I seem to recall that feedback functions are considered to be particularly important in the study of collective control. They are even given a special name – ATENFELS? Could someone please give me a quick explanation of the role of feedback functions in collective behavior? Thanks.
Yes, the environmental feedback function is an essential part of every control loop.
Most PCT discussions are concerned only with individual control systems, and the environmental feedback function amounts to no more than recognition merely that a control loop is closed through the environment. It is abstracted to the fact that behavioral output affects sensory input, in parallel to the effects of disturbances on sensory input. In the block diagram in the appendix to B:CP, it is represented by a single “Environment Function” box for the function Ke.
In collective control the fact that this is an environmental function gets more attention. This is necessary, because in collective control each individual controller is in the environment of each of the others.
For any given controller, the influence of the behavioral output is transmitted to perceptual input through a medium or media in the environment. For the production and perception of sounds, the environmental medium is the gasses of the atmosphere, or a combination of atmospheric gasses and solid substances if you’re complaining about the neighbor’s loud music or if the driver behind you is honking her horn. These media, which are themselves perceptible as e.g. objects and gas-filled spaces between objects, define segments in a feedback path between output and input. (Not all are conveniently identified with configuration perceptions, and in many cases words like path and segment are not so literal. The awkward neologisms Atenfel, etc. are attempted general vocabulary for segments in environmental feedback paths.)
In a collective situation, the individual environmental feedback paths cannot coincide entirely, of course, because the endpoints (the output functions and input functions) are uniquely identified with each separate controller. However these paths can intersect. More specifically stated, the environmental feedback paths of two controllers may have one or more segments in common. To make that more concrete, while driving you control your perceptions of the relationship of your car’s left and right fenders to your perceptions of the left and right margins of your traffic lane a certain distance ahead of your (changing) instant location. This is also true of drivers ahead and behind, and in respect to one of those margins it is true of oncoming drivers in the opposing lane, of those in parallel lanes of multi-lane highways, and so on. The roadway itself is perception that you control as a segment of your route (itself a controlled perception), until you turn at an intersection and commence travel on the next segment of your route, but other drivers are traveling on that same roadway, some continuing onward on it, some turning with you, some turning the other way, but for the moment your paths intersect.
This is easy to see for literal paths of travel. The car itself is a ‘segment’ of your environmental feedback path by which your behavioral outputs result in the distance relation between you and your destination being reduced to zero. So is the key (or keyfob) for your car. Someone else in your family might have borrowed your car for their own journey. Someone may have lost your keyfob. You may have received a recall notice for some part or function of your car, means by which officers of the car company control avoidance of legal liability for some failure which (the failure) is also your interest to avoid. The notice arriving in the mail or email is a segment in control by the corporate officers and by the employees who by various environmental feedback paths are directed to control creating and sending the notice. They trust that mail carriers and maintainers of the Internet control successfully, just as you trust that drivers oncoming in the opposing lane are controlling successfully. That trust is itself a collectively controlled perception.
Thanks, Bruce. I asked because I came across the following statement by Warren in one of his papers (I can’t remember which one): “… sophisticated feedback functions to draw users into rabbit holes…”. I found this somewhat puzzling because it sounded to me like Warren was saying that the feedback functions he was discussing (which, as I recall, were the “algorithms” of social media) cause the users to go down rabbit holes. I’m asking you rather than Warren because you seem to be the maven of feedback functions. What do you make of that statement? By the way, I feel like we might have discussed this before but apparently my memory is not surviving the aging process nearly as well as yours.
You’re asking me to interpret or elaborate upon the phrase “… sophisticated feedback functions to draw users into rabbit holes…” taken out of context, except that you think that it has to do with the algorithms employed by Facebook/Meta and the like.
Warren is the world’s leading expert on what he, Warren, intended. I respectfully decline; as I must, to be respectful to you both.
But I’ll indulge my puzzlement.
No need for scare quotes, the algorithms are not metaphorical. And evidence supporting such claims about them has been presented in court, examined in detail by experts in algorithms and in techniques for influencing people’s attention, beliefs, and disbeliefs, resulting in settlement or loss by the corporations, so there does seem to be a there there to which Warren is referring. These computational structures are in users’ environment intervening between what they type and what they see in response on their screens, so it seems difficult to claim that they are not part of the environmental feedback function in such transactions.
Is your difficulty with this because you’re used to the environment function being represented by a single mathematical function Ke in a laboratory setup, and now we’re talking about the complexities of the environment as people ordinarily live in it? That’s a lot of work for Ke to do.
Sorry, I should have been more specific because my question is pretty context independent. I was only curious about the “draw users” part of the statement because it sounds like Warren is saying that feedback functions “draw” --ie. cause – people to do things – like go down rabbit holes. My question should have been “Do you, as an expert in feedback functions, think that feedback functions can cause people to do things?”
I agree that it’s more appropriate to say that algorithms influence (rather than cause) behavior but they can wield that influence only when people are controlling for the variables affected by the algorithms. The people using the systems that provide the desired content are just as responsible for the influence of these algorithms as are the algorithms themselves.
Those computational structures are definitely in the environment of the people using the systems. But I think they are more like disturbance sources than feedback functions. After all, the user’s output (a button click) has no regular, functional relationship to the controlled variable (the content they are presented).
It’s the controlled variable itself (the content presented) that is used by the algorithm to determine what content to present – the content being an independent effect on (a disturbance to) what is displayed (the controlled variable).
Disturbances influence behavior (clicks) just as feedback functions do. To the extent that the disturbances result in the display of content the user wants to see, the user will click less and, thus, spend more time on that content.
No. It looks to me like you guys are the ones having difficulty with it. I’m here to help, if you want it.