. To say that more government means less freedom is
to assert that one has done a thorough analysis of the
possibilities.

    No, one might have just learned something from the past, one

might easily decide that the types of things that happened in
the past and are often still happening elsewhere are among “the
possibilities”, and are reason enough to reduce the risk.
Historically, more government means less freedom.

  You are arguing exactly as do the mainstream psychologists against

whom much of PCT is directed. Actually, your basis of argument is
less supportable than theirs. They conduct controlled studies in a
laboratory with many observations and under controlled conditions,
and then extrapolate their observations using “Ptolemaic”
mechanisms that don’t necessarily apply to the new conditions any
more than Ptolemaic epicycles apply to cometary orbits. Your
argument is less supportable than theirs because your base of
observation is far smaller, while the contexts are much less under
control. PCT offers the analogue of Newtonian mechanics, within
which cometary orbits can be readily described.

All of history would appear to be the largest sample possible, and

there are ethical concerns about experimenting with people,
especially their freedom. What I’m doing can’t be in conflict with
PCT anymore than it can be in conflict with the laws of
gravitation. PCT gives us a hierarchy of neural control, evolution
and the personal and cultural environment populated it with control
variables. Without gathering masses of data on the individual
variation in higher level controlled variables, PCT will be of
little social predictive use beyond the toy demonstrations at the
lower levels.

    One

could argue that past performance is not guarantee of future
performance. F.A. Hayek in “Road to Serfdom” laid out a case
for why the worst rise to the top. The difference between B.P.
and libertarians, is that libertarians realize that the bad guys
are us, not somebody else. We can’t allow the “freedom to”
coerce. If coercion is to be allowed at all, it must not be
free, but subjected to checks, balances and standards.

  You are talking about mechanism here, without first describing

what the mechanism is intended to achieve. All I ask in my posting
is that we consider whether what we are trying to achieve is
maximization of freedom as a measurable quantity, defined as I
proposed it might be defined.

Minimization of coercion is what the mechanism aids in achieving

whether that was its original intent or not. It is far from
perfect, and may not go far enough, but offers the potential for
less coercion than is currently extant.

      Likewise, to assert that to be constrained by the limitations

imposed by the CEOs of unregulated companies necessarily
implies a reduction of freedom is to assert that one has done
the required analysis. Both positions seem to me to be
untenable, and to be based on nothing more than intuition.

    There seems to be a wide range between "necessarily implies" and

“intuition”, that you aren’t considering. Look at the
arguments and the evidence.

  Yes, there are many arguments and much selection of evidence on

all of the many sides of the issues. If you look at all of the
arguments rather than only the ones that support your preferred
ideas, I think you will find little secure ground between
“necessarily implies” and “intuition”.

The PCT organization of neural networks evolved to handle just such

insecurity and complexity. Perhaps what is missing from our
discussions of PCT are some of the social perceptions that lower
levels of the hierarchy provide to the higher levels, such as
language, detection of threat, deception, loyalty, trustworthiness
and fairness. These and other social perceptions are human
universals across all cultures. The perceptions are perfect,
because sometimes, as in the case of threat, the risk associated
with false positives was less than with false negatives.

      The point of this message is to suggest a direction in which

research could be directed using the base concept of PCT and a
formal measure of “freedom”, to discover whether there exists
any one kind of economic-political system that would maximize
the overall freedom of the population.

    I suggest there is a worship of "one" here. There doesn't have

to be just “one” if the system is free enough to allow multiple
systems, sustainable subsistence farming, communes, religious
communities, market based exchange, etc.

  Absolutely! That solution might well be the "one". But we can't

know until we determine whether there is “a direction in which
research could be directed using the base concept of PCT and a
formal measure of “freedom”, to discover whether there exists any
one kind of economic-political system that would maximize the
overall freedom of the population.” And do the research.

But unless your "research"  is a priori like the Austrian school of

economics, you will have to find human subjects and hopefully just
willing human subjects, or be satisfied with the experiments history
provided without controls.

      I would like to be able to further with this, but as I said at

the top, the message has become too long delayed within the
thread that started it. I would be interested in any comments
on the general thrust, less interested in comments on the
speculative detail.

      UNSUPPORTED BELIEFS (for what they are worth)



      I believe (without data to support this belief) that the

happiest people are the most free. I also believe (again
without supporting data) that such a society as is proposed by
libertarians would result in freedom being concentrated in
very few people, so that the population as a whole would be
much very less free than the optimum.

    Why is happiness the standard?  Humans took a different

direction than bonobos, who may well be more happy, even though
less free in the materialistic control sense that you have put
forward.

  Materialistic control? Who said anything about that? The

perceptions you try to control may be your nearness to Christ,
your perception of yourself as a “Good Guy”, and so on. I talk
only of perceptions that are available to you to control, no
matter of what kind.

  Does your question "Why is happiness the standard" imply that you

have an alternative? Personally, I think it preferable that people
be happy than that they be miserable, though I should perhaps
mention that I once had a lab assistant who I thought had seemed
miserable for a time. I tried to cheer her up, but her response
was “I like being miserable.”

If we are to avoid a truism, and not define people as happy, many

people have either chosen or have a nature that is perpetually
dis-satisfied and striving, perhaps looking to the future, thirsting
for control and knowledge. I think such states differentiate humans
from other animals rather than mere gratification.

    Of course, humans may value control more than bonobos, but I

thought PCT assumed that all animals were controlling
perceptions. People may value material “freedom to” to
different extents. Many people would rather go to a movie or
chill out on pot or gamble in a casino or hang glide than work
overtime, study supply chain management or defer current
consumption.

  Sure. How is this relevant? You seem to cast it as a

counter-example to my proposal. However, I would point out that a
person could not control the perceptions in your earlier list
unless they had the environmental affordances supplied by the
availability of sufficient money. Nor could someone in an African
Sahel community be likely to be able to control their perception
of “being at a movie” or “gambling in a casino” or “hang gliding”,
unless they had a lot of money to travel.

Some control variables require more environmental affordances than

others, and some require none at all. Christianity and some
eastern philosophies emphasize values that don’t require many
environmental affordances.

    Given the subjective theory of value, the rich or middle class

person may, contrary your assumption, value the marginal dollar
more than a poor person, despite the general principle of
decreasing marginal utility.

  Yes. Didn't I point out that there are cases in which this might

be so. The argument is that overall, those cases contribute less
to the average than do the cases in which an increase of wealth by
a dollar has less effect on one’s freedom the more dollars one
already has. It’s irrelevant to the argument whether a particular
person is controlling for the amount of money they have. That’s
just one controllable perception among myriads of possibiities.

I'll  concede this with the complication that there are

nonlinearities and thresholds where we enter new regimes. Some
levels of wealth afford little more than opportunities for increased
consumption or ordinary rates of return, but as one sees
opportunities for levels of wealth that allows one to finance
medical research or influence political results, those marginal
dollars might climb in value again.

    The "freedom to" which allows freedom to coerce would allow

those more willing to coerce to be the ones that get “ahead” and
get more “freedom to”, and in the presence of coercion, there is
usually less willingness to invest, save and produce.

  That's pure intuition. You may well be correct, but I'd like to

see your assertions based on analysis of the PCT interactions that
lead to them.

Wouldn't "traditional wisdom" be a more accurate characterization

than “pure intuition”, there are intelligent people who are not PCT
aware. They’ve seen historical data that gives them some confidence
that “intuition”. People and investors running to safety in times
of increased uncertainty, increased saving and hoarding, keeping
wealth more liqiud than employed, higher interest rates and
projected rates of return needed to secure funding. I think there
a many levels of control that need to be populated before PCT is
ready shed light on human relations and social organization. Based
on extrapolation from low level results PCT may eventually have
something to offer.

I am surprised at the resistance of PCT founders to populate the

higher levels of the hierarchy with what we’ve learned about human
nature from history, evolution, economics and other disciplines. It
is almost as if they want to claim PCT came into existence ex nihil
like creationists.

  --------------



  As an aside, I think one approach to treating PCT in a social

context of very many interacting people might be to take a leaf
out of the meso-scale analyses of thermodynamic phenomena and
neural networks, and to develop some analogue of mean-field
theory. Rick actually does this, though without formal
underpinnings, when he talks about the composite producer and
consumer.

  --------------



  Setting aside the speculative detail, is a reasonable starting

point for a politico-economic analysis the expression F = F(N,R)
where F = freedom, N = number of controllable perceptions, and R =
range of effectively possible control for the individual
controllable perceptions, and the function is monotonically
increasing in N and R?

I don't see any problems with that  for an individual analysis.  But

I don’t see a human consensus for taking it to a politico-economic
scale. It is individuals that must live together. You propose a
universal value, I see a subjective milleau of values. Social
pressure in western culture is to agree to equality of all human
kind, but there is a discordance between expressed values and the
actual values demonstrated by behavior and scientific studies.
I’ve come to judge my own values by my behavior rather than my
professions and to accept my humanity. I have a lower carbon
footprint than most who profess that it is important. I don’t feed
high quality protein to pets, like many who claim to be
humanitarians. I don’t advocate nationalism and protectionism and
demonize the send of jobs overseas like many who claim to be
socialists. I don’t advocate universal healthcare for Americans
that would reducing economic growth and prosperity that benefits
rising middle classes in the third world like those who profess
equality. I also don’t pretend to value humans I don’t know more
than certain exotic ecosystems and endangered animals, although I
also don’t begrudge them their attempts to survive and exploit their
environments. I don’t begrudge the supply chain manager or CEO
their compensation like many who claim they value education. Other
people don’t live their lives the way I think they should or wish
they would or apparently the way they profess they should.

I don't see a higher level basis for consensus than letting other

people pursue their subjective values as long as they are willing to
not coercively interfere with others doing the same. That basis for
consensus is a tenuous enough hope.

Free market capitalism rewards people for  higher levels of

contribution to values that other people control for, and people
seem to respond to that with higher levels of productivity. Much of
what I want and value requires economic “surplus”, production beyond
basic needs, and people are more willing to finance what I want and
agree with my values when they are wealthy. That is why I am
excited by the new levels of wealth and large new middle classes
being brought into production in China, India and elsewhere. I
suspect we’ll have more scientific and medical research, space
exploration, etc because of all this increased productivity. We
will have more frivolous expendatures and waste as well. But
people probably wouldn’t voluntarily produce surplus if they didn’t
have some freedom in how they could expend it.

Martin L
···

On 4/17/2011 9:57 AM, Martin Taylor wrote:

  Martin T

(Gavin Ritz 2011.04…18.9.53NZT)

[Martin Taylor 2011.04.14.17.13]

And most importantly, we have not considered the implications of Kent
McLelland’s conjecture [From Kent McClelland 2010.11. 5.1130 CDT] : “I
would guess that on balance the massive stabilizations of the environment
associated with modern civilization have increased the degrees of freedom
available to everyone on the planet.”

In a
long article to Adam Matic I explained what the degrees of freedom are. That is the more energetic
resources available for use by organisms. In other words more “controlled
variables” available to be controlled.

In energetic
terms more entropy production ie more forces and fluxes.

Controlled
variables (CV) are not only for assessing catching fly balls and driving cars
at its ultimate level a CV is controlling and accumulating energy from the environment.

Regards

Gavin

[From Rick Marken (2011.04.17.1510)]

Martin Taylor (2011.04.14.17.13)--

Before I get to measuring freedom, I'd like to ask Adam how the money is
lost if the bridge isn't used?

I don't think free marketers understand the economy as a closed loop
system. Their economic ideas are very S-R: the rich cause jobs,
consumers respond to economic signals, lower taxes cause increased
revenue, etc. In a closed loop economy the only way money can be lost
is if it's hoarded. And the only people who can hoard money are the
one's who have so much of it that they don't have to use some
substantial proportion of to consume what they need and want. Guess
who that is. Hint: It's the one's who the S-R economics think are
causing the jobs.

Which provides a segue into how we might go about measuring freedom.

FREEDOM FROM vs FREEDOM TO

If we define freedom as I do -- the ability to control -- then we
don't really need to make this distinction. To me, "freedom" is just
another word for having all your controlled variables (not "control
variables", Martin L.) under control. My measure of freedom would then
be the overall error in the hierarchy of control system (including
intrinsic control systems); the more error the less freedom. Of
course, we can't measure error directly but, according to PCT, we can
measure error indirectly in terms of the observed rate of
reorganization. And we can observe reorganization indirectly in the
way the Plooij's did when looking for developmental changes in the
rate of reorganization. One sign of a high rate of reorganization is
physical illness. So we could measure the incidence of physical (or,
with adults) mental illness in populations to get an indication of the
level of reorganization going on. If the illness rate is high, the
reorganization rate is presumably high and the freedom level is, then,
low. So if we look at the health data for different countries we could
get a general picture of how free people are in those countries. That
would be my proposal.

What might be a unit of freedom? I suggest that the minimal unit is the
ability to control any one perception over some minimal range of attainable
reference values.

Good idea. But very hard to measure,I would guess.

More freedom exists when a perception can be controlled over a wider range
of reference values, or when more different perceptions can be controlled
over a minimal range of reference values.

Yes. Though I think this can be boiled down to "more freedom exists
the better the control". And the better the control the less error and
reorganization. So I think your proposal is really the same as mine:
freedom is control (sounds a bit Orwellian but it makes complete sense
to a control theorist who understands that not all control is coercive
control of others, which does deprive the others -- if not the coercer
-- of the ability to control).

LIMITS on Freedom

Ignoring all social interactions, what limits one's freedom?

Everything that limits the ability to control: lack of skill
(ignorance), lack of resources (want) and insuperable disturbances
(like earthquakes and military dictatorships). Dickens, without PCT,
managed to get two out of three;-)

...The amount of money one has makes a big difference on how free
one is.

Yes, that's the "resource" problem, which is more like the gain of
control; more money, more gain (purchase, literally).

All of these, and particularly the last, invalidate a naive idea that one
might readily derive from the non-linearity of the relation of freedom with
money, that the overall total quantity of freedom in a dyad would always be
enhanced by transferring money from the richer to the poorer. Instead, we
should look for the ways in which the total available quantity of freedom is
maximized. If this analysis leads to some statement about how money might
most effectively be distributed, so be it. If not, also so be it.

I agree. Money is just one possible tool for gaining control in a
society; but there are others, too. I like your idea of coming up with
an agreed on notion of "freedom" (since that seems to be a big concern
for the "free market" types) but right now I would like to see if we
can get some agreement about your idea (which is basically the same as
mine) -- that freedom is control and can, therefore, be measured in
terms of how well people are controlling -- before going on to think
about ways to increase it.

The point of this message is to suggest a direction in which research could
be directed using the base concept of PCT and a formal measure of "freedom",

And a good point it is, indeed.

UNSUPPORTED BELIEFS (for what they are worth)

I believe (without data to support this belief) that the happiest people are
the most free.

I agree. If freedom is control then the people who have the best
control over the variables they want to control have the least overall
error and, therefore, would probably describe themselves as "happy" or
simply "content".

I also believe (again without supporting data) that such a
society as is proposed by libertarians would result in freedom being
concentrated in very few people, so that the population as a whole would be
much very less free than the optimum.

I think we've never really had a society like the one proposed by the
libertarians (though they are typically more favorable to Republican
policies in the US so the state of US society during Republican
regimes should be a closer approximation to the ideal libertarian
society than the state of US society during Democratic regimes) so I
don't think we'll ever be able to present data that would be
considered supporting (or unsupporting) of the predicted utopia that
would result from having no (federal) government; I think we've
determined that libertarians are ok with state governments). But you
and I can talk;-)

Best

Rick

···

--
Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com
www.mindreadings.com

(Gavin Ritz 2011.04.18.10.14NZT)

[ Martin Lewitt
17 Apr 2011 1212 MDT]
[Martin Taylor 2011.04.17.11.11]
[Martin Lewitt 16 Apr 2011 2305]
[Martin Taylor 2011.04.14.17.13]

PCT offers the analogue
of Newtonian mechanics, within which cometary orbits can be readily described.

That’s
the problem exactly.

And that is the thinking behind almost all
of the theory. It’s not wrong it just has no power to explain complexity.
Like classical Newtonian mechanics was built upon by Relativity (a classical theory
too though) and then Quantum Mechanics. PCT needs a whole new position, not a
new theory, just a new position.

Like Newtonian gravity could not explain gravitational
forces across the universe neither can PCT explain the complexities of human Reality?

Regards

Gavin

(Gavin Ritz 2011.18.10.24NZT)

[From Rick Marken
(2011.04.17.1510)]

Martin Taylor
(2011.04.14.17.13)–

If we define freedom as I do – the ability to control
– then we

don’t really need to make this distinction. To me,
“freedom” is just

another word for having all your controlled variables
(not "control

variables", Martin L.) under control

GR: That’s exactly right.
And that includes all things in the environment, other people, organisations,
and nature.

That is the environment Energy
E(m M)su. Read my email to Adam
about David vs. Goliath
and see what controlled variables they where controlling both at low and higher
PCT levels.

You can never have all
controlled variables under control. Because of the free energy formula I showed
in the email. If one did one would become the tyrant of all tyrants.

···
Before I get to measuring freedom, I'd like to ask Adam how the

money is lost if the bridge isn’t used? Doesn’t it just get
transferred into other people’s pockets to be used for things they
value more than the money itself? So far as I can see, money is lost
only when someone defaults on a loan. What is lost when the unused
bridge is built is the labour used to design the bridge, manage its
funding and construction, and physically build it. That effort is
lost only in the sense that it might have been deployed elsewhere,
to provide environmental affordances for other people to control
more perceptions than they might otherwise be able to control.

AM:

Well invested money is used to create wealth, and that would mean providing a lot of value to a lot of people.

If we have a private investment, the measuring stick is a simple one - profit. If money is invested well - the project

will be profitable. Good for everyone.

If a private enterprise builds a bridge and it doesn’t get used, it looses money. They don’t earn what they invested.

The state is financed from taxes. It invests the tax money in an unused bridge and the bridge does not help anyone

to earn more money and pay more taxes, so there is a deficit. It’s easily overlooked.

Might have been better to just buy a little boat to transfer the few people who need it. Now the money has to be

taken from somewhere to equalise the deficit.

(…)

LIMITS on Freedom

Ignoring all social interactions, what limits one's freedom? Within

an order of magnitude or so, we are all endowed with more or less
the same sensory and muscular systems, and similar (as compared to
other species) mental capacities, though some of us are
unfortunately limited by birth or by accident in these respects. Yet
there are vast differences in what some of us can control as opposed
to what others of us with equal sensory, muscular, and mental
endowments can control. Where do these differences come from?

Since the parts of the control loops internal to all individuals are

fairly similar in capability, the difference must lie in the
environment. Some of us have access to mechanisms that are not
available to others. If I have a car and you don’t, I can control my
perception of my location over a much wider range than you can, even
if you use public transportation. In this dimension, I have more
freedom than you. My car is an environmental affordance not
available to you. Likewise, if I live in a semi-desert part of
Africa, and you live in England, you can successfully control a
perception of having roses growing in your garden, whereas I cannot.
You have more freedom than me in that you have a controllable
perception that I cannot have. Environmental affordances matter.

AM:

I have to strongly disagree with the notion that environment holds the difference of the amount of freedom. I would define freedom as the ability

to do the things you want to do, to reach goals you want to reach and maintain states you want to maintain. This quote by John Boyd

stuck in my mind some time ago (he was a military strategist; he had some insights about feedback loops in decision making Wiki link):

*The most important thing in life is to be free to do things. *

There are only two ways to insure that freedom —

you can be rich or you can you reduce your needs to zero.

I will never be rich, so I have chosen to crank down my desires.

So, I guess freedom depends on the level a person operates from. If on one level I can’t move my arm because it’s broken,

and the level up wants the arm to be moved to get some water, I could just use my other hand. I’m free on the level up.

Maybe I wish to buy a car so I could drive to work instead of using the bus. I would perceive owning a car as having more

freedom. I would also perceive not having to go to a job in the first place, as having more freedom. Or perhaps doing the job

from home.

MT:

This last observation is important when considering the amount of

freedom a person has. The amount of money one has makes a big
difference on how free one is. The value of a dollar is normally
less to a rich person than to a poor person because gaining or
losing a dollar makes very little difference either to the range or
to the number of controllable perceptions available to the rich
person (though there could be occasions when the rich person needs
one more dollar to achieve some objective, in which case the dollar
might have great value to that rich person). The function relating
monetary wealth to freedom as defined above is not a linear
function, by any means. For one thing, everyone has to eat if they
are to control any perceptions at all, and unless one has the
environmental affordances to grow all one’s own food, to eat costs
money. At the very least, the cost of eating has to be subtracted
from the money available to enhance one’s freedom.

Well… there’s food to be collected around even in very poor societies. If one has not much other desires but an occasional meal, he might

feel really free and not value a dollar much.

Of course, not a lot of people are like that, but there are individuals and even comunities who are.

There are a lot of people who consider having more money as having more freedom.

And there are people with no limits to how much money they want.

So, I think that in modeling the society, the ammount of money people wish to attain should be normaly distibuted accros the population.

Adam

···

On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 6:35 AM, Martin Taylor mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net wrote:

[From Rick Marken (2011.04.17.1510)]

I don’t think free marketers understand the economy as a closed loop

system. Their economic ideas are very S-R: the rich cause jobs,

consumers respond to economic signals, lower taxes cause increased

revenue, etc. In a closed loop economy the only way money can be lost

is if it’s hoarded. And the only people who can hoard money are the

one’s who have so much of it that they don’t have to use some

substantial proportion of to consume what they need and want. Guess

who that is. Hint: It’s the one’s who the S-R economics think are

causing the jobs.

AM:

Oh, just wait and see, I’ll be hinting all over my model of economy :D:D

I’d write more about it, but you’re probably busy studying the energy equations.

RM: My measure of freedom would then

be the overall error in the hierarchy of control system (including

intrinsic control systems); the more error the less freedom. Of
course, we can’t measure error directly but, according to PCT, we can

measure error indirectly in terms of the observed rate of

reorganization

AM:

How are emotions connected to all this? If I got things right, when

there are a lot of negative emotions, that means a lot of error is present,

but not necessarily reorganisation.

LIMITS on Freedom

Ignoring all social interactions, what limits one’s freedom?

Everything that limits the ability to control: lack of skill

(ignorance), lack of resources (want) and insuperable disturbances

(like earthquakes and military dictatorships). Dickens, without PCT,

managed to get two out of three;-)

AM:

Could we add other control loops inside the system?

An extreme example would be an addiction - if a person “has an addiction”

that would mean he can’t control and can’t be free.

Any internal conflict would then also mean the increase of error and reduction of freedom,

but only from one point of view. From level above, it might be completely different.

Adam

···

On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 12:11 AM, Richard Marken rsmarken@gmail.com wrote:

[Martin Lewitt 17 Apr 2011 2011 MDT]

[From Rick Marken (2011.04.17.1510)]

Martin Taylor (2011.04.14.17.13)--
Before I get to measuring freedom, I'd like to ask Adam how the money is
lost if the bridge isn't used?

I don't think free marketers understand the economy as a closed loop
system. Their economic ideas are very S-R: the rich cause jobs,
consumers respond to economic signals, lower taxes cause increased
revenue, etc. In a closed loop economy the only way money can be lost
is if it's hoarded. And the only people who can hoard money are the
one's who have so much of it that they don't have to use some
substantial proportion of to consume what they need and want. Guess
who that is. Hint: It's the one's who the S-R economics think are
causing the jobs.

Perhaps we don't understand the economy as a closed system because we've had course in economics or watched a business channel occasionally. All hoarding can do is is increase the amount of money the federal reserve can print without causing inflation, and the fed is managing to cause inflation, so missing money is not the problem. In America, most people don't have to use a substantial proportion to consume what they need and want. When the economy is uncertain, consumers manage to pull in their horns, if you had been watching the business channels you would know that the savings rates are up, despite interest rates so low that there is little incentive to save.

Which provides a segue into how we might go about measuring freedom.

FREEDOM FROM vs FREEDOM TO

If we define freedom as I do -- the ability to control -- then we
don't really need to make this distinction. To me, "freedom" is just
another word for having all your controlled variables (not "control
variables", Martin L.) under control. My measure of freedom would then
be the overall error in the hierarchy of control system (including
intrinsic control systems); the more error the less freedom. Of
course, we can't measure error directly but, according to PCT, we can
measure error indirectly in terms of the observed rate of
reorganization. And we can observe reorganization indirectly in the
way the Plooij's did when looking for developmental changes in the
rate of reorganization. One sign of a high rate of reorganization is
physical illness. So we could measure the incidence of physical (or,
with adults) mental illness in populations to get an indication of the
level of reorganization going on. If the illness rate is high, the
reorganization rate is presumably high and the freedom level is, then,
low. So if we look at the health data for different countries we could
get a general picture of how free people are in those countries. That
would be my proposal.

This is mystical, and by the same reasoning those controlling for equality in distribution of resources would be the most ill. Or did sick people make the mistake of controlling for health, and just make themselves sicker? Did the sick cause their own illness by selecting controlled variables they couldn't control instead of ones they could?

What might be a unit of freedom? I suggest that the minimal unit is the
ability to control any one perception over some minimal range of attainable
reference values.

Good idea. But very hard to measure,I would guess.

More freedom exists when a perception can be controlled over a wider range
of reference values, or when more different perceptions can be controlled
over a minimal range of reference values.

Yes. Though I think this can be boiled down to "more freedom exists
the better the control". And the better the control the less error and
reorganization. So I think your proposal is really the same as mine:
freedom is control (sounds a bit Orwellian but it makes complete sense
to a control theorist who understands that not all control is coercive
control of others, which does deprive the others -- if not the coercer
-- of the ability to control)

That makes sense.

LIMITS on Freedom

Ignoring all social interactions, what limits one's freedom?

Everything that limits the ability to control: lack of skill
(ignorance), lack of resources (want) and insuperable disturbances
(like earthquakes and military dictatorships). Dickens, without PCT,
managed to get two out of three;-)

Picking certain controlled variables to control limits the ability to control. Perhaps some of the health benefits of religious belief are due to reducing controlled variables to the most controllable ones.

...The amount of money one has makes a big difference on how free
one is.

Yes, that's the "resource" problem, which is more like the gain of
control; more money, more gain (purchase, literally).

Up to a point, beyond which more money is just inflationary. The true resource problem is lack of production and employment.

All of these, and particularly the last, invalidate a naive idea that one
might readily derive from the non-linearity of the relation of freedom with
money, that the overall total quantity of freedom in a dyad would always be
enhanced by transferring money from the richer to the poorer. Instead, we
should look for the ways in which the total available quantity of freedom is
maximized. If this analysis leads to some statement about how money might
most effectively be distributed, so be it. If not, also so be it.

I agree. Money is just one possible tool for gaining control in a
society; but there are others, too. I like your idea of coming up with
an agreed on notion of "freedom" (since that seems to be a big concern
for the "free market" types) but right now I would like to see if we
can get some agreement about your idea (which is basically the same as
mine) -- that freedom is control and can, therefore, be measured in
terms of how well people are controlling -- before going on to think
about ways to increase it.

Freedom is control, but it is also freedom from control by or dependence upon others, autonomy.

The point of this message is to suggest a direction in which research could
be directed using the base concept of PCT and a formal measure of "freedom",

And a good point it is, indeed.

UNSUPPORTED BELIEFS (for what they are worth)

I believe (without data to support this belief) that the happiest people are
the most free.

I agree. If freedom is control then the people who have the best
control over the variables they want to control have the least overall
error and, therefore, would probably describe themselves as "happy" or
simply "content".

Or progressing in their striving.

I also believe (again without supporting data) that such a
society as is proposed by libertarians would result in freedom being
concentrated in very few people, so that the population as a whole would be
much very less free than the optimum.

I think we've never really had a society like the one proposed by the
libertarians (though they are typically more favorable to Republican
policies in the US so the state of US society during Republican
regimes should be a closer approximation to the ideal libertarian
society than the state of US society during Democratic regimes) so I
don't think we'll ever be able to present data that would be
considered supporting (or unsupporting) of the predicted utopia that
would result from having no (federal) government; I think we've
determined that libertarians are ok with state governments). But you
and I can talk;-)

We are not particularly OK with state governments, but value them as another check on federal government and vice versa. We don't trust anyone with coercive power, all coercive power must be subjected to checks, balances and standards.

-- regards,
          Martin L

···

On 4/17/2011 4:11 PM, Richard Marken wrote:

Best

Rick

[Martin Taylor 2011.04.17.17.37]

  [Martin

Lewitt 17 Apr 2011 1212 MDT]

[Martin Taylor 2011.04.17.11.11]

[Martin Lewitt 16 Apr 2011 2305]

[Martin Taylor 2011.04.14.17.13]

    I'm perfectly willing to concede that much of my posting was

pretty speculative. That’s why I finished by saying: “I would be
interested in any comments on the general thrust, less
interested in comments on the speculative detail.” I’ll try to
address your comments, but not with much interest.

  In order to give you more comments on your general thrust, I will

have to be speculative, because you are challenging me to more
rigorously define at a level of detail that I have thought of for
awhile.

    I'd be more interested if you had some argument as to why I

might or might not be right to think that “freedom” could be a
measurable quantity for an individual, based on a joint function
of the number of perceptions the person is in a position to
control and the range of reference values over which that
control can be effective.

  I think that captures just one aspect of freedom.
That's essentially the kind of answer I hoped for. But I hoped that

you would follow it up by pointing out other aspects that I had
ignored. Instead …

  Under that materialistic version of freedom the most free humans

to ever live were the likes of Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, Kim
il Jong, ante-bellam southern plantation owners and various
absolute monarchists and emperors of the past.

Without knowing the particulars of those people, I would guess you

are probably correct. Do the aspects I did not think of imply that
those people were less free?

  There is little in todays western world to match the wealth and

freedom of having other peoples lives or your own country to play
with. How does freedom sum? Does the nearly unlimited freedom
of a few outweigh the paltry poor excuse for freedom that might
exist if that freedom were broadly distributed.

My naive analysis suggested that it does not. Actually, it suggests

a bit more than that. It suggests that whatever other effects come
into play because of interpersonal interaction, either they must be
strong enough to counter the tendency for more total freedom in the
population to equate to a more uniform distribution of wealth, or
else more freedom does in fact tend to go along with a more uniform
distribution of wealth. There’s a bias in the mathematics induced by
what you choose to call reduction in marginal utility, and what I
choose to call a commonly observed logarithmic relation between
perceived magnitude and actual magnitude.

  The

greeks had leisure to lay the foundations of western philosophy,
the monarchs were able to patronize the arts with what they sucked
out of their populations, would the wealth of human experience be
poorer if no-one had ever gotten to experience one of Saddam’s
rape rooms? Is it really fair that there are joys that some of us
will never know?

Where does "fairness" come into the analysis? I have a hunch that a

tendency toward fairness might emerge from the analysis, but I
really don’t want to put it in a priori.

  There is a sense of freedom that the materialistic definition of

freedom doesn’t capture and that many, not just libertarians are
willing to sacrifice a bit of the material freedom for, and that
is autonomy and independence. I know many, most not
libertarians, that would love to live “off the grid”, and not just
for environmental reasons, and they’d be willing to be a little
poorer (but not a lot poorer) for it.

"Autonomy" and "independence" are words suggesting that your actions

are not influenced by and do not influence other peole, aren’t they?
My refernce to Kent McLelland’s work was intended to suggest the
possibility that your freedom may be enhanced by rejecting autonomy
and independence as goals, in favour of the goal of increased
freedom to choose what you want to achieve, and increased ability to
achieve those things.

    Also, since you profess to be a libertarian, would you agree

that a libertarian objective is the greatest freedom for the
greatest number, and that if freedom for an individual is a
measurable quantity, the freest (and hence most desirable)
society is the one for which the average freedom per capita is
the greatest?

  I agree that libertarians want to be free, but their concern about

the freedom of others is more of a concession rather than an
objective. The goal of that concession is the minimization of
coercion for all, it is a social contract for mutual defense.

That does sound paranoid, written like that. I can't believe that's

the way you intend it to sound. By the way, lower down you present
examples of “coercion” that do not seem to conform to the PCT
definition. I’d like to know exactly what you do mean by the term,
so we can avoid talking past one another.

    Now for your comments on the speculative detail.
      *** snip ***
                  BP: I don't think

libertarians pay much attention to the problem of
Bad Guys. … Libertarians don’t seem to care much
about what happens to people who end up on the
short end of the stick. Maybe the losers deserve
to be weeded out as unfit.

      BP's error here ties into your discussion of  "freedom from"

and “freedom to”. Libertarians think first and foremost about
Bad Guys. This is the very reason the “freedom to”, which
they also value highly, must not include the “freedom to”
coerce.
How would you define a “Bad Guy” in PCT language? If they are
first and foremost in Libertarian thinking, they must have a
clear definition that can be put into PCT terms. By the way
“coercion” doesn’t have a specific PCT definition so far as I
know, other than the use of physical force that can overwhelm
the output of the coercee.

  It isn't the use of force, but the initiation of the use or threat

of use of force. The use of force in self defense or in defense
of others against coercion is not coercion.

I fail to see the connection between what I said and what you said.

I said that in PCT, coercion means that one party to a conflict is
sufficiently stronger than the other that the other is unable to
control whatever variable is in conflict. You seem to say that any
use of force is coercion. But that doesn’t make sense to me, since
all output of a control system is the use of force. There must be
something more to it than that.

  How are violations of social norms and obligations under contracts

put into PCT terms?

That's a very good question, since it is near the heart of the PCT

development of social psychology, which is usually ignored on this
mailing list. First, we have to consider what is a social norm, and
what is a contract, since contracts exist only when such a concept
is an element of a social norm. Then we can consider violations.

At the 1993 CSG meeting, I made a presentation on the development of

language, which is a specific kind of social norm. I don’t have a
copy, but Dag Forsell made a videotape. On my Web site I have a
short Powerpoint presentation on Social Control Systems I made at
the 2005 CSG meeting
.
There is also a discussion more nearly related to the issue at
from a
presentation I made at the University of Toronto in 1997. These
don’t specifically answer your question, but they might offer some
helpful background within which the question can properly be
abswered. Here I can offer only a brief sketch of the ideas. The fundamental notion is reorganization. To cut a long story short,
one aspect of reorganization is that if some behaviour fails to
reduce the error in the control system that emits the output that
leads to the behaviour, then something about that control loop will
change, usually the output connections. Loosely put, reorganization
can be characterized as “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, but if
it’s broke, try something different”.
A baby starts with no social skills, but as it grows, it encounters
times when its actions don’t serve to control the perceptions whose
error it is trying to reduce. Initially, those perceptions are
likely to be related to body positioning and bodily functions, but
it also can learn (probably not consciously, but through
reorganization) that to make the sound “Mama” often makes good
things happen. Moving ahead some years, through reorganization the child learns
that some behaviours have good effects on some perceptions while
others tend to lead to increased error in some perceptions. Treat
people nicely, and they are likely to treat you nicely. On balance,
reorganization tends toward people behaving according to their local
cultural norms, first within the family, then within peer groups,
and later within a wider circle of acquaintance. The child may very
well not be able to describe what has been learned, any more than a
child can describe English Grammar without being explicitly taught,
even though he speaks accurately using that grammar (at least the
grammar used by his/her social group).
Why do some social behaviours tend to lead to increased error in
some controlled perceptions? Apart from cases of conflict, one
possibility is that the behaviour disturbs a controlled perception
in another person, and the other person’s corrective output disturbs
a controlled perception in the first person. The first person’s
behaviour is likely to have “violated a social norm”, by which I
mean the pattern of behaviour learned through reorganization by that
other person and others in the circle of contacts. The norms will be
different in different social groups, as are many of the “human
values” of people in the different groups. Whether there exist
“Universal Human Values” is a question on which I have no solid
knowledge.
The process of reorganization is far from guaranteeing that any
person always conforms to socio-cultural norms. Some people learn
better than others. Some people associate with people whose social
norms differ from those of another group, and if the person belongs
to two groups with different norms, reorganization has to
incorporate the perception of which group the person is currently
communicating with. There may be honour among thieves, but the
victims of theft may consider that honour to violate their social
norms.
Now let’s consider contract. A contract is a form of social norm. In
some societies, if you say to someone that you will do something,
and then you fail to do it, your failure constitutes a severe
disturbance to the person’s perception of you as belonging to their
cultural group, and may bring corresponding penalty action. I
understand that diamond merchants in Antwerp have such a culture. In other societies, a contract has to be written down in a way that
someone else can interpret what is supposed to be done by both
parties. That’s a different cultural norm. In such a litiginous
society, the correction to the disturbance of the oteh person’s
perception caused by your failure to conform to the contract
specifications leads to a different corrective action, namely a
disturbance to the some perception controlled by a lawyer. The
lawyer’s corrective action may be to send you a letter informing you
of the situation. And so forth. What a contract means, and how violation of its obligations is dealt
with, is a social norm, developed through reorganization in the
multitude of people who interact together. Different groups treat it
differently. But how a contract is made and how failure to meet its
obligations results in increased error in the deefaulter’s
controlled perceptions is always a result of reorganization within
the cultural community.
I hope this isn’t so short as to render it unintelligible. If it is,
try to see if Dag has that videotape, and look at the URLs I
provided to get a sense of the background on which the above is
based.
Of course they can be represented in PCT. The skeleton of one such
approach I provided above has been available for nearly two decades.
I expect there are several other ways to consider it within PCT, but
I have not personally considered them.
I asked in my last message that you define “Bad Guy”. I’d still like
to know.
Without that definition, I would find it difficult to recognize one.
Also, I’m pretty sure that not everyone would agree with the
assignment of that label to any specific person. For example, to me,
our current (Canadian) Prime Minister is definitely a Bad Guy, but
nearly 40% of the voters polled apparently think he is a
sufficiently Good Guy that they plane to vote for his party in the
election a couple of weeks from now. He may even win a majority in
Parliament. So I don’t think it is easy to define “Bad Guy”, but I’d
like to hear how you would go about it.
Since much of the rest of your message concerns your assured
certainty about various truths, rather than an enquiry into how one
might go about discovering whether they are truths, I will not
comment further. I, too, have understandings I get from my limited
knowledge of history, and many of those understandings do not agree
with your truths that appear to have been revealed from on high.
It’s hard to comment on such things without getting into
“'tis-'tisn’t” arguments of the kind that I hoped to avoid by
introducing the concept of measuring freedom as a basis for
research.
Martin T

···

http://www.mmtaylor.net/PCT/CSG2005/CSG2005cSocialControl.ppthttp://www.mmtaylor.net/PCT/Mutuality/index.html

  It is definitely a problem  for PCT if these things that humans

control for can’t be represented.

  Bad

guys should be recognizable at a distance when coercing others.
Communication should aid in transmitting that information.

[Martin Taylor 2011.04.18.00.01]

[From Rick Marken (2011.04.17.1510)]

Martin Taylor (2011.04.14.17.13)--
Which provides a segue into how we might go about measuring freedom.

FREEDOM FROM vs FREEDOM TO

If we define freedom as I do -- the ability to control -- then we
don't really need to make this distinction.

I agree, but the 'tis-'tisn't argument has often seemed to me to hinge on a failure to notice that we are in fact making the distinction. It's a "glass half full" versus "glass half enpty" distinction. The wording shows whether you are concerned about how much freedom you do have or how much you don't have.

  To me, "freedom" is just
another word for having all your controlled variables (not "control
variables", Martin L.) under control. My measure of freedom would then
be the overall error in the hierarchy of control system (including
intrinsic control systems); the more error the less freedom.

I think you miss a point here. Your definition would give a thermostat more freedon than a bird, since it very seldom has any significant error, whereas the bird, with its many controlled perceptions, often has considerable error in at least some of them. Most people would think the bird had more freedom than the thermostat, because the thermostat is constrained to do only one thing.

My definition of freedom doesn't consider the actual error distributed over the complicated conrol structure. It considers what you could control if you encountered a disturbance of what magnitude. If I'm not controlling for perceiving the taste of chocolate, I have no error associated with the perception that I am not currently tasting chocolate. But if I were to control that perception with a value of "yes, chocolate", I could do so if I had some chocolate in the house, or if there is an accessible late-night shop that sells it nearby. If one of those conditions apply, I am free in respect of controlling for having or not having the taste of chocolate. But if I don't have any in the house and there is no nearby shop where I could get some, I am not free in that dimension. Since I am not currently trying to control that perception, I have no error associated with it whether or not I have chocolate in the house. So "chocolate taste" would be included in my measure of freedom, but not in yours.

In other words, my idea of freedom encompasses the range of perceptions you could control, not the current error in the perceptions you do control.

What might be a unit of freedom? I suggest that the minimal unit is the
ability to control any one perception over some minimal range of attainable
reference values.

Good idea. But very hard to measure,I would guess.

So would I, as I said. But I don't think this invalidates the notion.

From here on in your message, I think we are more or less in agreement, so I'm not commenting.

Martin

[Martin Taylor 2011.04.18.00.19]

in response to Adam Matic, apparently 2011.04.17.07.40
        Before I get to

measuring freedom, I’d like to ask Adam how the money is
lost if the bridge isn’t used? Doesn’t it just get
transferred into other people’s pockets to be used for
things they value more than the money itself? …

AM:

      Well invested money is used to create wealth, and that

would mean providing a lot of value to a lot of people.

      If we have a private investment, the measuring stick is a

simple one - profit. If money is invested well - the project

will be profitable. Good for everyone.

      If a private enterprise builds a bridge and it doesn't get

used, it looses money. They don’t earn what they invested.

      The state is financed from taxes. It invests the tax money

in an unused bridge and the bridge does not help anyone

      to earn more money and pay more taxes, so there is a

deficit. It’s easily overlooked.

      Might have been better to just buy a little boat to

transfer the few people who need it. Now the money has to be

taken from somewhere to equalise the deficit.

What you say may or may not be correct, but it seems to have no

relevance to my question. Certainly there have been lost opportunity
costs, but all that means is that the work involved in designing,
managing, and building the bridge could have been used for things
that provided more and better environmental affordances than the
bridge does. It doesn’t mean that the money paid to those who did
the work vanished.

(…)

LIMITS on Freedom

        Ignoring all social interactions, what limits one's freedom?

Within an order of magnitude or so, we are all endowed with
more or less the same sensory and muscular systems, and
similar (as compared to other species) mental capacities,
though some of us are unfortunately limited by birth or by
accident in these respects. Yet there are vast differences
in what some of us can control as opposed to what others of
us with equal sensory, muscular, and mental endowments can
control. Where do these differences come from?

        Since the parts of the control loops internal to all

individuals are fairly similar in capability, the difference
must lie in the environment. Some of us have access to
mechanisms that are not available to others. If I have a car
and you don’t, I can control my perception of my location
over a much wider range than you can, even if you use public
transportation. In this dimension, I have more freedom than
you. My car is an environmental affordance not available to
you. Likewise, if I live in a semi-desert part of Africa,
and you live in England, you can successfully control a
perception of having roses growing in your garden, whereas I
cannot. You have more freedom than me in that you have a
controllable perception that I cannot have. Environmental
affordances matter.

AM:

      I have to strongly disagree with the notion that

environment holds the difference of the amount of freedom. I
would define freedom as the ability

      to do the things you want to do, to reach goals you want to

reach and maintain states you want to maintain.

How does that differ from my definition? To me it sounds like a

rephrasing of what I said. What about the definition leads you to
“strongly disagree” with my conclusion that since we are all fairly
similar in perceptual, muscular, and mental endowment, the causes of
the great differences observable in our freedoms must lie in our
environments?

This quote by John Boyd

      stuck in my mind some time ago (he was a military

strategist; he had some insights about feedback loops in
decision making Wiki
link
):

  •          The most important thing in life is to be free to do
    

things. *

There are only two ways to insure that freedom —

  •          you can be rich or you can you reduce your needs to
    

zero.*

  •          I will never be rich, so I have chosen to crank down
    

my desires.*

        So, I guess freedom depends on the level a person

operates from. If on one level I can’t move my arm because
it’s broken,

        and the level up wants the arm to be moved to get some

water, I could just use my other hand. I’m free on the level
up.

        Maybe I wish to buy a car so I could drive to work

instead of using the bus. I would perceive owning a car as
having more

        freedom. I would also perceive not having to go to a job

in the first place, as having more freedom. Or perhaps doing
the job

from home.

If I understand your point correctly, you are suggesting that more

freedom is not associated with the ability to control more
perceptions (contradicting what you said just above), but in not
trying to control those perceptions you know you cannot. I think the
Buddha would agree that this is appropriate and would lead to
greater contentment in life, but I’m not sure I would agree that it
entails greater freedom.

MT:

        This last observation

is important when considering the amount of freedom a person
has. The amount of money one has makes a big difference on
how free one is. The value of a dollar is normally less to a
rich person than to a poor person because gaining or losing
a dollar makes very little difference either to the range or
to the number of controllable perceptions available to the
rich person (though there could be occasions when the rich
person needs one more dollar to achieve some objective, in
which case the dollar might have great value to that rich
person). The function relating monetary wealth to freedom as
defined above is not a linear function, by any means. For
one thing, everyone has to eat if they are to control any
perceptions at all, and unless one has the environmental
affordances to grow all one’s own food, to eat costs money.
At the very least, the cost of eating has to be subtracted
from the money available to enhance one’s freedom.

      Well... there's food to be collected around even in very

poor societies. If one has not much other desires but an
occasional meal, he might

feel really free and not value a dollar much.

True. But I don't think we should consider that if we impose that

limit on someone, they would then be more free than if we gave him
other opportunities. Certainly there are such people. I think of
what is said about Indian fakirs. I’m not sure that it relates to
the overall freedom of a whole society, though.

      Of course, not a lot of people are like that, but there are

individuals and even comunities who are.

      There are a lot of people who consider having more money as

having more freedom.

      And there are people with no limits to how much money they

want.

      So, I think that in modeling the society, the ammount of

money people wish to attain should be normaly distibuted
accros the population.

Where does that "So" and "should" come from? It sounds as though you

have done the research that I was proposing might be possible if we
have an agreed measure of “freedom”. Or is that statement just an
opinion? If it’s just an opinion, I also have one, which is that the
evolutionary tendency is likely to be for a Zipf’s law distribution,
and that distribution just might be the one that leads to greatest
overall freedom. But that’s only an opinion, subject to revision if
I come across data of theory that might bear on the question.

Martin T
···
    On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 6:35 AM, Martin > Taylor <mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net> >         wrote:

[Martin Lewitt 17 Apr 2011 2219 MDT]

*** snip ***
  You seem to say that any use of force is coercion. But that

doesn’t make sense to me, since all output of a control system is
the use of force. There must be something more to it than that.

The part that is missing, is coercion involves the initiation of

force or threat of force against another human being, not just
initiation of force in control of the environment in general. The
emphasis on “initiation” is to distinguish coercion from the use of
force against another person in self-defense or defense of others
from coercion. Probably most libertarians add fraud to the
definition as a form of coercion.

*** snip ***
  I

asked in my last message that you define “Bad Guy”. I’d still like
to know.

A bad guy is someone who coerces.
  Without that definition, I would find it difficult to recognize

one. Also, I’m pretty sure that not everyone would agree with the
assignment of that label to any specific person. For example, to
me, our current (Canadian) Prime Minister is definitely a Bad Guy,
but nearly 40% of the voters polled apparently think he is a
sufficiently Good Guy that they plane to vote for his party in the
election a couple of weeks from now. He may even win a majority in
Parliament. So I don’t think it is easy to define “Bad Guy”, but
I’d like to hear how you would go about it.

He probably is a bad guy by my defintion, but if he reduces taxation

and/or government regulation or police abuses, or the number of laws
or prosecutions against victimless crimes which don’t involve
coercion, then he probably is better than most that fill that
position. It is OK see someone in historical perspective, despite
adopting a higher standard.

  Since much of the rest of your message concerns your assured

certainty about various truths, rather than an enquiry into how
one might go about discovering whether they are truths, I will not
comment further. I, too, have understandings I get from my limited
knowledge of history, and many of those understandings do not
agree with your truths that appear to have been revealed from on
high. It’s hard to comment on such things without getting into
“'tis-'tisn’t” arguments of the kind that I hoped to avoid by
introducing the concept of measuring freedom as a basis for
research.

One is at a disadvantage in most ordinary discourse if one doesn't

put forward ones values and beliefs with as much confidence as those
who do think their values come from on-high. I tend to try to
persuade people by either their own values or standards, or
generally held standards that they wouldn’t want to admit they
disagree with in public. But all values are subjective, none are
absolute or written in the fabric of the universe, there are no
natural rights or right or wrong. We are descended from a long line
of bad guys by my defintion, humans emerged from Africa into
occupied territory. What probably distinguishes modern humans
from other hominids is how good we were at out competing other
humans for resources.

We are arguably in the process of domesticating ourselves,

culturally, but not genetically. The emotions that we characterize
as negative undoubtedly made their own contribution to our survival
and will be with us for some time to come.

But it is normal and nearly universal for humans to believe in right

and wrong, good and evil, moral values. Speaking in terms of mere
preferences and subjectively held values puts one at a disadvantage
in the face of certainly expressed views, but it is a disadvantage
without merit, since even certainly expressed value judgments are
subjective. That said, I do enjoy refining human relations to
principles, and I trust people who believe in principles far more
than those who engage in situational ethics. I adopt principles
that reflect my values and which I think can be applied and work
well universally, and I feel good about living a life of integrity
with respect to principles. I don’t lie, and I don’t coerce others
and I respect their rights as generally understood. I particularly
love the ideals of intellectual honesty and openness that are the
scientific ideals.

regards,

-- Martin L
···

On 4/17/2011 9:57 PM, Martin Taylor wrote:

  Martin T

[From Adam Matic]

[Martin Taylor 2011.04.18.00.19]

What you say may or may not be correct, but it seems to have no

relevance to my question. Certainly there have been lost opportunity
costs, but all that means is that the work involved in designing,
managing, and building the bridge could have been used for things
that provided more and better environmental affordances than the
bridge does. It doesn’t mean that the money paid to those who did
the work vanished.

AM:

Let’s say a company makes bridges and that people who use them, pay per crossing.

A bridge over a river is built connecting two big cities. In order to compete with the boats and other means of transportation, the bridge can’t be expensive. As a result, a lot of people use the bridge instead of other means, they cross more often, and a lot of people who wouldn’t cross at all, decide to do it occasionally. The company makes money, can make more bridges, workers stay employed, citizens gain a quicker and cheaper transportation. That’s a great investment and money is not lost.

Another bridge is built connecting two cities, but it’s expensive to use, bad quality, shakes on the wind, so it doesn’t get used. People don’t pay for the service, so the money invested is lost. It didn’t get back to the company. The company can’t make a new bridge and the workers get fired.

In building the two bridges there was no difference for the workers, they got payed from the investment fund.

Theoretically, this applies to all types of investments, and there is no difference if it’s private money or government money.

The anti-government investment argument is that, since the bridge is free to use, there is no way to find out how much value it creates to the citizens - no mechanism that shows if it’s a good or a bad investment. Also, it is very bad competition for the boat owners who can’t compete with free** crossings, whereas they could compete with another private company by lowering prices or innovating in some way to stay competitive.

** free, as in payed by tax money

AM:

      I have to strongly disagree with the notion that

environment holds the difference of the amount of freedom. I
would define freedom as the ability to do the things you want to do, to reach goals you want to
reach and maintain states you want to maintain.

MT: How does that differ from my definition? To me it sounds like a

rephrasing of what I said. What about the definition leads you to
“strongly disagree” with my conclusion that since we are all fairly
similar in perceptual, muscular, and mental endowment, the causes of
the great differences observable in our freedoms must lie in our
environments?

AM:

If we look at a single moment in time of a single system and we know all about the organisation of the system, then the amount of freedom, it seems to me, can be said to be caused by the environment. In different environments, the same system would have different amounts of freedom.

If we look at different points in time, a system can have different amounts of freedom in the same environment by changing it’s organisation.

That’s the part I disagree with. Have I misunderstood your definition?

Also, since people have quite different goals and wishes, I dont think we can say that we’re all “fairly similar”. Different people would percieve different amounts of freedom in the same environment, depending on what they wish to control.

MT:

If I understand your point correctly, you are suggesting that more

freedom is not associated with the ability to control more
perceptions (contradicting what you said just above), but in not
trying to control those perceptions you know you cannot. I think the
Buddha would agree that this is appropriate and would lead to
greater contentment in life, but I’m not sure I would agree that it
entails greater freedom.

AM:

Yeah, Buddha probably has some similar sayings :slight_smile:

I guess it all depends of how we define “freedom”. Is it a property of a hierarchy or a property of a single loop, where exactly could we measure the freedom, does the amount of freedom change as we go “up a level”; could the freedom be measured by observing behavior of real humans, or a simulation would be more appropriate…

MT:

True. But I don't think we should consider that if we impose that

limit on someone, they would then be more free than if we gave him
other opportunities. Certainly there are such people. I think of
what is said about Indian fakirs. I’m not sure that it relates to
the overall freedom of a whole society, though.

I’m confused about all the definitions of freedom. What would be the overall freedom of a whole society?

If that is a percieved quantity, than it’s different for all people and is constructed by their input functions (I guess we can say it depends on their goals?). A person living miserably in a big city might consider a tribal society very free.

MT: Where does that "So" and "should" come from? It sounds as though you

have done the research that I was proposing might be possible if we
have an agreed measure of “freedom”. Or is that statement just an
opinion? If it’s just an opinion, I also have one, which is that the
evolutionary tendency is likely to be for a Zipf’s law distribution,
and that distribution just might be the one that leads to greatest
overall freedom. But that’s only an opinion, subject to revision if
I come across data of theory that might bear on the question.

Right, it’s an opinion about the distribution of a potential property of a system in a simulation. Completly subject to revision and analysis.

Best

Adam

[Martin Lewitt 18 Apr 2011 1607 MDT]

Quite simply the government doesn't go out of business if it makes

bad decisions, it stays in business by being involuntarily
subsidized, whereas in the private sector businesses are self
sustaining, or they go out of business and the resources are
recycled. Think of it as a vibrant ecosystem where detritus is
doesn’t stick around for long. In addition the government
decisions were more likely to be bad in the first place, because
they were less likely to consider market information.

Martin L
···

On 4/18/2011 3:26 PM, Adam Matić wrote:

[From Adam Matic]

        [Martin Taylor

2011.04.18.00.19]

        What you say may or may

not be correct, but it seems to have no relevance to my
question. Certainly there have been lost opportunity costs,
but all that means is that the work involved in designing,
managing, and building the bridge could have been used for
things that provided more and better environmental
affordances than the bridge does. It doesn’t mean that the
money paid to those who did the work vanished.

AM:

      Let's say a company makes bridges and that people who use

them, pay per crossing.

      A bridge over a river is built connecting two big cities.

In order to compete with the boats and other means of
transportation, the bridge can’t be expensive. As a result, a
lot of people use the bridge instead of other means, they
cross more often, and a lot of people who wouldn’t cross at
all, decide to do it occasionally. The company makes money,
can make more bridges, workers stay employed, citizens gain a
quicker and cheaper transportation. That’s a great investment
and money is not lost.

      Another bridge is built connecting two cities, but it's

expensive to use, bad quality, shakes on the wind, so it
doesn’t get used. People don’t pay for the service, so the
money invested is lost. It didn’t get back to the company. The
company can’t make a new bridge and the workers get fired.

      In building the two bridges there was no difference for the

workers, they got payed from the investment fund.

      Theoretically, this applies to all types of investments,

and there is no difference if it’s private money or government
money.

      The anti-government investment argument is that, since the

bridge is free to use, there is no way to find out how much
value it creates to the citizens - no mechanism that shows if
it’s a good or a bad investment. Also, it is very bad
competition for the boat owners who can’t compete with free**
crossings, whereas they could compete with another private
company by lowering prices or innovating in some way to stay
competitive.

** free, as in payed by tax money

AM:

                I have to strongly disagree with the notion that

environment holds the difference of the amount of
freedom. I would define freedom as the ability to do
the things you want to do, to reach goals you want
to reach and maintain states you want to maintain.

        MT: How does that differ from my definition? To me it sounds

like a rephrasing of what I said. What about the definition
leads you to “strongly disagree” with my conclusion that
since we are all fairly similar in perceptual, muscular, and
mental endowment, the causes of the great differences
observable in our freedoms must lie in our environments?

AM:

      If we look at a single moment in time of a single system

and we know all about the organisation of the system, then the
amount of freedom, it seems to me, can be said to be caused by
the environment. In different environments, the same system
would have different amounts of freedom.

      If we look at different points in time, a system can have

different amounts of freedom in the same environment by
changing it’s organisation.

      That's the part I disagree with. Have I misunderstood your

definition?

      Also, since people have quite different goals and wishes, I

dont think we can say that we’re all “fairly similar”.
Different people would percieve different amounts of freedom
in the same environment, depending on what they wish to
control.

MT:

        If I understand your point correctly, you are suggesting

that more freedom is not associated with the ability to
control more perceptions (contradicting what you said just
above), but in not trying to control those perceptions you
know you cannot. I think the Buddha would agree that this is
appropriate and would lead to greater contentment in life,
but I’m not sure I would agree that it entails greater
freedom.

AM:

Yeah, Buddha probably has some similar sayings :slight_smile:

      I guess it all depends of how we define "freedom". Is it a

property of a hierarchy or a property of a single loop, where
exactly could we measure the freedom, does the amount of
freedom change as we go “up a level”; could the freedom be
measured by observing behavior of real humans, or a simulation
would be more appropriate…

MT:

        True. But I don't think we should consider that if we impose

that limit on someone, they would then be more free than if
we gave him other opportunities. Certainly there are such
people. I think of what is said about Indian fakirs. I’m not
sure that it relates to the overall freedom of a whole
society, though.

      I'm confused about all the definitions of freedom. What

would be the overall freedom of a whole society?

      If that is a percieved quantity, than it's different for

all people and is constructed by their input functions (I
guess we can say it depends on their goals?). A person living
miserably in a big city might consider a tribal society very
free.

        MT: Where does that "So" and "should" come from? It sounds

as though you have done the research that I was proposing
might be possible if we have an agreed measure of “freedom”.
Or is that statement just an opinion? If it’s just an
opinion, I also have one, which is that the evolutionary
tendency is likely to be for a Zipf’s law distribution, and
that distribution just might be the one that leads to
greatest overall freedom. But that’s only an opinion,
subject to revision if I come across data of theory that
might bear on the question.

      Right, it's an opinion about the distribution of a

potential property of a system in a simulation. Completly
subject to revision and analysis.

Best

Adam

[Martin Taylor 2011.04.18.22.55]

[From Adam Matic]

        [Martin Taylor

2011.04.18.00.19]

        What you say may or may

not be correct, but it seems to have no relevance to my
question. Certainly there have been lost opportunity costs,
but all that means is that the work involved in designing,
managing, and building the bridge could have been used for
things that provided more and better environmental
affordances than the bridge does. It doesn’t mean that the
money paid to those who did the work vanished.

AM:

      Let's say a company makes bridges and that people who use

them, pay per crossing.

      A bridge over a river is built connecting two big cities.

In order to compete with the boats and other means of
transportation, the bridge can’t be expensive. As a result, a
lot of people use the bridge instead of other means, they
cross more often, and a lot of people who wouldn’t cross at
all, decide to do it occasionally. The company makes money,
can make more bridges, workers stay employed, citizens gain a
quicker and cheaper transportation. That’s a great investment
and money is not lost.

      Another bridge is built connecting two cities, but it's

expensive to use, bad quality, shakes on the wind, so it
doesn’t get used. People don’t pay for the service, so the
money invested is lost. It didn’t get back to the company. The
company can’t make a new bridge and the workers get fired.

      In building the two bridges there was no difference for the

workers, they got payed from the investment fund.

      Theoretically, this applies to all types of investments,

and there is no difference if it’s private money or government
money.

      The anti-government investment argument is that, since the

bridge is free to use, there is no way to find out how much
value it creates to the citizens - no mechanism that shows if
it’s a good or a bad investment. Also, it is very bad
competition for the boat owners who can’t compete with free**
crossings, whereas they could compete with another private
company by lowering prices or innovating in some way to stay
competitive.

** free, as in payed by tax money

I don't see how this is relevant to my repeated question about how

the money is lost if the built bridge is unused. It is highly
relevant to my argument about the effect of the environment on
freedom. A bridge that nobody wants to use does not increase the
freedom of anyone, and it might decrease the freedom of someone who,
before the bridge, could control a perception of watching the shore
birds in that area and now cannot, or rather, has a much smaller
range of possible reference values over which that perception could
be controlled.

AM:

                I have to strongly disagree with the notion that

environment holds the difference of the amount of
freedom. I would define freedom as the ability to do
the things you want to do, to reach goals you want
to reach and maintain states you want to maintain.

        MT: How does that differ from my definition? To me it sounds

like a rephrasing of what I said. What about the definition
leads you to “strongly disagree” with my conclusion that
since we are all fairly similar in perceptual, muscular, and
mental endowment, the causes of the great differences
observable in our freedoms must lie in our environments?

AM:

      If we look at a single moment in time of a single system

and we know all about the organisation of the system, then the
amount of freedom, it seems to me, can be said to be caused by
the environment. In different environments, the same system
would have different amounts of freedom.

      If we look at different points in time, a system can have

different amounts of freedom in the same environment by
changing it’s organisation.

      That's the part I disagree with. Have I misunderstood your

definition?

I suppose you have, since what you say here agrees with my

definition and yet you say it is the part you disagree with.

      Also, since people have quite different goals and wishes, I

dont think we can say that we’re all “fairly similar”.

I said that within an order of magnitude, and ignoring accidents of

birth or life events, we all have similar capabilities, sensory,
muscular, and mental. I did not say we have similar goals and
wishes, did I?

      Different people would percieve different amounts of

freedom in the same environment, depending on what they wish
to control.

True. The question is whether that difference is measurable in the

sense that some other perceptions can be measured at least to the
degree of being ordered from greater to lesser? Does it ever make
sense to ask someone “Did you have more freedom then than you do
now, the same, or less?” I think it does sometimes make sense to ask
such a question, and if it does, the implication is that freedom is
a quantitative property.

MT:

        If I understand your point correctly, you are suggesting

that more freedom is not associated with the ability to
control more perceptions (contradicting what you said just
above), but in not trying to control those perceptions you
know you cannot. I think the Buddha would agree that this is
appropriate and would lead to greater contentment in life,
but I’m not sure I would agree that it entails greater
freedom.

AM:

Yeah, Buddha probably has some similar sayings :slight_smile:

      I guess it all depends of how we define "freedom". Is it a

property of a hierarchy or a property of a single loop, where
exactly could we measure the freedom, does the amount of
freedom change as we go “up a level”; could the freedom be
measured by observing behavior of real humans, or a simulation
would be more appropriate.

When I initially submitted my suggestion to the group, I had

imagined that EVERY perception at all levels would be included in
the summation. I finessed the problem that the (mathematical)
degrees of freedom for control, taking bandwidths into account,
cannot increase as we go up the levels, and just considered summing
them all. There are probably technical arguments for a different
approach, but unless we can agree on the basic issue, there’s no
point in going further.

MT:

        True. But I don't think we should consider that if we impose

that limit on someone, they would then be more free than if
we gave him other opportunities. Certainly there are such
people. I think of what is said about Indian fakirs. I’m not
sure that it relates to the overall freedom of a whole
society, though.

I’m confused about all the definitions of freedom.

Me, too. That's why I started this thread. Are we dealing with a set

of different concepts that are given the same label, or are we
looking at the same thing from different viewpoints?

What would be the overall freedom of a whole society?

I suggested that it is the sum over the freedom of all the

individuals in the society. You may suggest something else if you
think it appropriate to do so.

If that is a percieved quantity,

By my definition, an individual might be able to perceive his/her

own freedom, but it would take the kinds of data gathered by census
takers, followed by appropriate analytic procedures to discover the
overall freedom of a society.

I say an individual might be able to perceive his/her own freedom,

and perception is the only truth any of us can have. But an
individual cannot perceive the limits of his/her muscular control
bandwidth for finger movement, and yet it is a measurable quantity.
If you take my definition of freedom as a joint function of number
of perceptions available for control and the range over which the
individual perceptions can be controlled effectively, then it is
possible that this could be a measurable quantity that can be
perceived only loosely, in the same way as one can perceive that one
can control finger movements faster than toe movements.

      than it's different for all people and is constructed by

their input functions (I guess we can say it depends on their
goals?). A person living miserably in a big city might
consider a tribal society very free.

        MT: Where does that "So" and "should" come from? It sounds

as though you have done the research that I was proposing
might be possible if we have an agreed measure of “freedom”.
Or is that statement just an opinion? If it’s just an
opinion, I also have one, which is that the evolutionary
tendency is likely to be for a Zipf’s law distribution, and
that distribution just might be the one that leads to
greatest overall freedom. But that’s only an opinion,
subject to revision if I come across data of theory that
might bear on the question.

      Right, it's an opinion about the distribution of a

potential property of a system in a simulation. Completly
subject to revision and analysis.

Not only in a simulation. Theoretical analysis might also provide

data (I made a typo when I wrote “data of theory” when I meant “data
or theory”. It’s interesting that “of” in Danish means “or” :slight_smile:

Martin
···

On 2011/04/18 5:26 PM, Adam Matić wrote:

(Gavin Ritz 2011.04.19.15.34NZT)

[Martin Taylor
2011.04.18.22.55]

[From Adam
Matic]

[Martin Taylor
2011.04.18.00.19]

I’m confused about all
the definitions of freedom.

The degrees of freedom in terms of energy
are the extra numbers of new external energies a system can control.

Me, too. That’s why I started this thread. Are we dealing with a set of
different concepts that are given the same label, or are we looking at the same
thing from different viewpoints?

What would be the overall
freedom of a whole society?

The ability to control and concentrate its
internal energies and accumulate and control the energies in the environment. And
not get overwhelmed by the energies of the environment. Like a massive earthquake,
then a tsunami, then a hurricane and then a China meltdown, or global
warming on a massive scale. Or just plain dangerous infighting.

Free will is identical to Free energy.

ΔG = -Δn. msu. [E
(msy,Msy)- E(msu,Msu)] ( de
Lange) E (msy,Msy)>E(msu,Msu)]

Where ΔG is the free
energy

Δn= the rate or flow of
low order quantities from the Surrounding to the System

msu= the low
order qualities of the surroundings. (eg, food, water, oil, money, size)

E (msy,Msy)= the energy of the system in terms of its low
order qualities and high order qualities.

E(msu,Msy)=
the energy of the
surroundings in terms of its low order qualities and high order qualities.

For any system to be
spontaneous delta G must be negative.

···

On 2011/04/18 5:26 PM, Adam Matić wrote:

I don't see how this is relevant to my repeated question about how

the money is lost if the built bridge is unused. It is highly
relevant to my argument about the effect of the environment on
freedom. A bridge that nobody wants to use ** does not increase the
freedom of anyone, and it might decrease the freedom of someone** who,
before the bridge, could control a perception of watching the shore
birds in that area and now cannot, or rather, has a much smaller
range of possible reference values over which that perception could
be controlled.

AM:

The money is lost because no one profits from the bridge. Monetary profit to the bridge owner would be money gained. It would come from people who use the bridge - they would profit from using the bridge and would be willing to pay for use - non-monetary profit.

An unused bridge decreases the amount of money of the investor - that is his freedom. If the money comes from taxes, it decreases the freedom of people who are taxed.

MT: The question is whether that difference is measurable in the

sense that some other perceptions can be measured at least to the
degree of being ordered from greater to lesser? Does it ever make
sense to ask someone “Did you have more freedom then than you do
now, the same, or less?” I think it does sometimes make sense to ask
such a question, and if it does, the implication is that freedom is
a quantitative property.

AM: Ok. I agree with that.

MT: I suggested that it is the sum over the freedom of all the

individuals in the society. You may suggest something else if you
think it appropriate to do so.

AM:

That seems like a good measure.

I just have a vague idea at the moment: increasing one’s freedom giving him freedom to coerce, decreses other’s freedom from coertion.

Attaining maximum feedom for everyone would require that everyone at the same time has freedom to do whatever he wants except decreasing other’s freedom. An increase of one’s freedom to coerce would disproportionaly decrease other’s freedom to do what he wants.

Adam

···

On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 5:28 AM, Martin Taylor mmt-csg@mmtaylor.net wrote: