[From Bruce Nevin (980810.2348 EDT)]
Postulate an environment with two autonomous control systems in it.
Sooner or later both are controlling the same variable with different
reference values. They bump into one another. Or one is is sitting on what
the other wants to climb on to reach something. It doesn't matter what.
One is stronger than the other. Does this mean coercion takes place? No.
For illustration of what does happen, look at the data of interacting
simulated control systems in Kent's paper.
Kent McClelland (980804.1600 CDT) "paper available on-line"
The title of the paper is "The Collective
Control of Perceptions: Constructing Order from Conflict." It can be
found at this address:http://www.grinnell.edu/sociology/ccp.html
The paper is a revision of the lengthy paper I circulated a couple of years
ago with the subtitle, "Toward a Person-Centered Sociology"
(http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/csg/people/mcclelland/ccp/).
So what happens when one control system is able to control successfully and
the other (because of it) is unable to control at all? This is what the
spreadsheet simulation is supposed to be showing us. What do with observe
among living control systems?
When a living control system finds itself the weaker party to a coersive
transaction, it doesn't just stay in that relationship. Vertebrates at
least, and probably other critters, change what they are doing so that they
stop fruitlessly expending energy without effect.
The situation that the spreadsheet simulation depicts is typically a
transitional state in social interactions among living control systems. But
the spreadsheet shows the weaker system almost instantly producing maximum
output, and then staying there, fruitlessly resisting the overpowering
strength of the other system, with the neural signal climbing toward
infinity--it stops at an Excel limit, and would stop at a neurological
limit--way past the point at which the output function is maxed out. Living
control systems simply don't do this.
Perhaps the extreme case of coercion by overwhelming use of force is the
predator and its prey. But living control systems don't act like the
spreadsheet even in predator-prey situations. Persons who have been mauled
by big cats have reported a hypnotic kind of lethargy, and their observed
behavior has been like that observed in non-human prey. Something very
interesting is going on there. It's not the infamous universal error curve.
And it doesn't happen all the time, prey also may struggle until death. But
struggling looks mighty like (pardon me, Mary) reorganizing, it looks like
trying something different, and then something else different, and then
something else different, and so on in quick succession. The spreadsheet is
more like the guy pushing against the sumo wrestler: No action is visible,
no motion is visible, efforts to change the contested variable have no
effect, but he keeps putting out the effort nonetheless. A rather unnatural
and unlikely scenario. What living control system would persist in such
stupidity?
But to return to our social space. Sooner or later conflict happens.
Usually it does not escalate to coercion. The relative power of the
participants is not sufficiently unbalanced. A "virtual reference" emerges.
Out of these emerge our socially constituted realities. Kent has put
forward a bold conjecture indeed. What he needs now is data to model and
then to test his models.
The IACT folks ("Glasser renegades" working in school systems, not RTP but
related) described the process of setting up a program in a school. In
meetings, the various parties, parents, students, teachers, administrators,
come to what sounded very much like Kent's "conflictive agreement" as to
what the school is about. Later, when they do something similar to Ed's
questions, "What are you doing?" etc., this is a self-conscious reminder to
the student and to the teacher about those initial agreements as to what
the school is about. Clearly, that initial "buy-in" is crucial. I bet it
must take place in setting up the RTP program. Are there data there that
can be modelled? Can variables be pulled out of a record of verbalizations
during this process? What about after the RTP program (or the IACT program)
is established -- how do they get "buy-in" from new parents and new
students? What process goes on so that they understand and perhaps
participate in (re)formulating what the school is about? Or is it handed
down from the get as a more or less dogmatic system, here it is, this is
what we're doing? If so, how do they get that commitment to it from the
students and from the teachers? In this process is crucial data that smells
to me very much like Kent's simulated control system work.
I suggested this separately to the IACT folks and to Kent in Vancouver.
Also to Tom, sort of. (I don't know how much of the point got across--he
hastened to assert that he already had lots and lots of data, but I'm not
sure what kind and whether it bears on this.) What do you think? Is there a
research opportunity there?
What struck me about this is that the IACT folks were asking for help
better understanding the theory and better understanding how to apply it in
their work. The theory informs their work and helps to legitimate their
program. But conversely, data from successful programs in schools can
legitimate a research program and give it a context that makes it more
attractive for funding and publication. Instead of being a maverick
scientist off in a corner playing with models that no one understands
outside CSG (and how many of us have read Kent's paper yet?). Not to put
down your work, Kent, in any way, but just to emphasize the suggestion that
there may be an opportunity here.
Bruce Nevin