PCT and libertarian free will

[PHILIP_JERAIR_YERANO]

[Philip 4/13/15 18:00 pt]

Dear CSG,

I stumbled across this paper by Mark Balaguer. In the first paragraph, he defines “libertarian freedom” as “the ability to make decisions that are simultaneously (a) undetermined and (b) appropriately non-random.” If you read the rest of the paper, you’ll realize he’s essentially begging for an opportunity to hear about PCT. So I paid him a visit today and gave him the information he needed.

The moral of the story is that we need to find the right people to discuss PCT with - handpicking them if necessary. And we should discuss PCT with these people ONLY. We need to stop trying to disseminate the PCT message to people who are not trying to accept the PCT message.

Philip

A Coherent, Naturalistic, and Plausible Formulation of Libertarian Free Will.pdf (1.55 MB)

[wmansell]

Fab. What does he think of PCT?

···

On 14 Apr 2015, at 02:16, PHILIP JERAIR YERANOSIAN (pyeranos@ucla.edu via csgnet Mailing List) <csgnet@lists.illinois.edu> wrote:

[Philip 4/13/15 18:00 pt]

Dear CSG,

I stumbled across this paper by Mark Balaguer. In the first paragraph, he defines "libertarian freedom" as "the ability to make decisions that are simultaneously (a) undetermined and (b) appropriately non-random." If you read the rest of the paper, you'll realize he's essentially begging for an opportunity to hear about PCT. So I paid him a visit today and gave him the information he needed.

The moral of the story is that we need to find the right people to discuss PCT with - handpicking them if necessary. And we should discuss PCT with these people ONLY. We need to stop trying to disseminate the PCT message to people who are not trying to accept the PCT message.

Philip
<A Coherent, Naturalistic, and Plausible Formulation of Libertarian Free Will.pdf>

[rsmarken]

[From Rick Marken (2015.04.14.1230)]

···

On Tue, Apr 14, 2015 at 12:02 AM, Warren Mansell csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

WM: Fab. What does he [Mark Balaguer] think of PCT?

RM: I’d be more interested in hearing what PCT people think of the article by Balaguer. PCT seems to attract libertarians, which I can kind of understand. But many seem to stay libertarians even after learning PCT, and I don’t understand that. So I’d be interested in seeing either a PCT based critique of or support for the Balaguer treatise.

RM: I’ll just say that what I see as the fundamental flaw in the Balaguer article is that it implicitly accepts the notion that behavior is a caused output. So he’s building his “Coherent, Naturalistic, and Plausible Formulation of Libertarian Free Will” on a foundation of sand.

Best

Rick

On 14 Apr 2015, at 02:16, PHILIP JERAIR YERANOSIAN (pyeranos@ucla.edu via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Philip 4/13/15 18:00 pt]

Dear CSG,

I stumbled across this paper by Mark Balaguer. In the first paragraph, he defines “libertarian freedom” as “the ability to make decisions that are simultaneously (a) undetermined and (b) appropriately non-random.” If you read the rest of the paper, you’ll realize he’s essentially begging for an opportunity to hear about PCT. So I paid him a visit today and gave him the information he needed.

The moral of the story is that we need to find the right people to discuss PCT with - handpicking them if necessary. And we should discuss PCT with these people ONLY. We need to stop trying to disseminate the PCT message to people who are not trying to accept the PCT message.

Philip

<A Coherent, Naturalistic, and Plausible Formulation of Libertarian Free Will.pdf>

–
Richard S. Marken, Ph.D.
Author of Doing Research on Purpose.
Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble

[P0ck]

PCT is fully in line with libertarianism, see the

http://biologyoflaw.org/ website for a full PCT analysis of legal rights foundation and its conclusions.

Behavior may be a by-product of perception control but how many options one have to try to control a particular perception strongly affects one’s ability to control one’s perception. This is know as the law of requisition variety in cybernetics and is fully demonstrated by Shannon 5th theorem and widely accepted as a law by control theorists. There is also the law of requisite hierarchy in control theory that implies hierarchy and orders are required in society too.

Nicolas

···

On Tue, Apr 14, 2015 at 12:02 AM, Warren Mansell csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

WM: Fab. What does he [Mark Balaguer] think of PCT?

RM: I’d be more interested in hearing what PCT people think of the article by Balaguer. PCT seems to attract libertarians, which I can kind of understand. But many seem to stay libertarians even after learning PCT, and I don’t understand that. So I’d be interested in seeing either a PCT based critique of or support for the Balaguer treatise.

RM: I’ll just say that what I see as the fundamental flaw in the Balaguer article is that it implicitly accepts the notion that behavior is a caused output. So he’s building his “Coherent, Naturalistic, and Plausible Formulation of Libertarian Free Will” on a foundation of sand.

Best

Rick

On 14 Apr 2015, at 02:16, PHILIP JERAIR YERANOSIAN (pyeranos@ucla.edu via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Philip 4/13/15 18:00 pt]

Dear CSG,

I stumbled across this paper by Mark Balaguer. In the first paragraph, he defines “libertarian freedom” as “the ability to make decisions that are simultaneously (a) undetermined and (b) appropriately non-random.” If you read the rest of the paper, you’ll realize he’s essentially begging for an opportunity to hear about PCT. So I paid him a visit today and gave him the information he needed.

The moral of the story is that we need to find the right people to discuss PCT with - handpicking them if necessary. And we should discuss PCT with these people ONLY. We need to stop trying to disseminate the PCT message to people who are not trying to accept the PCT message.

Philip

<A Coherent, Naturalistic, and Plausible Formulation of Libertarian Free Will.pdf>

–
Richard S. Marken, Ph.D.
Author of Doing Research on Purpose.
Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble

[rsmarken]

[From Rick Marken (2015.04.15.1340)]

···

On Tue, Apr 14, 2015 at 9:10 PM, Nicolas M. Kirchberger oberon.nmk@gmail.com wrote:

NK: PCT is fully in line with libertarianism, see the

http://biologyoflaw.org/ website for a full PCT analysis of legal rights foundation and its conclusions.

RM: This is a very well written article and I do hear vague traces of skipping reels of PCT in there. But Hugh Gibbons is a lawyer, not a scientist, and he says a lot of things that sound good but are not really consistent with PCT. I can make PCT sense out of what he says up to point 3. “Wills cause undertakings”, which I can interpret as control systems act (undertake) to get their perceptions to match their reference (will). But from that point on Gibbons is talking about the way he sees things rather than about the PCT model of how things work. For example, the idea that “Undertakings cause risks” is just his way of saying that control has unintended side effects. I suppose those risks don’t exist without a person controlling but it seems odd to call those risks “caused by controlling”. But then Gibbons goes on to say that “Risks cause duties”. This is clearly a description of Gibbons’ own values – his references for the way things should be – and not a description of the way things work per PCT. The idea here is that when a person controls there are unintended side effects that cause the controller to have the duty to prevent these side effects from interfering with someone else’s controlling. This sounds nice but it is actually an impossible notion since we are controlling hundreds of variables all the same time and we could not possibly be aware of --let alone have a duty to prevent – any possible harmful unintended consequences of that controlling.

RM: So we have definitely left PCT at this point and entered Hugh Gibbons’ value system (which is a fine value system but not PCT). Gibbon’s had to make the assumption about “Risks causing duties” because it leads to his idea that it’s those Duties that cause rights. The idea is that when we breach our duty to take into account the side effects that our controlling might have on another person’s ability to control we have cause the violated party to have the right to use coercion to “redress” our violation. This is very non-PCT for so many reasons but most importantly, I think, because it assumes that a right is an actual entity that exists in the person whose been violated. In PCT rights exist only as controlled perceptions. So what those rights are depend on what a person has learned to perceive and control for as a right. I think this is the essential difference between Gibbons’ views and the control theory view of “rights”. Gibbons thinks people actually have rights that are like invisible shields that protect them from people doing things to them that they don’t like; PCT says that rights are just controlled perceptions that are controlled as a means of achieving some other goal, like perceiving themselves as “free” to do certain things that they want to do. Controlling for rights is just a fancy way of saying “you’re not the boss of me”.

RM: Even though I think the Gibbons paper gives a very distorted picture of PCT, many of the conclusions are basically consistent with my values. I certainly think people should treat each other with respect, that people try not to interfere with each other’s controlling and that coercion should be used as little as possible but is sometimes necessary and justified when people actively and knowingly interfere with other people’s ability to control. If what Gibbon is describing here is a libertarian vision of society than I’m pretty much on board with it. The only problem with it for me is that it has a very limited picture of what constitutes interference with another individual’s ability to control. Gibbons considers only direct interference of one person with another’s controlling; what’s missing is a consideration of indirect influences of one person’s controlling on another’s. These are social influences. For example, one person’s greed or bad health habits may not obviously affect another person’s ability to control but I think they do. This is where I think libertarianism fails for me as a system concept. It doesn’t really take into account the “externalities”, the social side effects of controlling. I think this kind of controlling should be regulated just as we regulate the “criminal” controlling that directly interferes with the controlling of others.

RM: One last point here. Whether or not Gibbons is using PCT in this article, PCT is just a theory of behavior and being a libertarianism is just something that some people do. So PCT explains what libertarianism is (a controlled system concept level perception) but doesn’t “justify” controlling for that system concept any more than it justifies controlling for socialism or capitalism or whatever system concept people control for. I think people think of PCT as justifying libertarianism because they imagine that PCT says that people have free will and libertarianism is all about people being “free”. But, in fact, PCT doesn’t suggest that people have “free will”, at least not in the sense that their daily behavior is “free”. Indeed, the hierarchical model suggests that the actions we take to achieve our goals are completely constrained by the goals themselves. This is clear from the simple tracking task where, once you have selected the goal of keeping the cursor on target, you are no longer free to choose the actions (mouse movements) you will take to achieve this goal; you must move the mouse in a way that compensates for the effect of disturbances to the controlled variable. That, by the way, is why a person’s actions are controllable via disturbance to a variable you know the person to be controlling.

NK: Behavior may be a by-product of perception control but how many options one have to try to control a particular perception strongly affects one’s ability to control one’s perception. This is know as the law of requisition variety in cybernetics and is fully demonstrated by Shannon 5th theorem and widely accepted as a law by control theorists.

RM: The law of requisite variety is just a qualitative statement of the fact that in order to control a variable the control system must be able to vary its output in a way that compensates for variations in the effects of disturbances to a controlled variable. It’s really not a very useful (or descriptive) statement about how control works, whether it’s accepted or not by control theorists. It certainly has nothing to do with control system’s having free will. Indeed, a more precise statement of this law is:

o = - d

RM: That is, once the system has selected (for higher level reasons) the goal of keeping a controlled variable at particular reference level variations in output, o, the actions of the system, are completely determined by variations in the net disturbance, d, to the controlled variable. The “requisite variety” in o is negatively related to and completely determined by the “variety” of d. The law of requisite variety shows that a control system is not free to do what it wants once it has selected goals for the variables it controls.

RM: There is room for something like “free will” in the reorganization system: look up “volition” in B:CP. We can voluntarily (and arbitrarily, hence “freely) change references for a controlled variable, which is what I do when I decide to make a fist for no particular reason other than to do it. This is where I think we should look for free will” in the PCT Model; not in the law of requisite variety.

Best

Rick

Best

Rick

There is also the law of requisite hierarchy in control theory that implies hierarchy and orders are required in society too.

Nicolas

Le 2015-04-14 à 15:28, Richard Marken (rsmarken@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu a écrit :

[From Rick Marken (2015.04.14.1230)]

–
Richard S. Marken, Ph.D.
Author of Doing Research on Purpose.
Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble

On Tue, Apr 14, 2015 at 12:02 AM, Warren Mansell csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

WM: Fab. What does he [Mark Balaguer] think of PCT?

RM: I’d be more interested in hearing what PCT people think of the article by Balaguer. PCT seems to attract libertarians, which I can kind of understand. But many seem to stay libertarians even after learning PCT, and I don’t understand that. So I’d be interested in seeing either a PCT based critique of or support for the Balaguer treatise.

RM: I’ll just say that what I see as the fundamental flaw in the Balaguer article is that it implicitly accepts the notion that behavior is a caused output. So he’s building his “Coherent, Naturalistic, and Plausible Formulation of Libertarian Free Will” on a foundation of sand.

Best

Rick

On 14 Apr 2015, at 02:16, PHILIP JERAIR YERANOSIAN (pyeranos@ucla.edu via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Philip 4/13/15 18:00 pt]

Dear CSG,

I stumbled across this paper by Mark Balaguer. In the first paragraph, he defines “libertarian freedom” as “the ability to make decisions that are simultaneously (a) undetermined and (b) appropriately non-random.” If you read the rest of the paper, you’ll realize he’s essentially begging for an opportunity to hear about PCT. So I paid him a visit today and gave him the information he needed.

The moral of the story is that we need to find the right people to discuss PCT with - handpicking them if necessary. And we should discuss PCT with these people ONLY. We need to stop trying to disseminate the PCT message to people who are not trying to accept the PCT message.

Philip

<A Coherent, Naturalistic, and Plausible Formulation of Libertarian Free Will.pdf>

–
Richard S. Marken, Ph.D.
Author of Doing Research on Purpose.
Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble

[P0ck]

The law of requisite variety explains why libertarianism is the best system to allow people to maximize their perception control abilities.

The goal of libertarianism is to expand freedom maximally for all. Increased freedom means that people have more options as to how they can seek their goal and how they can manage disturbances.

For instance, if for a particular problem a person must meet with another in Chicago at 7am the next morning and the person has the choice to go to the other city with his car, by train, by plane, by taxi, by commuting with another, etc, the person has more chance to be able to meet his/her goal of being there by 7am and can better manage adverse events that may prevent him or her to be there on time. If the person has only two choice then he/she is more exposed to control failure than if he/she has more option.

Thus libertarianism by maximizing options people can choose from maximize and ease people’s ability to reach their goals, manage disturbances and avoid control failure.

Nicolas

···

RM: The law of requisite variety is just a qualitative statement of the fact that in order to control a variable the control system must be able to vary its output in a way that compensates for variations in the effects of disturbances to a controlled variable. It’s really not a very useful (or descriptive) statement about how control works, whether it’s accepted or not by control theorists. It certainly has nothing to do with control system’s having free will. Indeed, a more precise statement of this law is:

o = - d

RM: That is, once the system has selected (for higher level reasons) the goal of keeping a controlled variable at particular reference level variations in output, o, the actions of the system, are completely determined by variations in the net disturbance, d, to the controlled variable. The “requisite variety” in o is negatively related to and completely determined by the “variety” of d. The law of requisite variety shows that a control system is not free to do what it wants once it has selected goals for the variables it controls.

RM: There is room for something like “free will” in the reorganization system: look up “volition” in B:CP. We can voluntarily (and arbitrarily, hence “freely) change references for a controlled variable, which is what I do when I decide to make a fist for no particular reason other than to do it. This is where I think we should look for free will” in the PCT Model; not in the law of requisite variety.

Best

Rick

Best

Rick

There is also the law of requisite hierarchy in control theory that implies hierarchy and orders are required in society too.

Nicolas

Le 2015-04-14 à 15:28, Richard Marken (rsmarken@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu a écrit :

[From Rick Marken (2015.04.14.1230)]

–
Richard S. Marken, Ph.D.
Author of Doing Research on Purpose.
Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble

On Tue, Apr 14, 2015 at 12:02 AM, Warren Mansell csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

WM: Fab. What does he [Mark Balaguer] think of PCT?

RM: I’d be more interested in hearing what PCT people think of the article by Balaguer. PCT seems to attract libertarians, which I can kind of understand. But many seem to stay libertarians even after learning PCT, and I don’t understand that. So I’d be interested in seeing either a PCT based critique of or support for the Balaguer treatise.

RM: I’ll just say that what I see as the fundamental flaw in the Balaguer article is that it implicitly accepts the notion that behavior is a caused output. So he’s building his “Coherent, Naturalistic, and Plausible Formulation of Libertarian Free Will” on a foundation of sand.

Best

Rick

On 14 Apr 2015, at 02:16, PHILIP JERAIR YERANOSIAN (pyeranos@ucla.edu via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Philip 4/13/15 18:00 pt]

Dear CSG,

I stumbled across this paper by Mark Balaguer. In the first paragraph, he defines “libertarian freedom” as “the ability to make decisions that are simultaneously (a) undetermined and (b) appropriately non-random.” If you read the rest of the paper, you’ll realize he’s essentially begging for an opportunity to hear about PCT. So I paid him a visit today and gave him the information he needed.

The moral of the story is that we need to find the right people to discuss PCT with - handpicking them if necessary. And we should discuss PCT with these people ONLY. We need to stop trying to disseminate the PCT message to people who are not trying to accept the PCT message.

Philip

<A Coherent, Naturalistic, and Plausible Formulation of Libertarian Free Will.pdf>

–
Richard S. Marken, Ph.D.
Author of Doing Research on Purpose.
Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble

[MartinT]

[Martin Taylor 2015.04.16.12.35]

Sure, and PCT is equally fully in line with Communism, Socialism,

Social Democracy, Capitalism, and whatever other system-level
concept you want to invent. I guess that’s why there is so much
conflict among people who control for one or the other.
However, if what you are controlling for is maximization of the
average ability of a person to control their perceptions, it is not
at all clear that libertarianism achieves this end. What it probably
would achieve after a not very long while is a few people with great
ability to control their perceptions, and a lot of people with
hardly any ability to control theirs. But that’s just as much
speculation as the converse, that Libertarianism would result in
everybody being able to control their perceptions, on average,
better than any other system. There are many things to consider, not least conflict over limited
resources. To use a trivial example of the kind of thing one must
consider, at a major crossroad would more cars go through safely in
each direction when the traffic light is working or when there’s a
power failure and the lights are out? Real-life experience shows
that when the lights are out, there are long back-ups in each
direction, but when the lights work, restricting the ability of one
direction to move at all for a while, traffic flows well in each
direction. Restricted liberty, in this case at least, results in
better control of the perceptions related to drivers getting where
they want to go quickly and safely.
By the way, notice that at least the first article linked on the
page deals entirely with conscious perception, which is a topic on
which PCT has little to say. Different contributors to CSGnet and
its predecessor(s) have offered their opinions on the role of
consciousness, but there’s no consensus.
No it isn’t. The law of requisite variety simply means that if you
want to control to a certain level of precision, you must be able to
perceive at least to that precision and your range of action must be
at least that finely graded.
What do you mean by Shannon’s 5th Theorem? In my copy of “The
Mathematical Theory of Communication” “Theorem 5” says that if you
want to estimate the entropy of a source that emits a sequence of
symbols, you get a closer approximation by looking at longer chunks
of the source. Theorem 6 says you get the same approximation more
quickly if you look at the next symbol after each chunk of length N
rather than just at the chunks as a whole. I don’t see what that has
to do with the law of requisite variety. Maybe you mean Theorem 5 in
some other publication.
I don’t follow this, either. Some explanation might be welcome. We
have known (or understood) since Donders a century and a half ago,
that perception can be understood as a hierarchic process, and at
least since Powers started publishing that hierarchic control works
stably, at least if you are careful in its design. Hierarchy also
probably increases efficiency, but what it has to do with “requisite
hierarchy”, or how hierarchy is “requisite” is a mystery to me.
Martin

···

On 2015/04/15 12:10 AM, “Nicolas M.
Kirchberger” ( via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

oberon.nmk@gmail.com

PCT is fully in line with libertarianism, see the

http://biologyoflaw.org/ website
for a full PCT analysis of legal rights foundation and its
conclusions.

    Behavior may be a by-product of perception control but how

many options one have to try to control a particular perception
strongly affects one’s ability to control one’s perception.
This is know as the law of requisition variety in cybernetics

and is fully demonstrated by Shannon 5th theorem

    and widely accepted as a law by control theorists. There is

also the law of requisite hierarchy in control theory that
implies hierarchy and orders are required in society too.

[P0ck]

[Martin Taylor 2015.04.16.12.35]

No it isn't. The law of requisite variety simply means that if you

want to control to a certain level of precision, you must be able to
perceive at least to that precision and your range of action must be
at least that finely graded.

Here’s a short page about the law of requisite variety, it’s also known as “Ashby’s law” and is fundamental to cybernetics (now control theory).

→ http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/reqvar.html

and is fully demonstrated by Shannon 5th theorem

What do you mean by Shannon's 5th Theorem? In my copy of "The

Mathematical Theory of Communication" “Theorem 5” says that if you
want to estimate the entropy of a source that emits a sequence of
symbols, you get a closer approximation by looking at longer chunks
of the source. Theorem 6 says you get the same approximation more
quickly if you look at the next symbol after each chunk of length N
rather than just at the chunks as a whole. I don’t see what that has
to do with the law of requisite variety. Maybe you mean Theorem 5 in
some other publication.

I was sure it was Shannon’s 5th theorem but it look like it’s Shannon 10th theorem instead… Not sure what was linked to the 5th (if anything)…

    and widely accepted as a law by control theorists. There is

also the law of requisite hierarchy in control theory that
implies hierarchy and orders are required in society too.

I don't follow this, either. Some explanation might be welcome. We

have known (or understood) since Donders a century and a half ago,
that perception can be understood as a hierarchic process, and at
least since Powers started publishing that hierarchic control works
stably, at least if you are careful in its design. Hierarchy also
probably increases efficiency, but what it has to do with “requisite
hierarchy”, or how hierarchy is “requisite” is a mystery to me.

Martin

The “law of requisite hierarchy” is supposedly a corollary to the law of requisite variety and has been proposed by a social cybernetician while studying different social system. I’d like to give you a link to more info about it but the sites that hosted the file seem to be down now for some reasons…

Nicolas

···

On 2015/04/15 12:10 AM, “Nicolas M.
Kirchberger” ( via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

oberon.nmk@gmail.com

    Behavior may be a by-product of perception control but how

many options one have to try to control a particular perception
strongly affects one’s ability to control one’s perception.
This is know as the law of requisition variety in cybernetics

[rsmarken]

[From Rick Marken (2015.04.15.1750)]

···

On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 2:35 PM, Nicolas M. Kirchberger oberon.nmk@gmail.com wrote:

NK: The law of requisite variety explains why libertarianism is the best system to allow people to maximize their perception control abilities.

RM: Could you explain the law of requisite variety in terms of a simple control task, like the tracking task. The law of requisite variety is not a concept that is part of PCT or control theory, for that matter. It would be nice if you could explain the law in terms of the variables involved in control. I presume the term “variety” refers to the range of different lvalues of some variable in the loop; is that right? And if so, which variable? And what is the variety “requisite” for?

RM: And also, could you explain what the libertarian “system” is?

NK: The goal of libertarianism is to expand freedom maximally for all.

RM: What is “freedom”? How do you measure it in order to determine how much of it there is (whether it is maximal or minimal)

NK: For instance, if for a particular problem a person must meet with another in Chicago at 7am the next morning and the person has the choice to go to the other city with his car, by train, by plane, by taxi, by commuting with another, etc, the person has more chance to be able to meet his/her goal of being there by 7am and can better manage adverse events that may prevent him or her to be there on time. If the person has only two choice then he/she is more exposed to control failure than if he/she has more option.

RM: So the libertarian system produces more alternative means of achieving a goal. How does it do that? And why is having many means available better than making one means highly reliable? There is a need for many means only if there is a high likelihood of many of the means becoming unavailable with considerable regularity.

NK: Thus libertarianism by maximizing options people can choose from maximize and ease people’s ability to reach their goals, manage disturbances and avoid control failure.

RM: Again, why is maximizing options better than making a small number of options highly reliable (as they are now in your transportation example)? The only disturbances that would require many options are disturbances which rather regularly take out all the options but one.

RM: And, again, assuming that having many options really is a good thing how does the libertarian system create all these options while other systems don’t? Your answer should take into account the fact that the options are actually “available” only if a person can afford all of them. So part of making all these options available to people means also making it so that all people can easily afford the options. So the libertarian system will allow everyone to control better by providing more options (however it does that) if it also makes it so that everyone can afford to take the options that (due to disturbance) are required to achieve all their goals.

RM: So it seems like one of the most important things the libertarian system must do to make it so that everyone can control better is provide everyone with enough money so that they can afford to use any of the options necessary to control the variables they want (and need) to control, given prevailing circumstances (disturbances). If the libertarian system leaves some people without enough money then these people are actually deprived of the ability to control, no matter how many options are out there.

Best regards

Rick

–
Richard S. Marken, Ph.D.
Author of Doing Research on Purpose.
Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble

[P0ck]

[From Nicolas M. Kirchberger 2015.04.16.2119]

[From Rick Marken (2015.04.15.1750)]

NMK: Yes, in the tracking example, the variety of behaviors by the prey may be considered as disturbance variables. Here, instead of thinking of those variable as values, we can think of them as “definitions” of behaviors. So if the prey for instance change its skin’ color or hide beneath some foliages or things like that, they in effect change the definition the predator is looking for.

If the predator do not knows about the other definition, he will be fooled and the prey will have successfully escaped. The prey will therefore have had an “higher definition” of some behavior than the predator. Similarly, if the predator is shrewder (or has more various definitions or variety) and look closer in the foliage or knows the prey can change color and looks for it, then it has more variety than its prey and probably will be able to get it.

The law of requisite variety states that “only variety can absorb variety.” Just like a joker can beat all other cards in most card games because it can take any value.

Here’s a great short video illustrating this idea:

Stargaze sg-1 super soldier, the ultimate soldier, able to absorb any kind of energy or disturbance, is able to easily accomplish its missions.

http://youtu.be/jZnOKHrnEfQ

Here’s further explanations by Ashby himself (in plain English )

Ashby’s explanation of requisite variety

http://pcp.vub.ac.be/books/AshbyReqVar.pdf

NMK: Yes it’s the political/economical/philosophical/ethical/legal system that strive to maximize liberty (the numbers of choices available for a person to choose from, also called the person’s causal capacity) and minimize the level of coercion or obligations caused by other people (and reality through technological development).

Here’s a some short video explanations exposing libertarianism’s basic principles:

Philosophy of liberty short movie (8 min)

http://youtu.be/muHg86Mys7I

St0p and l00k individualism short movie serie

http://youtu.be/dJqSsrFDiSA

NMK: That would be the number of choices available to a person, or the number of different paths a person can take to reach his/her goals.

Here’s a document developing these ideas:

http://biologyoflaw.org/Purpose/PurposeLaw.pdf

NMK: Well, no means is 100% reliable, so some level of redundancy is always welcome.

For instance in libertarianism, the free market provide competition between providers and prohibits monopolies. This mechanism foster improvement in quality and the lowering of prices. If we were to rely on a few reliable providers, chance are the price for their service would go up or stay the same and quality of their products or services would go down.

The free market allows anyone who think they may have some solution to some problem to try to market it to people to make money. This mechanism distributes risks for bad ideas and allows good ideas (those that provide solutions to problems) to spread ( assuming a free information flow and no media monopolies like we have now).

Also for those things that rarely break down, when they do their availability often goes to zero percent so any other option would be better.

Libertarianism (free market capitalism), because of the variety it creates through the free market, would also provide us with the best chance for humanity were an asteroid were to threaten the planet or if some deadly virus were to appear.

NMK: Well, if you absolutely need to be in Chicago for 7am tommorow and bad luck makes it so that there’s an earthquake, a flood, your car don’t start, the taxi are in strike, etc, then having many different ways of getting there on time maximize your chance of getting there. If for instance you had to be there for a life saving medical treatment that couldn’t wait or to meet your future wife then that might have saved your life or given you a great wife.

NMK: Well it’s not only about money but also about what products and services are available on the market. For instance, a king in the 16th century may have been rich in term of money but he still didn’t have a working toilet, an iPhone, a fridge or a car and the like. Now even many of the poorest people even have those stuff, in a way, the “poor” of today are many orders of magnitude richer than the kings of an hundred years ago.

Fiction author Neal Stephenson has this quote that goes “the future is here, it’s just that it’s not equally distributed.”

The poor of today are way better able to control for most important things (health, leisure, effort, security, etc) than the Kings of yesterday. The rich of today are a bit like the poor of today compared to the Kings of yesterday, they may be better able to control for certain things because they have more money like for instance have access to better medical care but because that those rich can afford such expensive care, people in the future will be able to have access to those care much cheaper because the rich were able to pay for the business of this kind of care to start.

···

On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 2:35 PM, Nicolas M. Kirchberger oberon.nmk@gmail.com wrote:

NK: The law of requisite variety explains why libertarianism is the best system to allow people to maximize their perception control abilities.

RM: Could you explain the law of requisite variety in terms of a simple control task, like the tracking task. The law of requisite variety is not a concept that is part of PCT or control theory, for that matter. It would be nice if you could explain the law in terms of the variables involved in control. I presume the term “variety” refers to the range of different lvalues of some variable in the loop; is that right? And if so, which variable? And what is the variety “requisite” for?

RM: And also, could you explain what the libertarian “system” is?

NK: The goal of libertarianism is to expand freedom maximally for all.

RM: What is “freedom”? How do you measure it in order to determine how much of it there is (whether it is maximal or minimal)

NK: For instance, if for a particular problem a person must meet with another in Chicago at 7am the next morning and the person has the choice to go to the other city with his car, by train, by plane, by taxi, by commuting with another, etc, the person has more chance to be able to meet his/her goal of being there by 7am and can better manage adverse events that may prevent him or her to be there on time. If the person has only two choice then he/she is more exposed to control failure than if he/she has more option.

RM: So the libertarian system produces more alternative means of achieving a goal. How does it do that? And why is having many means available better than making one means highly reliable? There is a need for many means only if there is a high likelihood of many of the means becoming unavailable with considerable regularity.

NK: Thus libertarianism by maximizing options people can choose from maximize and ease people’s ability to reach their goals, manage disturbances and avoid control failure.

RM: Again, why is maximizing options better than making a small number of options highly reliable (as they are now in your transportation example)? The only disturbances that would require many options are disturbances which rather regularly take out all the options but one.

RM: And, again, assuming that having many options really is a good thing how does the libertarian system create all these options while other systems don’t? Your answer should take into account the fact that the options are actually “available” only if a person can afford all of them. So part of making all these options available to people means also making it so that all people can easily afford the options. So the libertarian system will allow everyone to control better by providing more options (however it does that) if it also makes it so that everyone can afford to take the options that (due to disturbance) are required to achieve all their goals.

RM: So it seems like one of the most important things the libertarian system must do to make it so that everyone can control better is provide everyone with enough money so that they can afford to use any of the options necessary to control the variables they want (and need) to control, given prevailing circumstances (disturbances). If the libertarian system leaves some people without enough money then these people are actually deprived of the ability to control, no matter how many options are out there.

[wmansell]

Hi Everyone, like Martin and Rick, I don’t really see how one can align PCT with any particular ideology. PCT just tells us more accurately how people and other living things function. And like Rick, I can see the benefits of both variety (via reorganisation) and more single-minded, reliable control (via a learned control system). Luckily PCT explains our provision for both. Whether future authorities choose to use or abuse this knowledge is up to them. I can see that PCT has great potential power for the wider good, but also for more selfish ends. Maybe we should only tell nice people about it?!

Warren

···

On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 2:35 PM, Nicolas M. Kirchberger oberon.nmk@gmail.com wrote:

NK: The law of requisite variety explains why libertarianism is the best system to allow people to maximize their perception control abilities.

RM: Could you explain the law of requisite variety in terms of a simple control task, like the tracking task. The law of requisite variety is not a concept that is part of PCT or control theory, for that matter. It would be nice if you could explain the law in terms of the variables involved in control. I presume the term “variety” refers to the range of different lvalues of some variable in the loop; is that right? And if so, which variable? And what is the variety “requisite” for?

RM: And also, could you explain what the libertarian “system” is?

NK: The goal of libertarianism is to expand freedom maximally for all.

RM: What is “freedom”? How do you measure it in order to determine how much of it there is (whether it is maximal or minimal)

NK: For instance, if for a particular problem a person must meet with another in Chicago at 7am the next morning and the person has the choice to go to the other city with his car, by train, by plane, by taxi, by commuting with another, etc, the person has more chance to be able to meet his/her goal of being there by 7am and can better manage adverse events that may prevent him or her to be there on time. If the person has only two choice then he/she is more exposed to control failure than if he/she has more option.

RM: So the libertarian system produces more alternative means of achieving a goal. How does it do that? And why is having many means available better than making one means highly reliable? There is a need for many means only if there is a high likelihood of many of the means becoming unavailable with considerable regularity.

NK: Thus libertarianism by maximizing options people can choose from maximize and ease people’s ability to reach their goals, manage disturbances and avoid control failure.

RM: Again, why is maximizing options better than making a small number of options highly reliable (as they are now in your transportation example)? The only disturbances that would require many options are disturbances which rather regularly take out all the options but one.

RM: And, again, assuming that having many options really is a good thing how does the libertarian system create all these options while other systems don’t? Your answer should take into account the fact that the options are actually “available” only if a person can afford all of them. So part of making all these options available to people means also making it so that all people can easily afford the options. So the libertarian system will allow everyone to control better by providing more options (however it does that) if it also makes it so that everyone can afford to take the options that (due to disturbance) are required to achieve all their goals.

RM: So it seems like one of the most important things the libertarian system must do to make it so that everyone can control better is provide everyone with enough money so that they can afford to use any of the options necessary to control the variables they want (and need) to control, given prevailing circumstances (disturbances). If the libertarian system leaves some people without enough money then these people are actually deprived of the ability to control, no matter how many options are out there.

[rsmarken]

[From Rick Marken (2015.04.17.1005)]

···

Nicolas M. Kirchberger (2015.04.16.2119)

NMK: Yes, in the tracking example, the variety of behaviors by the prey may be considered as disturbance variables…

RM: I meant the tracking task that we use to illustrate control, like this one :http://www.mindreadings.com/ControlDemo/BasicTrack.html. Could you try it again using this task.

NMK: Here’s further explanations by Ashby himself (in plain English )

Ashby’s explanation of requisite variety

http://pcp.vub.ac.be/books/AshbyReqVar.pdf

RM: This makes no sense to me at all from a PCT perspective. I’d rather you explain requisite variety in terms of the variables in a control loop that I can understand, the variables in the computer tracking task which I point to above. The main variables are the controlled variable (C: cursor), disturbance variable (D) and output variable (M: mouse).

NMK: Yes it’s the political/economical/philosophical/ethical/legal system that strive to maximize liberty (the numbers of choices available for a person to choose from, also called the person’s causal capacity) and minimize the level of coercion or obligations caused by other people (and reality through technological development).

RM: Yes, I know what the goal of libertarianism is; I was asking what libertarians propose to do to achieve that goal. I presume there are policies that you would like to see implemented?

NMK: That would be the number of choices available to a person, or the number of different paths a person can take to reach his/her goals.

RM: This is why I would like you to explain the law of requisite variety in terms of an actual control task like the tracking task. In that task, once you have a particular goal (such as “cursor on target”) then you are no longer free to “choose” among the possible outputs (mouse positions) that are the possible “paths” to achieving that goal. No matter how many possible output values (“paths”) there are you always have to produce the output (“take the path”) that compensates for the net effects of disturbances to the goal state of the controlled variable. There is no “choice” involved. I mentioned this before but you apparently missed it. But the fact is that when you understand control, you have to completely revise your ideas about what it means to be free.

RM: Successful control doesn’t require that the controller be “free” in the sense of being able to “choose” among options. What control requires is the appropriate number of available degrees of freedom, in the mathematical sense. What that means is that, in order to control successfully, a control system has to be able to produce outputs that protect a controlled variable from disturbances in all dimensions in which those disturbances can affect the controlled variable. Powers discusses this in a paper entitled (appropriately enough) “Degrees of Freedom in Social Interactions” which is reprinted in LCS I (p. 221). Actually, I have a little paper on that topic myself, reprinted in my book “Mind Readings” entitled “Degrees of Freedom in Behavior” on p. 185.

NMK: For instance in libertarianism, the free market provide competition between providers and prohibits monopolies.

RM: In your imagination perhaps. But in reality, the evidence is overwhelming that when there is less regulation of markets there is more concentration of wealth and more poverty and, hence, less control (“when there’s too much of nothin’ no one’s in control”). Other problems result from too much regulation as well, of course.

NMK: This mechanism foster improvement in quality and the lowering of prices.

RM: In some cases, yes. But in other cases, such as health care, a resounding no. This is the problem with ideologies (and libertarianism is an ideology); they prevent critical thinking, which is essential to improving society (if one’s goal is improving society, as yours apparently is).

NMK: The poor of today are way better able to control for most important things (health, leisure, effort, security, etc) than the Kings of yesterday.

RM: Well, if that’s your measure of the success of free market economics – that poor people today are better off than rich people in 500 years ago – then it is much different than mine. My measure of the success is how well everyone in the society is able to control their lives in the context of current technology. By that measure, the US, the most free market of all technologically advanced countries, sucks compared to the more highly regulated/socialistic societies of Northern Europe and Japan.

Best

Rick

–
Richard S. Marken, Ph.D.
Author of Doing Research on Purpose.
Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble

RM: Could you explain the law of requisite variety in terms of a simple control task, like the tracking task.

RM: And also, could you explain what the libertarian “system” is?

RM: What is “freedom”? How do you measure it in order to determine how much of it there is (whether it is maximal or minimal)

RM: So the libertarian system produces more alternative means of achieving a goal. How does it do that?

RM: So it seems like one of the most important things the libertarian system must do to make it so that everyone can control better is provide everyone with enough money so that they can afford to use any of the options necessary to control the variables they want (and need) to control, given prevailing circumstances (disturbances).