[From Bill Powers (991115.0313 MDT)]
Bruce Nevin (991115.0013 EDT)--
strenuously to anything you said in this post), it might serve us better to
talk about our experiences with this sort of thing. Data first.
I was talking about my personal experience. Those were not logical
deductions. They were compact statements of observations in personal
experience.
Sorry, I failed to recognize the reports of any actual occurrances.
Have you ever been bullied or watched someone else being bullied?
What kind of question is that?
The kind that asks about actual reports of data rather than abstract
generalizations.
My aim was to lay bare some of the issues before us if we wish to model
coercion other than simple overwhelming use of force. This was in response
to a direct request.
Rick observes (991113.0850) that coercion by direct use of force is
uncommon, and that by far the most common forms of coercion involve threats.
I would add to this (again) that you cannot extrapolate from a model of
direct force to talk about these much more usual forms of coercion. Rick
and you have done this a lot. Please stop.
Well -- no. Even if you say "please."
The subject of discussion here is making people do things, regardless of
their wishes, to suit someone else's desires. Remember that my emphasis,
and I think Rick's, is on the person doing this to someone else, because
the largest part of the problem as I see it is the _desire_ to control
other people's behavior. Forget the victim's desires; the victim may never
know that another person thinks he has controlled the victim's behavior,
because the victim may have wanted to do whatever it is anyway. That point
has been made several times, and I agree that it's plausible. If the victim
wants to do whatever it is so the putative controller never has to act,
there is no problem for the victim; the victim is not a victim, but is
simply unaffected by, and perhaps unaware of, what is going on.
The most effective way to threaten the use of force is simply to use it.
After the user of force has used it a few times, others will come to expect
it and their actions will take this expectation into account. If they can
see that the use of force is an expected consequence of not doing what the
user of force demands, or doing what he prohibits, and if they don't want
to be on the receiving end of that behavior and have no effective defenses,
they will have to comply with the user of force to _prevent_ the use of
force on them. Of course, to reiterate a previous paragraph, if they do
what the user of force wants simply because they want to do it anyway, they
may never know that they had flirted with danger. They might even consider
the user of force an ally.
Your complaint seems to be that we have no model of this situation. That
may be so, but are we in agreement about the situation, the state of
affairs that we would like to explain with a model? There's no point in
offering a model if we don't agree on the concrete circumstances to be
explained.
Another point that I think is important is that all forms of inducement are
alike. Apparently I did not make that point clear. "If you practice
regularly, your piano playing will improve." If you in fact desire to play
the piano well, that inducement from your piano teacher may help to
persuade you to practice more regularly. You would hardly call that
coercion. "If you shovel my walk I'll give you $5."
Why not call it coercion? There seem to be no rules about what we can and
cannot call coercion. "You would hardly call that coercion" is not an
argument; it's an appeal to unspoken common-sense meaning, which is useless
in this context. If you can say exactly why you don't expect us to call it
coercion, perhaps we might understand your usage better.
Making other people behave to suit you is not a form of "inducement."
Inducement leaves an element of choice to the other person; if the
inducement offered is not sweet enough, the attempt to induce will fail.
What we are talking about is an act of control, which will not be allowed
to fail as long as the one who wants to do the controlling has sufficient
power.
Bullies, in my experience, do not confine themselves to threats and
blandishments.
Blandishments are offers of reward in interactions of this latter sort,
interactions that no one would call coercion.
Except people who would call it coercion. Why wouldn't anyone (you, that
is) call it coercion?
I said "To communicate the
threat or the promised reward Ace in some way brings to Deuce's attention
the fact that Ace is controlling this variable ...."
First they beat you or someone near you up to demonstrate
what they can do any time they wish, and to show you who has the power.
_Then_ they communicate the conditions: do what I want or I'll do that to
you again.
Sometimes. Sometimes reputation is enough. Sometimes just sizing them up.
"I don't want to mess with this guy, he looks tough." Sometimes the victim
can't abide conflict or confrontation, or is just plain timid and scared of
everybody. Maybe this has to do with prior experience with bullies, or
other kinds of prior experience, or weaknesses learned and/or inborn.
Certainly there is some basis for the credibility of the bully in the mind
of the victim. But it isn't always "just so" as you have described it.
I think this paragraph sums up the difficulties that arise when you try to
focus on the recipient of behavioral control rather than the perpetrator.
Recipients are endlessly variable; there is simply no general way to
predict how they will react when someone tries to control their behavior.
On the other hand, if we focus on the one who wants to control other
people's behavior, we can say fairly easily what will happen, because now
we're talking about a specific control system with a specific reference
signal. We can predict that if the recipient produces the behavior the
controller wants, the controller will take no action to change the
recipient's behavior. If the recipient deviates from the behavior the
controller wants to see, the controller will apply whatever actions are
necessary to restore the other's behavior to the state the controller wants
to see. On general principles, we might guess that the controller's actions
will start with the easiest ones to produce and, if they fail to correct
the error, will escalate to more and more energetic forms, until we have
overt violence.
The _particular_ case I am interested in is the one in which the controller
has resources far greater than those of the controllee. In this case, there
is no doubt about the outcome; the controllee will do what the controller
wants, quite independently of what the controllee wants. By that I mean
simply that knowing what the controllee wants is unneccessary if you want
to predict the outcome. All you need to know is the intention of the
controller; that will suffice to predict the outcome.
The question is, how does this make any difference? I doubt there are
bullies-by-threat among the paramecia.
Animals are more pragmatic. If a bigger animal uses force against you, you
just give in or keep out of the way. Animals do not say "Gosh, I'm being
controlled and I hate to be controlled." They just counteract those
disturbances they can resist, and change their goals when they run into
disturbances too powerful to handle. Human beings do this, too, of course,
but they like to tell stories about what they're doing while they do it.
Best,
Bill P.