Something's Happening Here

Phenomena Collective phenomena
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What it is ain’t exactly clear, so I’m hoping that the experts in collective control can help me out here. What seems to me going on in the USA at the present time is some serious social conflict. The conflict seems to be over the type of society people want to live in. Different groups of people seem to be controlling for two rather different system concepts – concepts of the type of society they want to live in; one system concept could be called “democracy” and the other “fascism”. Of course, there is variation across people in what these two concepts describe, but it seems that these two words get at the “centroid” of the variation in these two different system concept perceptions.

This conflict doesn’t seem to be producing the kind of social stability that is supposed to result from collective control of the same variable (type of society) relative to different references (“democracy” versus “fascism”). So what’s going on here, from a PCT perspective?

Best, Rick

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Great song, yes. Same line in “Ballad of a thin man”.

Yes, there is some serious social conflict going on. But imagining it as a simple conflict of two values for one controlled system concept is not illuminating.

Rather than being the clueless Mr. Jones, who just doesn’t know what’s happening, we need to step back to see where we’re at. Might have to look at the forest to learn to recognize what is a tree.

“Stop children, what’s that sound? Everybody look at what’s going down.”

To investigate collective control we need data about pertinent variables that individuals in the population are controlling. Demography is a field that investigates quantitative measures pertinent to questions of this sort. A couple of people accustomed to accessing demographic information for public policy work, William Strauss and Neil Howe, began describing a longitudinal cycle in a number of these variables in a series of books beginning in 1991, the most recent in 2023.

I see two main factors (clusters of variables) in their Generational Theory:

Children growing up and coming of age in a socio-economic system recognize and control values and attitudes that their peers recognize and control

Parents (more generally, the parents’ generation) have the most immediate influence on the values and attitudes that their children adopt as they differentiate themselves from their parents’ generation and identify with their own. People self-identify with a perceived generation. Gen-X is a label invented by some of the earliest Gen-Xers (born 1961-1964 or so) as a disparaging differentiation from Boomers.

In Anglo-American history what this has resulted in, since at least the 1400s, is a regular cycle of four generations, each roughly 20-22 years, 80-90 years for the complete cycle or saeculum (the old Roman term for an analogous concept). A number of variables wax and wane in a kind of multivariate yin and yang. I’ve extracted about 30 variables described in the most recent of the books listed at the end, and organized them in a spreadsheet here.

The four phases or ‘turnings’ of a saeculum are characterized as

  • The ‘High’ following the resolution of a great civil crisis. There is strong consensus on making it work, strong conformity. Whew! We got through it! Most recently, that’s the Silent generation of the ‘50s.
  • An ‘Awakening’ rebelling against the conformity and soullessness of the establishment. Boomers and the counter-culture.
  • An ‘Unraveling’ as the neglected latchkey kids of the communards and hippies come of libertarian gig economy age while social supports and social trust evaporate. How’s that fit for the stretch between Reagan 1984 and 9/11/2001.
  • A ‘Crisis’: economic (the Great Depression), external military enemy (WWII) or civil conflict (the Civil War), usually a combination with one or two predominant. We are here. The timing of cycles predicts we will get through the culmination of the current Crisis in the early 2030s.

The presence of books laying out this research adds a social feedback function unique to the current saeculum.

An editorial comment in the ShortForm rendition of the 1997 book (see below) says:

A possible downside of recognizing the pattern Strauss and Howe describe is that people and leaders may be tempted to push the nation toward deliberate disaster in order to hasten the post-Crisis High by exaggerating and worsening the nation’s problems. Some accuse leaders of right-leaning political parties around the world of actively pushing for conflicts to happen for this purpose, calling such an approach disaster nationalism—the promotion of conflict to pave the way for authoritarian leadership in response.

Steve Bannon has been a close student of the 4-generation saeculum cycle theory, and has said that it is an important guide to his political activities. This alone makes it consequential and predictive. The 1997 book proposed that this would be likely in our current crisis:

One political party will achieve a decisive win early in the Crisis and will maintain its power throughout the Turning. Its leaders will exaggerate and deliberately exacerbate the country’s problems to accelerate change and enact a more and more extreme agenda.

I need hardly emphasize that this is exactly what the Trumpies are trying to do.

According to Bannon in 2017, the financial collapse of 2008 was a result of “the permissive culture of the 1960s.” But this permissive culture itself, Bannon posits, was generated by a prior generation that was traumatized by the slaughter of World War II, and thus shielded its children from the harsh realities of the world, producing their lax moral standards and self-centeredness. This is Bannon’s shorthand interpretation.

Earlier, Al Gore called Generations (1991, the first book of the series) the most stimulating book on American history he’d ever read, and gave copy to each member of Congress.

Among publications by William Strauss and Neil Howe I think these books are the most relevant to the question:

  • Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069 (1991)

  • The Fourth Turning (1997)

  • Millennials Rising (2000)

  • The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End (2023)

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I’ve been speculating a lot about the state of things lately.

There’s two “emotions” that I think are worth honing in on. “Schadenfreude” and “Dissonance”. I make a couple assumptions first, that “happiness/relief” is an emotional signal related to a reduction in error from a reference range. And that anger is related to increasing error.

Schadenfreude

Schadenfreude, German for “Harm-Joy”, is an emotion described as feeling joy as a result of the suffering of others. This seems to suggest that there is a reference range for “other-suffering”, and that as other-suffering approaches this range, happiness is generated. There is some evidence for anger when desired other-suffering does not manifest as well. The “Opposer’s Loss Effect” suggests that people react more negatively when they are rooting for an opposing team to lose, than if they rooting for a preferred team to win. (Teeny & Petty 2025).

The Schadenfreude literature suggests 3 sub-types, Aggression, Rival, and Justice (Wang, Lilienfeld, & Rochat 2019), it is a taxonomy of “why” schadenfreude might pop up in various contexts, such as wanting to see justice done against someone who has harmed the group, or wanting one’s own group to gain an advantage over another, or one wanting to gain standing over an envied rival. Though they all share in having a reference for other-suffering, and it’s possible they can occur simultaneously. There was some evolutionary advantage to this, if someone senior in a hierarchy met misfortune - you may stand to benefit. If another tribe competing for resources in the same area met misfortune, your tribe stood a better chance. And if a tribe member stole or harmed another, a sense of schadenfreude might drive “justice”. However, having maintained that wiring in far more complex environments today, there are many ways to carve out us/them groups, and many ways ‘justice’ can be interpreted.

So one area I’m seeing Schadenfreude in right-wing spaces is in response to the ICE shootings & ICE enforcement. The “whatabout” invoked is Covid Mask Mandates. This seems to suggest that during Covid, MAGA felt “autonomy-error”. (Autonomy being control over one’s own behavior). And that ICE actions against “liberals” seem to invoke this sort of “you caused me X control-error so I want to see you suffer X+1 control-error”. This might be “justice schadenfreude”, rather than anything to do with system-level ideas about governance. There are parallels to this in Nazi Germany, whereby there must have been a setpoint for other-suffering in regard to marginalized populations as “causes” of economic & cultural suffering & war loss. Creating a “they deserved it because ‘they’ harmed ‘us’ first in XYZ way” justification. “Owning the libs”, in other words, causing emotional distress for one’s own amusement, is also a commonly controlled outcome.

Dissonance

An information state abstracted as “truth as I know it”, might have an error signal which occurs when new information does not fit within that reference range. This may be psychic discomfort itself, cognitive dissonance. Causal Inference: The Mixtape by Scott Cunningham mentions a parable of a woman sailing a boat. From a naive observer’s perspective, her rudder movements are not correlated to her heading - which remains fixed. So they may conclude the rudder is broken. Yet from the sailor’s perspective, they are controlling their heading - protecting it from the disturbing effects of wind and current via the rudder. I imagine “truth as I know it” much like this heading, incompatible information behaving like port & starboard winds. The mind then counter-steers using various biases and heuristics available to it to resolve the dissonance. The stronger the incompatible information, the stronger the counter-steering. It seems like regardless of the scale of information presented, the scale of the cognitive counter-steering rises to meet it. This effect is strong enough for apocalypse cult members to rationalize away their dissonance as the date for end-times comes and goes (Festinger, Riecken, Schachter 1956). Likewise, information that is agreeable, is like wind from the stern and a favorable current. It takes no steering whatsoever to let it drift you forward, and no effort may be made at all to interrogate its truthfulness.

Identity-Error

If someone does not self-identify as a Nazi, fascist, racist, bigot etc…then the incoming information saying they are (perhaps in the form of being called that in a comment on social-media) is sure to cause some dissonance. One person is saying “you and your group’s behavior is fitting a pattern, which is commonly described by this word”. As the other person says “but I don’t hate Jewish people, how could I be a fascist Nazi? What a rude thing to say”. A category error perhaps, as one person’s use of the word may mean “your behavior meet approximately 50-80% of this pattern”, while the other interprets it all-or-nothing. Any discomfort or dissonance from this identity-error would naturally be interpreted as “caused” by the other person. The same way a person might think the cold “caused” them to put a jacket on. Ignoring that their temperature was below an internally specified range, and their behavior sought to correct that error. This external view of causality would then facilitate some schadenfreude, if the person or kinds of people that “caused” that identity-error got some kind of suffering themselves.

The Market Crashed & The Tribe Has Spoken

I believe there is some evolutionary precedent for all of this, as we see it play out time & time again. If a tribe was struggling with having enough resources (food/water/space/jobs/etc) for all it’s members, it may decide to redraw the boundaries of who is us and who is them in order to shore up resources and exile those who are perceived to be weighing the tribe down. And just like any old human tribe, most modern human countries try to start with the “violent criminals” first. “Why should we share resources with murderers?”. But if economic woes are not relieved, the line may be pushed to immigrants. Propaganda may suggest a race or class is “intrinsically criminal”. But you cannot exile enough people to fix a fundamentally broken system, as we discover over and over again throughout history.

Re-Animating Popper

I think Karl Popper’s Open Society and its Enemies (1945) is begging for a PCT refresh. It was written by the philosopher of science while in political exile in New Zealand from Germany. He was intimately familiar with the problems of Fascism & Communism, and he critiqued both as “historicist doctrines”. In other word, both Fascism & Communism claim to understand the mechanisms of national success and you need only follow them to utopia.

I’ll focus on Popper’s critique of Fascism, which begins by attacking Plato as a Proto-Authoritarian. Plato had the idea of philosophers ruling, soldiers soldiering, workers working, and slaves slaving - bringing about an “arrested society”, a utopia that never changes. It is attractive to the authoritarian leader, who would declare themselves the philosopher. It’s also attractive to others who feel “naturally born for” a military or trade lifestyle. This arrested society would not be a democracy, as mob rule could not be trusted to maintain the order.

Since the days of Plato’s Republic, as countries enter times of economic struggles - it’s fashionable for someone to step up, point to some time in that country’s history where they were “closest” to utopia, and declare we should return to that. This is usually followed up with the accusation that democracy or some out-group “caused” the fall from utopia, and if we want to get back on track we’ll have to do away with that. For Nazi Germany this was pre-WW1, and Jews, Immigrants, LGBT, Gypsies, Liberals, etc were blamed for the fall. For America, it seems like they are picturing 1950’s postwar US, a job that could sustain a family, cheap college, plenty of housing, a wife you could cheat on and get away with it. It’s no surprise though that women and people of color have a tendency to ask “When exactly was America great for us?”

Steve Bannon’s recent interview on The Economist had the aura of Platonian righteousness. That Trump is chosen by God to lead, and that democracy or term limits should not get in the way of that.

The Big Lie

If you pay attention, Trump is actually the best at everything and the best person who ever existed. Just ask the people that told him so. I have a theory that any time he experiences some dissonance, he will invent a 3rd person who tells him the thing that, if true, would make him feel better. For example, if he’s feeling dishonest he will say “people tell me I’m the most honest guy in the world”. If he doesn’t understand something about economics: “nobody knows more about economics than me, they say”. And if it feels bad to lose an election, then of course - “they say it was stolen”. This of course directly led to fraudulent elector scandals and Jan 6th.

Indeed, Jan 6th insurrectionists felt very justified in their behavior, because they believed Trump was the rightful president, and that this attack on the Capitol was “justice”. Just like a sailor steers to protect a heading from the disturbing effects of wind, but does not steer when winds are favorable…Donald Trump did not steer when he watched the news that day. No behavior at all, meant that things were developing favorably to his goals.

Conclusion

This comment got a bit longer than I anticipated. I do not know how excessive schadenfreude or dissonance can be resolved, or if it is even possible. But if there is any chance, it may lie in the parameterization of the reference values - rather than in simply presenting information which creates dissonance & is resisted, or pointing out cruelty, which is reframed as justice.

One potential avenue is Popper’s critique of Fascism & Communism, as two wings of the same Historicist bird. A good critique of Fascism may be possible to Trojan-Horse inside a good critique of Communism.

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Let me go back to Rick’s initial post in this thread and focus more strictly on the PCT argument that he’s making about collective control, a concept that I put forward in my own writings now almost thirty years ago. Here’s what Rick said:

What seems to me going on in the USA at the present time is some serious social conflict. The conflict seems to be over the type of society people want to live in. Different groups of people seem to be controlling for two rather different system concepts – concepts of the type of society they want to live in; one system concept could be called “democracy” and the other “fascism”. Of course, there is variation across people in what these two concepts describe, but it seems that these two words get at the “centroid” of the variation in these two different system concept perceptions.

When I read this, I said, Yes! He’s got a grasp on the concept of collective control, and this is a nice description of the kind of conflict that sometimes emerges from collective control. Good work, Rick!

Then Rick goes on to say,

This conflict doesn’t seem to be producing the kind of social stability that is supposed to result from collective control of the same variable (type of society) relative to different references (“democracy” versus “fascism”).

When I read that, it seemed to me that Rick had lost the thread. I’m fully in agreement with him that “some serious social conflict” is occurring in today’s America. But my question for him is what evidence he can point to that a state of high conflict is equivalent to a loss of “social stability”

What is your indicator of social instability, Rick? Have we had a revolution in this country? Has there been a coup? Are we in the midst of civil war? I know that many people are fearful that these dire consequences may occur in the near future. Me, too. But to the best of my knowledge, all these things are still just frightening possibilities, not the current state of affairs.

What it seems to me that you have had a hard time grasping, Rick, is that intense conflicts can have a high degree of stability, when you look at the course of a conflict over time. The conflict that you are describing between people in America who have a system concept of “Democracy” and those who have a system conflict of “Fascism” has had a long period of development, dating back at least to conflict in the 1990s between Clinton and Gingrich. In the ensuing 30 years, this conflict has intensified, and the intensification has been more rapid in the last 10 years, since Trump came on the scene, but the intensification of a collective conflict is precisely what my PCT-based theory predicts, as one side commits what the other side regards as atrocities, and the other side increases its resistance in turn. See my 2014 paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261503001_Cycles_of_Conflict_A_Computational_Modeling_Alternative_to_Collins’s_Theory_of_Conflict_Escalation

Correct me if I’m wrong, Rick, but, if I remember correctly, your favorite model of how conflict happens in collective control is the classic tug-of-war scenario. A conflict between two sides escalates very rapidly and then dissolves immediately upon the victory of one side over the other, because it was all just a game to begin with.

Unfortunately, that’s not how serious conflicts develop in real life. As I’ve argued many times in my published articles, collective conflicts can often get stuck for long periods of time in a high-conflict mode, with both sides exerting the maximum gain that they can apply to the interaction, but neither side prevailing over the other. Consider, for example, the Russia-Ukraine war, which has dragged on for more than four years now with neither side making appreciable progress and neither ready to give up. I could go on almost endlessly to cite serious conflicts that have, sadly, shown remarkable “social stability.” (The low-stakes conflict between you and me, Rick, about the meaning of collective control is another example of a conflict that has gotten stuck for decades without much change.)

In a presentation that I gave at the 2022 IAPCT meeting, I offered a PCT simulation model of how such high-conflict situations can drag out over time with considerable stability:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/367240652_A_Fresh_Look_at_Collective_Control_and_Conflict

If, after giving this matter some thought, Rick, you still think that there is something faulty about my theory of collective control, I would be very pleased if you would offer your own PCT-based theoretical alternative. I’m eager to learn from your insights.

My best,

Kent

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Thank you for posting that paper again, Kent. The variables that I extracted from Strauss & Howe (1991 – 2023), like Collins’s variables, require better definition to be amenable to mathematical treatment. It is equally important, in a different respect, that they are variables as perceived by observers, and we need to figure out how relevant matters are perceived by the agents being observed.

The first reason for my posting that spreadsheet was to indicate the complexity of the ‘social conflict’ so called. Even pick out one variable, and it’s not analogous to a tug of war. A variable in which ‘community’ is at one pole and ‘individualism’ is at the other has many strands, and they’re not parallel strands as in a tug of war rope. Freedom from what and freedom to what? “Whatever” is the general answer. Community with whom and not with whom. And so on.

Every conflictual activity has a ‘bone of contention’, the ‘contested variable’ in Kent’s diagrams. Kent, here is your Figure 3, schematically representing a model for simulating conflict:

image
image725×513 63.1 KB

Kent, as you say on pp. 41-42, the interactive agents in such models require greater hierarchical depth:

Whether this computational model of conflict escalation will also prove more scientifically illuminating than the conventional alternative awaits further research. The PCT model’s success in revealing unexpected insights about conflict escalation, despite its rudimentary form, suggests its promise as a scientific tool, but fulfillment of that promise will require additional work, both theoretical and empirical.

The PCT model takes a modular form, which allows for more complex models that are more realistic and widely applicable. One possibility is to construct each simulated agent as a multi-level hierarchy of control systems, in line with the neural organization envisioned by perceptual control theory. Constructing agents with multi-level control capabilities would then allow researchers to simulate multidimensional conflicts. The stakes in real-world conflicts are rarely simple, as combatants struggle for the control of many contested variables at once, and with multi-level PCT models researchers could simulate these complicated struggles.

When we look at p1, p2, p3, and p4 in the four agents, we are quick to assume that each has its own perception of the same thing. Each is controlling a perception of some aspect(s) of the environment, and for each, that CV is disturbed from their reference value for it. Of course we know that the environmental feedback function for each is unique, and that there may be other idiosyncrasies, but we have some warrant for accepting the simplifying fiction that p1=p2=p3=p4. When we apply it to real events we may need to revisit that assumption.

At the perceptual input function ‘up a level’ the other perceptual inputs are less likely to be the same across the participants, especially those drawn from memory rather than input from the current environment. These divergences increase in complex ways as we go farther up the hierarchy and the diversity of sources of perceptual input increases.

Illustration: Paying taxes for some of us is my contribution to sustaining the work of others from which I benefit, and to sustaining the institutions in which they work and which make that work possible. A person who games the system so as not to pay taxes is a freeloader, like one who wants the benefits of the country club without paying club dues. For some of us, taxes are an imposition, a taking, taking money from me that properly is mine, a person who gets away with it is smart, and a person who just pays it is a sucker. Different perceptual input functions at higher levels for the same ‘contested variable’, nicely quantified as the amount of cash that goes to the tax collector.

Whatever the CVs are, underlying the generational ups and downs of those demographic variables, more of them are involved the higher you go in the hierarchy. And just as you can perceive a configuration made of configurations, like this letter T

image

The more important of our system concepts are made of system concepts. And principles and system concepts are most subject to collective control.

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Well, it looks like this thread has really taken off. I’ll try to answer each post in order. This might take a few days.

How were these variables determined to be “pertinent” and “controlled”.

This “saeculum” theory seems closer to astrology than to PCT.

I had asked how you understand what’s currently going on in the US “from a PCT perspective”. Even though you describe “variables” and mention “social feedback function” in this post, I don’t see much PCT perspective here.

I’ll reply to the next posts as I get chance, which might not be for a couple days.

Go Seahawks and Bad Bunny!!

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Before I answer Brian’s post I think I should explain why I don’t see much PCT perspective in Bruce’s post.

I think the main problem is related to Bruce’s claim that "To investigate collective control we need data about pertinent variables that individuals in the population are controlling… "

Actually, the first step in any study of control – collective or individual – is to describe the behavioral phenomenon you want to understand. For example, in the study of fly ball catching the behavior we want to understand is how a fielder manages to get to the right place to catch a ball. The next step is to describe the variables involved in the behavior – in this case the trajectory of the ball and the movement of the fielder. Then we start coming up with hypotheses about the perceptual variables the fielder might be controlling. Finally, we develop ways to test these hypotheses.

Bruce’s spreadsheet that purports to be a “collection of all pertinent variables that individuals in the population are controlling” in collective control puts the horses (controlled variables) before the cart (the collective control phenomenon to be explained). The collective control phenomenon to be explained is what I referred to as the “something” that’s happening here (in the USA). I think the first step in this discussion should be a description of what that “something” is. I would say it’s the USA becoming a fascist society. So I think that the first step in this discussion should be a description of the current state of our society and how it differs from the society we had just over a year ago.

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Actually, what I said was:

This misquotation (and many others in your CSGNet history) suggests that you control for perceiving statements that contradict principles that you identify with PCT, whether or not those statements actually occur in that princple-disturbing form.

The variables abbreviate descriptions by demographic observers. It is an open question how observed generational age-group characteristics are related to perceptions controlled by people in those age-group subpopulations.

But I already said this. And I said

In The Nature of Science and in his Lectures on Physics, Richard Feynman presents a wonderful exposition of how findings in the physical sciences cascade, for example, from Galileo’s inclined planes to the orbit of the moon, the moons of Jupiter, the tides, the reason there are two tides (square the distance from the moon side of the earth to the opposite side), on to relativity, GPS timing, and so on.

Kent’s work is still at the inclined planes level of investigation. But control systems are a different order of thing in the universe. The control behavior of a mouse placed on an inclined plane cannot be predicted from Galileo’s observations of rolling balls. Collective control cannot be predicted in a linear way from models of individual control, and more complex collective control phenomena which are manifestly evident around us are more involved than a model of tug-of-war conflict.

I have given you references for a longitudinal description from the 1400s to the present, books published from 1991 to 2023.

Collective control is a collective outcome of individual control. Here’s the beginning of a relevant Gedankenexperiment:

A number of players stand around a very large table that has a slippery surface. On the table lies an object like an ice-hockey puck…. Each player has access to a stockpile of objects like small flat pebbles that they can slide across the table to hit the Puck and nudge it a little…. […] the table is always clear[ed] of stray pebbles.

The team collectively controls the location of the Puck by hitting it with pebbles thrown from their different directions. Clearly, if they are to get the Puck to the target as fast as possible, the players for whom the target-puck-player angle is less than 90 degrees should not throw their pebbles. For the purposes of the game, we assume that a player is quite likely to hit the Puck, but cannot hit it on a chosen part of its circumference. This implies that individual players cannot direct the Puck accurately. Instead, when hit, the Puck moves in a direction that has a component away from the thrower plus a random sideways component ….

Whether individuals are controlling ‘the same thing’ or not, what is relevant is that their control outputs affect the state of ‘the same thing’.

The words “the USA becoming a fascist society” do not describe a conflict. Many of the participants would not use those words. What are the words that they use? Do they suggest something about what perceptions are being controlled?

You expressed it more clearly at the outset:

Conflict occurs at levels below the systems issuing conflicting reference values for one perceptual variable. System concepts are understood to be the top level of the hierarchy, therefore system concepts cannot be in conflict. Look for perceptions below the system concept level which are in actual conflict because of divergent reference values.

When people talk about system concepts like democracy and fascism they talk about their attributes, that is, perceptions whose references are set by the system concept. (“Set” rather than “varied” might often be the appropriate term at that level, given their amenability to change, and since nothing above them uses them as means of control. Reorganization is orthogonal, not above.)

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Ok, now here’s my comments on Brian’s post.

Brian starts off on the right PCT foot by saying that he is trying to explain the “state of things” in the USA. Unfortunately, he doesn’t describe what that state is but from the rest of his post I think it would be fair to say that he, like me, considers that unfortunate “state of things” to be fact that the US seems to have become a fascist dictatorship.

Brian is trying to explain fascism from a PCT perspective. And he suggests two human emotions – “Schadenfreude” and “Dissonance” – as having something to do with it. In PCT, an emotion is the cognitive interpretation of the sensed somatic consequence of error in control systems – a persistent difference between reference and perception. So I think it’s more useful, for explanatory purposes, to describe emotions in terms of the perceptions being controlled.

So from a PCT perspective, I would say Schadenfreude is the successful control of a perceptual variable that might be called “how I’m doing relative to others”, and controlling it at a reference level of “much better”. Brian does describe it this way when he says “in Nazi Germany … there must have been a setpoint [among a large segment of the population – RM] for other-suffering in regard to marginalized populations.”

Brian’s other explanatory “emotion” is “Dissonance” as in Cognitive Dissonance. From a PCT perspective, Cognitive Dissonance is an error resulting from an internal conflict that is resolved by revising the reference for one side of the conflict. A classic example is pledging for a club; you don’t want to be hurt but you want to be in the club so you resolve the conflict by thinking more highly of the club (in PCT we would say that the person may has gone “up a level” to see the club as essential to their control of a higher level perception of self worth). I’m sure this kind of conflict resolution is involved in the rise of MAGA.

“Schadenfreude” and “Dissonance” imply the existence of control processes that might explain the fascistic behavior we are now seeing in the US. But people exhibiting Schadenfreude and Cognitive Dissonance have always been with us. I guess what I would like is an explanation of why fascism shown up in the USA now? What is a PCT explanation for the rise of fascism in the USA?

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OK, now I’ll address some of the comments in Kent’s post.

My “evidence” is only that many of the things I see as social instability are a result of conflict.

What’s your indicator of social stability, Kent?

My indicator of social instability is kind of intuitive. It includes attempted coups (Jan 6), lawlessness (ignoring the constitution), military occupation of cities (unnecessarily), large variations in policy (tariffs), egregious wealth inequality, among many other things. All these things can be seen as examples of conflict. Jan 6 was a conflict between those who believed Trump won and those who knew he didn’t; ignoring the constitution is a conflict between those who want the constitution to mean different things; daily changes in tariff policy were a conflict with other countries over trade; egregious wealth inequality is a conflict over how progressive our tax system should be.

I think I have a pretty good grasp of how apparent stability can emerge from conflict. I gave a talk on it at the IAPCT conference in 2023. Here’s a pointer to it. My talk shows that the stability that can be seen in some conflicts is illusory; there is a dead zone around the apparently stable “virtual controlled variable” that is easily disturbed (made unstable). My conclusion was that conflict is generally a bad thing although it can sometimes be a good thing when it is carefully regulated with rules and laws, as in sporting events and civilized societies.

Yes, that’s the example of conflict I used in the 2023 talk. Though I actually used an augmented version a tug of war to make the demo and modeling simpler. I had the connection between each team and the contested flag be a solid pole rather than a rope so that the teams could both pull AND push the flag.

The conflict demo in my talk does exactly that: it allows you to “get stuck for long periods of time in a high-conflict mode, with both sides exerting the maximum [output – gain is not exerted] .” If you do the demo that is in the presentation you’ll see that this conflict situation is perfect for exposing the instability hiding in the dead zone of the conflict.

The simulation work described in this talk is very nice. But it conceals some of the unpleasant features of what you call a Giant Virtual Controller (GVC); unpleasantries such as the dead zone (where there is no resistance to disturbance) and the large, persistent error in the individuals that make up the GVC (showing that the individuals that make up the GVC are not really in control).

But the main problem with your GVC model of society is that you have never demonstrated how your model fits data on social behavior. Because of this, and despite your lovely simulations, I don’t consider your model to be PCT-based. Modeling is a necessary component of the PCT-based approach to understanding social behavior, but it is not sufficient. It is also necessary that these models be tested against observation (data). You have done a great job of building models of social behavior. But without testing it against observation, it’s just hand waving. And testing models against observation involves more that verbal anecdotes.

Examples of PCT models of social behavior being tested against data are described in Chapter 7 of my book The Study of Living Control Systems (SLCS). These examples show that my “PCT-based theoretical alternative” to your Giant Virtual Controller model is, just, PCT being mapped appropriately to the social phenomenon to be explained. If the phenomenon involves conflict – as it does in the arm wrestling example that I describe in section 7.1.6 – then the model will involve control systems in conflict. If the phenomenon doesn’t involve conflict – like the flocking and phonemic drift examples in SLCS – then the model will not involve control systems in conflict.

I think you like the idea of a Giant Virtual Controller (GVC) because it seems to legitimize Sociology as a discipline independent of Psychology; the GVC is a social rather than an individual behavioral phenomenon. I think, therefore, that the concept of a GVC is very important to you, as a Sociologist, and, therefore, it will be hard (if not impossible) for you to give it up. But I wish you could give it up because I believe you could do great PCT-based research with all that great modeling skill you’ve developed.

Best, Rick

11

“The end of the conflict remembers the beginning”

-Eddie Lee (maybe?)

There are a few papers from the Santa Fe Institute that I think might be relevant, as examples of quantitative modeling of conflict data:

Scaling theory of armed-conflict avalanches

Discovering the mesoscale for chains of conflict

Collective memory in primate conflict implied by temporal scaling collapse

One of the authors has a great episode on Complexity discussing the research.

This suggests to me that PCT models of conflict should also report power-law-like distributions of conflict intensity over frequency.

The authors of these papers divorce conflict data from pre-determined narrative descriptions like “wars”, and perhaps it would be useful to do the same for American conflict to avoid binary “is/is not a fascist country” states. Circumventing the need to describe or define “when” Fascism “came to America”, especially since the term itself is vague, and pinning down an exact transition point would fail to the Sorities Paradox.

While Popper would have critiqued the 4 Turnings as Historicist & described its relation to Plato’s Authoritarianism, the PCT model of it is still useful. As they say, Know Thy Enemy’s Controlled Variables.

So one potential conflict-suppressing factor may be the inverse of Schadenfreude - “too much other-suffering error”. It’s one thing to feel a little bit of joy if a minor criminal is given a minor jail sentence. But most people would probably recoil in horror if the sentence for a minor crime was to be waterboarded & de-limbed with a machete on state sponsored television. It is “too much suffering”, despite the existence of a setpoint for suffering in the first place.

The Renee Good & Alex Pretti shootings seemed to have evoked such disgust, I have seen some, not all, but some redhats report this suffering was excessive. Others thought it was justified.

The racist caricature of the Obamas that Trump re-tweeted also elicited a lot of such disgust, revealing an inverse-schadenfreude which suggests that the psychological harm via such a depiction is too much suffering for black people for most people to stomach. Yet still, some thought it was justified.

The Epstein Files are also invoking this disgust, as most people’s setpoints for the suffering children should experience are extremely low.

Unfortunately, enough people with high enough setpoints for other-suffering, who may not even be capable of a “too-much-suffering” error, organized with enough resources, can cause some awful things to happen. We might classify this phenomena “slavery”, “racism”, “genocide”, “fascism”, “psychopathy”, “narcissism” etc, but regardless of the taxonomy, schadenfreude seems to be a common thru-line.

A side-note, most of MAGA is constantly committing Bernoulli’s Fallacy. They engage with statistics & numbers using a Frequentist definition of probability, whereby probability reflects the nature of the measured object (a coin is 1/2 odds because of their shape. Dice are 1/6 odds because of their shape. Cards are 1/52 odds because of the number of unique cards). This is of course how the Eugenicists Galton/Pearson/Fisher etc justified their racism. Black & immigrant crime statistics are reported to right-wing viewers with the implication that they reflect an intrinsic racial criminality. DEI statistics are reported to them with the implication of an intrinsic racial incompetence.

So there may be opportunities for using Bayesian probability to dismantle eugenicist talking points, and by extension lower any schadenfreude centered on the belief that the suffering of black/brown people in the US is “justified” because they’re “probably criminals anyways”. My favorite Trojan horse to establish that a frequentist perspective is insufficient is a classic from conditional probability. “You go to the doctor and he wants to check if you have a rare 1:1,000,000 disease going around. He gives you a test that is 99% accurate, and it comes back positive. What are the odds you have the disease? Not 99%. Not 50%. They are 0.01%. Because if you gave a 99% accurate test to 1 million people, 10,000 would come back positive. 9,999 false positives and 1 true positive.” Similarly, crime is conditional based on many socioeconomic factors, and it’s therefore inappropriate to imply any probability distribution centered on race is representing the intrinsic nature of that race.

The Frequentist problem is about to rear up again as we approach the 2026 Midterms. I am already seeing posts in right-wing spheres that suggest deep red counties that have flipped blue could not have possibly done so, implying the 2024 election results reflected an intrinsic quality of the voting population in that area, not the conditions at the time. This misinterpretation of probability will likely be used to suggest that people flipping to vote Democrat after this shit-show of a first year is not probable & therefore the elections were rigged. Thus justifying a seizing & federalization of the elections, under the guise that “they did it first”.

12

I said:

The next thing about collective control is that these collective outputs are perceptible aspects of the environment.

Even at the simplistic tug of war level of consideration, the rope, the flag on it, the marker on the ground between the two teams, the two teams as teams, are all perceptions controlled by team members, referees, and spectators, controlled in respect to rules of the game of tug-of-war which themselves are both CVs and perceived outcomes of collective control.

A non-game example: “That guy’s car is over the line into this parking space, that makes it hard for me to park properly in it and get out of my car. I see another space around over there, but I feel like putting a note on his windshield!”

13

It wasn’t a misquotation; I thought the variables in your spreadsheet were the kind of variables you referred to at the beginning of your post: the “pertinent variables that individuals in the population are controlling”, which you said are the variables that are needed “to investigate collective control”. Otherwise, all I would know about them is that they are variables that “..wax and wane in a kind of multivariate yin and yang”… that are “.. described in the most recent of the books listed at the end…” That doesn’t help me understand why you went to all the trouble to put them in the spreadsheet.

So why did you put them in a spreadsheet if they are not "pertinent variables that individuals in the population are controlling”?

Listing the variables that might be involved in the phenomenon under study doesn’t mean that the phenomenon is complex. I could list many variables that might be involved in fielders catching fly balls, such as size of stadium, height of fielder, state of the field, weather conditions, type of bat used, sound of the ball off the bat, size of the ball, etc. etc. And yet the explanation of how fielders catch fly balls is rather simple: the control two different optical variables.

That’s an unfortunate analogy since Galileo’s studies of movement were all examples of clever experimental observation (linear acceleration is an observation, not a theory); Kent’s work is pure theory (“tested” only against anecdotal observation).

If it can’t be done in a “linear way” then how is it done? This is important to know since Kent’s models of collective control are all based on models of individual control.

OK, it’s a start. But I think it would be better, for modeling purposes, to describe the society in terms of variables that map to those in Kent’s model – inputs, outputs and CVs. It’s hard for me to see how variables (or states of variables) like placid, unfulfilling, etc fit into Kent’s model.

Yes, a nice experiment. It’s just missing one very important thing: a hypothesis. Experiments are always done to test hypotheses. So what is the hypothesis being tested in this experiment?

I think you are both right and wrong. This is because, in PCT, the word “conflict” can refer to different aspects of the phenomenon that we see as conflict. As you know, in PCT there are three levels of any conflict; I’ll call the lowest level the one at which the conflict is expressed; the next level up is the level where it is caused and the highest level is the level at which it is created.

An intrapersonal conflict is one where all these levels of conflict are in the same person. An example is bulimia nervosa.It is expressed behaviorally by overeating (binging) followed by self-induced vomiting (purging). It is probably caused by two control systems that set different references for eating, one controlling for consuming a lot of food and the other controlling for consuming no food. And the references for those two systems are probably created by two still higher level systems, one controlling for getting nutrients into the body and the other controlling for looking slim.

The conflicts that occur in social situations are interpersonal. In these conflicts all levels of conflict are in different people. An example is what I call the conflict between fascism and democracy. It is expressed behaviorally in the activities going on in my beloved Minneapolis, where bazillions of protesters are peacefully demonstrating against the occupation of the city by 3000 violent ICE agents. It is probably caused by control systems in each protester that control for cooperative protest and control systems in each ICE agent that control for getting rid of “illegitimate” people. And the references for those control system are probably created by different “system concept” control systems, democratic system concepts in the protesters and fascistic system concepts in the ICE agents.

So I think it’s fair to say that there is a conflict going on in the USA that is created by differences between people in terms of the system concepts they control for, some wanting to perceive themselves living in a fascistic society and others wanting to perceive themselves living in democratic society. What each person actually means by fascistic or democratic – that is, what perceptions those words point to – are probably quite different in each group. But on average the difference between the fascistic and democratic system concepts seems large enough to create what I see as some rather severe instability in the society.

I think you make a very important point here that is most clearly stated in the part of your comment that I’ve italicized. In theory, system concepts are at the top of the human control hierarchy. This means that the reference for ones system concept cannot be systematically varied as the means of controlling some higher level perception; for example, you can’t change from wanting to live in a fascist society to wanting to live in a democratic one, or vice versa, for some higher level reason because there is no higher level reason. (Of course, you can act like you have changed system concepts. Chaplin did a great job of being a fascist in the Great Dictator despite his obvious democratic inclinations).

But, as you note, the only way to really change the reference for a system concept you control for is through reorganization, which (per theory) involves random changes to the functional components of control loops that are experiencing error. And the only way reorganization might work to change a system concept (per PCT) is if maintaining control of that concept causes intrinsic error. Even people who don’t know PCT know this; the way to get a person to change system concepts is to deprive them of what they need and let them get it back as their system concept changes te way you want it to. Of course, the brainwasher has to be able to discriminate between real change and acting. But that’s just art of the fun (cackled the one with the democratic system concept).

Best, Rick

14

These are interesting papers inasmuch as they are actually testing models of conflict against data on actual conflicts. The problem is that the models are, as far as I can tell, superficial inasmuch as they predict overt behavior (DVs) as a function of variables in the environment (IVs) of the conflicting agents. The models relating IVs to DVs involve the production of fractals,which makes the models more complex than the general linear model (GLM), which is the most common data analysis model in the behavioral and social sciences. But even with the fractals, the modeling done in these papers strikes me as treating the conflicting agents as input-output devices (as in the GLM) rather than purposive (control) systems (as in PCT). So I don’t see the modeling described in these papers as being relevant to PCT. But I do think the fact that these models are being test against data is a good lesson for those studying conflict from a PCT perspective. But I would be interested in hearing why (and how) you think this work should be taken into account by people who are developing PCT models of conflict.

Best, Rick

15

And, except for the two teams trying to move the flag to their respective sides, this lovely sporting event is produced with little or no conflict. The ends of the rope are handed to each team without event, the flag is placed on the rope sans dispute, same with the marker. The referee calls fouls with minimal complaint from the fouler, a least that’s the way it works in basketball. Speaking of which, I went to the Ucla game last week and the only conflict I saw in this otherwise very stable social event was the one between the Ucla and UDub teams.(Ucla won, which did create some error in me, even though I’m an alum, because my daughter lives in Seattle so I was rooting for UDab; but it was a satisfyingly close game).

What is this an example of? It’s certainly not a conflict…yet;-)

Best, Rick

16

I am at a bit of a loss regarding why there is a debate at all here as the two sides seem to be talking past one another.

What can we see in PCT modelling?

When a variable is subject to conflict, it is at least somewhat less well controlled, may go into a dead zone, and may oscillate.

Whether or not that variable is perceived as ‘conflict’ by an observer, or whether or not the conflict is perceived as a problem by each of the people who are attempting to control that variable, are two further different questions.

Not everyone will consider a poorly controlled variable to be an example of conflict, even if they can see the two or more agents involved.

Not everyone will experience a lack of control of a specific variable prone to conflict as a problem in the grand scheme of the hundreds or thousands of variables that they may need or want to control.

Conflict may be unwanted, wanted, an incidental side effect, or a price to pay for controlling another variable.

I think all we can say is that when two or more control systems have differing reference values for the same, or overlapping, variable, that variable will be less well controlled, sometime significantly so. But whether a specific agent ‘cares’ about this is another matter.

We can also say that if it is possible to develop and organise a control system superordinate to the conflict such that it sets reference values for the systems in conflict, and it is allowed to reorganise its functions and parameters on the basis of improving control over another variable (typically an intrinsic variable in B:CP), then change will happen over time in a way that improves control over that intrinsic variable. This may or may not increase or decrease conflict for any other specific variable, but it would be likely that at least one or more other variables are controlled better and conflicted less in the process of improving intrinsic control. But no guarantee of removal of all conflict per se.

So it then comes down to - what do we regard as ‘intrinsic’? Is it survival? Is it freedom of expression? What does a person care about? What does a society care about?

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My statistical physics is non-existent, but I don’t believe the authors actually modeled conflict causes & effects. Nor made any agents. The first citation is Lewis Fry Richardson’s Variation of the frequency of fatal quarrels with magnitude which identified power scaling laws in armed conflict data. So it’s a statistical, not a mechanistic model. But the consistency of a power law relationship between conflict intensity & frequency is interesting. A similar result is found when the geography of the conflict space is virtual, and conflict epicenters and front-lines exist in a social network. (Impact and dynamics of hate and counter speech online).

As it relates to this thread, most schadenfreude and dissonance-resolving thought-terminating cliches seem rooted in “revenge” for past grievances. (Biden, Covid). Aka moving “against” the out-group more-so than moving “for” some specific governance system that they don’t openly identify with anyways, even if the patterns match. And it just so happens an authoritarian system can exert the most control over variables like other-suffering, culture-consistency, racial-consistency etc.

The power-law distribution of forest fire models is a good metaphor, as small fires clear away brush which prevents the larger fires. However if enough brush is allowed to accumulate, a large fire can occur, which then depletes the system once again. If the historicists are to be right about any turnings or historical patterns, it may be that conflict chills out a bit after the biggest ones, because conflict depletes resources.

As we speak, the resources for conflict may be at an all-time high. So what I am interested in is something functional which may help people “go up a level” or reorganize how they view things like justice, grievance, revenge, truth, etc. as to disarm the bomb so to speak.

18

There is a debate here because there is a conflict over the desired state of some variable. I would say that that variable is “the merits of Kent’s “collective control” model of social stability”. One side (me) has a reference for seeing the other side (everyone else) accept that the model has no merit, while the other side has a reference for seeing me accept that the model has considerable merit. Our debate is a conflict that consists of each side making arguments aimed at getting the controlled variable – merits of Kent’s model – into their desired reference state. When you say that “the two sides seem to be talking past one another” what I think you are seeing is that neither side is having much effect on achieving that goal.

I think this last part of your post, about different ways of understanding conflict, is an important component of the perceptual variable being debated here; one certainly has to understand conflict from a PCT perspective in order to argue, one way or the others about the merits of the collective control model of social stability". But this is only one aspect of the main topic of the debate, which is whether or not Kent’s particular application of the PCT model of conflict is a good model of social behavior (and, in particular, the “stability” of such behavior).

I’m in this conflict mainly because I enjoy presenting my point of view on all things PCT. I know that that no one agrees with me – no one on Discourse, anyway – but I make believe that someday my view of PCT – which I believe to be virtually the same as Bill’s, who I imagine to be looking down upon me with his tolerant smile --will prevail.

Best, Rick

19

Yup. The vast majority of collective control maintains conditions in which people go about controlling without running into conflict with one another. That’s a good part of why we contribute to collective control of those environmental conditions.

In tug of war, basketball, etc., two groups of people control to be in conflict under collectively controlled conditions.

In the course of a basketball game, some individuals are episodically in physical conflict with one another over everyone’s perception of the location of the ball—while “the ball is in play”. No player is in direct physical conflict all the time, and much of the play involves moving the ball from a player in present or imminent conflict to a player free from immediate conflict (“passing”). Collective control of rules, strategy, tactics, score, bounds, etc. is not conflictual.

To illustrate the breadth and pervasiveness of non-conflictive collective control I’ll take the liberty of quoting a passage from pp. 280-281 of Kent’s chapter in the Handbook, LCS IV:

The kinds of activities described as work in everyday language are activities that create stable feedback paths in a shared environment for the benefit of other people. The word [‘work’] is also commonly used to refer to the kinds of activities that maintain these feedback paths in place. Thus, work activities produce some kind of environmental stabilisation, the creation of some [particular link in an environmental feedback path or paths] for use in controlling other perceptions. Manual workers create stable feedback paths by manipulating physical objects; they build things, make things, and clean things up. Agricultural workers produce fields of crops and confinements full of animals to be used as food. Transportation workers move truckloads of products from factories to stores, where sales workers make those products available to customers in exchanges with predictably structured protocols. Service workers manipulate and stabilise the immediate physical environments of individuals, including their dwellings and even their physical bodies, as barbers and hairdressers do. Healthcare workers attempt to stabilize the physiological functioning of people’s bodies. Educators strive to turn out classes of graduates with predictable abilities and skills, people who can then be hired to put their skills to work creating various kinds of feedback paths for others. Government workers maintain stability and order for the community in a wide variety of ways, from removing trash to providing and enforcing laws designed to regulate commercial transactions and maintain public order, and thus preventing large disturbances that would make control of other perceptions difficult.

The purposes of any given social structure are reflected in the work done by its members, that is, the ways they seek to stabilize some portion of their shared environment. Thus, we can classify social structures by the kind of work their members do: for example, families, ideally at least, stabilise a home environment for family members; schools aim [to] provide stable flows of individuals with the tools to take action in predictable ways; businesses provide people with goods—objects that can be used as feedback paths—and services—routine actions that serve as feedback paths for controlling the perceptions of those who receive the services; and governmental structures are intended to prevent the kinds of disturbances to a shared environment that would make the work of other social structures more difficult.

Even workers whose work seems somewhat abstract must produce physically perceptible stabilities, which can then be used as feedback paths for controlling lower-level perceptions essential for control of the higher-level, more abstract perceptions that provide the ostensible objectives of their work. Administrators and business executives create feedback paths by organizing the routine activities of others into predictable and efficient patterns for getting the work of an organization done. Knowledge workers put words on paper or images on electronic screens in order to send symbolic messages to others, thus facilitating their readers’ control of higher-level perceptions. Entertainers offer their performances hoping to attract audiences, who will then use the performances as feedback paths for controlling perceptions of excitement or amusement. In every case, the creation of some perceptible product in the form of stabilized portions of the physical environment or stabilized patterns of human action—in other words, [links in environmental feedback paths]—provides the empirical evidence that work has been done. These types of stabilities form the material and behavioral bases of social structures, and thus by producing these physical and behavioral stabilities people contribute to the overall stability of the social structures to which they belong.

In some kinds of work, people maintain feedback paths rather than creating them. People doing this work take the existence of certain feedback paths as perceptions to be controlled and then seek to protect them against the ongoing effects of disturbances. The janitor cleaning a building, the systems engineer fixing software bugs, the emergency responder driving an ambulance, or the baby’s caretaker changing a diaper, all work to maintain feedback paths for others. Thus, the feedback paths in our shared environment depend on constant human attention and effort to do the work necessary to keep them stable. Without continual work, a humanly structured environment begins to crumble over time, like ghost towns or ancient ruins. The environments that most people live in are filled with feedback paths, both physical objects and routine actions, that have been shaped and maintained by human work.

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Hi Brian

From my perspective, the problem with the research presented in the Physical Review paper by Lee et al isn’t that it is “mechanistic”. The problem is that it looked only at statistical characteristics of measures of overt behavior, such as the duration and diameter of conflict “avalanches”. The PCT approach to understanding these conflicts would start by trying to infer, based on observations of overt behavior, the controlled variables that are the basis of the conflict – the variables that the parties to the conflict are trying to move to different reference states. I don’t think the Lee et al paper presents the kind of data needed to make such inferences. But the paper you refer to in this post – (Impact and dynamics of hate and counter speech online) – does seem to present the kind of data needed to make such inferences. Here’s a copy of Figure 7 from that paper:

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If the stunning mirror image relationship between the proportion of focal (blue line) and reaction (red line) tweets is not an artifact of how these proportions were calculated, then this suggests that there is some variable being controlled relative to two different reference by the two groups of tweeters. I don’t think the mirror relationship alone would be enough to get a good idea of what that variable is but if this data a valid representation of a conflict there might be ways to derive more detailed evidence about the commonly controlled variable from the raw data.

I’m not much of a tweeter – I don’t use X at all anymore – so I’m not sure I understand these data. You probably understand it better than I do so I would be very interested in hearing what you make of the mirror image relationship between these tweets.

Best, Rick