[spam] Re: Perception or Reference

Kenneth_Kitzke_Value · August 5, 2006, 9:42pm

[From Kenny Kitzke (2006.08.05.1700EDT)]

As a PCT practitioner, isn’t it obvious Rick that you cannot know what or which dimensions another person is looking at for evaluation by statements they make? Your statement is demeaning (and I suspect that you intend it to be) about our Secretary of State. And, it is self aggrandizing.

I am at a loss to comprehend why you continue to insist on using such personalized political examples to make legitimate queries in how PCT/HPCT applies to events in our lives. This is not a political forum. Your PCT knowledge is welcome, respected and appropriate here. Your political views are not welcome, respected or appropriate here, speaking for myself.

Judging from the responses so far, only one person really wants to discuss such political views here on the CSGNet. I side with Bill Powers when he responded this way to you:

“Aside from the politics, which is still tiresome and self-indulgent on CSGnet”

The following observations you made border on character and intelligence assassination and have little factual basis beyond your intentional speculation:

<A third possibility is that Condi is hallucinating; using her
imagination to “perceive” what no one else can perceive: a Middle East
on the brink of peace and cooperation.

Of course, a fourth possibility is that she is lying through her teeth:
that she, like me, sees that things aren’t getting anything like
better in the Middle East but won’t say so. But this couldn’t be right
because Republicans don’t lie. Only Democrats lie – and about really
terrible things like whether or not they got blow jobs from someone
other than their wife. Thank goodness that we have an honest, moral
administration in office during this time of crisis;-)>

I question whether this is a fruitful way to bring scientific investigation and new members interested in understanding the theory of PCT/HPCT to this CSGNet. Your fourth contains a gross generalization and is ugly laking any scientific merit.

If you sincerely wish to find an understanding or resolution of your perceptions of the Middle East compared to a political appointee like Condi, why not simply take it up with her? You may be surprised on just how many and what dimensions she evaluates which you don’t.

That is enough for my rant. Your PCT related issues are very interesting and as Bill Powers related, politics aside, there are some issues worth clarifying. It is too bad he is busy with his house move as the scientific interchanges between you and he have been excellent. He has mentioned my name in one and since I find your observations about perceptions in different people relevant to the scientific theory, I will offer some thoughts…but in another post.

Kenneth_Kitzke_Value · August 5, 2006, 11:02pm

[From Kenny Kitzke (2006.08.05.1800EDT)]

<But it is also possible that not all people have the same perceptions as Rick, particularly at the event level and up but even at lower levels.

An example at the relationship level comes to mind. If you drop a bomb on my village, do you perceive this as an unwarranted act of aggression, or as a justified retaliation for some previous action of mine which you see as an unwarranted act of aggression (like dropping a bomb on your village)? Simply by the way you group configurations and transitions into events, you can perceive the relationship either way, and categorize it either way. This is a genuine difference in perception, I think>

Me too. I can imagine a number of ways that two people experiencing/sensing the exact same environmental situation will perceive it differently; even radically differently as in your bomb attack example.

a. something could be different in your perceptual input function/physiologically. I am not sure what a color-blind persons perceives when they see a red flag, but it apparently is not a red flag that I perceive. Can a mentally impaired peson possibly have the same perception of an environmental event as a “fully capable/normal” human?

b. assuming two people’s perception input functions are essentially equivalent, they can still experience and look at the same environmental condition and end up with entirely different perceptions. Think of our “picture” demonstration in China by Shelley Brierley. Looking at the exact same picutures, the perceptions of people varied all over the map. Why? Well, we were rushed, and people’s awareness focused on different aspects of the picture. Some saw a dog or even dogs. Others saw a woman and what she was wearing or the color or lenght of her hair. Even given as much time as desired, I doubt that any two perceptions written down describing the picture would be identical.

c. what we perceive impacts us simultaneously at all levels, including the higher levels. So, even when two persons’ perception of specific aspects of the outside environment variabless are essentially the same, their reference perceptions will determine whether or not error or action is needed, and of what kind and at what gain. This seems especially relevant to a complex picture about what is happening in the real world of the middle East.

When innocent citizens are killed in Lebanon by Israeli defense forces or in Israel by Hezbollah terrorists our references for almost every word describing our perception will determine whether we experience error. Depending upon its size, I conclude our actions and the gain of our output to reduce it will be dramatically and even irreconcilably different. PCT and HPCT is unable to make a distinction of the right reference for both persons. That takes something we might call a conscience and agreement on what is right and wrong for people as a whole. This is seldom a human nature reality. Hence differences in actions and side effects will contribute to conflict that can escalate in an open loop fashion where no one can get what they want.

That is why MOL and reorganization are the means and the human capability respectively that could potentially yield a solution acceptable to all parties in the Middle East. Likely? I am afraid not. There are things like land and autonomy that cannot be achieved by both. And, if that is the top of your hierarchy, it becomes the law of the jungle, the survival of the fitest, to get a solution like a wild animal getting what it wants. It is not pretty.

The Twelfth Level I once proposed was a “Self” perception Level of the Systems of Human Behavior available to our consciousness. In this case, it might become a perception of being a good neighbor instead of being a savage. How would that come about? Our human spirit of live and let live, being a lover instead of a fighter, practicing the golden rule, or a hundred others, might help us make a sudden shift in how we want to perceive ourselves…a reorganization of our mental reference perceptions. So my mysterious “spirit nature” is more like Bill’s mysterious “reorganization system” as we sort of agreed back at the CSG Chicago Conference. My proposal was that there are three unique control systems in humans: our body, mind and our spirit which are networked and can affect one another.

I believe this happens all the time in human experience. It does not have to take a long time to; but it could. It does not have to involve intrinsic life variables; but it could. Republicans may suddenly reorganize into Democrats and vice versa. Atheists may suddenly reorganize into devotees of Judaism, Muslims into Christians, or vice versa. These are common human experiences at a very high level. Current HPCT deals mostly with the body and mind. I think it leaves a gap in what is observable in human beings and their nature.

If you restrict reorganiztion to the Eleventh Level (system concepts), that would be the case. And, that seems pretty common too.

Yes, my belief and hope is that our human spirit can change even our most embedded, experience generated bottom up system and belief references. But, the self concept can be just as much an impediment as a help in how we deal with others.

Anyway, as food for thought, those are a few ideas about possibilities concerning the science of human behavior.

Kenneth_Kitzke_Value · August 5, 2006, 11:18pm

[From Kenny Kitzke (2006.08.05.1900/EDT)]

So, are you really sorry enough to try a different approach?

I think Bill just perceives your approach in this respect hurts the cause of expanding PCT science,as it now is in China. I suspect that is a very high level reference for him that he will act to reduce error, even to a good disciple like you. But, who knows for sure, except Bill?

I love Bill too and I love you too (which is not as easy for me).

I perceive it as horrible also. I guess our references have a role in what actions we decide to take to counter that disturbance.

On your last point, sexual perversions are purposful human behavior too and horrible, especially to alter boys, abused children and young Asian girls. Does that need to be brought up here too to understand human behavior?

Bill_Powers1 · August 6, 2006, 6:17pm

Unlike Kenny, I think any
discussion on perceptual control could be important whether it be about
politics, sex, drugs or whatever. The problem is trying to stay focused
on the perceptual control issues rather than on moralizing over any
issue. Its not easy especially when the topics are important and
meaningful to us.
I agree. But you are not
currently doing that Rick. PCT cannot currently “explain” the
purposeful behavior going on because PCT does not address the most
important aspect of understanding this mess and that is; how do we
construct our perceptions?
[From Bill Powers (2006.08.06.1055 MDT)]

Marc Abrams (2006.08.05.2233) –

Well said. I think that in order to avoid mixing the science with our
individual hang-ups, we have to maintain some distance between the events
in question and our own reactions to them. We are, after all, observing
what people who are living control systems do. Liking it or not
liking is it not the point: the point is to understand it, as best we can
with what we know so far. I know there are things about Hezbollah that I
simply do not understand. But the same is true of the long-term Israeli
response, which seems to be just the mirror image of Hezbollah. There is
simply something important about what is going on that I don’t know. If
we don’t know what is wrong, how can we fix it?

However, just reacting to Hezbollah or Israel according to what we like
or don’t like, approve or don’t approve of, isn’t science unless we’re
volunteering to be guinea pigs for studies of pathological
conditions.

You’ve said this before, and I still don’t know what your question is.
When you ask “how”, are you asking for a list of instructions,
like put tab A in slot B? Are you asking about the neurobiology of the
process? Are you asking what circumstances lead to acquiring new
perceptions (even if we can’t explain the mechanics of the process)? When
you ask about how WE construct our perceptions, do you mean how we, the
conscious entities in our brains, do it?

My own answers to questions like these focus on general processes which
might be carried out in any number of different ways. For example,
reorganization. I have define it as random (or unsystematic) changes in
connections and weights in neural networks which cease when certain basic
variables are returned within limits, or close enough to built-in
reference signals. How are these changes made? I can hardly even guess,
but we know that synaptic connections form and disappear in the brain,
and that processes like neurotaxis occur when there is activity of some
kind in the brain, especially during maturation. But even not knowing the
mechanisms, we can observe that there is an age before which we do not
perceive something and after which we do perceive it, so we know that
some kind of neural organization has changed (assuming, of course, that
perception is a neural phenomenon, which also remains to be
proven).

It seems to me that the first step is always to describe WHAT is
happening, and this includes what perceptions people seem to be
controlling. Right now I can’t specify the neural networks that are
producing the perceptions (nor can anyone else), so what’s left is to try
to establish the conditions under which people are likely to reorganize
their perceptions (the method of levels is about that). I don’t have to
know how the neural networks operate to do that.

As I
said before, thinking about a perception as “signal” might be
fine for analytical study and theory building but it falls way short in
helping us understand exactly what it is we are talking about when we say
“perception”.

I agree that there is more to conscious perception than a signal: there
is a receiver of the signal, which I call awareness. This is aside from
the physical destination of the signal, which is some higher-level neural
network. But “signal” simply means a train of neural impulses
generated by one neuron and received by one or more other neurons some
distance away. A perceptual signal can exist with or without awareness of
it, as shown by the fact that we can control some things either
consciously or unconsciously.
The idea that perceptions appear as neural signals in the brain is pretty
well established, I think. Experiments with electrical stimulation of
various brain areas show that perfectly real-seeming perceptions result,
and examinations of brains with lesions in them show that loss of
perceptions of certain kinds results when certain neurons in the brain
are damaged. Conscious perception also involves awareness, which
has never been localized that I know of, but at least we can say that
neural signals, trains of neural impulses, are required if any kind of
perception is to occur.

In PCT, as in other technical fields, “signal” simply means a
carrier of information from one place to another. We speak of radio
signals and audio signals and intermediate-frequency signals. You can
even think of a signal transmitted along a cord, as when a passenger
pulls on the emergency cord in a train, sending a signal to the automatic
brake mechanism. Most signals in technical fields are continuous
variables which have magnitudes representing the magnitude of some other
physical variable. The receiver of the signal acts as if the
megnitude of the signals is the magnitude of the variable that gave rise
to the signal, as if the variable itself had been transported to the
receiver and sensed right there.

As you may be able to tell, I am having a hard time understanding just
what it is about perception that you feel needs to be explained – what
level of explanation you’re after.

Best,

Bill P.

Bill_Powers1 · August 7, 2006, 1:13am

[From Bill Powers (2006.08.06.1830 MDT)]

Rick Marken (2006.08.06.1720 PDT)–

My point (which I’m prepared to
abandon if it’s wrong) is that conflict is not a direct result of systems
controlling different perceptual variables that that it is a direct
result of systems controlling the same perceptual variable.
Colloquially, seeing things differently is not the basis of conflict;
seeing things the same way is. Conflict can occur when people see things
differently, but it is not because they see things differently that the
conflict occurs.

But Richard has just demonstrated a case where the parties in conflict
are NOT perceiving the same perceptual variables.

I know that conflict can occur
when systems are controlling different perceptual variables; but this
conflict (as in your example and in my conflict demo) is not the result
of controlling different perceptual variables, per se. It occurs as a
result of constraints on the effect that outputs can have on these
different perceptions. But when systems are trying to control the
same perceptual variable relative to even slightly different references
there will be conflict.

Yes, we know that this is one case (among several others) in which
conflict will occur. The problem can be generalized, as Richard Kennaway
did, to showing that the number of independent perceptions being
controlled must not exceed the number of environmental variables on which
the perceptions depend. Your case is the one where two perceptions exist
but there is only one environmental variable. Since both perceptions
depend on the same variable, their values must reflect the same state of
the environment to avoid conflict.
(Just to acknowledge one point: I don’t think anyone is saying that
conflict arises because people are controlling different
perceptions).

When perceptions depend on multiple environmental variables, a more
likely case, “the same perception” means “the same
function of the same environmental variables.” Richard expanded this
to include the case where too many different perceptions are being
controlled for the number of environmental variables on which they
depend. This is in fact a complex conflict among N system trying to
control in an environment with N-1 or fewer degrees of freedom. It isn’t
between any two of them; it exists among all of them. It shows up as an
excess of effort required for every system to keep its error small, and
the impossibility of making its error zero.

I discussed this a long time ago on the net in terms of one person trying
to enter a group of people who form a society, and the effects of
overpopulation. Up to a point, it is possible for a group of people to
find variables to control that are independent enough to avoid conflicts,
especially in an environment that is rich in alternative ways to
accomplish almost anything When a new person tries to join this society
(for example, by immigrating or being born) it’s easy to find a niche in
which the person can find something relatively unique to do to survive
without arousing opposition from others. But as population grows, it
becomes harder to find that empty niche, and at some point we can
formally say that overpopulation has begun: the last niche has been
filled, and from now on, adding another person means that everyone will
experience a slight increase in error.

The actual amount of increased error may be small, but the number of
people pushing back against the disturbance is large, so the net
opposition to the new person’s efforts to control will be far out of
proportion to the actual amount of disturbance. Of course the society
will not be homogeneous, so there can be regions or occupations in which
overpopulation occurs earlier than in others. Also, the effects will be
felt before the formal limit has been reached, because the last few
available degrees of freedom may be very difficult for a newcomer to
find, and they may or may not be useable or preferable.

It occurs to me now, from your remarks, that an obvious way to postpone
the onset of social conflict as the population grows is for someone
somehow to force people to adopt the same reference conditions. Then we
can have groups of people contributing their efforts to the achievement
of agreed-on (or forced) goals without getting into conflict with each
other, or with less conflict. This sounds a lot like certain political
systems which emphasize (and enforce) solidarity and group efforts. It’s
possible that such systems arise when the population reaches a size where
the number of independent controllers starts to exceed the degrees of
freedom in the resource pool. The totalitarian society is, in fact, one
solution to the problem of avoiding internal conflict as population grows
or resources dwindle.

That idea surprised me – I thought I was about to write

Best,

Bill P.

Bill_Powers1 · August 7, 2006, 10:48am

[From Bill Powers (2006.08.07.0300 MDT)]

Richard Kennaway (2006.08.07.0912 BST) --

Sorry to have caused so much boggling, but I was writing without much explanation as the ideas occurred to me.

I completely agree that the totalitarian solution is not really a solution. What occurred to me is that it might be a natural thing to try when people start stepping on each other's toes. Yes, it's done with a gun to the head and it gets grudging compliance -- but for a time it may seem to work better than having people competing for resources and jobs so some people have nothing at all. I don't think China has famines any more, but we have to notice also that they decided that the real problem is population (more guns to the head, of course). When I was there I was staggered by the endless huge clusters of high-rise apartment buildings in the hundred or so miles between Hong Kong and Guangzhou, and wondered how on earth they get enough food and water in and waste out and clothing and things for people to do to earn a living. Maybe that train trip is behind what I wrote, because I remember suddenly having a pang of sympathy for those who are trying to administer this gigantic chaotic mess. Maybe central control seems like the only way to impose some sort of order and prevent disasters from happening on their watch. Maybe the reason for the harsh measures and tight control isn't just that bad people are in charge -- they may see nothing else that would work.

As to your faith in the ability of technology and human inventiveness to handle the degrees of freedom problem, I don't share it. We've been experiencing increasing shortages of degrees of freedom ever since I was a child. I once (in the '50s) tried to camp in Yosemite park and gave up when I saw that the pine needles in the campground had been pulverized by passing feet into a kind of fine flour, and the ropes bracing adjacent tents were overlapping each other. There were no degrees of freedom left, no niches that Mary or I wanted to occupy in that locality. That was just a foretaste. I've noticed that everywhere you go there are people, and you have to avoid bumping into them or wait until they're finished before you can do what or go where you want. It didn't used to be that way. When I got to Durango I built a little observatory to take advantage of the altitude with its clear air and dark skies up on my hill. Now 15 years later the mesa below my house, extending for miles, is covered with yard-lights all night, and it just isn't dark any more. Where I am going to move, north of Denver, there are giant developments consisting of condos, apartments, and houses spreading for tens of miles across what used to be empty prairies and farms. They don't grow food or graze livestock there any more, of course. One development, Broomfield, has become its own county. I found an apartment complex (in what used to be a small town) where the buildings are a little farther apart, so it's semi-tolerable. But basically that whole area is pretty horrible.

There are already water shortages in Colorado and people are beginning to fight over who gets the rights. The town of Durango is trying to obtain some senior water rights to protect the rafting and white-water kayaking that is big around here -- and of course the resorts upstream and the farmers downstream are screaming NO. The sportsmen, tourists, and entrepreneurs and those who get the taxes they pay are screaming YES. The gas extraction industry which has wells all over the Fruitland mesa (25 miles across, south of Durango) is begining to see the yield dropping off, so they've manage to persuade the authorities to let then increase the density of wells from one every 160 acres to one every 80 acres, and use more water for injecting into wells to increase gas flow. Home owners, ranchers, and farmers are objecting strenuously since the well pads and the roads to them are plopped down onto their property and they can't stop it. When the gas runs out, property taxes in this country will have to go up about 60% to make up for the loss of revenue from British Petroleum, and others. And those who own mineral rights on their property will suffer a drastic drop in income.

The interdependence is getting denser and denser. Conflicts both big and little are everywhere. I think we're running out of degrees of freedom, or that finding unused ones is getting harder and harder. And this is in the spacious underpopulated West. In Chicago, Boston, and New York the regimentation is forced on everyone. Rush hour packs people onto highways and trains and buses where they can move in parallel and in bunches -- they just can't take off in any direction they like. The only gun at their heads is the impossibility of getting to work any other way -- and the necessity of taking what work is available in the place where it is offered -- which is just as effective as a gun. And the jobs are more and more standardized -- lots of people have to be doing essentially the same thing, there's no way for people to survive otherwise. Variety in food, toys, gadgets, entertainment, and schools is disappearing, just to pick a few sectors at random. Even the cars all look alike.

But new people introduce new degrees of freedom, new niches. There isn't a fixed set of roles to fill, which once occupied allow of no new entrants except at the expense of those already there. The masses of immigrants to the US did not fit into an existing richness of alternative ways, they created it. Overpopulation is a matter of physical resources, not roles, and the resources are elastic as well. Overpopulation is always relative to available technology.

It's physical resources I'm talking about, mainly. The first one is simply space -- how far you can move in a given direction without bumping into somebody else. The Mean Free Path. The second one is variety of resources: you can't produce goods to order for large numbers of individuals; mass production is essential to get enough produced, at the expense of reducing the number of different kinds of things available. As the degrees of freedom dwindle, more and more people have to live alike, think alike, look alike.

I mean, how do you force people to adopt the same reference conditions, other than holding guns to their heads and getting at best foot-dragging compliance?

That's what you do, and that's what you get. Look around. Or better yet, talk to a libertarian, who will find guns held to heads where you thought everything was free and easy.

How does forcing people to adopt them avoid conflict, when by definition it *is* conflict?

When you impose rationing in a famine, you force people (quite often with guns held to the head) to share so more people can stay alive, instead of letting the strongest or most ruthless eat their fill while others die. One conflict is substituted for another worse one. It's a judgment call, of course, and once social control is established it's hard to get rid of. You don't have to tell me the disadvantages of dictatorship etc. I'm not advocating any of these approaches, just trying to understand how they could arise without attributing them to evil people. They are solutions, if not long-term solutions.

Doesn't the history of totalitarian societies show that they do not in fact provide a solution, that far from avoiding internal conflict, they operate by means of it, and that they invariably make worse use of their resources than non-totalitarian societies?

Sure, but then why do they keep arising? I think the answer is that they do improve things, just as drugs and drink and smoking do make you feel better. You may see that the solution is temporary and self-defeating, but not everyone sees that, and especially not when there are pressing immediate problems and neither time, knowledge, nor intelligence enough to find something better for the long term. I think you can take it as a general principle that people do not try to do bad things. They try to do good things, meaning things that satisfy their references at all levels. How do they decide what is good? From the experiences of their lives, including other people. You can't get rid of a dictator by telling him he is a bad man. He thinks he is a good man doing good works. Before you can get rid of him, or forestall the next one, you have to understand what is going on. Not approve of it, condone it, or excuse it -- understand it. That's what I'm trying to do.

I think that overpopulation of the world began early in the 20th Century, or probably even earlier in particular places. The problem is that it happens so slowly on the scale of an individual lifetime -- people are born into it, so they think life has always been this way. And they forget easily and change as they grow up, so it's hard to compare childhood life with now. Couple that with the fact that people don't really want to think that there is a limit to growth -- it's scary to start running out of essential things like food or water or air, so let's just pretend we're not. There are lots of reasons for denial. Maybe not good ones, but understandable ones.

Best,

Bill P.

Bozo_the_Clown · August 7, 2006, 5:23pm

From [Marc Abrams (2006.08.07.1302)]

[From Rick Marken (206.08.07.0840)]

Marc Abrams (2006.08.06.0831)–

Bill, you have often stated that Cog Sci and Behaviorism each > represent a part of the perceptual control model and I agree, so its > not as if everyone is talking about stuff from Mars. It is amazing, at > least from my perspective, how each theory can help inform the others. > By inform I don’t necessarily mean make it better. Sometimes you can > see why a theory went down the wrong path and what to avoid.

I don’t think Bill ever said that Cog Sci and Behaviorism represent part of the perceptual control (PCT) model.

As a matter of fact Bill did say this. No he did not say they were “part” of the PCT model. What he said was that Behaviorism accounts for the environmental influences and that Cog Sci accounts for the internal goal setting.

I’m pretty sure that what Bill might have said is pretty close to what I said in my “Blind men and the elephant” paper in More Mind >Readings: If organisms are organized as input controllers then their behavior can appear to be caused by internal mental plans >(Cog Sci) or by external stimuli (Behaviorism). But, according to PCT, the Cog Sci and Behaviorist
views of behavior are >understandable mistakes.

Sorry Rick, they are not mistakes. They are incomplete views and understandings, but not any more so than the incompleteness of PCT itself. PCT is not the final word nor will any other theory developed by man be the final word.

PCT shows why scientists have succumbed to either point of view but it also shows that both points of view are wrong.

Incomplete, not wrong. Was Newton wrong, or incomplete? How about Einstein?

So Cog Sci and Behaviorism can’t really help inform PCT but PCT can’t help inform Cog Sci and Behaviorism by showing that these are> theories of what is basically an illusion.

Illusion? And who proclaimed that your ideas are not?

Regards,

Marc

···

Check out AOL.com today. Breaking news, video search, pictures, email and IM. All on demand. Always Free.

Richard_Kennaway · August 7, 2006, 5:47pm

[From Richard Kennaway (2006.08.07.1720 BST)]

[From Bill Powers (2006.08.07.0300 MDT)]
The interdependence is getting denser and denser. Conflicts both big and little are everywhere. I think we're running out of degrees of freedom, or that finding unused ones is getting harder and harder. And this is in the spacious underpopulated West. In Chicago, Boston, and New York the regimentation is forced on everyone. Rush hour packs people onto highways and trains and buses where they can move in parallel and in bunches -- they just can't take off in any direction they like. The only gun at their heads is the impossibility of getting to work any other way -- and the necessity of taking what work is available in the place where it is offered -- which is just as effective as a gun. And the jobs are more and more standardized -- lots of people have to be doing essentially the same thing, there's no way for people to survive otherwise. Variety in food, toys, gadgets, entertainment, and schools is disappearing, just to pick a few sectors at random. Even the cars all look alike.

The world changes. Did it become overpopulated when hunting and gathering weren't enough any more, and agriculture had to be invented? Or when cities were founded? How many people is too many? Who decides, and how do we get there?

It's not that there aren't problems, but making people do what you think they should do to solve them, does not solve them, it makes them worse. It's like beating a baby to make it stop crying.

It's physical resources I'm talking about, mainly. The first one is simply space -- how far you can move in a given direction without bumping into somebody else. The Mean Free Path. The second one is variety of resources: you can't produce goods to order for large numbers of individuals; mass production is essential to get enough produced, at the expense of reducing the number of different kinds of things available. As the degrees of freedom dwindle, more and more people have to live alike, think alike, look alike.

I see more diversity in the world than a century ago, not less. My supermarket sells more than twenty different kinds of bread. "Any colour you like, as long as it's black" didn't last.

I mean, how do you force people to adopt the same reference conditions, other than holding guns to their heads and getting at best foot-dragging compliance?

That's what you do, and that's what you get. Look around. Or better yet, talk to a libertarian, who will find guns held to heads where you thought everything was free and easy.

I'd describe myself as a libertarian. Any gpovernment, by definition, can point guns to heads, but it's the least effective way of getting people to do what you want. The less a government needs to resort to that, the better it works. Totalitarianism is the best system in the world, except for all the others.

Doesn't the history of totalitarian societies show that they do not in fact provide a solution, that far from avoiding internal conflict, they operate by means of it, and that they invariably make worse use of their resources than non-totalitarian societies?

Sure, but then why do they keep arising? I think the answer is that they do improve things, just as drugs and drink and smoking do make you feel better. You may see that the solution is temporary and self-defeating, but not everyone sees that, and especially not when there are pressing immediate problems and neither time, knowledge, nor intelligence enough to find something better for the long term. I think you can take it as a general principle that people do not try to do bad things. They try to do good things, meaning things that satisfy their references at all levels. How do they decide what is good? From the experiences of their lives, including other people. You can't get rid of a dictator by telling him he is a bad man. He thinks he is a good man doing good works. Before you can get rid of him, or forestall the next one, you have to understand what is going on. Not approve of it, condone it, or excuse it -- understand it. That's what I'm trying to do.

Well, here is my understanding of the totalitarian phenomenon.

Making people do what they should is tempting in direct proportion to the degree that one thinks it possible. One of the clear conclusions of B:CP is that it is not possible, without expending such enormous effort as to defeat the original purpose. (Although you seemed to draw back from the libertarian implications in later writings.) It may be very frustrating to share a planet with over 6 billion other people who just won't do what they obviously should, but there is no solution to that problem.

(Warning: politics follows.)

I think you understate the goodness of dictators. Consider the great dictators of recent history: Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot. They were not merely good people, they were saints. They were stupendously good, monstrously good. They impressed everyone who met them with their miraculous goodness. They would do anything at all to bring their enormously good plans to fruition, for the creation of paradise on Earth.

We all know how those plans turned out. They did not merely fail in the long term, they failed from beginning to end. They never provided a solution at all. The more the dictators strove for their vision, the more people they had to kill.

If you beat the baby hard enough, it does stop crying.

The revolutions that brought them in did not become corrupted by bad people who took over the system for their own ends. They were run by paragons of goodness working for the ultimate good of the whole population. That is to say, they were evil.

The only difference between the dictators and those more usually called saints is that the latter have generally not had the power to impose their visions on everyone else. Where they did, they gave us the Inquisition. Government by the good is the worst government of all. Let us be thankful for venal politicians, for their goals are easily satisfied; the goals of saints can never be. Whatever one thinks of Bush, he is a nobody in comparison.

···

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

Bill_Powers1 · August 7, 2006, 10:48pm

[From Bill Powers (2006.08.07.1447 MDT)]

Richard Kennaway (2006.08.07.1720 BST) –

The world changes. Did it
become overpopulated when hunting and gathering weren’t enough any more,
and agriculture had to be invented? Or when cities were
founded? How many people is too many? Who decides, and how do we
get there?

That’s a question I’ve been trying to answer. What sort of measure could
we use to define “overpopulation”? As you are pointing out it
can’t have anything to do with simple numbers like population density. We
ought to define it, if we can, in such a way that our individual
preferences would not affect the judgment – I know that many people get
lonesome when in situations I would call overcrowded.

The degrees of freedom criterion is the best way I’ve seen yet. While the
threshold is not absolutely sharp for reasons I’ve mentioned, I think we
can agree that less conflict is better (sticking to the strict definition
of conflict, and not things like sports or other optional contests –
true conflict is not optional).

Conflict shows up as increases in the effort needed to achieve a goal,
the increase being due to disturbances by the actions of other people
trying to achieve conflicting goals. When the environment has a lot more
degrees of freedom than the set of reference signals in all interacting
people, conflict is only an accident and can be resolved, if
desired, in a variety of ways. But as the critical condition is
approached and passed (number of degrees of freedom becoming equal and
then reversing), the possible resolutions of conflict become fewer and
fewer, finally going to 1 at the critical point, then zero beyond that.
Then, with further imbalances, the degree of conflict that results starts
to increase more and more rapidly.

I think you and I understand this abstract condition in the same way.
It’s quite independent of how many degrees of freedom actually exist, and
it can be reversed if, as you imply, people can invent more degrees of
freedom and increase their capacity to control. All I’m looking for is
some measure that will tell us where we are right now in relation to the
critical zone in the vicinity of equality of degrees of freedom. I have
my own opinions about overpopulation, but I’m willing to put them aside
in favor of a measure that is repeatable, that makes sense, and that we
can agree on.

It’s not that there aren’t
problems, but making people do what you think they should do to solve
them, does not solve them, it makes them worse. It’s like beating a
baby to make it stop crying.

So you say. But what’s your basis for saying it, other than a profound
belief in the superiority of peaceful methods (similar to my belief)? Can
you actually show that a particular free society is farther from the
critical conflict point than some particular totalitarian society is? In
my own society I see a great many conflicts going on (including babies
getting beaten, figuratively and literally), and I think I’m justified in
asking whether they are really fewer than those I saw in China (I saw
only happy children) or have heard about elsewhere. I wouldn’t be
surprised if there were greater risk of conflict in China, but I can’t
prove that or the opposite.

If we want to know the truth, rather than just pushing our private
preferences and beliefs, we need to work out formal uniform procedures
that will permit anyone, with any preference, to arrive at the same
answer to the question. That’s what science is about, and what’s
wonderful about science is that now and then this can actually be
achieved.

I think you and Mark are both mistaking my attempt to understand
something for advocacy. Relax, I probably have the same prejudices and
beliefs you have concerning totalitarian societies, coercion, and so on.
But I don’t want to operate on the basis of beliefs – I have to test
them, or I’ll lose faith in them. A belief that can’t stand up to a
sincere effort to disprove it isn’t worth a teaspoon of warm spit. I’m
looking for a measure of overpopulation that can prove that my belief
about it is either right or wrong. I’d rather know I’m wrong than believe
I’m right.

I see more diversity in the
world than a century ago, not less. My supermarket sells more than
twenty different kinds of bread. “Any colour you like, as long
as it’s black” didn’t last.

Right, but it’s the same 20 brands in all 200,000 supermarkets in the
United States, whereas the bread used to be different in every village,
depending on who baked it (even if, looking at just one dimension, it was
all black). Incidentally, finding out how many supermarkets there really
are in the USA is very hard – I gave up. The number above is a wild
guess, probably low.

I mean, how do you force people
to adopt the same reference conditions, other than holding guns to their
heads and getting at best foot-dragging compliance?

That’s what you do, and that’s what you get. Look around. Or better yet,
talk to a libertarian, who will find guns held to heads where you thought
everything was free and easy.

I’d describe myself as a libertarian. Any government, by
definition, can point guns to heads, but it’s the least effective way of
getting people to do what you want. The less a government needs to
resort to that, the better it works. Totalitarianism is the best
system in the world, except for all the others.

If you use government for that purpose, possibly so. I couldn’t prove it.
Neither could you. I see lots of uses for governments beside making
people do things. But that’s irrelevant. We’re trying to find a way of
telling whether overpopulation exists, and if we want to find out the
truth we have to put away our pet peeves and prejudices. I’ve probably
said enough on that subject for now. Let’s think about it for a while.
What kind of measures of incipient society-wide conflict could we think
of? On to the other subject:
The fact is that totalitarian societies keep springing up and enduring
for long times, and my impression is that this always happens in an
attempt to fix something that most people consider needs fixing. You can
pound the table all night about how wrong and stupid and self-defeating
that is, but it still keeps happening. Are the people who make it happen
and let it happen stupid or insane or evil or perverted or inhuman? No.
These measures would not be taken or accepted if they did not in fact
make matters better rather than worse (for the majority). I likened it to
smoking or drinking or using drugs. People don’t do those things to feel
worse; they do them to feel better, and they work. That’s why it is so
hard to stop, or even to want to stop.
So, I’ve been asking myself, what it is about a totalitarian society that
makes things better than without it? Note that I’m not comparing it with
some other system. I’m just asking, " What could give people the
feeling that after the dictator takes power, things are better than they
were before?" We shouldn’t be afraid to address that question. What
could *actually be better?*It was my asking that question that threw everyone into fits. Better?
Better than freedom? But that’s the wrong way of putting it. All I mean
is “better than before.” That’s usually all that people pay
attention to, anyway.

My answer was that I could see situations where regimentation and central
control would reduce conflict by reducing the number of degrees of
freedom in the goals that people are free to pursue. If, as in Somalia a
little while ago, there is serious hunger and teenage delinquents are
roaring around in jeeps with machine guns commandeering all the food for
themselves and their friends, for most people the situation would improve
a lot if someone could just overpower those bastards and force them to
share what they’ve taken. The Authority says, “We are all going to
have the same goal of getting almost enough food, and if we decide that
we are going to take more food for ourselves than is fair, we are going
to be shot.” That forces all the reference signals for food more or
less into agreement and resolves the conflict quite neatly, even if it
does create martyrs and lifelong revolutionaries or terrorists. Who cares
about that possibility that hasn’t happened yet, when my wife, my parent,
my starving baby now has food?

Doesn’t the history of
totalitarian societies show that they do not in fact provide a solution,
that far from avoiding internal conflict, they operate by means of it,
and that they invariably make worse use of their resources than
non-totalitarian societies?

What I’m suggesting is that they do in fact provide a (short-term)
solution to a degrees-of-freedom problem, which doesn’t mean that I
disagree that other approaches work better and make better use of
resources. I’m talking about real situations in which other solutions are
hypothetical and nonexistent at the moment, and in which the current
solution is in fact working. Somewhat, but enough that people don’t want
to go back to what was there before. Yes, they’re stuck in a local
minimum, but they are better off than before and that’s what people want.
This makes it possible to understand why so many poor oppressed Cubans
want Castro to get better and take control again.

Well, here is my understanding
of the totalitarian phenomenon.

Making people do what they should is tempting in direct proportion to the
degree that one thinks it possible. One of the clear conclusions of
B:CP is that it is not possible, without expending such enormous effort
as to defeat the original purpose.

It’s not impossible, though at one point I seemed to assert and maybe
believed that it was, while I had my head in a theoretical fog. I forgot
that in reality people will trade their freedom for a bowl of porridge,
if they’re hungry enough. Some won’t but most will. We theoreticians
think in terms of the elegant solution, the permanent long-term solution.
Most people, however, just want something that solves their problem
today, and they hope tomorrow.

Let’s see if we can stick to science.

Best,

Bill P.

Richard_Kennaway · August 10, 2006, 5:54pm

[From Richard Kennaway (2006.08.10.1729 BST)]

[From Bill Powers (2006.08.07.1447 MDT)]
I think you and I understand this abstract condition in the same way. It's quite independent of how many degrees of freedom actually exist, and it can be reversed if, as you imply, people can invent more degrees of freedom and increase their capacity to control. All I'm looking for is some measure that will tell us where we are right now in relation to the critical zone in the vicinity of equality of degrees of freedom. I have my own opinions about overpopulation, but I'm willing to put them aside in favor of a measure that is repeatable, that makes sense, and that we can agree on.

I don't know what general measure might be possible, in an abstract setting of a large number of individuals each controlling a number of variables in a large environment. Something may be possible though.

For the specific case of people on the Earth, one might begin by looking at statistics for the overt signs of major conflict. The ultimate failure of control is dying, so count executions, homicide rates, deaths from starvation, deaths in war, disappearances. Then go on to other signs of major conflict such as rates of violent crime, war casualties, proportion of the population in jail, numbers of homeless, numbers of orphans. Lifespan. Perhaps levels of drug addiction. Military spending. Law enforcement budgets.

Count up those for a country, and they might give a basis for comparison. Add in whether the government lets its citizens leave and whether the citizens can sack the government.

Come to think of it, there's a video I came across recently which is actually a presentation about some new data visualisation technology, but the subject matter of the data is levels of health and wealth in all countries over the last century. Worth a look (70-minute video -- broadband essential):

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7996617766640098677&q=gapminder

But that's all specific and ad hoc, not a general answer to the theoretical question.

Can you actually show that a particular free society is farther from the critical conflict point than some particular totalitarian society is?

Wherever any such point may lie, the above criteria give a very clear answer to the question of which countries have more conflict. Freedom wins hands down.

In my own society I see a great many conflicts going on (including babies getting beaten, figuratively and literally), and I think I'm justified in asking whether they are really fewer than those I saw in China (I saw only happy children) or have heard about elsewhere. I wouldn't be surprised if there were greater risk of conflict in China, but I can't prove that or the opposite.

I dare say that if you had gone to China in the days of Mao you would have seen positively ecstatic children, parading in great masses and singing loyal songs of loyalty to Mao. I doubt you would have believed them though. It may be a better place nowadays, but, well, do we have any subscribers there? I wouldn't want to be responsible for getting CSGNET blocked. Or should I go ahead and openly mention someone who objected to certain activities of a certain regime, was severely beaten up, and who a certain government brazenly claimed did it to himself?

A digression on bread:

Right, but it's the same 20 brands in all 200,000 supermarkets in the United States, whereas the bread used to be different in every village, depending on who baked it (even if, looking at just one dimension, it was all black). Incidentally, finding out how many supermarkets there really are in the USA is very hard -- I gave up. The number above is a wild guess, probably low.

Actually, it's 80 breads in my supermarket -- I was in there last night and counted. 80 different breads, that is, not just different brand names. It's nearly all one brand -- theirs. And that's leaving aside related products like croissants, (English) muffins, naans, and so on. Yes, it is rather a good supermarket chain. Their next rival in quality has, I would guess (I may be underestimating again), around 50 varieties of bread, but still way beyond what I'd expect to find in any small baker's shop, or anywhere at all a century ago. It's no good knowing they make another type of bread in the next village if it takes all day to walk there and back.

So, I've been asking myself, what it is about a totalitarian society that makes things better than without it? Note that I'm not comparing it with some other system. I'm just asking, " What could give people the feeling that after the dictator takes power, things are better than they were before?" We shouldn't be afraid to address that question. What could actually be better?

It isn't necessary that things actually be better, only that enough people be persuaded that they will be to put the dictator into power. After that, what the people want no longer matters. The conflict begins. People adjust to fit into the system, which is why when it goes away, however bad it was, people want it back.

One of the ways they fit in is by getting government jobs, which immediately gives them a very large stake in the system -- their life may depend on its perpetuation. For these people, life may very well be better than before. For the rest, not. This conflict between rulers and ruled is the mainspring of the system. It cannot work without it.

Perhaps the appeal of telling everyone what to do lies in people's ignorance of the fact that people cannot easily be told what to do. They just imagine everyone doing what the imaginer thinks they should, and in imagination, everything just happens the right way. When real people don't act anything like the daydream says they will, pointing guns at them seems the obvious solution. But that only reduces conflict if you exclude from the reckoning the very conflicts that the process depends on.

If, as in Somalia a little while ago, there is serious hunger and teenage delinquents are roaring around in jeeps with machine guns commandeering all the food for themselves and their friends, for most people the situation would improve a lot if someone could just overpower those bastards and force them to share what they've taken. The Authority says, "We are all going to have the same goal of getting almost enough food, and if we decide that we are going to take more food for ourselves than is fair, we are going to be shot."

Unfortunately, the Authority cannot be shot. That is what makes them the Authority.

Making people do what they should is tempting in direct proportion to the degree that one thinks it possible. One of the clear conclusions of B:CP is that it is not possible, without expending such enormous effort as to defeat the original purpose.

It's not impossible, though at one point I seemed to assert and maybe believed that it was, while I had my head in a theoretical fog.

I don't think it's a theoretical fog, but the cold, hard light of a very unforgiving reality, that there may simply be nothing to be done about some problems except the narrow road of teaching people what they are. And they may not listen.

I forgot that in reality people will trade their freedom for a bowl of porridge, if they're hungry enough.

In reality, people will fight for a bowl of porridge, not submit to chains. While the result may be bad, it is better than what any dictator has achieved. Famine does not create dictators, dictators create famine as a tool of control. Stalin and Mao starved the people, and Mugabe is doing the same.

Let's see if we can stick to science.

Amen.

-- Richard

···

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

Bill_Powers1 · August 10, 2006, 10:25pm

[From Bill Powers (2006.08.10.1440 MDT)]

By the way, in case nobody has noticed: if you do a search of a mailbox as a text file (which Eudora mailboxes allow), you can find every new message from a CSG member who observes the format above by searching on "[From". That's why I put that bracket there, to allow bypassing all the other instances of "from".

I haven't actually used that very much. In principle, though ...

Richard Kennaway (2006.08.10.1729 BST) --

For the specific case of people on the Earth,

I knew it. So just what do you have against Klingons?

one might begin by looking at statistics for the overt signs of major conflict. The ultimate failure of control is dying, so count executions, homicide rates, deaths from starvation, deaths in war, disappearances. Then go on to other signs of major conflict such as rates of violent crime, war casualties, proportion of the population in jail, numbers of homeless, numbers of orphans. Lifespan. Perhaps levels of drug addiction. Military spending. Law enforcement budgets.

That's a start. I'd like to see measures that are as direct as possible, sort of like measuring a person's oxygen consumption while the person does some motor task. A person who has reorganized the motor control systems for minimum conflict (some is desirable) will use the least oxygen possible in performing the task.

By the measures you suggest, the US would not come out as superior to the Chinese as might appear. Great Britain might do better. China hasn't been involved in combat since the 1950s, has it (the Korean "police action")? And even then it was North Korea that bore the brunt of the casualties. The US has been in quite a few wars since then, and has experienced casualties at a pretty high rate, especially if you count "collateral damage." The US, and maybe Britain, have probably had more war casualties in the last 40 years than China has. Also, I just read something the other day saying that near the end of apartheid, the US had more males in prison relative to its population than any other country but South Africa. I don't know if that's true. Our homicide rate, of course, is stupendous. Yes, it would be interesting to see those numbers. Hard to get them from some countries, of course.

The problem with all these measures is that they very quickly become entangled with political, cultural, and moral issues, not to mention positions that are hardened against nuclear attack. On our side, there's been so much enthusiastic advocacy of "freedom" (by people like Cheney and Bush, for example) that it's hardly possible even to do a study, without implying that one doubts the value of freedom, which of course is forbidden. The tolerance of dissidents in the US is getting very low, and suspicion seems tantamount to conviction these days. Look at the Israelis, bombing "suspected Hezbollah strongholds," some of which attacks have turned out pretty ugly. Look at the "suspected terrorists" in Guantanamo.
...

But that's all specific and ad hoc, not a general answer to the theoretical question.

Can you actually show that a particular free society is farther from the critical conflict point than some particular totalitarian society is?

Wherever any such point may lie, the above criteria give a very clear answer to the question of which countries have more conflict. Freedom wins hands down.

Wow, you've done the studies already? That was fast! How about sharing the data with me?

My devious way of saying, "I don't think you know that yet."

I dare say that if you had gone to China in the days of Mao you would have seen positively ecstatic children, parading in great masses and singing loyal songs of loyalty to Mao.

I don't think many small children did much of that. I'm describing something cultural, not political. The Chinese are very tolerant of their children -- I didn't see any children punished for anything, and I watched a lot of people on the streets and in other places. The policy of limiting the number of children may have increased this tolerance. I'm sure there's a bell-shaped curve, even so.

The Chinese government is pretty repressive, interfering with lots of things the people would like to do. However, I report that only as hearsay. One of the people who complained was our guide on the bus we took in touring Guangzhou. He did it through a loudspeaker and didn't seem worried. Several professors said to me that they hoped I noticed that things were a lot more open. I told them that I had indeed noticed and was surprised. They nodded -- they didn't seem offended when I said I was surprised.

Anyway, the question I'm asking is still how we might find out the truth about overpopulation by looking for the predicted signs of conflict due to approaching the limits set by degrees of freedom. I don't think that questions of freedom versus tyranny are the only relevant ones -- in fact they seem relatively irrelevant to me, in terms of this specific question. You can have a free society in which there are very high degrees of internal conflict -- for example, the conflict due to competition for scarce goods or for markets. Or just from plain old overcrowding, as per the anecdote I told about Yosemite Park 50 years ago (note that you can't even camp there any more without a reservation). It's perfectly possible to screw up even a free economic system. In fact, some people look on freedom as a license to do anything they want, no matter how nasty, to anyone else, so it's quite possible for a few people to spoil an otherwise free society. Not everyone in a free society is nice, just as not everyone in a repressive society is nasty. It doesn't take many nasties to cancel out a lot of nices.

Actually, it's 80 breads in my supermarket -- I was in there last night and counted. 80 different breads, that is, not just different brand names. It's nearly all one brand -- theirs.

That rather negates the example. The local Walmart has lots of different breads, too, and they all taste pretty much the same (the main variable is the air content). Ditto for the other two supermarkets in Durango. Nobody around here knows how to make bread any more, at least not for sale in a market.

And that's leaving aside related products like croissants, (English) muffins, naans, and so on.

"Naans?" Hold on there, you sneaky libertarian. How do I know that's even a kind of bread? I'll bet your 80 kinds of bread included shoes and wristwatches and all sorts of other stuff.

Yes, it is rather a good supermarket chain. Their next rival in quality has, I would guess (I may be underestimating again), around 50 varieties of bread, but still way beyond what I'd expect to find in any small baker's shop, or anywhere at all a century ago. It's no good knowing they make another type of bread in the next village if it takes all day to walk there and back.

It isn't necessary that things actually be better, only that enough people be persuaded that they will be to put the dictator into power. After that, what the people want no longer matters. The conflict begins. People adjust to fit into the system, which is why when it goes away, however bad it was, people want it back.

I suppose that could happen that way, but that's not an argument showing that repressive dictatorships can't make life better relative to what it was before. I don't think you know, any more than I do. I cited some examples where there would be some pretty obvious support for a government crackdown, where things would actually be better for most people after it than before it. When the US went blundering into Somalia it actually suppressed the warlords and improved a lot of lives. A lot of people were happy to see that happen. It all fell apart, of course, when we left and the warlords came out of hiding again. But the application of superior force did improve lives of innocent people. I know it's not supposed to, but it did.

Again, try to remember that I'm comparing before and after, not one system against another. If we can't admit that something as common as government suppression and central control does accomplish some improvements in the human condition, compared to the immediate past, then we have to conclude that everyone is simply crazy and evil and impervious to reason. If that's so, then there's no hope of improving anything and we might as well give up and nuke 'em all.

I don't think people are crazy. They do things because they work, not because they don't work. Of course this has to be in the context of what they know and believe. They can't judge the worth of methods they've never tried. All they know is what happens when something is done by the existing system. If what happens is that they eat better, go to school more, have better health care, and can afford to buy tee-shirts that say "Joy up weekend" in English lettering, they approve (that example was actually Japanese)..

In fact, having tasted that, they might start to grumble when they find they can't do or get all the other things, too, as they hear about them. But the fact is that repressive central governments keep appearing and are not overthrown by popular revolt, and we have to explain why they show up repeatedly and why they aren't very quickly overthrown. Saying that it is impossible for them to do so doesn't make it impossible. That's my argument here. We have observations to deal with, and ideologies are not going to make them go away.

The best study of these questions that I can think of would be organized so that after going through the report, the reader would be unable to tell whether the author approved or disapproved of the result. So far we're not exactly living up to that ideal.

Best,

Bill P.

Bill_Powers1 · August 11, 2006, 1:24pm

[From Bill Powers (2006.08.11.0646 MDT)]

Richard Kennaway (2006.08.11.0940 BST) --

Ok, you've got me there. That was just an unscientific guess informed by unscientific reading of the news, tertiary historical sources (i.e. other people's rants) and what I would like to be true. I think it's very telling, though, in an unscientific sort of way, that the totalitarian countries have to keep their people from escaping, and the free countries don't.

As you say, quite. However, the fact that liberty is better than slavery is not the point. If that were evident to everyone, we would have to conclude that large parts of the Earth's population deliberately choose a form of government that they know is inferior. So clearly they do not choose (or put up with) a central repressive government on the basis of comparing it with other systems and deciding it is the best one for them.

I say that's clear, but I guess it's not that clear, because quite a few people act as if the other side is merely evil or insane. Bush keeps saying that the terrorists "hate freedom." But that's just silly -- they want lots of freedom for themselves to do all the violence they want to do wherever in the world they want to do it. They want to be free to worship as they see fit; make laws (or ignore them) as they see fit; punish those who transgress against their deepest values. They want to be free to destroy a whole nation in revenge for evildoing by certain factions in that nation. I'm pretty sure, in fact, that they agree with Bush's version of freedom, which is quite similar. I don't really think that most people know what they're talking about when they use the word "freedom." They just mean freedom to do whatever they happen to like doing, and to heck with what anyone else likes to do.

That kind of freedom is a recipe for conflict and failure. For me, freedom is a system concept, not a personal preference for my own way of doing things. It can't work unless it applies equally to everyone, which means that to be free, people can't just pick their goals in life without regard to anyone else's goals (which seems to be the basic idea of liberatianism). We have to be thinking about making room for others as well as demanding room for ourselves. If we don't do that, conflict will be inevitable. I guess what I'm talking about isn't anything new -- I've heard the term "enlightened self-interest," which seems about right, self interest enlightened by the Categorical Imperative, the principle that what is good is good only if it can be applied universally. Self-interest says it would be good if everyone gave me $1000 so I would be a hyper-billionaire. But enlightened self-interest says, "Wait a minute, that can't work because then I would have to give everyone $1000. which would leave us right where we are."

That's why I want to study these things "scientifically," the term that Mark sneers at. I want to eliminate impractical biases like unenlightened self interest. My faith is that if we just ask the right questions and seek whatever answers are really there, the answers we get will be as close to the truth as possible and they will work out for the best even if they're not what we thought we wanted when we started asking.

If we do the kind of study of conflict I'm thinking of, and if we find that it relates to overpopulation, then we will know something valuable -- provided nobody can accuse us of fudging the data or letting our wishes or beliefs cloud our perceptions. If we manage to accomplish that, then it wouldn't matter if the answer came out the other way -- that overpopulation has not yet taken us past the point where there are really too many people for the Earth and human ingenuity to sustain. We would like to know that, if it's true (but not if it's not true). Mainly, we (I at least) want to know what's true, rather than just defending whatever idea we happen to have faith in.

Best,

Bill P.

Best,

Bill P.

Bozo_the_Clown · August 14, 2006, 3:26am

From [Marc Abrams (2006.08.11.2051)]

[From Rick Marken (2006.08.11.1230)]

Of course. Bush’s talk about freedom is sheer demagoguery.

I’m afraid the demagoguery lies entirely in your lap.

He certainly doesn’t want homosexuals to be free to marry,

Marriage licenses are STATE issues not the federal government, so what Bush thinks matters little.

for example, or women to be free to chose to terminate their pregnancy

Again, I believe this will ultimately revert back to each of the individual states, again making what any president thinks moot.

or scientists to be free to do stem cell research.

A lie. First, Bush wants to limit the spending of federal government money on stem cell research that is derived from fetuses. He is not interested in outlawing stem cell research per se. He does not want public money spent on fetus stem cells. He is all for the use of other stem cells, although he has maintained several lines.

But demagogues like yourself have little interest in the facts. You have the hubris to believe that your ideas and beliefs should be adopted and accepted by all.

You have no understanding of perceptual control and the consequences it has on the ability of each of us to get and have what we want.

You are so myopically focused on your little toy models that you have no real clue, because if you did, you might actually have an answer or two for what ails us.

This reminds me that one of the main causes of social conflict seems to be people controlling perceptions of physically harmless >aspects of other people’s behavior. Controlling for gays or people of different races not marrying seems like a good example of >controlling for something that can only create conflict.

Is this the sum total of you insight due to your “expertise” with control? Do you really believe I need to understand perceptual control to understand or realize this?

I can see controlling for people not killing or stealing; in this case you are for >preventing behavior that is intrinsically conflictual.

So what do you think? Does controlling for things like “no gay marriage” or “no option to abort a fetus” increase conflict and, if so, >how does this fit into the idea that conflict results from a reduction in the degrees of freedom available to control perceptions?

I think that as long as you control variables that inhibit others from controlling what they need to control for you will create conflict.

Limiting the degrees of freedom simply means a reduction in available choices. It stands to reason that when you reduce your available options there is a greater chance of not finding a suitable answer.

Regards,

Marc

···

Check out AOL.com today. Breaking news, video search, pictures, email and IM. All on demand. Always Free.