(Relocated from Delay in control loops.)
RM: It’s hard for me to tell that that’s the case. Figure 4 says it shows the behavior of a participant tracking two different target types and Fig. 6 says it shows “model simulation accuracy” but it’s not clear whether that is accuracy of the model tracking the target or the accuracy of the model accounting for participant behavior. But it doesn’t really matter. This just isn’t the kind of research I would like to see done to test the PCT model. The kind of research I would like to see done is described in Powers (1979).
RM: I’m not that interested in research on how organisms overcome transport lags in control loops because we know they do. We know that because we see them controlling all kinds of different variables. What we don’t know is what all the different variables are, whether they are of a fixed number of types, whether they are controlled at different levels of a hierarchy of control systems, etc. These are the kind of question that distinguish PCT from other applications of control theory to understanding behavior.
RM: Once we know what variables are controlled and how they are related to each other, our models, when successful, will implicitly show us how transport lags (which will be different for different variables with the duration of some of these lags – as well as the duration of the variables themselves – being quite substantial; think about the control loop that controls for a particular program perception, for example, as in my demo of program control).
RM: Apparently there aren’t many (any?) people interested in doing such research but, if anyone is, I again invite them to discuss it in the
PCT-research Discourse topic that I created for that purpose.
Best
Rick