Problems with RTP

CSGnet Archive CSG1998
1

[From Mike Acree (980512.0850)]

Bill Powers (980501.0211)--

Unless you
understand what I mean by coercion, you won't see why I consider one

aspect

of RTP so offensive. It's not enough to turn me off to RTP

altogether, but

it does reduce my admiration considerably.

This is what I referred to yesterday as a "forced choice."

In my single exposure to RTP, at the 1994 conference, I had an
additional, though less important, problem with it: that, as I
understood Ed's own presentation of it, he didn't practice what he
preached--at least at that time. He was trying to get teachers to
approach children, not with a directive "Do this, don't do that," but by
asking the children, "What are you doing?" Yet his approach to teachers
was essentially to say, "Do this, don't do that," rather than to ask,
"What are you doing [with this child]?" That Ed would not use his own
vaunted technique himself does not prove that it is no good, but it is
at least astonishingly poor advertising. More importantly, it
seriously, and needlessly, muddles the message for teachers, who hear
one thing and experience another.

Mike

2

[From Bruce Gregory (980512.1440 EDT)]

Mike Acree (980512.0850)

In my single exposure to RTP, at the 1994 conference, I had an
additional, though less important, problem with it: that, as I
understood Ed's own presentation of it, he didn't practice what he
preached--at least at that time. He was trying to get teachers to
approach children, not with a directive "Do this, don't do that," but by
asking the children, "What are you doing?" Yet his approach to teachers
was essentially to say, "Do this, don't do that," rather than to ask,
"What are you doing [with this child]?" That Ed would not use his own
vaunted technique himself does not prove that it is no good, but it is
at least astonishingly poor advertising. More importantly, it
seriously, and needlessly, muddles the message for teachers, who hear
one thing and experience another.

Ed's "vaunted technique" is designed to provide a way for disrupting
children to achieve their goals without disrupting a classroom. This does
not seem to me to be identical with the problem faced by Ed in teaching
teachers how to employ this method. It doesn't surprise me, therefore, that
different approaches are called for, nor would I expect it confuse teachers.
If Ed had the same relationship to the teachers as they have to their
students, and the teachers were being disruptive, I suspect he would use the
RTP with them as well.

Best Offer

3

[From Mike Acree (980514.1453)]

Bruce Gregory (980512.1440)--

Mike Acree (980512.0850)

In my single exposure to RTP, at the 1994 conference, I had an
additional, though less important, problem with it: that, as I
understood Ed's own presentation of it, he didn't practice what he
preached--at least at that time. He was trying to get teachers to
approach children, not with a directive "Do this, don't do that," but

by

asking the children, "What are you doing?" Yet his approach to

teachers

was essentially to say, "Do this, don't do that," rather than to ask,
"What are you doing [with this child]?" That Ed would not use his

own

vaunted technique himself does not prove that it is no good, but it

is

at least astonishingly poor advertising. More importantly, it
seriously, and needlessly, muddles the message for teachers, who hear
one thing and experience another.

Ed's "vaunted technique" is designed to provide a way for disrupting
children to achieve their goals without disrupting a classroom. This

does

not seem to me to be identical with the problem faced by Ed in teaching
teachers how to employ this method. It doesn't surprise me, therefore,

that

different approaches are called for, nor would I expect it confuse

teachers.

If Ed had the same relationship to the teachers as they have to their
students, and the teachers were being disruptive, I suspect he would

use the

RTP with them as well.

A single thread being more than I can easily keep pace with, I had lost
track of this one. I have nothing to say but the obvious, anyway: that
we can focus on the similarities or the differences. For my part, the
facts that Ed _was_ placing himself in a teacher role vis-a-vis the
teacher and was trying to get her to change her behavior constituted an
essential similarity. I don't know the details of his method, but I
would not have expected his insight to be so narrow as to pertain only
to dealing with disruptions.

My comment was also not entirely devoid of empirical base: in different
contexts I have observed people trying to get parents and teachers to be
less directive and controlling and more sensitive and responsive in
their interactions with disabled youngsters; and those who modeled what
they were trying to teach were generally more successful.

Mike

4

i.kurtzer (980514)

[From Bruce Gregory (980512.1440 EDT)]

Mike Acree (980512.0850)

In my single exposure to RTP, at the 1994 conference, I had an
additional, though less important, problem with it: that, as I
understood Ed's own presentation of it, he didn't practice what he
preached--at least at that time. He was trying to get teachers to
approach children, not with a directive "Do this, don't do that," but by
asking the children, "What are you doing?" Yet his approach to teachers
was essentially to say, "Do this, don't do that," rather than to ask,
"What are you doing [with this child]?" That Ed would not use his own
vaunted technique himself does not prove that it is no good, but it is
at least astonishingly poor advertising. More importantly, it
seriously, and needlessly, muddles the message for teachers, who hear
one thing and experience another.

Ed's "vaunted technique" is designed to provide a way for disrupting
children to achieve their goals without disrupting a classroom. This does
not seem to me to be identical with the problem faced by Ed in teaching
teachers how to employ this method. It doesn't surprise me, therefore, that
different approaches are called for, nor would I expect it confuse teachers.
If Ed had the same relationship to the teachers as they have to their
students, and the teachers were being disruptive, I suspect he would use the
RTP with them as well.

I agree with B.O.
Two bits on coersion: I feel that defining a type of human interaction by
reference to a single member seems to smack of lineal causality. It is direct
contrast to how we have herethough defined all other social interactions, that
is, by reference to _all_ the constituents.

i.

5

[From Bruce Nevin (980516.)]

i.kurtzer (980514)

Two bits on coersion: I feel that defining a type of human interaction by
reference to a single member seems to smack of lineal causality. It is

direct

contrast to how we have herethough defined all other social interactions,

that

is, by reference to _all_ the constituents.

Isaac,

I don't think we've been defining coercion with reference to one
participant and not the other. The coercer controls the actions of the
coerced and the coerced is overpowered and therefore unable to control. Or
am I missing your point? Are there are more than two participants?

  Bruce Nevin

6

[From Tim Carey (980517.1720)]

[From Bruce Nevin (980516.)]

I don't think we've been defining coercion with reference to one
participant and not the other. The coercer controls the actions of the
coerced and the coerced is overpowered and therefore unable to control.

Or

am I missing your point? Are there are more than two participants?

I don't want to pre-empt what Isaac is going to say but I think the way
coercion is defined by Bill and Rick it is very much a one way thing. In
fact this is basically what my disagreement with them is all about. They
say that coecion only has to do with the references of the person doing the
coercing. Bill's and Rick's position (I think) is that a person is coercing
when they have a reference to control the actions of another.

I don't see how you can separate one from the other in a two person
interaction like coercion. Even your statement above implies some knowledge
of the coercee. How do you know that they are "unable to control" unless
you have some idea as to what it is they're controlling for? The assumption
on
CSG at the moment seems to be that if I'm controlling your actions then
that's coercion _regardless_ of what you want. My position is that it
_might_
be coercion and it might not _depending_ on the references of the coercee.
The coercee might in fact _want_ the coercer to be holding him as tightly
as he can .... in my head this situation wouldn't be coercion.

Cheers,

Tim

7

[From Bill Powers (980518.0326 MDT)]

Tim Carey (980517.1720)--

I don't want to pre-empt what Isaac is going to say but I think the way
coercion is defined by Bill and Rick it is very much a one way thing. In
fact this is basically what my disagreement with them is all about. They
say that coecion only has to do with the references of the person doing the
coercing. Bill's and Rick's position (I think) is that a person is coercing
when they have a reference to control the actions of another.

I don't see how you can separate one from the other in a two person
interaction like coercion. Even your statement above implies some knowledge
of the coercee. How do you know that they are "unable to control" unless
you have some idea as to what it is they're controlling for?

The whole point of negative feedback control is that you don't have to know
in advance whether there will be any disturbances. If you take hold of a
child's wrist and position the hand over a piano keyboard, it doesn't
matter whether the child resists or not. Your own arm control system is so
much stronger that it will automatically supply enough force to move the
child's hand to the intended position. You simply move the child's hand as
you would move your own. That's what coercion is like.

In contrast, if you were not coercing, you would pay attention to
perceptions of resistance from the child, and stop wishing to move the
child's hand if resistance appeared. You would explain to the child what
you're trying to do, and ask permission to move the hand as a way of
showing how to do something. If you got permission, you could then position
the hand and would feel no resistance, showing that you're no longer in
conflict with the child. But if you didn't get permission, or if you
continued to feel resistance, you'd have to abandon the goal of showing the
child how to do whatever it was -- or become coercive, and move the child's
hand with or without permission, which you could easily do.

You seem to want to make the coercee's feeling of being overwhelmed the
criterion for defining coercion. I see this as a weak definition, because
there can be a coercive system present and active even when the coercee
isn't feeling its effects (because the coercee happens to be behaving as
the coercer wants). This is very different from the situation where the
person is doing exactly the same thing, but is free to do otherwise.

The assumption on CSG at the moment seems to be that if I'm controlling

your >actions then that's coercion _regardless_ of what you want. My
position is >that it _might_ be coercion and it might not _depending_ on
the references >of the coercee. The coercee might in fact _want_ the
coercer to be holding >him as tightly as he can .... in my head this
situation wouldn't be >coercion.

What you're forgetting is that references are not fixed, but change in
service of higher-level goals. A child may want to be hugged, so holding
the child tightly will not be experienced by the child as confinement. But
after a few moments, the child will want to leave, and if the hugger is
using the child to satisfy the hugger's goals instead of the child's, the
hugger will prevent the child from leaving even if it struggles to get
free. So the relationship has been coercive all along. You would claim that
it becomes coercive only when the child starts to struggle to leave and the
adult won't let go. I say it becomes coercive at the moment the adult
controls the child's body to satisfy the adult's desire to have a child to
hug. Your definition only describes the point when the coercee _discovers_
that there is coercion going on. But if coercion weren't going on prior to
that time, the attempt to change one's behavior would succeed.

How do you discover that your car's wheels are in deep ruts in a dirt road?
As long as you're steering in the direction the ruts go, you may think
you're steering the car. But you'll find out that you're not steering it as
soon as you try to turn in some other direction; the front wheels, trapped
in the ruts, won't turn, and the car will continue to go where the ruts go.
At that point, you _discover_ that you haven't been in control for some
unknown length of time.

The question is, could I do anything different from what I am doing if I
wanted to, or needed to? If you're being coerced, the answer is NO. If
you're not being coerced, the answer is YES. That seems pretty
straightfoward to me. It makes a great deal of difference, when you walk
into a room, whether someone does or doesn't lock the door behind you. Your
behavior doesn't change while you're in the room, but when you try to leave
the room your attitude changes drastically if you find the door locked.
There's a great deal of difference between knowing you can leave and
knowing that you can't leave, even if you don't want to leave right at the
moment. Doing what you're being forced to do simply isn't the same as doing
the same thing without being forced and knowing you could do something else
any time you wished.

According to your definition of coercion, a person who has been tortured
until he confesses to being a sinner is not coerced if he voluntarily calls
himself a sinner to avoid being tortured again. By my definition, simply
knowing that he will be tortured if he does not call himself a sinner is
enough to define the situation as coercive, even if he is never actually
tortured again.

Best,

Bill P.

8

[From Bruce Gregory (980518.1320 EDT)]

Bruce Nevin (980518.1232 EDT)]

I think most instances of coercion are incomplete or imperfect, and the
coerced person "gets out of it" to some degree. That's where we
see control
to avoid being coerced again. If coercion is complete and lasts through
reorganization, we see compliant control that is no longer coerced because
it is a reorganized control system that is doing the controlling.

Now _that's_ applied PCT.

Best Offer

9

[From Bruce Nevin (980518.1232 EDT)]

Bill Powers (980518.0326 MDT)
According to your definition of coercion, a person who has been tortured
until he confesses to being a sinner is not coerced if he voluntarily calls
himself a sinner to avoid being tortured again. By my definition, simply
knowing that he will be tortured if he does not call himself a sinner is
enough to define the situation as coercive, even if he is never actually
tortured again.

Hm. If coercion causes error causes reorganization, and the reorganized CS
happens to control "calling myself a sinner," then that behavior of the
reorganized CS is no longer coerced. Brainwashers and behavior modifiers
expect this. They can keep coercing until they see the desired behavior,
whatever the reorganization that might underly it, and whatever other
changes in behavior might unpredicatably accompany it.

Reorganization is random, but it keeps up until error diminishes. The
number of ways to make error diminish is constrained to those that include
the actions that the coercer is controlling. The range of possible outcomes
is limited (though it probably includes more outcomes than we or the
coercer readily imagine). Some outcomes are I suppose more likely than
others, though how to guage that I do not know.

The reorganization might include controlling "I'll get even", which is
likely to be practised on someone weaker (not the coercer, unless at a
disadvantage), which might foster a self-perception of being a sinner. The
product of reorganization might prefer to practise "getting even" with
someone weaker who is perceived as being a sinner. Etc. Seems like I've run
into this sort of thing.

I think most instances of coercion are incomplete or imperfect, and the
coerced person "gets out of it" to some degree. That's where we see control
to avoid being coerced again. If coercion is complete and lasts through
reorganization, we see compliant control that is no longer coerced because
it is a reorganized control system that is doing the controlling.

Brainwashing is generally intended to last through reorganization, even if
the brainwasher does not understand that.

Cult brainwashing may exploit conflict in people by offering a resolution
to conflict.

The brainwasher can't predict other results of reorganization. Isn't it a
common experience of behavior modification that some other "symptom"
emerges in some unpredictable way, seemingly unrelated to the "modified"
behavior? I recall that in family therapy training we concerned ourselves
with what the old symptom was accomplishing for the person, that the new
behavior also tries to accomplish in a different way.

  Bruce Nevin

10

[From Tim Carey (980519.0635)]

[From Bill Powers (980518.0326 MDT)]

You seem to want to make the coercee's feeling of being overwhelmed the
criterion for defining coercion.

Nope, I want to make it _part_ of the definition. Just like your "two
flavours" of coercion that you described in a recent post. You seem to be
talking about coercion from the perspective only of the coercer, I'm trying
to consider the experience of the coerced.

What you're forgetting is that references are not fixed, but change in
service of higher-level goals. A child may want to be hugged, so holding
the child tightly will not be experienced by the child as confinement.

But

after a few moments, the child will want to leave, and if the hugger is
using the child to satisfy the hugger's goals instead of the child's, the
hugger will prevent the child from leaving even if it struggles to get
free. So the relationship has been coercive all along.

Nope, early on the child had a reference to be hugged as well. They were,
therefore, using the adult to get a hug just as much as the adult was using
them. It became coercive when the child wanted to finish the hug and the
adult didn't and was able to use superior force to continue the hug
(althogh I bet the kid make the adult's life hell for a little while after
that ;-))

You would claim that

it becomes coercive only when the child starts to struggle to leave and

the

adult won't let go.

Yep.

I say it becomes coercive at the moment the adult

controls the child's body to satisfy the adult's desire to have a child

to

hug.

Then you're ignoring half of the interaction.

Your definition only describes the point when the coercee _discovers_

that there is coercion going on. But if coercion weren't going on prior

to

that time, the attempt to change one's behavior would succeed.

An interaction only _becomes_ coercive when someone doesn't want to do what
someone else wants them to do and that person needs to use force to 'get
the job done'. Use of the word force implies resistance which implies the
reference of the other control system. I don't see how you can use the word
force and also say that the intentions of the other person are irrelevant.
They're not irrelevant to the use of force, they're the half the _cause_ of
the force.

According to your definition of coercion, a person who has been tortured
until he confesses to being a sinner is not coerced if he voluntarily

calls

himself a sinner to avoid being tortured again. By my definition, simply
knowing that he will be tortured if he does not call himself a sinner is
enough to define the situation as coercive, even if he is never actually
tortured again.

By my definition Bill you'd need to ask the person being tortured whether
or not he thought he was being coerced.

Cheers,

Tim

11

[From Bill Powers (980519.1027 MDT)]

Bruce Nevin (980518.1232 EDT)--

According to your definition of coercion, a person who has been tortured
until he confesses to being a sinner is not coerced if he voluntarily calls
himself a sinner to avoid being tortured again.

Hm. If coercion causes error causes reorganization, and the reorganized CS
happens to control "calling myself a sinner," then that behavior of the
reorganized CS is no longer coerced.

Not according to my definition of coercion. If there is a control system in
place (the coercer) ready to correct any slight deviation from the desired
behavior (by the coercee), coercion still exists. It is momentarily not
producing any coercive actions because for the moment, the coerced system
happens to be spontaneously producing the behavior the coercer wants to
see. But unless the coercer has picked a behavior for the coercee to
produce that will always satisfy all of the coercee's goals under all
circumstances, the coercee will soon have occasion to use a different
behavior, and that will immediately result in the coercer becoming active
again. So by my definition, coercion never went away. The only way to
remove coercion is to remove the coercer.

Brainwashers and behavior modifiers
expect this. They can keep coercing until they see the desired behavior,
whatever the reorganization that might underly it, and whatever other
changes in behavior might unpredicatably accompany it.

Reorganization is random, but it keeps up until error diminishes.

And if error then increases again, reorganization starts up again. When you
establish a model, you must let it go on working, not cut it off just when
the result you want occurs.

The
number of ways to make error diminish is constrained to those that include
the actions that the coercer is controlling. The range of possible outcomes
is limited (though it probably includes more outcomes than we or the
coercer readily imagine). Some outcomes are I suppose more likely than
others, though how to guage that I do not know.

This scheme will work only if reorganization stops when (by your
definition) coercion stops. That can happen only if the behavior you are
demanding is compatible with all the goals of the coerced system, including
intrinsic reference levels. You may brainwash a person into producing a
specific behavior, but this is an unstable condition, because the chances
are huge that the behavior you want to see will itself result in intrinsic
or other error. Thus reorganization never stops, and it will soon start
producing variations in the behavior. The coercer can never rely on the
coercee to maintain the same behavior when there is no longer any threat
(or actuality) of force. The rodentiae comport themselves impeccably when
in the presence of their feline master, but not when the cat's away. So the
cat has to stay home to make the coerced behavior persist.

I think most instances of coercion are incomplete or imperfect, and the
coerced person "gets out of it" to some degree. That's where we see control
to avoid being coerced again. If coercion is complete and lasts through
reorganization, we see compliant control that is no longer coerced because
it is a reorganized control system that is doing the controlling.

Reorganization is not something that happens once and never again. We're
always reorganizing to some extent. It is not really possible to "stamp in"
a behavior so thoroughly that it will persist forever. "Stamping in," which
seems to be in the back of your mind, is the wrong model. The only way to
make sure a behavior remains in place is to make sure that reorganization
never starts again. The only way to assure that is to make sure that the
behavior you want the other to produce does not conflict with any existing
goals or directly cause any intrinsic error. Otherwise you simply have to
continue coercing as long as you want the behavior to persist.

It's not possible to pick a behavior for another person that will always
keep all of his higher-level errors at zero.

Brainwashing is generally intended to last through reorganization, even if
the brainwasher does not understand that.

Cult brainwashing may exploit conflict in people by offering a resolution
to conflict.

The brainwasher can't predict other results of reorganization. Isn't it a
common experience of behavior modification that some other "symptom"
emerges in some unpredictable way, seemingly unrelated to the "modified"
behavior? I recall that in family therapy training we concerned ourselves
with what the old symptom was accomplishing for the person, that the new
behavior also tries to accomplish in a different way.

All good comments. The side-effects you mention are simply the result of
the fact that any arbitrarily fixed behavior will inevitably result in
errors in other systems, and other control systems will start trying to
correct them.

Best,

Bill P.