[from Mary Powers 940504]
Hans Blom (940503)
...let me annoy you a bit...
Because you know it teases (a la the Duchess' child in Alice?)
But this is a very generous interpretation of your post. If you
are being satirical, it comes across as dead serious. If you are
serious, your argument is weak, for reasons spelled out by Bill
and Tom. For instance, your own resistance to the E. coli
reorganization model. More particularly, your assorted arguments
drawn from physics models.
Do you get what I mean or did you only feel resistance when
reading this?
Obviously, they felt resistance. But not to what you thought you
were doing (giving them a taste of their own medicine?). Rather,
to the flawed content of your post.
Maybe what they say about their model vs other models in
psychology seems as pointless to you as Euclideans and non-
Euclideans talking past each other. I put this down to your
ignorance of psychology as it exists today.
As for this:
You do not play by the rules of science. As long as you believe
that another theory is wrong simply because it is in conflict
with PCT, you are so unscientific as to be unwelcome in the
circles where scientists convene.
Again, I think this is you, trying to convey the hurt and insult
some people may have felt who have been on the receiving end of
some comments on the net, by insulting PCTers back. I hope that's
all it was. It really strikes a nerve, however, because a major
reason PCTers are at times bitter and aggressive on the net is
because they have been jerked around for years by scientists who
are NOT playing by the rules, have had papers on PCT rejected
simply because it does conflict with other scientists' theories,
and have been made thoroughly unwelcome in various scientific
circles.
To the degree that csg-l is intended as an educational tool,
perhaps the complaints about attitude are justified. But csg-l
was established largely for another reason: to enable people
interested in the subject to talk to each other. Before the net,
PCTers had only phone and letters, and a once-a-year meeting
which only 20 or 30 could attend. While newcomers to the subject
are welcome, it is not really compatible with this aim of keeping
up with each other to have to stop and answer criticisms and
questions from people who have jumped in to this entertaining
discussion without having read anything on the subject.
Rightly or wrongly, the point of this net is to explore the
hypothesis that PCT is the best model going in the life,
behavioral, and social sciences. This hypothesis may turn out to
be incorrect, but this net is where it is being explored. It may
seem arrogant and power-mad to you (and others), but how else can
a model like this be tested other than by dumping what has gone
before and embracing the new model wholeheartedly and seeing
where it goes? Substantive questions from new people coming on
the net are ALWAYS answered, in immense detail. People who resist
adopting a PCT frame of reference are tolerated up to a point,
but since the purpose of the net is to use and apply and extend
the PCT hypothesis, anyone who isn't interested in or capable of
doing so is really interfering in the process and providing an
irrelevant distraction. These distractions are what get annoying
sometimes, and are perhaps responded to crudely. This is, after
all, csg-l, not cogsci-l or S-R-l, or even control-theory-l. Your
perception of PCT as being full of holes is an artifact of your
own particular frame of reference, informed by the design of
systems that are not living, that serve purposes other than their
own. This has limited your understanding of PCT, and is why this
pedagogical attack has failed its purpose.
Mary P.