[From: Bruce Nevin (Mon 930614 06:57:04 EDT)]
In _Closed Loop_ 3.2:49 Bob Clark describes transferring ball-throwing
skill from his right hand to his left by analytically replicating the
familiar sequence. He observes that he had to have no witnesses to do
this successfully.
I think that this is because whenever we are in company of others we
imagine how our actions appear to them. This becomes a distraction
when we are on unfamiliar ground.
This imagining how we appear to others is the basis on which individuals
may control perceptions of conformity (or not) to social norms. It is
the basis for development of norms in the individual and in the evolution
of social groups.
The gather program shows that some "social behavior" at least requires no
perceptions of social norms. This proposal predicts that other "social
behavior" does, and it suggests something about the origin and character
of perceptions of social norms. An example of origination might be the
means by which the individual control systems in the gather program come
to have the same setting of a reference perception of proximity to other
individuals.
Bruce
bn@bbn.com