[From Bill Powers (950927.1220 MDT)]
Looks as though Bruce Abbott's thread on self-control has resulted in
some excellent thoughts on the matter.
Dennis Delprato (092705) --
I was surprised to find self-control tied to conflict in several
previous posts.
The reason is that most of us were taking the term self-control in a
special common-language sense that is closely tied to conflict. In the
more general sense, you would be right to be surprised, since control is
what behavior is all about. But to speak of _self_ control implies, in
oprdinary usage, that one is trying to make himself do something or keep
himself from doing something, which would happen only if there were two
opposing goals involved. If someone tells an angry person to control
himself, the ordinary meaning would be that he should STOP controlling
in the way he is controlling and behave in some other way. "Control
yourself" is not normally taken to mean "Go on behaving as you are
behaving." Similarly, when people speak of controlling themselves, they
are normally taken to mean that they want to change something about what
they are doing.
When there is no conflict, we don't usually speak of controlling
_ourselves_, or for that matter of controlling other things. We just say
we are DOING something. We name the behavior by naming the controlled
variable and sometimes the means of controlling it. We say "I'm eating
breakfast," not "I'm controlling myself to eat breakfast" (unless the
breakfast is particularly nauseating).
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Martin Taylor (950927.1130)--
A fine essay on self-control. I agree with your observation that it is
consciousness versus non-consciousness of controlling that makes the
difference in how it feels to behave -- doing something "automatically"
or "on purpose."
I've suggested that (1) awareness or attention seems strongly drawn to
systems containing large error signals, (2) conflict is one major source
of large errors, and (3) the locus of reorganization seems to follow the
locus of awareness. These ideas seem to fit with the observation that a
sense of self-control or focused consciousness of control arises
primarily when there are control problems.
We really do need to do some experiments with attention.
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Rick Marken (950927.0945) --
Your application of the "range of control" curve nicely handles the
situation where you don't know you want something until you see it, or
smell it, etc.. It also explains nicely how conflict can remain hidden:
one way to avoid the deleterious effects of conflict is to stay out of
situations that are within the range of control of the conflicted
systems. The range within the zig-zag curve is a trap; once the
controlled variable gets within it, the action quickly (with positive
feedback) snatches the variable into the range of control. So when
people have a big beef with each other, they can avoid getting into a
fight by talking about unrelated subjects. But as soon as either one
says "About last night..." the fight is on again.
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Fred Nickols (950927) --
Welcome aboard, Fred!
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Hans Blom (950927d) --
Martin Taylor said
Why should one become conscious of controlling when there is
conflict?
And you replied
One _should_ not. One _does_. Lots of people worry and ruminate all
the time. It cannot be switched off, however hard they try. They
are not experts, yet.
I've noticed the same thing, that experts have a tendency to stop
thinking about what they know and just apply it. This is fine when what
they know isn't questioned and when what they do works. But it becomes a
handicap when different points of view clash, or when the performance of
the expert runs into problems. It can be hard to get such experts to get
back into the self-conscious reorganization mode from whence cometh all
progress.
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Hans Blom (950927c) --
Did you get my statement that it was _knowledge acquisition_ and
the subsequent _use_ of this knowledge that provides the
improvement in control?
Yes, but I don't see that this adds to the discussion. It's the
_specific_ knowledge that makes better control possible, not knowledge
in general. I can agree with your statement without feeling any wiser.
Is there some view opposed to this that I don't know about?
I'll have to study your explanation for a while. One question that comes
to mind is how the system knows it should use a form for its world model
that is
x = a * u + b.
Considering all the different kinds of "plants" that may exist, wouldn't
the adaptive system have to be incredibly lucky to hit on the right one
with the first guess? I seem to recall your saying something about the
problem of "system identification," which is probably what I'm talking
about. It seems to me that you're building the solution into the program
from the start.
I'll probably have more elementary questions, as I'm not used to dealing
with variances and covariances this way.
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Best to all,
Bill P.