Ship of Fools (was Re: Correlations and politics)

[Dick_Robertson]

[From Dick Robertson,2007.09.16.0935CDT]

But the question is, what
principles
will in fact support such a society? This is a matter of fact, not
of principles or system concepts.

Go back a couple of centuries and I can imagine you arguing for
absolute monarchies, and Mike Acree (and myself) putting forward
the
radical idea that people should be able to choose their own rulers.
Well, now we do, and the new idea is that maybe we don't need to
have rulers at all.

Has any of you kept abreast of that Dutch experiment where the town removed all
its traffice controls, betting that drivers would then regulate themselves?

It seems to me that the outcome of that experiment might throw some light on the
larger question of "maybe we don't need rulers at all."

Best,

Dick R

···

From: Richard Kennaway <jrk@CMP.UEA.AC.UK>
Date: Monday, September 17, 2007 6:41 am

--
Richard Kennaway, jrk@cmp.uea.ac.uk, Richard Kennaway
School of Computing Sciences,
University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, U.K.

[Richard_Kennaway]

[From Richard Kennaway (2007.09.17.1552 BST)]

[From Dick Robertson,2007.09.16.0935CDT]
Has any of you kept abreast of that Dutch experiment where the town removed all
its traffice controls, betting that drivers would then regulate themselves?

It seems to me that the outcome of that experiment might throw some light on the
larger question of "maybe we don't need rulers at all."

A quick Google turns up an interesting Wikipedia article about the underlying concept, and several other places it's been tried:

Shared space

All the results mentioned on that page are positive. Not yet tried in the U.S. though.

···

--
Richard Kennaway, jrk@cmp.uea.ac.uk, Richard Kennaway
School of Computing Sciences,
University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, U.K.

[Bill_Powers1]

And nobody should fret about not
having complete freedom to chose systematic rules or principles, once it
is realized that the most important thing is to have a viable social
system to live in. We will pick principles that support the viability of
society, and rules that support the principles.

That begs the whole question. If “a viable social system”
means peace and prosperity for all, I expect all of us on this list would
like that. No conflict there. But the question is, what
principles will in fact support such a society? This is a matter of
fact, not of principles or system concepts.
[From Bill Powers (2007.09.17.0750 MDT)]
I think it’s more a matter of problem-solving from the point of view that
we’re trying to conceive a system that will work for as many of us as
possible. The framers of the U. S. Constitution were trying to do that.
So were the writers of the Magna Carta: the Wikipedia, that marvelous
substitute for a real education, says
**The content of the Magna Carta was
drafted by Archbishop Stephen Langton and the most powerful Barons of
England. King John signed the document which was originally called the
‘Articles of the Barons’ on June 10, 1215.**The problem, as I dimly see it, is that we human beings are
autonomous agents within the limits set by our physical humanity, yet
every move made by one of these agents is potentially and often actually
a disturbance acting to change what other agents are controlling. Since
we’re control systems, and it’s the nature of control systems to resist
disturbances, the potential for conflict is always present. Furthermore,
this resistance is automatic and requires no conscious effort to carry
out, so conflicts have a way of escalating before anyone realizes that a
fatal positive feedback loop has been set in motion. We are so intent on
correcting our own errors caused by others that we fail to see what our
defenses are doing on the other side, the side that is intent on
correcting the errors we are causing, until the escalation is well under
way.

This is what I think of as a system concept – the system concept itself,
of course, is beyond words, but is behind the picture painted above. It’s
an appreciation of the way a society made of control systems works, and
it’s not stated from the standpoint of any one of the individuals making
up the system. That’s the difference between the system concept point of
view and the ones behind the conflicts being discussed on CSGnet. In all
the conflicts we discuss, someone is taking one side against someone
else, and there is very little awareness that BOTH sides are required in
order for the conflict to exist. And BOTH sides need to change to resolve
the problem.

I asked a mathematician, long ago, if he would show me the proof of some
theorem. He replied that he couldn’t show me the proof, although he could
show me the steps taken in developing it. From that sly hint, I got the
idea that a proof is a perception, and if one can perceive that sort of
thing, one can see that a series of mathematical manipulations embodies a
proof without itself being a proof, just as little dots of varying size
embody a half-tone photograph without any of them being a photograph.
This is what I’m trying to say about system concepts.

You cannot imagine
how things could possibly work without a government in charge to tell
everyone what to do. At least, what you do imagine is everyone
shooting each other. But other people can, and have written on the
subject at length.

My concept is not that governments are in charge to tell everyone what to
do. That is the child’s view of a parent. The child does not ask why the
parents tell the child what to do – that is the parents’ business and
the child has no interest in grown-up concerns. But governments are
composed of adults interacting with other adults. Adults are expected to
understand why some rules are necessary and to choose to live by
them.

My concept of government is of delegation of duties to people who are
willing to perform them and are interested in and skilled in doing that
kind of thing. Government is there to do things that the people say they
want done. It’s up to the people to agree on what those things are and to
see that they are done in the way desired. But because the agents of the
people’s will are also autonomous control systems, the people can’t
determine exactly how those duties, or those objectives, are to be
carried out. The representatives of the people are given reference
conditions at a high level of organization, from programs on up and
preferably on up, leaving it to the skill and understanding of the
representatives to determine how to do what the people want. If they
don’t do it, other representatives will be found.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes is the problem. The custodians, being
human, will act autonomously whether we want them to or not, and they
will do this at all levels. They will confuse duty with power. For
example, we charge some representatives with the duty of analyzing social
problems and devising regulations that will curb excesses and remove
threats. Those charged with enforcing the laws will inevitably assume
that they have more power, more rights, than other people do. So the
legislative and judicial systems become oppressors instead of protectors.
In order to understand that this has happened and to correct the
misinterpretation, we must see the whole system of representative
government and rule of law from a higher point of view from which it is
clear what has gone wrong. From that point of view we can begin to see
how to reframe the way the system is organized and described so as to
remove the mistakes without losing the vital social functions being
performed – which is what would happen if we simply did away with all
government and all law.

Revolutionaries typically don’t think much farther ahead than destroying
the opposition. Once it’s destroyed, they then start squabbling among
themselves as the same old problems as before surface and demand
solutions. We end up with a lovely communistic vision of a society of
comrades turning into a vicious dictatorship and oppressor of the people
in whose name it arose. It’s much better to modify and reorganize, to
analyze the problems and make the appropriate changes, to try doing
things a little differently and see if the result is better. That’s
pretty much what we’re trying to do, but there’s always someone who is
impatient and just wants to knock the whole thing down and start again
from scratch. We need a reorganizing system that can focus on the place
where the problem is and change that without destroying subsystems that
are functioning perfectly well.

Go back a couple of
centuries and I can imagine you arguing for absolute monarchies, and Mike
Acree (and myself) putting forward the radical idea that people should be
able to choose their own rulers. Well, now we do, and the new idea is
that maybe we don’t need to have rulers at all.

I agree. We need public servants, not rulers. But we do need public
servants, and people to coordinate them, and we do need mechanisms for
serving the common weal. There are bad people around and most of us need
protection from them. Most of us are not good shots. Stupid people get
into positions of power, and need to be removed. Greedy people get the
idea that they deserve more goodies than anyone else, and they need to be
reminded of just who and what they depend on. There are grand uplifting
projects that only a society can carry out, and vital amenities that need
all of us to contribute if they are to be provided. so we need
governments and laws and public projects, even if we don’t need rulers.
We just need to design them better, knowing what we know about living
control systems.

Best,

Bill P.

[Bill_Powers1]

Has any of you kept abreast of
that Dutch experiment where the town removed all

its traffice controls, betting that drivers would then regulate
themselves?

It seems to me that the outcome of that experiment might throw some light
on the

larger question of “maybe we don’t need rulers at
all.”
[From Bill Powers (2007.09.17.0920 MDT)]

Dick Robertson,2007.09.16.0935CDT –

I’m sure we don’t need rulers, but we might need some rules. For example,
do these towns require that people have driver’s licenses, and do they do
any driver education before allowing children to drive cars? Is there any
attempt to find out why accidents occur, and whether there are causes
(like excessive speed in crowded places) that need to be addressed? Does
every single person in these towns drive carefully and alertly even when
drunk? Is there any notice given to people from out of town that traffic
is unregulated?

In fact, if people do regulate themselves, I think that would pretty soon
evolve into a system of traffic regulations that are published and,
eventually (when they are ignored by some) enforced. The reason I say
this is that these towns will need to protect their citizens against the
few who take selfish advantage of it or who drive with impaired judgement
or run away from accidents. When people get used to other people
spontaneously doing the right thing, they become more vulnerable when
there are exceptions – and please don’t tell me there are no exceptions.
Laws and regulations arise from abuses of mutual trust, and they’re meant
to prevent repetitions. I don’t agree with the punitive aspects of law,
but I do agree with removing bad apples from the barrel and watching out
for what goes into the barrel.

Best,

Bill P.

[rsmarken]

[From Rick Marken (2007.09.17.0930)]

Bill Powers (2007.09.17.0345 MDT)--

Rick Marken (2007.09.16.2250) --

Kucinich is my kind of libertarian; a fiscal
communitarian and a social respectatarian -- a person who is against
laws preventing actions that can't hurt anyone else (like gay marriage
and marijuana consumption) and for laws that prevent actions that
can (like shooting people).

This is a narrow view. You are judging what hurts other people by
your own preferences and sensibilities. All you have to do is switch
from "gay marriage" to "white supremacy" and from "marijuana
consumption" to "bus drivers high on marijuana".

I agree. I didn't mean to imply that I am hoping for complete freedom
in one case or complete restriction in the other. I would like simply
to see conflicts resolved in these directions; like maybe see if the
conflict over gay marriage can be reduced by calling it "civil unions"
instead of marriage for gays (I think that is acceptable to most gays
and conservatives) and regulate marijuana and other drug use, just as
we regulate alcohol use (I think that would be acceptable to both drug
legalizers and many drug warriors).

We need to be looking at system concepts.

I agree. I think the system concept I have can be described as a
secular, liberal democracy with a regulated capitalist economic
system. Gee, that sounds like the US in 1950 -- about when I came
conscious that I was an American. I guess I actually bought all that
liberal Eisenhower era crap;-)

This means that different mixes of principles must be tested to see
which lead to the least conflict; when a principle proves to be fatally
conflict-engendering, it has to be revised or abandoned. So neither
reason nor morality can be immutable.

I agree! Obviously, the ambient principles held by people in the US
have moved to a very high conflict state. I hope they start to shift a
bit. Perhaps this awful Bush presidency will be the beginning of a
shift toward a less conflict producing set of principles.

Best

Rick

···

--
Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com

[Martin_Taylor2]

[Martin Taylor 2007.09.17.12.55]

[From Bill Powers (2007.09.17.0750 MDT)]

And nobody should fret about not having complete freedom to chose systematic rules or principles, once it is realized that the most important thing is to have a viable social system to live in. We will pick principles that support the viability of society, and rules that support the principles.

That begs the whole question. If "a viable social system" means peace and prosperity for all, I expect all of us on this list would like that. No conflict there. But the question is, what principles will in fact support such a society? This is a matter of fact, not of principles or system concepts.

I think it's more a matter of problem-solving from the point of view that we're trying to conceive a system that will work for as many of us as possible. The framers of the U. S. Constitution were trying to do that. So were the writers of the Magna Carta: the Wikipedia, that marvelous substitute for a real education, says
....

I've been watching this thread with some interest, because although I deeply disagree with the conclusions reached by Mike and Richard, and agree with those reached by Rick, I am unable to find any purely PCT-based reasons in support of or in opposition to either side, either in the thread or in my own thinking.

Nobody in this discussion has noted the importance of different roles in any PCT-based society. Most specifically, nobody has noted that there are far more non-human perceptual control systems that interact with each other than there are human ones. They certainly have roels different from the roles of most humans, but they are all part of the same society of perceptual control systems. So, if the argument is to have any legitimate basis, it must either consider all "societies" of perceptual control systems or deal with those aspects of human society in which humans differ significantly from non-human control systems.

I think of two ways in which human societies differ from non-human, and they are almost certainly linked. The first is in the use of language that enables one person to disturb the perceptions of another so that the two can cooperate (or at least agree to operate within each other's tolerance zone and avoid conflict). That ability leads to technological invention, which leads to the second major difference between human and non-human societies.

The second major difference is that ALL non-human perceptual control systems living in the wild get their energy source (another neglected topic in the discussion) either directly from sunlight, deep-sea chemical reactions, or from eating each other. That's every single one of them. Only humans and animals raised by humans get most of their energy from sources other than eating other species. At a rough estimate, since the carrying capacity of the Earth without using artificial energy sources is on the order of 70 million (not billion), we must get around 99% of our energy from artificial sources.

That we get so much of our energy from NOT eating other control systems implies that we must either have copious energy sources or we must be in conflict (degrees of freedom argument). To avoid conflict under such conditions means coordination through the use of language. Since we cannot communicate pairwise to more than a very few other people, coordination on this scale seems to imply not only regulation, but enforceable regulation. Enforceable regulation seems to imply that people should be better able to control their perceptions by following the regulations than by flouting them. This applies to concensus agreements as well as to police-monitored laws (I'd be surprised if people in the Dutch towns don't drive on the right, and give way to traffic in the roundabouts, and walk on the sides by preference to the middle of the roads).

I'm not sure where this argument leads from that point. I think it could go either way, toward Mike and Richard, or toward Rick. However, what I am sure of is that the thread should consider these two ways in which humans differ from other species, and the discussion should incorporate the importance of roles, which I think should take precendence over the suggestion we all should have the same reference values or perceptual functions at ANY level of perception, whether it be sensation or principles. After all, naive PCT would suggest we are most likely to be in conflict with those who have the same goals as we do.

Martin

[rsmarken]

[From Rick Marken (2007.09.17.1100)]

Bill Powers (2007.09.17.0750 MDT)

I think it's more a matter of problem-solving from the point of view that
we're trying to conceive a system that will work for as many of us as
possible. The framers of the U. S. Constitution were trying to do that.
So were the writers of the Magna Carta

This has got to be one of the greatest posts of all time. Once you
finish the book on PCT/Modeling could you please make this post the
basis of a little pamphlet on "a control theory approach to social
problems". It's helping me get a better idea of what you're thinking
about and, of course, I love your thoughts on this.

This is what I think of as a system concept -- the system concept
itself, of course, is beyond words, but is behind the picture painted
above. It's an appreciation of the way a society made of control
systems works, and it's not stated from the standpoint of any one of
the individuals making up the system.

That's the difference between the system concept point of view and
the ones behind the conflicts being discussed on CSGnet.

Yes. I think I'm starting to see!!

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes is the problem. The custodians,
being human, will act autonomously whether we want them to or
not, and they will do this at all levels. They will confuse duty with
power. For example, we charge some representatives with the duty
of analyzing social problems and devising regulations that will curb
excesses and remove threats. Those charged with enforcing the
laws will inevitably assume that they have more power, more
rights, than other people do. So the legislative and judicial systems
become oppressors instead of protectors.

I think a similar thing happens in economics. Those charged with
running companies -- management -- end up assuming they are more
important (they are certainly more powerful) than the people whose
work they are organizing. I think this has led to a concept of
economics that sees management as the "real" producers and labor as
just a costly and unfortunate necessity. This creates references for
management and labor that are in conflic: the managers want to
maximize profit by cutting the cost of labor, and labor wants to
maximize their income, even at the expense of profit.

I think my view of economics -- as a collection of people cooperating
to produce the inputs they want-- might qualify as a system concept by
your definition that sees the economic system, not only from a control
point of view but also from a point of view that is "above" the
conflict. If labor and management could see themselves as equally
vital components of a cooperative control process, the goal of which
is to produce inputs that meets everyone's wants and needs, the
conflict would go away. If this is indeed a system concept for
economics then I like it a lot; but it's been quite difficult to get
people to buy into it. But I think those societies that embrace
something like this system concept tend to have lower conflict than
one's that don't.

Thanks for a very thought-provoking post!!

Best regards

Rick

···

--
Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com

[Bill_Powers1]

The second major difference is
that ALL non-human perceptual control systems living in the wild get
their energy source (another neglected topic in the discussion) either
directly from sunlight, deep-sea chemical reactions, or from eating each
other. That’s every single one of them. Only humans and animals raised by
humans get most of their energy from sources other than eating other
species.
[From Bill Powers (2007.09.17.1442 MDT)]

Martin Taylor 2007.09.17.12.55 –

I take it you’re lumping “humans-and-animals-raised-by-humans”
as one unit – otherwise, humans eat lots of other species, from oats to
okapis.

At a rough
estimate, since the carrying capacity of the Earth without using
artificial energy sources is on the order of 70 million (not billion), we
must get around 99% of our energy from artificial
sources.

Seems small to me. Any particular reason for picking that number? Do you
count crops raised to feed cattle, pigs, chickens, and so on as
artificial sources? The fertilizer, of course, would count. Tractor fuel?

That we get so much
of our energy from NOT eating other control systems implies that we must
either have copious energy sources or we must be in conflict (degrees of
freedom argument). To avoid conflict under such conditions means
coordination through the use of language. Since we cannot communicate
pairwise to more than a very few other people, coordination on this scale
seems to imply not only regulation, but enforceable
regulation.

Since these conclusions all rest on the premises, I’d like to see the
premises established a little better before following the rest of this
development.

After all, naive
PCT would suggest we are most likely to be in conflict with those who
have the same goals as we do.

That’s true, if coupled with shortages. My own measure of the time when
overpopulation occurred puts it within a score of years ending in the
1960s, when the guy-lines of tents in the Yosemite Park campground began
to cross each other. But perhaps you have a more objective
measure.

Best,

Bill P.

[Martin_Taylor2]

[From Bill Powers (2007.09.17.1442 MDT)]

Martin Taylor 2007.09.17.12.55 --

The second major difference is that ALL non-human perceptual control systems living in the wild get their energy source (another neglected topic in the discussion) either directly from sunlight, deep-sea chemical reactions, or from eating each other. That's every single one of them. Only humans and animals raised by humans get most of their energy from sources other than eating other species.

I take it you're lumping "humans-and-animals-raised-by-humans" as one unit -- otherwise, humans eat lots of other species, from oats to okapis.

It doesn't matter what humans eat. I'm talking about what wild animals eat. Farmed and tame animals take advantage of the artificial energy sources used by humans.

At a rough estimate, since the carrying capacity of the Earth without using artificial energy sources is on the order of 70 million (not billion), we must get around 99% of our energy from artificial sources.

Seems small to me. Any particular reason for picking that number? Do you count crops raised to feed cattle, pigs, chickens, and so on as artificial sources? The fertilizer, of course, would count. Tractor fuel?

Everything. House heating and air-conditioning, any farmed crop energy inputs, most definitely including the production of fertilizer, transportation energy,...

As for the number of people the Earth would carry if we didn't have artificial energy sources, maybe it is small. I get that from combining two sources: "Population density and body size in mammals", John Damuth, Nature 290, 23 April 1981, 699-700, and the CIA World Factbook.

Damuth provides a graph (attached, if I remember) on which he plots the number of animals per square km as a function of body mass. If we take humans to be normal mamals and plot them at 70kg, the range of the number per square km is around 0.9 to 20, with 4 as the most likely. This is for optimum habitat.

The CIA World Factbook says that the land area of the World is almost 150 million square km. Of that, 13.3% is arable, which is probably not far from the area that would be "optimal habitat" for a normal human mammal (i.e. one without extra energy sources). That gives about 20 million sq km of habitat. At 4 per square km, we get 60 million humans. I said 70, meaning I probably did a slightly different calculation the last time I thought about it.

But no matter how you slice it, the number isn't going to change by two orders of magnitude. Even if you take the maximum density feasible from the Damuth plot and assume Antarctica, Greenland, the Gobi and Sahara all to be optimum habitat, you still get only 600 million humans as the maximum population without artificial energy. And that number would say we get 90% rather than 99% of our energy from artifical sources. I'd bet on 99% rather than 90%.

That we get so much of our energy from NOT eating other control systems implies that we must either have copious energy sources or we must be in conflict (degrees of freedom argument). To avoid conflict under such conditions means coordination through the use of language. Since we cannot communicate pairwise to more than a very few other people, coordination on this scale seems to imply not only regulation, but enforceable regulation.

Since these conclusions all rest on the premises, I'd like to see the premises established a little better before following the rest of this development.

Does the above help?

After all, naive PCT would suggest we are most likely to be in conflict with those who have the same goals as we do.

That's true, if coupled with shortages. My own measure of the time when overpopulation occurred puts it within a score of years ending in the 1960s, when the guy-lines of tents in the Yosemite Park campground began to cross each other. But perhaps you have a more objective measure.

I don't know where one would get an objective measure. Perhaps overpopulation can be measured by species extinction rates. If it were possible to keep the present species balance, with extinction rates somewhere near historical levels (say, for example, the rate measured over the million years before writing began), then we could argue for an objective measure based on the amount of renewable energy we could distribute, all of which comes directly or indirectly from the sun. But I suspect the number we would come up with would still be too large to sustain the non-human ecology, and the degradation of that ecology inevitably would mean a habitat less hospitable for human survival than it now is.

Habitat degradation would mean a need for more energy per person, and a lower sustainable population. So, in the long run, sustainability of the human population level comes down to bringing the rate of species extinction back to down the levels of the last million years from the dramatically high levels of the last half century, which seem to be the highest since the great Permian extinction.

Is that enough to get us back to the PCT basis of social organization?

Martin

[Dick_Robertson]

[From Dick Robertson,2007.09.17.1825CDT]

Considering together your comment here, and Richard Kennaway's report that the
"driver self discipline" experiments in several places have seemed to be working
so far, I'm wondering if what we are looking at is a perennial cycling between
disciplined and undisciplined people. That is the Dutch town I read about
origionally might have started their experiment with a population of highly
disciplined people (as the Dutch are usually perceived) who had begun to
perceived themselves with an overdose of rules and regulations, saying, in
effect, "we can do this ourselves." After a while certain people begin to see
advantages to be gained from shaving the courtesies a bit, and so on, until you
begin to get a highly competitive population who love (non mortal) combat, such
as we seem to have here in Glenview, IL.
Those of us who are persuaded of the value of sharing and playing by the rules
notice ourselves often taken advantage of, in small ways, anyway. And
occasionally I notice some egregious violaters testing what they can get away with.

It often makes me wish our village would saturate the roads and intersections
with so many police (not that we could afford it) that the cheaters would get so
sick of being stopped and fined that they would join the "we can police
ourselves," group. But, of course that doesn't happen, or does it? I notice more
courtesy amoung older drivers, but can't tell whether that results from more
experience, slower reaction times, or early training, that began to be diluted
in the "we don't want to inhibit our kids" philosophy of the hippie generation
parents.

Best,

Dick R

···

From: Bill Powers <powers_w@FRONTIER.NET>
Date: Monday, September 17, 2007 10:41 am

<<<
<[From Bill Powers (2007.09.17.0920 MDT)]

Dick Robertson,2007.09.16.0935CDT --

<Has any of you kept abreast of
that Dutch experiment where the town removed all

its traffice controls, betting that drivers would then regulate
themselves?

It seems to me that the outcome of that experiment might throw some light
on the

larger question of &quot;maybe we don't need rulers at
all.&quot;<<

I'm sure we don't need rulers, but we might need some rules. For example,
do these towns require that people have driver's licenses, and do they do
any driver education before allowing children to drive cars? Is there any
attempt to find out why accidents occur, and whether there are causes
(like excessive speed in crowded places) that need to be addressed? Does
every single person in these towns drive carefully and alertly even when
drunk? Is there any notice given to people from out of town that traffic
is unregulated?

In fact, if people do regulate themselves, I think that would pretty soon
evolve into a system of traffic regulations that are published and,
eventually (when they are ignored by some) enforced. The reason I say
this is that these towns will need to protect their citizens against the
few who take selfish advantage of it or who drive with impaired judgement
or run away from accidents. When people get used to other people
spontaneously doing the right thing, they become more vulnerable when
there are exceptions -- and please don't tell me there are no exceptions.
Laws and regulations arise from abuses of mutual trust, and they're meant
to prevent repetitions. I don't agree with the punitive aspects of law,
but I do agree with removing bad apples from the barrel and watching out
for what goes into the barrel.

Best,

Bill P.

<<
<

[Martin_Taylor2]

Re: Ship of Fools (was Re: Correlations and
politics)
[Martin Taylor 2007.09.17.20.31]

[From Bill Powers (2007.09.17.1442
MDT)]

At a rough estimate, since the
carrying capacity of the Earth without using artificial energy sources
is on the order of 70 million (not billion), we must get around 99% of
our energy from artificial sources.

Seems small to me. Any particular reason for picking that number? Do
you count crops raised to feed cattle, pigs, chickens, and so on as
artificial sources? The fertilizer, of course, would count. Tractor
fuel?

Everything. House heating and air-conditioning, any farmed crop energy
inputs, most definitely including the production of fertilizer,
transportation energy,…
As for the number of people the Earth
would carry if we didn’t have artificial energy sources, maybe it is
small. I get that from combining two sources: “Population density
and body size in mammals”, John Damuth, Nature 290, 23 April
1981, 699-700, and the CIA World Factbook.

I forgot two things in that message: to give it’s header date
stamp, and to attach the figure from Damuth’s paper. I can’t fix
the missing date stamp, but here’s the figure. The figures 20 and 0.9
are just my by-eye estimates. 4 is placed accurately.

Martin

[Bill_Powers1]

Only humans and animals raised
by humans get most of their energy from sources other than eating other
species.

I take it you’re lumping “humans-and-animals-raised-by-humans”
as one unit – otherwise, humans eat lots of other species, from oats to
okapis.

It doesn’t matter what humans eat. I’m talking about what wild animals
eat. Farmed and tame animals take advantage of the artificial energy
sources used by humans.
As for the number of people the
Earth would carry if we didn’t have artificial energy sources, maybe it
is small. I get that from combining two sources: “Population density
and body size in mammals”, John Damuth, Nature 290, 23 April 1981,
699-700, and the CIA World Factbook.
[From Bill Powers (2007.09.18.0047 MDT)]

Martin Taylor 2007.09.17.12.55 –

This denial confuses me; your last sentence before my comment seemed to
be referring to humans getting “most of their energy from sources
other than eating other species.”.Aren’t cows, pigs, and chickens
other species?

The problem is that you’re using the regression line on a log plot when
you should be using the ellipse that contains the data. There is one
point representing some species that weighs around 90 Kg. yet has a
density of over 100 per square kilometer. Using your figure of 20E6 Km^2
of arable land, that’s 2 billion of these creatures living on arable
land. Who’s to say we aren’t smart enough to do as well as that without
using more extra energy than is sustainable? And who the heck are these
two billion 90-kilogram animals, one for every three humans? You’d think
we would have noticed them. Maybe they don’t live on what is technically
called arable land. Are forests called arable land?

I certainly agree that the Earth is overpopulated and has been for some
time. But your shortcut calculation skips over too many details and I
don’t trust the result. You’re trying to get too much information out of
too little data.

Best,

Bill P.

[Bill_Powers1]

After a while certain people
begin to see

advantages to be gained from shaving the courtesies a bit, and so on,
until you

begin to get a highly competitive population who love (non mortal)
combat, such

as we seem to have here in Glenview, IL.

Those of us who are persuaded of the value of sharing and playing by the
rules

notice ourselves often taken advantage of, in small ways, anyway.
And

occasionally I notice some egregious violaters testing what they can get
away with.
[From Bill Powers (2007.09.18.0159 MDT)]

Dick Robertson,2007.09.17.1825CDT –

I agree, that seems to be the way it goes. Someone always ends up
spoiling the nice tolerant mutually-considerate life that civilized
people try to live. When the nice guys get fed up, they start making laws
and hiring people (often not-so-nice people) to enforce them. Seems
inevitable to me. The one loudmouth in the library gets tossed out and
the signs go up: SILENCE. I’ll bet that speeders in those Dutch towns
will get weeded out pretty fast. The towns will be back to traffic laws
pretty soon, though they may have trouble after all the rosy publicity
admitting that this is what they’ve done.

Actually, I think I would agree with Rick that it might be worth an
experiment. Eliminate all laws and enforcement for a while and see what
happens. On the other hand, I’m afraid it would be a little too grisly,
and I’m not sure what I’d do when the first looter came in my front door.
It would sure put an end to sitting around theorizing about human
behavior. I don’t think I’d last long.

Best,

Bill P.

···

It often makes me
wish our village would saturate the roads and intersections

with so many police (not that we could afford it) that the cheaters would
get so

sick of being stopped and fined that they would join the "we can
police

ourselves," group. But, of course that doesn’t happen, or does it? I
notice more

courtesy amoung older drivers, but can’t tell whether that results from
more

experience, slower reaction times, or early training, that began to be
diluted

in the “we don’t want to inhibit our kids” philosophy of the
hippie generation

parents.

Best,

Dick R

<<<

<[From Bill Powers (2007.09.17.0920 MDT)]

Dick Robertson,2007.09.16.0935CDT –

<Has any of you kept abreast of

that Dutch experiment where the town removed all

its traffice controls, betting that drivers would then regulate

themselves?

It seems to me that the outcome of that experiment might throw some
light

on the

larger question of "maybe we don’t need rulers at

all."<<

I’m sure we don’t need rulers, but we might need some rules. For
example,

do these towns require that people have driver’s licenses, and do
they do

any driver education before allowing children to drive cars? Is
there any

attempt to find out why accidents occur, and whether there are
causes

(like excessive speed in crowded places) that need to be addressed?
Does

every single person in these towns drive carefully and alertly even
when

drunk? Is there any notice given to people from out of town that
traffic

is unregulated?

In fact, if people do regulate themselves, I think that would pretty
soon

evolve into a system of traffic regulations that are published
and,

eventually (when they are ignored by some) enforced. The reason I
say

this is that these towns will need to protect their citizens against
the

few who take selfish advantage of it or who drive with impaired
judgement

or run away from accidents. When people get used to other
people

spontaneously doing the right thing, they become more vulnerable
when

there are exceptions – and please don’t tell me there are no
exceptions.

Laws and regulations arise from abuses of mutual trust, and they’re
meant

to prevent repetitions. I don’t agree with the punitive aspects of
law,

but I do agree with removing bad apples from the barrel and watching
out

for what goes into the barrel.

Best,

Bill P.

<<

<

–

No virus found in this incoming message.

Checked by AVG Free Edition.

Version: 7.5.476 / Virus Database: 269.13.19/1008 - Release Date:
9/14/2007 8:59 AM

[Martin_Taylor2]

[Martin Taylor 2007.09.18]

[From Bill Powers (2007.09.18.0047 MDT)]

Martin Taylor 2007.09.17.12.55 --

Only humans and animals raised by humans get most of their energy from sources other than eating other species.

I take it you're lumping "humans-and-animals-raised-by-humans" as one unit -- otherwise, humans eat lots of other species, from oats to okapis.

It doesn't matter what humans eat. I'm talking about what wild animals eat. Farmed and tame animals take advantage of the artificial energy sources used by humans.

This denial confuses me; your last sentence before my comment seemed to be referring to humans getting "most of their energy from sources other than eating other species.".Aren't cows, pigs, and chickens other species?

The key word is "most". "Most" does not mean "all".

As for the number of people the Earth would carry if we didn't have artificial energy sources, maybe it is small. I get that from combining two sources: "Population density and body size in mammals", John Damuth, Nature 290, 23 April 1981, 699-700, and the CIA World Factbook.

The problem is that you're using the regression line on a log plot when you should be using the ellipse that contains the data.

Not in this case. There's not much uncertainty about the weight of the average human. And I used the range rather than the standard deviation.

There is one point representing some species that weighs around 90 Kg. yet has a density of over 100 per square kilometer.

You are talking about a scan of a 26-year-old Xerox. Looking at the "original" xerox, I also see a point for a 1000kg animal at 10,000 per square km and two points for animals of less than 5 gm at less than 0.5 per sq km.

Using your figure of 20E6 Km^2 of arable land, that's 2 billion of these creatures living on arable land. Who's to say we aren't smart enough to do as well as that without using more extra energy than is sustainable? And who the heck are these two billion 90-kilogram animals, one for every three humans? You'd think we would have noticed them.

Yes, you would, wouldn't you!

Maybe they don't live on what is technically called arable land. Are forests called arable land?

I certainly agree that the Earth is overpopulated and has been for some time. But your shortcut calculation skips over too many details and I don't trust the result. You're trying to get too much information out of too little data.

And you, I think, prefer to trust your intuition rather than the data at hand. There's actually quite a lot of it in that plot.

Anyway, there's lots of other evidence that "we aren't smart enough to do as well as that [the invisible 90 kg animals] without using more extra energy than is sustainable". Look at what we do when we have the power and technological capability to disregard the effects we have on other people and other species, either as individuals or in the effects of our collective activities!

···

------------------

My point in introducing animals into the discussion was not to get into a thread about overpopulation, but to bring the concept of roles into the sociological thread. I'm trying to find some kind of PCT-based argument for or against the strongly held prejudices expressed in this forum.

If you are going to generate PCT-based arguments without intriducing a-priori ideas of good and bad, you have to include all the interacting control systems. You can't do it while ignoring the animals and plants. Nor can you do it while ignoring the fact that control systems work only if supplied with an energy flow that may be limited in some places and at some times. Nor can you do it while ignoring that other necessary resources may have limits, which in PCT terms means a degrees-of-freedom conflict.

OK. A full analysis is not feasible. What then? In thermodynamics, the answer is statistical mechanics. There presumably is a PCT-based equivalent approach, based on what happens when dyads or larger but still small groups interact in the presence of resource limitation, and in cases where one class of control system can exert overwhelming force over another when the other's activities provide something required by the more powerful (as is the case for the interactions of wild animals and plants, just as much as it is for domesticated animals and plants).

Roles matter, and the assumption in the thread that everyone should have the same top-level perceptions and reference values for those perceptions really bothered me, as it seems to be both intuitively wrong (consider animals again) and to pre-empt a whole range of lines of enquiry.

Martin

[Bill_Powers1]

Only humans and animals raised
by humans get most of their energy from sources other than eating other
species.

I take it you’re lumping “humans-and-animals-raised-by-humans”
as one unit – otherwise, humans eat lots of other species, from oats to
okapis.

It doesn’t matter what humans eat. I’m talking about what wild animals
eat. Farmed and tame animals take advantage of the artificial energy
sources used by humans.

This denial confuses me; your last sentence before my comment seemed to
be referring to humans getting “most of their energy from sources
other than eating other species.”.Aren’t cows, pigs, and chickens
other species?

The key word is “most”. “Most” does not mean
“all”.
[From Bill Powers (2007.09.18.0946 MDT)]

Martin Taylor 2007.09.18 –

No, I see that the key words are “their energy”. I read it to
mean the energy they take into their bodies, which of course comes from
what they eat (and breathe). Sorry. You meant the total energy they cause
to be expended.

The problem is that
you’re using the regression line on a log plot when you should be using
the ellipse that contains the data.

Not in this case. There’s not much uncertainty about the weight of the
average human. And I used the range rather than the standard
deviation.

But there’s a lot of uncertainty about where an animal of known weight
fits in this diagram. This is definitely a case where you dare not use a
characteristic of a population to predict that same characteristic of an
individual. There are systematic differences between species that
influence how much arable land they need to survive. That regression line
tells you nothing about any individual. You are committing a statistical
sin, and you must say 10 Hail Pearsons to be restored to
grace.

There is one
point representing some species that weighs around 90 Kg. yet has a
density of over 100 per square kilometer.

You are talking about a scan of a 26-year-old Xerox. Looking at the
“original” xerox, I also see a point for a 1000kg animal at
10,000 per square km and two points for animals of less than 5 gm at less
than 0.5 per sq km.

I see those defects, too. They don’t look like most of the other points.
The one I’m talking about seems like most of the others. What does the
age of the Xerox have to do with it? If you suspect that some of the
points were introduced artificially, then how do you choose which
points to reject? Just

the ones that don’t make sense to you? Here is a magnified view –
the point in question looks like most of the other points in the diagram.
Are you sure that point doesn’t represent us, as of 20-some years ago or
more? 57 years ago (1950) the world population was 2.5 billion, not far
from the 2 billion we get from using your figures. Was there more or less
arable land then? And don’t different species make better use of arable
land than others do, even discounting artificial energy usage? The
scatter diagram says Definitely Yes. We needn’t assume that the scatter
is random: it could represent perfectly systematic differences among
species in their natural energy use. Using the regression line says that
human beings don’t do any better at agriculture than armadillos or
elephants do.

Using your
figure of 20E6 Km^2 of arable land, that’s 2 billion of these creatures
living on arable land. Who’s to say we aren’t smart enough to do as well
as that without using more extra energy than is sustainable? And who the
heck are these two billion 90-kilogram animals, one for every three
humans? You’d think we would have noticed them.

Yes, you would, wouldn’t you!

Maybe they don’t live on
what is technically called arable land. Are forests called arable
land?

I certainly agree that the Earth is overpopulated and has been for some
time. But your shortcut calculation skips over too many details and I
don’t trust the result. You’re trying to get too much information out of
too little data.

And you, I think, prefer to trust your intuition rather than the data at
hand. There’s actually quite a lot of it in that
plot.

Actually there’s hardly any relevant information in that plot about any
individual species.

Anyway, there’s
lots of other evidence that “we aren’t smart enough to do as well as
that [the invisible 90 kg animals] without using more extra energy than
is sustainable”. Look at what we do when we have the power and
technological capability to disregard the effects we have on other people
and other species, either as individuals or in the effects of our
collective activities!
My point in introducing animals
into the discussion was not to get into a thread about overpopulation,
but to bring the concept of roles into the sociological thread. I’m
trying to find some kind of PCT-based argument for or against the
strongly held prejudices expressed in this
forum.

I won’t argue with that. There are too many of us and we are using up our
resources. You put me in an awkward position, because I’m saying that
your way of deriving “facts” about the situation is flawed, yet
I don’t want to dispute your conclusions.

···

---

You draw conclusions from data, I argued from prejudices?

If you are going to
generate PCT-based arguments without intriducing a-priori ideas of good
and bad, you have to include all the interacting control systems. You
can’t do it while ignoring the animals and
plants.

Why not? I can analayze tracking behavior of human beings without
referring to plants or other animals. I agree that an analysis of
resources brings in all living systems, but I don’t agree that we have to
include them to speak about all social relationships. Ultimately the
social conflicts will come back to a fight over resources, so I agree
with you on that. But we don’t have to limit ourselves to
“ultimate” questions when we’re just getting started. In fact,
doing that is a guarantee that we won’t get anywhere.

Roles matter, and
the assumption in the thread that everyone should have the same top-level
perceptions and reference values for those perceptions really bothered
me, as it seems to be both intuitively wrong (consider animals again) and
to pre-empt a whole range of lines of enquiry.

I’m not sure which side of the threads you’re talking about here. I don’t
think everyone should have the same top-level perceptions and reference
values, but I think we have a lot of problems at the top levels that are
causing most human misery. There are surely viable and non-viable system
concepts; shouldn’t we try to figure out which are which?

Best,

Bill P.

’

[Acree_Michael]

[From Mike Acree (2007.09.18.1157 PDT)]

Rick Marken (2007.09.16.2250)--

Don't you support the tax cuts? The hostility to unions? The removal
of environmental regulations? The business friendly policies?

Libertarianism is not a philosophy about which special-interest groups
are to be favored by government, unless the answer is "none."

Domestic and foreign policy are linked.

Paul would agree. He has also persuaded Cindy Sheehan, whose
announcement that she is running against Pelosi included a call for the
abolition of the Federal Reserve system.

Kucinich is my kind of libertarian; a fiscal

communitarian and a social respectatarian

"Respectatarian" sounds like a concept I could get behind. But color me
a fiscal respectatarian, too: No prohibitions on capitalist acts
between consenting adults.

I have been dismayed, incidentally, to see that Kucinich has been
subjected to the same tactics as Paul: Democrats have excluded him from
debates and other forums, on the ground that his poll numbers weren't
high enough; yet Biden and Dodd, whose numbers are lower, were included.

Mike

[Martin_Taylor2]

[Martin Taylor 2007.09.18.15.16]

[From Mike Acree (2007.09.18.1157 PDT)]

"Respectatarian" sounds like a concept I could get behind. But color me
a fiscal respectatarian, too: No prohibitions on capitalist acts
between consenting adults.

I note that you didn't include any proviso about disturbances that those acts might impose on the controlled perceptions of "unconsenting adults".

But having read much of what you have written on this forum, I imagine that you would not regulate against those unconsenting adults voluntarily banding together to act to prevent the consummation of acts that would, if completed, create large errors in their controlled perceptions -- in other words, you would not permit the "consenting adults" to use force to prevent those "unconsenting adults" from acting to control their own perceptions.

Assuming you would not regulate against such intervention by people that would be hurt by the "capitalist acts between consenting adults", I infer that you would also permit those "unconsenting adults" to combine together so as to generate sufficient force to prevent the acts from occurring. In other words, you argue for the creation of regulations to prohibit unwelcome "capitalist acts between consenting adults".

Or have I missed something in the logic of your position?

Martin

[Acree_Michael]

[From Mike Acree
(2007.09.18.1250 PDT)]

Bill Powers (2007.09.17.0300 MDT)–

Maybe I
misunderstood. I thought you had said you were trying to figure out what
was behind my words. There’s no mystery­no error­for me >>(though conceivably
there should be).

I am trying to
figure out what is behind your words, but I can’t do that until you tell me.

Ok, but then I’m not sure what the “trying”
consists of; it sounds more like waiting. No matter.

So you’re saying
that the Libertarian vision will work even in a society as selfish and
crime-ridden as ours is?

It wouldn’t be worth wasting my time
on if it didn’t. That said, it is also important to recognize that
political systems have a significant impact on the level of crime in a
society. The most obvious example is the huge increase in crime caused by
our 30-year war on drugs. There are many more interesting and subtle
reasons for expecting that a libertarian society would have substantially less
crime than we do now (recall, for example, Moynihan’s prediction 40 years
ago about what welfare programs were going to do to Black families).

What you have implied so
far seems to involve arming the citizenry,

No, just not disarming them.

abolishing any overall
government,

Yes.

and letting each group of
people with different ideas settle their differences with bullets where they
can’t do it with reason –

Bullets are a more popular resort now than
they were 50 years ago, especially in places like DC where guns are
illegal. They’ve never been the preferred mode of conflict
resolution for most people.

and to do this without
any base of agreed-upon laws or principles of law.

I haven’t said that. It sounds
as though you are thinking that the only kind of law is legislative law, which
indeed presupposes a government. But there are many bodies of traditional
law, of which perhaps the most interesting is international law for resolving
trade disputes, in the absence of a world government. Note that such
disputes are not typically
resolved by shoot-outs; violence between countries is almost always the action
of governments.

I guess what I don’t
understand is how you would handle all the social problems we now try to handle
by pooling resources and efforts, by delegating responsibilities to
specialists, by contributing small amounts of money from individuals to projects
that require large amounts of money, and so on. The system we have now has
evolved from previous systems, and represents the best effort to date, which is
very far from perfect but I wouldn’t want to live in the America of 150 years
ago or the England of 300 years ago (unless I was rich). Your complaint bout
the present system seems to be that we have hired incompetent specialists, but
is the answer to do away with specialists altogether, or to find ways to get
better ones?

Here you’ve missed a key point from
my previous post, which is that the only difference between us is that you want
the services in question be an enforced
monopoly (of all things!). Security, protection, and dispute
resolution are services that are important enough to most of us to pay for if
we weren’t already taxed to pay for the monopoly service. (Many
businesses, as I’ve pointed out before, now stipulate private arbitration
in their contracts, and hire private security.) Providers on a free
market would have to compete for our business, in terms of satisfying our
wishes as consumers, for safe—nonviolent—effective services at the
least cost. As I’ve said before, if a private court were perceived,
even falsely, to favor wealthy clients, it would have a hard time attracting
any customers except those who perceived themselves as comparable in wealth—a
rather specialized market niche. What are the chances, in the present
system, of being able to get rid of a corrupt or biased judge?

It seems to me that
Libertarians, like most other political extremists, want a system in which
conflicts are almost assured to develop into life-or-death >confrontations, which favor the strong
over the weak, the intelligent over the not-so-intelligent, and in general
which operates on the principle that >conflicts
are to be won, not resolved.

I don’t know where these ubiquitous
life-or-death struggles are that you’re talking about. It’s
true that, in a free market, there will be a tendency for the smarter philosophers
to get published and the more talented pianists to perform; but it’s rare
for such conflicts to be resolved by shoot-outs. And, if enough people
shared your values as a consumer, the stupid philosophers and untalented
performers would be just as successful. You and I have conflicts in our
views, but there’s nothing the slightest bit unusual about the fact that they
are never going to come to blows. It’s true that lots of Christians
would like to see lots of Muslims killed, and vice versa, but even they
generally don’t want to do it themselves; they want their governments to
do it for them. So I think I haven’t grasped your point here.

I do see government—democracy in particular—as
conflict-generating on a massive scale, and destructive of civil society.
In two ways. (a) The fact that the majority can vote itself benefits at
the expense of the others sets groups perpetually against each other.
Protestant whites are now terrified of losing their privileged position to the
influx of Catholic Mexicans. Other examples abound. (b) Government
entails uniform decisions for everybody, which are appropriate only in the very
circumscribed realms where we are all alike. In education, for example, a
single decision is made for everybody in the state about whether the government
schools will teach creationism or sex education, so all the energy and
resources that could have gone into education go into trying to win.
Imagine what it would be like if we had to get our cars from the
government. There would be a vote every few years about which kind
everybody had to buy. SUVs, hybrids, sports models, convertibles, and
others would have their partisans, who would have to spend enormous amounts of
time and money campaigning, lobbying, bribing legislators, etc. Most
people, whatever their preferences, wouldn’t even bother to inform
themselves about the various alternatives, because there was so little chance
they could have an effect on what they got to drive. Compare the
conflicts in our society over cars or computers with those over
education. Turning a function over to government creates massive
conflicts where none would otherwise exist. Maybe the reason that you’re
seeing fierce conflicts everywhere is that you’re looking at education
while I’m looking at cars?

Mike

[rsmarken]

[From Rick Marken (2007.09.17.1345)]

Martin Taylor (2007.09.18.15.16) to Mike Acree

But having read much of what you have written on this forum, I
imagine that you would not regulate against those unconsenting adults
voluntarily banding together to act to prevent the consummation of
acts that would, if completed, create large errors in their
controlled perceptions -- in other words, you would not permit the
"consenting adults" to use force to prevent those "unconsenting
adults" from acting to control their own perceptions.

Assuming you would not regulate against such intervention by people
that would be hurt by the "capitalist acts between consenting
adults", I infer that you would also permit those "unconsenting
adults" to combine together so as to generate sufficient force to
prevent the acts from occurring. In other words, you argue for the
creation of regulations to prohibit unwelcome "capitalist acts
between consenting adults".

I think it's fine as long as you don't call the bands of "unconsenting
adults" a government. A well armed militia, perhaps, but not a
government.

I think you make the point that Bill has been making, but just with
more of that droll British humor. A libertarian society is basically
what we have now, everywhere in the world.

Best

Rick

···

--
Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com

[Acree_Michael]

[From Mike Acree (2007.09.18.1350 PDT)]

Martin Taylor 2007.09.18.15.16--

I note that you didn't include any proviso about disturbances that
those acts might impose on the controlled perceptions of
"unconsenting adults".

But having read much of what you have written on this forum, I
imagine that you would not regulate against those unconsenting adults
voluntarily banding together to act to prevent the consummation of
acts that would, if completed, create large errors in their
controlled perceptions -- in other words, you would not permit the
"consenting adults" to use force to prevent those "unconsenting
adults" from acting to control their own perceptions.

Assuming you would not regulate against such intervention by people
that would be hurt by the "capitalist acts between consenting
adults", I infer that you would also permit those "unconsenting
adults" to combine together so as to generate sufficient force to
prevent the acts from occurring. In other words, you argue for the
creation of regulations to prohibit unwelcome "capitalist acts
between consenting adults".

Or have I missed something in the logic of your position?

I'm having a little trouble following you here; maybe an example would
help. You are postulating that I sell you, say, a kilo of heroin, or a
nuclear weapon, or an erotic massage, and a third party claims to be
harmed by this exchange between us; he or she or they had some need for
the money to stay in your hands and the goods or services in mine. Am I
understanding you so far?

Mike