Stack exchange

[PHILIP_JERAIR_YERANO]

[Philip Yeranosian 12/16/2019 4:44 pm]

Have any of you posted to stack exchange? Stack exchange is a site where you
post questions and people either answer the questions or kill your thread.
It’s kind of like the game of life, through which living control systems all
run the gauntlet. There are certain rules you have to follow to play the game.
First, no open ended discussions are allowed. Your question must either be
answerable or your question lacks focus. If it lacks focus or you don’t bother
with references, your thread gets killed by accumulating negative feedback. In
any case, you get good feedback about whether your understanding lacks focus.
If it’s a good question, it gets positive feedback and it appears on a
priority list of questions to be answered. I challenge anyone who believes
their understanding of PCT to be mature enough participate on the site. Let’s
see if your question is killed or if it generates answers. It is a way to
ensure that PCT does not become a “diverse�? or unorthodox theory as Boris is
alerting. You’d be surprised how hard it is to keep a thread alive on that
site. It’s not for the weak. It is essentially a platform for community
refereeing. But the site has very clever algorithms for preventing trolling.
For example you are always rate limited to 1 question per hour, but if your
questions get killed, you are suspended for days or longer. It is surprisingly
strict so be careful not to waste your questions. I would like to see you guys
battling it out on a site where I can guarantee positive results for the
theory. Everybody should give it a shot. Make an account and post something.
See if you don’t feel foolish when your question is killed for lacking focus.
See how quickly you can spread PCT in a “new world�?. I especially encourage
those who are mathematically or clinically inclined. If you prefer to discuss
PCT exclusively on discourse or Csgnet, please note that the purpose of such
platforms is archiving. There is no concept of the community deleting your
“contribution�?. Stack exchange is quite different.

Boris, as the one who is most disappointed with whatever it is you’re
disappointed about (it seems to be the use of Bills definitions), I suggest
you be one of the first to give stack exchange a try.

https://stackexchange.com/

Create a username and go to the portal you’re interested in: psychology or
physiology or academia. Then hit the “ask�? button. Come up with a title.
Choose one keyword. And write your post. Be sure to read the “how to ask a
question�? tutorial if you’re not completely sure you’re competent to discuss
what you’re asking.

[bnhpct]

[Bruce Nevin 2019122116:09 ET]

Philip Yeranosian 12/16/2019 4:44 pm –

Â

If it lacks focus or you don’t bother

with references, your thread gets killed by accumulating negative feedback. In

any case, you get good feedback about whether your understanding lacks focus.

If it’s a good question, it gets positive feedback and it appears on a

priority list of questions to be answered. I challenge anyone who believes

their understanding of PCT to be mature enough participate on the site. Â

If it just works like a good editor improving the ‘focus’ of your writing and providing good references, that would be great, but doesn’t it also depend on whether responders grasp fundamental concepts like feedback? Won’t they substitute the usual notion that negative feedback is commentary that you don’t like and positive feedback is commentary that you like? Similarly for behavior, control, …

Or are you proposing that we fork a PCT area of stack exchange? Then go for it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stack_Exchange#Site_creation_process Â

Then promote it here again once there is a place for us to go and exercise this system.

Or see if you accomplish similar results in a different way by responding to posts on discourse.iapct.org.

Â

···

/Bruce

On Mon, Dec 16, 2019 at 8:45 PM pyeranos@ucla.edu csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Philip Yeranosian 12/16/2019 4:44 pm]

Have any of you posted to stack exchange? Stack exchange is a site where you

post questions and people either answer the questions or kill your thread.

It’s kind of like the game of life, through which living control systems all

run the gauntlet. There are certain rules you have to follow to play the game.

First, no open ended discussions are allowed. Your question must either be

answerable or your question lacks focus. If it lacks focus or you don’t bother

with references, your thread gets killed by accumulating negative feedback. In

any case, you get good feedback about whether your understanding lacks focus.

If it’s a good question, it gets positive feedback and it appears on a

priority list of questions to be answered. I challenge anyone who believes

their understanding of PCT to be mature enough participate on the site. Let’s

see if your question is killed or if it generates answers. It is a way to

ensure that PCT does not become a “diverse� or unorthodox theory as Boris is

alerting. You’d be surprised how hard it is to keep a thread alive on that

site. It’s not for the weak. It is essentially a platform for community

refereeing. But the site has very clever algorithms for preventing trolling.

For example you are always rate limited to 1 question per hour, but if your

questions get killed, you are suspended for days or longer. It is surprisingly

strict so be careful not to waste your questions. I would like to see you guys

battling it out on a site where I can guarantee positive results for the

theory. Everybody should give it a shot. Make an account and post something.

See if you don’t feel foolish when your question is killed for lacking focus.

See how quickly you can spread PCT in a “new world�. I especially encourage

those who are mathematically or clinically inclined. If you prefer to discuss

PCT exclusively on discourse or Csgnet, please note that the purpose of such

platforms is archiving. There is no concept of the community deleting your

“contribution�. Stack exchange is quite different.

Boris, as the one who is most disappointed with whatever it is you’re

disappointed about (it seems to be the use of Bills definitions), I suggest

you be one of the first to give stack exchange a try.

https://stackexchange.com/

Create a username and go to the portal you’re interested in: psychology or

physiology or academia. Then hit the “ask� button. Come up with a title.

Choose one keyword. And write your post. Be sure to read the “how to ask a

question� tutorial if you’re not completely sure you’re competent to discuss

what you’re asking.

[PHILIP_JERAIR_YERANO]

There’s nothing wrong with using the word feedback to refer to up/downvotes in
stack exchange. Everybody will know that feedback in PCT is refers to the
feedback in differential equations.
We could discuss on discourse, but it’s helpful to see how your posts are
received by a “vulgar�? crowd. If you want to first develop the posts on
discourse, that’s fine. The thing we should do as a group here or on discourse
is come up with a question we all agree that we want answers to. We should do
this rather than explain PCT from the ground up. By asking questions, it will
help unify the group because we may all have different interpretations of the
theory, but we all share the same questions. Furthermore, by asking questions
instead of talking theory, we can express ourselves in a way that doesn’t
specifically involve PCT vocabulary. Thus, we can not only include others in
our conversations but we can immerse ourselves in other conversations too.
Like here’s a question for example: beginning with the interneurons in the
spine, how far up the neural axis can we identify comparator like structures?
In PCT terms, I’m thinking: is there any evidence of an error signal in the
cortical regions? Another question is: do people always try to control as many
variables as possible? I would like to see more questions and less answers.
And if you don’t want to ask questions and just truly want to rant and open
an interesting topic and let out what’s on your mind, please be original. The
way to do that is to talk common sense. Use the following rule of thumb: the
more you quote others, the less common sense it is. Try to speak from your own
experiences only, and don’t try to ask questions, just describe the experience
and end the conversation.
By the way, I noticed something interesting. I noticed that the more tolerant
you are of yourself, the less tolerant you are of others. And the less
tolerant you are of yourself the more tolerant you are of others. and because
I’ve just exhausted everything I have useful to say, I going to have some fun
and ruin this post by going off topic. I’m going to speak about people
directly here, which is rude, but please don’t be offended because this might
be genuinely interesting . And if I don’t mention your name, it’s not because
I dont like you, it’s just that you’re not easily caricaturized. Rick seems to
be very tolerant of others (he can summarize bills writings freely because of
this, and has in fact produced voluminously), me and Boris are very tolerant
of ourselves (although producing writing which is of the carefree nature of
rick’s writing is not necessarily what we do, we are nevertheless good at
producing constructive criticism as well as destructive criticism) , and
Martin is in between (he is working on a book, but he refuses to insist on his
role as an authority, and he often provides solid responses to topics, but
does not offer advice to his readers). It seems to me that being on one or the
other end of the spectrum and also being in the middle is a norm. While being
in the two middle thirds is an extreme.

[bnhpct]

[From Bruce Nevin 20191223.10:09ET]

Philip Yeranosian Dec 22, 2019, 7:22 AM –

PY:

by asking questions

instead of talking theory, we can express ourselves in a way that doesn’t

specifically involve PCT vocabulary.Â

We can. But your questions that follow are couched in PCT terms. If we don’t use PCT concepts and terminology either explicitly or implicitly how is the question relevant to PCT? If we put a question to a lay audience, or a ‘vulgar’ audience as you say, without them having any prior understanding of negative-feedback control of perceptual inputs (so called not because of differential equations but because inhibitory p is ‘negative’ wrt excitatory r and synapsing them is represented mathematically as subtraction, yielding e) aren’t they going to understand the question within a conceptual framework that is familiar to them? What conceptual frameworks are likely to be familiar to them? Don’t all the extant ‘common-knowledge’ conceptual frameworks grounded in linear causation rather than circular causation? That is, don’t they presume that environmental stimuli cause behavior, with perhaps some complicated symbolic representations and information processing intervening between input and output? If such readers down-vote your post, does it signify that you have a problem describing or asking questions about organisms and their behavior, or does it signify that their preconceptions make it difficult for them to understand?

PY:

beginning with the interneurons in the

spine, how far up the neural axis can we identify comparator like structures?

In PCT terms, I’m thinking: is there any evidence of an error signal in the

cortical regions?Â

I certainly don’t know the answers. Aren’t these questions for you to ask Henry, our only real neuroscientist? Or questions calling for a search of the neuroscience literature? Wouldn’t you then need some help interpreting the literature in PCT terms if it is couched in linear-causation terms? (In my experience, that is likely to be the case.) As Bill often said, this is a new field, with opportunities for original discoveries in every direction that you look. Go for it.

PY:

do people always try to control as many variables as possible?Â

This is a rather muddled question. I assume you mean “control as many variables at the same time”. On one level, you seem to assume that people perceive how many variables they control and try to maximize that number. Is the number of variables that one controls a controlled variable? How would you test that? Or is this about the number of controlled variables that one can be aware of at the same time? That’s quite a different question. What kind of control process is it to focus one’s awareness or to ‘multitask’ with it? On another level, one’s organism controls uncounted, indefinitely many variables without our awareness, and we can be aware of many but far from all of them. Are there any perceptions which are not controlled? A perceptual signal that does not synapse to a higher-level perceptual input function could not be controlled. What would be the value to the organism of recognizing such a perception? Can you identify any? You cannot use your physical output functions to control the sun rising in the east, but if you are driving directly into the sunrise you control your perception of it by pulling down the sun visor. And as Bill pointed out if the rising sun were behind you on that familiar road your consternation (in that imagined scenario) is evidence that you control that perception. The evidence that a perception is controlled is outputs tending to restore the perception to a reference value.

Â

PY:

Use the following rule of thumb: the

more you quote others, the less common sense it is. Try to speak from your own

experiences only, and don’t try to ask questions, just describe the experience

and end the conversation.

This is what I offered and advocated in my “stalking perceptions in the wild” presentation in Manchester, and in the paper which I posted. I think more ethology and less ‘theorology’ would be a good thing.

PY:

the more tolerant

you are of yourself, the less tolerant you are of others. And the less

tolerant you are of yourself the more tolerant you are of others.Â

Do you mean if I believe I’m always right then I am more often going to perceive others as being wrong, and if I regard my conclusions as provisional, always subject to question and re-evaluation, I am likely to regard others’ conclusions the same way? Is the certainty that one’s opinions are correct a controlled variable? What does your observation of your on-the-fly experience tell you?

···

/Bruce

On Sun, Dec 22, 2019 at 7:22 AM pyeranos@ucla.edu csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

There’s nothing wrong with using the word feedback to refer to up/downvotes in

stack exchange. Everybody will know that feedback in PCT is refers to the

feedback in differential equations.

We could discuss on discourse, but it’s helpful to see how your posts are

received by a “vulgar� crowd. If you want to first develop the posts on

discourse, that’s fine. The thing we should do as a group here or on discourse

is come up with a question we all agree that we want answers to. We should do

this rather than explain PCT from the ground up. By asking questions, it will

help unify the group because we may all have different interpretations of the

theory, but we all share the same questions. Furthermore, by asking questions

instead of talking theory, we can express ourselves in a way that doesn’t

specifically involve PCT vocabulary. Thus, we can not only include others in

our conversations but we can immerse ourselves in other conversations too.

Like here’s a question for example: beginning with the interneurons in the

spine, how far up the neural axis can we identify comparator like structures?

In PCT terms, I’m thinking: is there any evidence of an error signal in the

cortical regions? Another question is: do people always try to control as many

variables as possible? I would like to see more questions and less answers.

And if you don’t want to ask questions and just truly want to rant and open

an interesting topic and let out what’s on your mind, please be original. The

way to do that is to talk common sense. Use the following rule of thumb: the

more you quote others, the less common sense it is. Try to speak from your own

experiences only, and don’t try to ask questions, just describe the experience

and end the conversation.

By the way, I noticed something interesting. I noticed that the more tolerant

you are of yourself, the less tolerant you are of others. And the less

tolerant you are of yourself the more tolerant you are of others. and because

I’ve just exhausted everything I have useful to say, I going to have some fun

and ruin this post by going off topic. I’m going to speak about people

directly here, which is rude, but please don’t be offended because this might

be genuinely interesting . And if I don’t mention your name, it’s not because

I dont like you, it’s just that you’re not easily caricaturized. Rick seems to

be very tolerant of others (he can summarize bills writings freely because of

this, and has in fact produced voluminously), me and Boris are very tolerant

of ourselves (although producing writing which is of the carefree nature of

rick’s writing is not necessarily what we do, we are nevertheless good at

producing constructive criticism as well as destructive criticism) , and

Martin is in between (he is working on a book, but he refuses to insist on his

role as an authority, and he often provides solid responses to topics, but

does not offer advice to his readers). It seems to me that being on one or the

other end of the spectrum and also being in the middle is a norm. While being

in the two middle thirds is an extreme.

[PHILIP_JERAIR_YERANO]

I meant to say it like this: the more tolerant you are of others the less
tolerant you are of yourself. So roughly, when you appreciate others you often
belittle yourself privately.

[bnhpct]

[From Bruce Nevin 2019122̃.06:45ET]

Philip Yeranosian Dec 23, 2019, 1:19 PM –

PY:

I meant to say it like this: the more tolerant you are of others the less tolerant you are of yourself. So roughly, when you appreciate others you often belittle yourself privately. Â

What is the relationship between this and my attempted paraphrase? What perceptual variables would you guess are being controlled in “belittling” and “tolerating”? (As you understand these words.) Are there alternatives to belittling vs. tolerance? What different perceptual variables might be controlled in those alternatives? For each of these hypothetical perceptual variables, how would you test whether the person doing the “belittling” or “tolerating” or an alternative is in fact perceiving that variable and controlling it?

Is your response here a good example of the sort of response we would see on stackexchange? I asked you a number of questions, trying to follow the mode of discourse you prescribed. Here I have asked several more questions. You have responded to none. Your recommendations do not seem to be working.

I begin to doubt your good faith engagement with the purposes of this forum. It is dedicated to development and practice of a particular field of science in its theoretical and applied aspects. If you were to post to physics.stackexchange.com rejecting and refusing to use the terminology and concepts of physics, how long would your posts endure? Likewise, you must use the terminology and concepts of Perceptual Control Theory in order to engage with the purposes of this forum, though on CSGnet we evidently have been more tolerant than stackexchange would be,Â

···

/Bruce

On Mon, Dec 23, 2019 at 1:19 PM Philip Yeranosian pyeranos@g.ucla.edu wrote:

I meant to say it like this: the more tolerant you are of others the less tolerant you are of yourself. So roughly, when you appreciate others you often belittle yourself privately.Â

On Dec 23, 2019, at 7:28 AM, Bruce Nevin bnhpct@gmail.com wrote:

[From Bruce Nevin 20191223.10:09ET]

Philip Yeranosian Dec 22, 2019, 7:22 AM –

PY:

by asking questions

instead of talking theory, we can express ourselves in a way that doesn’t

specifically involve PCT vocabulary.Â

We can. But your questions that follow are couched in PCT terms. If we don’t use PCT concepts and terminology either explicitly or implicitly how is the question relevant to PCT? If we put a question to a lay audience, or a ‘vulgar’ audience as you say, without them having any prior understanding of negative-feedback control of perceptual inputs (so called not because of differential equations but because inhibitory p is ‘negative’ wrt excitatory r and synapsing them is represented mathematically as subtraction, yielding e) aren’t they going to understand the question within a conceptual framework that is familiar to them? What conceptual frameworks are likely to be familiar to them? Don’t all the extant ‘common-knowledge’ conceptual frameworks grounded in linear causation rather than circular causation? That is, don’t they presume that environmental stimuli cause behavior, with perhaps some complicated symbolic representations and information processing intervening between input and output? If such readers down-vote your post, does it signify that you have a problem describing or asking questions about organisms and their behavior, or does it signify that their preconceptions make it difficult for them to understand?

PY:

beginning with the interneurons in the

spine, how far up the neural axis can we identify comparator like structures?

In PCT terms, I’m thinking: is there any evidence of an error signal in the

cortical regions?Â

I certainly don’t know the answers. Aren’t these questions for you to ask Henry, our only real neuroscientist? Or questions calling for a search of the neuroscience literature? Wouldn’t you then need some help interpreting the literature in PCT terms if it is couched in linear-causation terms? (In my experience, that is likely to be the case.) As Bill often said, this is a new field, with opportunities for original discoveries in every direction that you look. Go for it.

PY:

do people always try to control as many variables as possible?Â

This is a rather muddled question. I assume you mean “control as many variables at the same time”. On one level, you seem to assume that people perceive how many variables they control and try to maximize that number. Is the number of variables that one controls a controlled variable? How would you test that? Or is this about the number of controlled variables that one can be aware of at the same time? That’s quite a different question. What kind of control process is it to focus one’s awareness or to ‘multitask’ with it? On another level, one’s organism controls uncounted, indefinitely many variables without our awareness, and we can be aware of many but far from all of them. Are there any perceptions which are not controlled? A perceptual signal that does not synapse to a higher-level perceptual input function could not be controlled. What would be the value to the organism of recognizing such a perception? Can you identify any? You cannot use your physical output functions to control the sun rising in the east, but if you are driving directly into the sunrise you control your perception of it by pulling down the sun visor. And as Bill pointed out if the rising sun were behind you on that familiar road your consternation (in that imagined scenario) is evidence that you control that perception. The evidence that a perception is controlled is outputs tending to restore the perception to a reference value.

Â

PY:

Use the following rule of thumb: the

more you quote others, the less common sense it is. Try to speak from your own

experiences only, and don’t try to ask questions, just describe the experience

and end the conversation.

This is what I offered and advocated in my “stalking perceptions in the wild” presentation in Manchester, and in the paper which I posted. I think more ethology and less ‘theorology’ would be a good thing.

PY:

the more tolerant

you are of yourself, the less tolerant you are of others. And the less

tolerant you are of yourself the more tolerant you are of others.Â

Do you mean if I believe I’m always right then I am more often going to perceive others as being wrong, and if I regard my conclusions as provisional, always subject to question and re-evaluation, I am likely to regard others’ conclusions the same way? Is the certainty that one’s opinions are correct a controlled variable? What does your observation of your on-the-fly experience tell you?

/Bruce

On Sun, Dec 22, 2019 at 7:22 AM pyeranos@ucla.edu csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

There’s nothing wrong with using the word feedback to refer to up/downvotes in

stack exchange. Everybody will know that feedback in PCT is refers to the

feedback in differential equations.

We could discuss on discourse, but it’s helpful to see how your posts are

received by a “vulgar� crowd. If you want to first develop the posts on

discourse, that’s fine. The thing we should do as a group here or on discourse

is come up with a question we all agree that we want answers to. We should do

this rather than explain PCT from the ground up. By asking questions, it will

help unify the group because we may all have different interpretations of the

theory, but we all share the same questions. Furthermore, by asking questions

instead of talking theory, we can express ourselves in a way that doesn’t

specifically involve PCT vocabulary. Thus, we can not only include others in

our conversations but we can immerse ourselves in other conversations too.

Like here’s a question for example: beginning with the interneurons in the

spine, how far up the neural axis can we identify comparator like structures?

In PCT terms, I’m thinking: is there any evidence of an error signal in the

cortical regions? Another question is: do people always try to control as many

variables as possible? I would like to see more questions and less answers.

And if you don’t want to ask questions and just truly want to rant and open

an interesting topic and let out what’s on your mind, please be original. The

way to do that is to talk common sense. Use the following rule of thumb: the

more you quote others, the less common sense it is. Try to speak from your own

experiences only, and don’t try to ask questions, just describe the experience

and end the conversation.

By the way, I noticed something interesting. I noticed that the more tolerant

you are of yourself, the less tolerant you are of others. And the less

tolerant you are of yourself the more tolerant you are of others. and because

I’ve just exhausted everything I have useful to say, I going to have some fun

and ruin this post by going off topic. I’m going to speak about people

directly here, which is rude, but please don’t be offended because this might

be genuinely interesting . And if I don’t mention your name, it’s not because

I dont like you, it’s just that you’re not easily caricaturized. Rick seems to

be very tolerant of others (he can summarize bills writings freely because of

this, and has in fact produced voluminously), me and Boris are very tolerant

of ourselves (although producing writing which is of the carefree nature of

rick’s writing is not necessarily what we do, we are nevertheless good at

producing constructive criticism as well as destructive criticism) , and

Martin is in between (he is working on a book, but he refuses to insist on his

role as an authority, and he often provides solid responses to topics, but

does not offer advice to his readers). It seems to me that being on one or the

other end of the spectrum and also being in the middle is a norm. While being

in the two middle thirds is an extreme.

[PHILIP_JERAIR_YERANO]

Where have I ever refused to use PCT terminology. One time I suggested that we
remove the words “a perception of�? in the phrase “controlling a perception of
a variable�? because it is undue pedagogy.

If you really want to help distinguish feedback control from feedforward
control, which seems to be one of the main points, if not the only main point
of PCT, I suggest fixing the corresponding demo on this site.
http://www.pct-labs.com/tutorial1/index.html

[rsmarken]

[[Rick Marken 2019-12-24_14:42:21]

Hi Philip

PY: Where have I ever refused to use PCT terminology. One time I suggested that we

remove the words “a perception ofâ€? in the phrase “controlling a perception of

a variable� because it is undue pedagogy.

RM: That was a very good suggestion. Removing the words "a perception ofâ€? from that phase “controlling a perception of a variableâ€? is not only removing undue pedagogy; it is making the phrase correct. In fact, we don’t control perceptions of variables; we control perceptions that are functions of variables. And the resulting perceptions are themselves variables. So the correct way to say what is involved in control is: control involves controlling a perceptual variable!.

BestÂ

Rick

···

Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[PHILIP_JERAIR_YERANO]

So you’re saying that we control perceptions that are functions of variables. And the resulting perceptions are therefore functions or operators.

···

On Tue, Dec 24, 2019 at 2:43 PM Richard Marken rsmarken@gmail.com wrote:

[[Rick Marken 2019-12-24_14:42:21]

Hi Philip

On Tue, Dec 24, 2019 at 2:23 PM pyeranos@ucla.edu csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

PY: Where have I ever refused to use PCT terminology. One time I suggested that we

remove the words “a perception ofâ€? in the phrase “controlling a perception of

a variable� because it is undue pedagogy.

RM: That was a very good suggestion. Removing the words "a perception ofâ€? from that phase “controlling a perception of a variableâ€? is not only removing undue pedagogy; it is making the phrase correct. In fact, we don’t control perceptions of variables; we control perceptions that are functions of variables. And the resulting perceptions are themselves variables. So the correct way to say what is involved in control is: control involves controlling a perceptual variable!.

BestÂ

Rick

 If you really want to help distinguish feedback control from feedforward

control, which seems to be one of the main points, if not the only main point

of PCT, I suggest fixing the corresponding demo on this site.

http://www.pct-labs.com/tutorial1/index.html

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[rsmarken]

RM: Yes, the “operators” being the perceptual functions.

···

Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[PHILIP_JERAIR_YERANO]

In that sense it would be best to just call perceptions functions.

[bnhpct]

[From Bruce Nevin 2019125.12:29ET]

Philip Yeranosian Dec 24, 2019, 5:21 PM –

Where have I ever refused to use PCT terminology.  Â

My expression was too elliptical. I should have made the analogy more overt. Look at the evident conceptual and terminological requirements to avoid being downvoted on the physics stack exchange. Draw an analogy to what would be required to avoid being downvoted on a PCT stack exchange such as you proposed that we invest ourselves in. But also the word refusal was too strong. I am unable to say whether or not the absence of PCT concepts and terminology in an imagined post to an imagined PCT stack exchange is due to refusal.Â

Of course you did use PCT terminology (and presumably concepts) in the several questions of yours that I responded to (with more questions), so I would be wrong to say that you are refusing to use them.Â

My posting questions was at your invitation, or so I thought, as a way of modeling the process that you ascribed to stack exchange. You proposed that discussing PCT would be more productive on stack exchange than it is here because stack exchange works by posing questions, and if one’s question is not up to snuff it gets snuffed (downvoted). In that spirit, I posed several series of questions. You haven’t replied to any of them. That does seem like some kind of refusal. I could be wrong.Â

You proposed a kind of complementarity of belittling and tolerance.Â

the more tolerant you are of yourself, the less tolerant you are of others.Â

And the less tolerant you are of yourself the more tolerant you are of others.

Schematically (where ~ symbolizes proportionality and the + and - make it inversely proportional):

+tolerant (yourself) ~ -tolerant (others)

-tolerant (yourself) ~ +tolerant (others)

Or more simply, tolerance of self and and tolerance of others are inversely proportional. And if indeed the two sides are inversely proportional, the proportionality symbolized by the ~ operator is symmetrical, and these two statements are equivalent notational variants. Now, in mathematics to change proportionality to inverse proportionality one changes one term to the reciprocal of that term: a~b becomes a~1/b. But we’re not being quantitative here, so I’ll use Ê…Â as a symbol for inverse proportionality. Â

tolerant(yourself)Â Ê… tolerant(others)

I proposed a paraphrase of your idea, because a paraphrase of the same meaning in different words is a good test as to whether or not one has grasped the intended meaning, certainly a better test than merely repeating the same words. My attempted paraphrase was:

If I believe I’m always right then I am more often going to perceive others as being wrong, and if I regard my conclusions as provisional, always subject to question and re-evaluation, I am likely to regard others’ conclusions the same way

Of course, under the first clause only those who disagree are going to be perceived as wrong, hence the “more often” hedge. Formulaically:

I am right ~ if you disagree you are wrong

I might be right ~ you might be right

It appears now that this is a related but different idea, not a paraphrase. I asked some follow-on questions aimed at getting empirical evidence about this.

It appears to me that my supposed paraphrase was not directly a disturbance to your control of (a perception of) my understanding your intended meaning. Rather, you looked back at your own way of putting your idea into words and it became in retrospect a disturbance to your control of the meaning that you had intended to express. You resisted that disturbance by rephrasing your idea. You rephrased only one of the two parts. You rephrased the second part, “And the less tolerant you are of yourself the more tolerant you are of others”, by reversing the terms around the inverse correlation:Â

 the more tolerant you are of others the less tolerant you are of yourself. So roughly, when you appreciate others you often belittle yourself privately.Â

Formulaically:

+tolerant (others) ~ -tolerant (yourself)

But as noted above proportionality and inverse proportionality are symmetric operations, so you were justified in rephrasing just one of your two statements, which can be more simply (if formulaically) expressed thus:

tolerant(yourself)Â Ê… tolerant(others)

or

tolerant(others)Â Â Ê…Â tolerant(yourself)Â

The only difference is that whoever is named first is the topic of the sentence.

I observe now a spectrum of judgement as to who is right and who is wrong, ranging from self-doubt being easily swayed to dogmatic rejection; and also variation as to how much a given place on this spectrum is habitual or context dependent. And once more I am reminded of Milton Rokeach’s experimental investigations of open/closed and flexible/rigid cognitive styles. Is that person wrong because what they say doesn’t provide acceptable input to my system concepts (closed), or is that person wrong because I (or they) have got stuck in a local minimum within the problem-solving space in which we are working (rigid)? SFAIK no one is doing any experimental work at these higher levels of the hierarchy. Rick, what do you think about looking at Rokeach’s experiments through control-theory glasses for your methodology book?Â

···

/Bruce

On Tue, Dec 24, 2019 at 5:21 PM Philip Yeranosian pyeranos@g.ucla.edu wrote:

Where have I ever refused to use PCT terminology. One time I suggested that we remove the words “a perception ofâ€? in the phrase “controlling a perception of a variableâ€? because it is undue pedagogy.Â

 If you really want to help distinguish feedback control from feedforward control, which seems to be one of the main points, if not the only main point of PCT, I suggest fixing the corresponding demo on this site.Â

http://www.pct-labs.com/tutorial1/index.html

On Dec 24, 2019, at 4:15 AM, Bruce Nevin (bnhpct@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[From Bruce Nevin 2019122̃.06:45ET]

Philip Yeranosian Dec 23, 2019, 1:19 PM –

PY:

I meant to say it like this: the more tolerant you are of others the less tolerant you are of yourself. So roughly, when you appreciate others you often belittle yourself privately. Â

What is the relationship between this and my attempted paraphrase? What perceptual variables would you guess are being controlled in “belittling” and “tolerating”? (As you understand these words.) Are there alternatives to belittling vs. tolerance? What different perceptual variables might be controlled in those alternatives? For each of these hypothetical perceptual variables, how would you test whether the person doing the “belittling” or “tolerating” or an alternative is in fact perceiving that variable and controlling it?

Is your response here a good example of the sort of response we would see on stackexchange? I asked you a number of questions, trying to follow the mode of discourse you prescribed. Here I have asked several more questions. You have responded to none. Your recommendations do not seem to be working.

I begin to doubt your good faith engagement with the purposes of this forum. It is dedicated to development and practice of a particular field of science in its theoretical and applied aspects. If you were to post to physics.stackexchange.com rejecting and refusing to use the terminology and concepts of physics, how long would your posts endure? Likewise, you must use the terminology and concepts of Perceptual Control Theory in order to engage with the purposes of this forum, though on CSGnet we evidently have been more tolerant than stackexchange would be,Â

/Bruce

On Mon, Dec 23, 2019 at 1:19 PM Philip Yeranosian pyeranos@g.ucla.edu wrote:

I meant to say it like this: the more tolerant you are of others the less tolerant you are of yourself. So roughly, when you appreciate others you often belittle yourself privately.Â

On Dec 23, 2019, at 7:28 AM, Bruce Nevin bnhpct@gmail.com wrote:

[From Bruce Nevin 20191223.10:09ET]

Philip Yeranosian Dec 22, 2019, 7:22 AM –

PY:

by asking questions

instead of talking theory, we can express ourselves in a way that doesn’t

specifically involve PCT vocabulary.Â

We can. But your questions that follow are couched in PCT terms. If we don’t use PCT concepts and terminology either explicitly or implicitly how is the question relevant to PCT? If we put a question to a lay audience, or a ‘vulgar’ audience as you say, without them having any prior understanding of negative-feedback control of perceptual inputs (so called not because of differential equations but because inhibitory p is ‘negative’ wrt excitatory r and synapsing them is represented mathematically as subtraction, yielding e) aren’t they going to understand the question within a conceptual framework that is familiar to them? What conceptual frameworks are likely to be familiar to them? Don’t all the extant ‘common-knowledge’ conceptual frameworks grounded in linear causation rather than circular causation? That is, don’t they presume that environmental stimuli cause behavior, with perhaps some complicated symbolic representations and information processing intervening between input and output? If such readers down-vote your post, does it signify that you have a problem describing or asking questions about organisms and their behavior, or does it signify that their preconceptions make it difficult for them to understand?

PY:

beginning with the interneurons in the

spine, how far up the neural axis can we identify comparator like structures?

In PCT terms, I’m thinking: is there any evidence of an error signal in the

cortical regions?Â

I certainly don’t know the answers. Aren’t these questions for you to ask Henry, our only real neuroscientist? Or questions calling for a search of the neuroscience literature? Wouldn’t you then need some help interpreting the literature in PCT terms if it is couched in linear-causation terms? (In my experience, that is likely to be the case.) As Bill often said, this is a new field, with opportunities for original discoveries in every direction that you look. Go for it.

PY:

do people always try to control as many variables as possible?Â

This is a rather muddled question. I assume you mean “control as many variables at the same time”. On one level, you seem to assume that people perceive how many variables they control and try to maximize that number. Is the number of variables that one controls a controlled variable? How would you test that? Or is this about the number of controlled variables that one can be aware of at the same time? That’s quite a different question. What kind of control process is it to focus one’s awareness or to ‘multitask’ with it? On another level, one’s organism controls uncounted, indefinitely many variables without our awareness, and we can be aware of many but far from all of them. Are there any perceptions which are not controlled? A perceptual signal that does not synapse to a higher-level perceptual input function could not be controlled. What would be the value to the organism of recognizing such a perception? Can you identify any? You cannot use your physical output functions to control the sun rising in the east, but if you are driving directly into the sunrise you control your perception of it by pulling down the sun visor. And as Bill pointed out if the rising sun were behind you on that familiar road your consternation (in that imagined scenario) is evidence that you control that perception. The evidence that a perception is controlled is outputs tending to restore the perception to a reference value.

Â

PY:

Use the following rule of thumb: the

more you quote others, the less common sense it is. Try to speak from your own

experiences only, and don’t try to ask questions, just describe the experience

and end the conversation.

This is what I offered and advocated in my “stalking perceptions in the wild” presentation in Manchester, and in the paper which I posted. I think more ethology and less ‘theorology’ would be a good thing.

PY:

the more tolerant

you are of yourself, the less tolerant you are of others. And the less

tolerant you are of yourself the more tolerant you are of others.Â

Do you mean if I believe I’m always right then I am more often going to perceive others as being wrong, and if I regard my conclusions as provisional, always subject to question and re-evaluation, I am likely to regard others’ conclusions the same way? Is the certainty that one’s opinions are correct a controlled variable? What does your observation of your on-the-fly experience tell you?

/Bruce

On Sun, Dec 22, 2019 at 7:22 AM pyeranos@ucla.edu csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

There’s nothing wrong with using the word feedback to refer to up/downvotes in

stack exchange. Everybody will know that feedback in PCT is refers to the

feedback in differential equations.

We could discuss on discourse, but it’s helpful to see how your posts are

received by a “vulgar� crowd. If you want to first develop the posts on

discourse, that’s fine. The thing we should do as a group here or on discourse

is come up with a question we all agree that we want answers to. We should do

this rather than explain PCT from the ground up. By asking questions, it will

help unify the group because we may all have different interpretations of the

theory, but we all share the same questions. Furthermore, by asking questions

instead of talking theory, we can express ourselves in a way that doesn’t

specifically involve PCT vocabulary. Thus, we can not only include others in

our conversations but we can immerse ourselves in other conversations too.

Like here’s a question for example: beginning with the interneurons in the

spine, how far up the neural axis can we identify comparator like structures?

In PCT terms, I’m thinking: is there any evidence of an error signal in the

cortical regions? Another question is: do people always try to control as many

variables as possible? I would like to see more questions and less answers.

And if you don’t want to ask questions and just truly want to rant and open

an interesting topic and let out what’s on your mind, please be original. The

way to do that is to talk common sense. Use the following rule of thumb: the

more you quote others, the less common sense it is. Try to speak from your own

experiences only, and don’t try to ask questions, just describe the experience

and end the conversation.

By the way, I noticed something interesting. I noticed that the more tolerant

you are of yourself, the less tolerant you are of others. And the less

tolerant you are of yourself the more tolerant you are of others. and because

I’ve just exhausted everything I have useful to say, I going to have some fun

and ruin this post by going off topic. I’m going to speak about people

directly here, which is rude, but please don’t be offended because this might

be genuinely interesting . And if I don’t mention your name, it’s not because

I dont like you, it’s just that you’re not easily caricaturized. Rick seems to

be very tolerant of others (he can summarize bills writings freely because of

this, and has in fact produced voluminously), me and Boris are very tolerant

of ourselves (although producing writing which is of the carefree nature of

rick’s writing is not necessarily what we do, we are nevertheless good at

producing constructive criticism as well as destructive criticism) , and

Martin is in between (he is working on a book, but he refuses to insist on his

role as an authority, and he often provides solid responses to topics, but

does not offer advice to his readers). It seems to me that being on one or the

other end of the spectrum and also being in the middle is a norm. While being

in the two middle thirds is an extreme.

[PHILIP_JERAIR_YERANO]

You know your truth tables. To be honest, when I corrected the error, I didn’t
consider the semantic consequences of applying the converse to my second
proposition.
I was trying to say something like the greater you appreciate someone’s work
the less you appreciate another’s. But I changed the predicate in the second
proposition from appreciation to belittling. The statement is referring to the
fact that some thoughts appear to oscillate. And for the independent variable
I put tolerance.

In answering a series of your questions I try to integrate them and provide a
single answer with some type of continuity. If I don’t answer one of your
questions it’s because I forgot to integrate it or couldn’t integrate it. In
the latter case, it could be seen as a refusal to answer the question in its
context. I invite you discuss the semantic consequences of this refusal.

[rsmarken]

[Rick Marken 2019-12-25_11:21:31]

[From Bruce Nevin 2019125.12:29ET]

Â

BN: Rick, what do you think about looking at Rokeach’s experiments through control-theory glasses for your methodology book?Â

RM: Thanks but I don’t think so. The book is going to be about doing research aimed at understanding the controlling done by living systems. It’s not about how to interpret existing research in terms of PCT. It’s about starting behavioral science research all over again based on an understanding of the fact that behavior is the control of perceptual input variables.

Best

Rick

···

Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[MartinT]

[Martin Taylor 2019.12.25.14.10]

Happy Xmas, to those who observe it, and happy Holidays to all, and

in the New Decade, may all our intolerable errors be correctable by
perceptual control.

No. That's quite wrong. Any function of variables is a variable. The

function itself, operating on source variables (input in the case of
perceptual input functions) is where the operators do their job in
producing the output variable that is the controlled perception. To
the higher-level control loop, all that is irrelevant. All it
“knows” is that its output varies the perceptual variable it
controls. In HPCT (hierarchical PCT as described by Powers), high-level loops
are conceptually identical to low-level loops. The practical
realization of a single loop presumably gets more complicated at
higher levels as opposed to more peripheral levels. But nothing
changes in the conceptual structure. One scalar variable we call a
“perception” or “perceptual variable” is controlled by acting to
influence something that the value of the perceptual variable
depends on. Martin

···

On 2019/12/24 5:47 PM, PHILIP JERAIR
YERANOSIAN ( via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:

pyeranos@ucla.edu

    So you're saying that we control perceptions that

are functions of variables. And the resulting perceptions are
therefore functions or operators.

      On Tue, Dec 24, 2019 at 2:43

PM Richard Marken rsmarken@gmail.com wrote:

[[Rick Marken 2019-12-24_14:42:21]

Hi Philip

            On Tue, Dec 24, 2019 at

2:23 PM pyeranos@ucla.edu
<csgnet@lists.illinois.edu >
wrote:

            PY:

Where have I ever refused to use PCT terminology. One
time I suggested that we

            remove the words “a perception of� in the phrase

“controlling a perception of

            a variable� because it is undue pedagogy.

RM: That was a very good suggestion. Removing the words "a
perception of� from that phase “controlling a
perception of a variable�  is
not only removing undue pedagogy; it is making the
phrase correct. In fact, we don’t control
perceptions of variables; we control
perceptions that are functions of variables. And
the resulting perceptions are themselves variables. So
the correct way to say what is involved in control is:
control involves controlling a perceptual variable!.

BestÂ

Rick

            Â If you really want to help distinguish feedback control

from feedforward

            control, which seems to be one of the main points, if

not the only main point

            of PCT, I suggest fixing the corresponding demo on this

site.

            [http://www.pct-labs.com/tutorial1/index.html](http://www.pct-labs.com/tutorial1/index.html)

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

                                    "Perfection

is achieved not when you have
nothing more to add, but when
you
have
nothing left to take away.�
 Â
             Â
–Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[rsmarken]

[Rick Marken 2019-12-25_12:57:58]

[Martin Taylor 2019.12.25.14.10]

    PY: So you're saying that we control perceptions that

are functions of variables. And the resulting perceptions are
therefore functions or operators.Â

MT: No. That’s quite wrong.

RM: Yes, you are quite right. I said “yes” to this because I got so excited about the correctness of the first sentence that I failed to carefully read the second. As you note, that second sentence should have been "“And the resulting perceptions are therefore variables”. I would have given extra credit if Philip had also noted that there variables are, therefore, analogs of the aspects of the environment defined by the functions (perceptual functions) that produce those variables (perceptual variables).

Merry Xmas

BestÂ

Rick

Â

···

Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[bnhpct]

[From Bruce Nevin 2019125.18:03ET]

Bruce Nevin 2019125.12:29ET –

BN: Rick, what do you think about looking at Rokeach’s experiments through control-theory glasses for your methodology book?

Rick Marken 2019-12-25_11:21:31 –

RM: Thanks but I don’t think so. The book is going to be about doing research aimed at understanding the controlling done by living systems. It’s not about how to interpret existing research in terms of PCT. It’s about starting behavioral science research all over again based on an understanding of the fact that behavior is the control of perceptual input variables.

I’m not suggesting that you interpret Rokeach’s research. I’m suggesting that the phenomena that he was looking at are control phenomena at higher levels of the hierarchy where we are least clear how to proceed experimentally, and that if we look at those phenomena through control theory glasses we can design PCT experiments with systems concepts, and with the planning processes and sequences that are the means of controlling them.

Delays in solving a specified problem are disturbances to controlling a perception of a solution to the problem.

The problem is set in a fictional cosmology with its own simple properties, the system concept(s) for the problem.

1. Some delays are due to controlling one or more perceptions as though they are aspects of the problem cosmology when they are not.
2. Some delays are due to failure to recognize and control relevant perceptions that are within the problem cosmology.

Subjects talk about what they’re doing as they work on the problem.

Rokeach gave clues under certain conditions.

Some clues are helpful if the interfering CVs were part of the subject’s systems concepts (familiar cosmology) but not part of the fictional cosmology (unfamiliar systems concepts).

Some clues are helpful if the subject had followed a particular solution path to a point from which other potentially controllable perceptions within the puzzle cosmology were no longer evident. This is what I called being in a local minimum within a problem space. Getting out of it without the clue seems to be analogous to going up a level. The clue enables that.

I don’t suggest that people who are able easily to control perceptions within an alternate set of systems concepts are controlling from a level above systems concepts. The perception that there are alternative sets of systems concepts that are inconsistent with each other, or mutually incompatible, is itself a systems concept.

From subject variability as to (1) Rokeach suggests an open-mind/closed-mind parameter, at one extreme demanding that new concepts fit easily into authoritatively established knowledge, at the other extreme controlling an eclectic collection of systems concepts with no concern for mutual consistency. from subject variability as to (2) Rokeach suggests a flexibility/rigidity parameter, at one extreme easily going down a rabbit hole and losing sight of the problem domain, and at the other extreme working through problems with great mental agility–maybe going down a rabbit hole, but jumping back up and hopping back into a helicopter to look for another promising one. This diagnostic suits his interest in refining notions of dogmatism. It might be of practical use in recognizing different ways people get stuck grasping PCT and communicating more effectively.

···

/Bruce

[bnhpct]

[From Bruce Nevin 2019125.18:47ET]

I should have prefaced “Delays in solving a specified problem” with “For example,”. But the overriding questions are how do we do PCT research at the higher levels, and would it be useful to look at phenomena like this?

···

On Wed, Dec 25, 2019 at 6:04 PM Bruce Nevin bnhpct@gmail.com wrote:

[From Bruce Nevin 2019125.18:03ET]

Bruce Nevin 2019125.12:29ET –

BN: Rick, what do you think about looking at Rokeach’s experiments through control-theory glasses for your methodology book?

Rick Marken 2019-12-25_11:21:31 –

RM: Thanks but I don’t think so. The book is going to be about doing research aimed at understanding the controlling done by living systems. It’s not about how to interpret existing research in terms of PCT. It’s about starting behavioral science research all over again based on an understanding of the fact that behavior is the control of perceptual input variables.

I’m not suggesting that you interpret Rokeach’s research. I’m suggesting that the phenomena that he was looking at are control phenomena at higher levels of the hierarchy where we are least clear how to proceed experimentally, and that if we look at those phenomena through control theory glasses we can design PCT experiments with systems concepts, and with the planning processes and sequences that are the means of controlling them.

Delays in solving a specified problem are disturbances to controlling a perception of a solution to the problem.

The problem is set in a fictional cosmology with its own simple properties, the system concept(s) for the problem.

1. Some delays are due to controlling one or more perceptions as though they are aspects of the problem cosmology when they are not.
2. Some delays are due to failure to recognize and control relevant perceptions that are within the problem cosmology.

Subjects talk about what they’re doing as they work on the problem.

Rokeach gave clues under certain conditions.

Some clues are helpful if the interfering CVs were part of the subject’s systems concepts (familiar cosmology) but not part of the fictional cosmology (unfamiliar systems concepts).

Some clues are helpful if the subject had followed a particular solution path to a point from which other potentially controllable perceptions within the puzzle cosmology were no longer evident. This is what I called being in a local minimum within a problem space. Getting out of it without the clue seems to be analogous to going up a level. The clue enables that.

I don’t suggest that people who are able easily to control perceptions within an alternate set of systems concepts are controlling from a level above systems concepts. The perception that there are alternative sets of systems concepts that are inconsistent with each other, or mutually incompatible, is itself a systems concept.

From subject variability as to (1) Rokeach suggests an open-mind/closed-mind parameter, at one extreme demanding that new concepts fit easily into authoritatively established knowledge, at the other extreme controlling an eclectic collection of systems concepts with no concern for mutual consistency. from subject variability as to (2) Rokeach suggests a flexibility/rigidity parameter, at one extreme easily going down a rabbit hole and losing sight of the problem domain, and at the other extreme working through problems with great mental agility–maybe going down a rabbit hole, but jumping back up and hopping back into a helicopter to look for another promising one. This diagnostic suits his interest in refining notions of dogmatism. It might be of practical use in recognizing different ways people get stuck grasping PCT and communicating more effectively.

/Bruce

[_Boris_Hartman]

Philip, Bruce…

···

From: Bruce Nevin (bnhpct@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Sent: Monday, December 23, 2019 4:28 PM
To: Philip Yeranosian pyeranos@ucla.edu
Cc: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Re: Re: Stack exchange

[From Bruce Nevin 20191223.10:09ET]

Philip Yeranosian Dec 22, 2019, 7:22 AM –

PY:

by asking questions

instead of talking theory, we can express ourselves in a way that doesn’t

specifically involve PCT vocabulary.

BN : We can. But your questions that follow are couched in PCT terms. If we don’t use PCT concepts and terminology either explicitly or implicitly how is the question relevant to PCT?

HB : How many times did you use PCT concepts and terminology ? Before or after I warned you ? Check archives ?

BN : If we put a question to a lay audience, or a ‘vulgar’ audience as you say, without them having any prior understanding of negative-feedback control of perceptual inputs (so called not because of differential equations but because inhibitory p is ‘negative’ wrt excitatory r and synapsing them is represented mathematically as subtraction,

HB : How did you get to that conclusion ? Did you ask Henry Yin ?

BN : ….yielding e) aren’t they going to understand the quesstion within a conceptual framework that is familiar to them? What conceptual frameworks are likely to be familiar to them? Don’t all the extant ‘common-knowledge’ conceptual frameworks grounded in linear causation rather than circular causation? That is, don’t they presume that environmental stimuli cause behavior,

HB . This includes also you… I can prove it… an>😊 or you can check archives…

BN : ….with perhaps some complicated symbolic representations and information processing intervening between input and output?

HB : Well it seems that you are talking about yourself ? Go and search a little through archives what kind of “complicated symbolic representations and information processing” constructs you are able to create.

BN : If such readers down-vote your post, does it signify that you have a problem describing or asking questions about organisms and their behavior, or does it signify that their preconceptions make it difficult for them to understand?

HB : Well it’s a big question who has a problem ?

PY:

beginning with the interneurons in the

spine, how far up the neural axis can we identify comparator like structures?

In PCT terms, I’m thinking: is there any evidence of an error signal in the

cortical regions?

BN : I certainly don’t know the answers. Aren’t these questions for you to ask Henry, our only real neuroscientist? Or questions calling for a search of the neuroscience literature? Wouldn’t you then need some help interpreting the literature in PCT terms if it is couched in linear-causation terms? (In my experience, that is likely to be the case.) As Bill often said, this is a new field, with opportunities for original discoveries in every direction that you look. Go for it.

HB : After a long time good answer. You should always stay on your field.

PY:

do people always try to control as many variables as possible?

BN : This is a rather muddled question. I assume you mean “control as many variables at the same time”.

HB : And I assume that Phillip meant “try to control as many variables possible to control succesfully”.Â

BN : On one level, you seem to assume that people perceive how many variables they control and try to maximize that number.

HB : What kind of assumption is this ? Without head and tail.

BN : Is the number of variables that one controls a controlled variable?

HB : Well sticky answer could be yes if you meant the same “controlled variable” as I do.

BN : How would you test that?

HB : It’s not big problem.

BN : Or is this about the number of controlled variables that one can be aware of at the same time?

HB : I don’t think Philip was talking about this one. It seems that you created assumption for your personal phylosophical pleasure.

BN : That’s quite a different question.

HB : Right. It’s probably something that you want to talk about.

BN : What kind of control process is it to focus one’s awareness or to ‘multitask’ with it? On another level, one’s organism controls uncounted, indefinitely many variables without our awareness, and we can be aware of many but far from all of them. Are there any perceptions which are not controlled? A perceptual signal that does not synapse to a higher-level perceptual input function could not be controlled.

HB : How did you get to this conclusion ? What a nonsense if I understood right. Do you understand how anatomically nervous system looks like ? And physiology has to fit into anatomy.

BN : What would be the value to the organism of recognizing such a perception? Can you identify any? You cannot use your physical output functions to control the sun rising in the east, but if you are driving directly into the sunrise you control your perception of it by pulling down the sun visor.

HB : Good. I hope you understand why there is no “controlled perception” ?

BN : And as Bill pointed out if the rising sun were behind you on that familiar road your consternation (in that imagined scenario) is evidence that you control that perception. The evidence that a perception is controlled is outputs tending to restore the perception to a reference value.

HB : This is interesting. “RESTORING” perception to a reference value ? Where did you get this term ? Are we talking about PCT ? And you are the one who is telling Philip to keep terminology and concepts close to PCT. I think you are more far away from PCT than Philip. I can prove it if you want or it’s already here. But after the “book” is out you’ll get as many proofs you want. Are you sure it’s not “pushing perception toward references” as Rick is promoting in his RCT. I’m asking this because you were very close in promoting “Control of behavior” and so on. Terms " restoring", “pushung” does not represent right terms for what is happening when people are acting (behavior). You are simply not following what you are lecturing Philip. You are not using PCT terminology. But if you’ll start to use it I’d like to “here” who sugested you to do so.

HB : Boring. I think this kind of answer was chewed up for I don’t know how many times with more or less success.

PY:

Use the following rule of thumb: the

more you quote others, the less common sense it is. Try to speak from your own

experiences only, and don’t try to ask questions, just describe the experience

and end the conversation.

BN : This is what I offered and advocated in my “stalking perceptions in the wild” presentation in Manchester, and in the paper which I posted. I think more ethology and less ‘theorology’ would be a good thing.

HB : Well and you think that what you offered in Manchester was a good “presentation” ???

PY:

the more tolerant

you are of yourself, the less tolerant you are of others. And the less

tolerant you are of yourself the more tolerant you are of others.

BN : Do you mean if I believe I’m always right then I am more often going to perceive others as being wrong,

HB : Good self-description… You forget arrogantly perceiving others as being wwrong… like in this case with Philip. That’s at least how I perceivee it.

BN : ….and iff I regard my conclusions as provisional, always subject to question and re-evaluation, I am likely to regard others’ conclusions the same way?

HB : Well depends if you use insults or not. Maybe there could be also other complaints ? Nobody is perfect…

BN : Is the certainty that one’s opinions are correct a controlled variable? What does your observation of your on-the-fly experience tell you?

/Bruce

On Sun, Dec 22, 2019 at 7:22 AM pyeranos@ucla.edu csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

There’s nothing wrong with using the word feedback to refer to up/downvotes in
stack exchange. Everybody will know that feedback in PCT is refers to the
feedback in differential equations.
We could discuss on discourse, but it’s helpful to see how your posts are
received by a “vulgar� crowd. If you want to first develop the posts on
discourse, that’s fine. The thing we should do as a group here or on discourse
is come up with a question we all agree that we want answers to. We should do
this rather than explain PCT from the ground up. By asking questions, it will
help unify the group because we may all have different interpretations of the
theory, but we all share the same questions. Furthermore, by asking questions
instead of talking theory, we can express ourselves in a way that doesn’t
specifically involve PCT vocabulary. Thus, we can not only include others in
our conversations but we can immerse ourselves in other conversations too.
Like here’s a question for example: beginning with the interneurons in the
spine, how far up the neural axis can we identify comparator like structures?
In PCT terms, I’m thinking: is there any evidence of an error signal in the
cortical regions? Another question is: do people always try to control as many
variables as possible? I would like to see more questions and less answers.
And if you don’t want to ask questions and just truly want to rant and open
an interesting topic and let out what’s on your mind, please be original. The
way to do that is to talk common sense. Use the following rule of thumb: the
more you quote others, the less common sense it is. Try to speak from your own
experiences only, and don’t try to ask questions, just describe the experience
and end the conversation.
By the way, I noticed something interesting. I noticed that the more tolerant
you are of yourself, the less tolerant you are of others. And the less
tolerant you are of yourself the more tolerant you are of others. and because
I’ve just exhausted everything I have useful to say, I going to have some fun
and ruin this post by going off topic. I’m going to speak about people
directly here, which is rude, but please don’t be offended because this might
be genuinely interesting . And if I don’t mention your name, it’s not because
I dont like you, it’s just that you’re not easily caricaturized. Rick seems to
be very tolerant of others (he can summarize bills writings freely because of
this, and has in fact produced voluminously), me and Boris are very tolerant
of ourselves (although producing writing which is of the carefree nature of
rick’s writing is not necessarily what we do, we are nevertheless good at
producing constructive criticism as well as destructive criticism) , and
Martin is in between (he is working on a book, but he refuses to insist on his
role as an authority, and he often provides solid responses to topics, but
does not offer advice to his readers). It seems to me that being on one or the
other end of the spectrum and also being in the middle is a norm. While being
in the two middle thirds is an extreme.

[_Boris_Hartman]

Philip, Bruce…

···

From: Bruce Nevin (bnhpct@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Sent: Tuesday, December 24, 2019 1:16 PM
To: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Re: Stack exchange

[From Bruce Nevin 2019122̃.06:45ET]

Philip Yeranosian Dec 23, 2019, 1:19 PM –

PY:

I meant to say it like this: the more tolerant you are of others the less tolerant you are of yourself. So roughly, when you appreciate others you often belittle yourself privately.

BN : What is the relationship between this and my attempted paraphrase? What perceptual variables would you guess are being controlled in “belittling” and “tolerating”? (As you understand these words.) Are there alternatives to belittling vs. tolerance? What different perceptual variables might be controlled in those alternatives? For each of these hypothetical perceptual variables, how would you test whether the person doing the “belittling” or “tolerating” or an alternative is in fact perceiving that variable and controlling it?

HB : You can’t. That’s why I kept telling for years that you can’t control other people all the time (Rick and his RCT), because you don’t know what kind effects you are producing in other people (how they control perception). It’s just guess. Whatever terms “belitting and tolerance” mean for both of you it’s always some error in respect to your references and the way you compensate error in respect to other people, where effects of behavior can be perceived.

BN : Is your response here a good example of the sort of response we would see on stackexchange? I asked you a number of questions, trying to follow the mode of discourse you prescribed. Here I have asked several more questions. You have responded to none. Your recommendations do not seem to be working.

HB : Your questions were obviously directed to wrong person .

BN : I begin to doubt your good faith engagement with the purposes of this forum.

HB : Well I doubt your good faith for benefits of this forum since you started to insult me. But whatever you are talking about remind me of Ricks’ methods for disqualifying and “pushing” unwanted persons out. In the matter of fact it’s not problematic person that is to be eliminated but unwanted perception of eliminator.Â

BN : It is dedicated to development and practice of a particular field of science in its theoretical and applied aspects.

HB : Are you talking about CSGnet forum and whatever other forums exits for talking about PCT ? Dedicated to development ? Dedicated to practice ? How what you are talking about is connected to progress of PCT and when did you or Rick aplied theoretical and aspect PCT view ? You simply perfectly fit into definition of not being dedicated to devlopment of PCT but you are dedicated to RCT and BNCT. It’s logical. You are LCS. And think a little what real LCS do. The same goes for Rick.Â

BN : If you were to post to physics.stackexchange.com rejecting and refusing to use the terminology and concepts of physics, how long would your posts endure? Likewise, you must use the terminology and concepts of Perceptual Control Theory in order to engage with the purposes of this forum,

HB : This must be the joke of century. Using the terminology and concepts of PCT ??? You and Rick persistantly used non PCT terminology and concepts… Maybe now after so mnayy years and after I warned you so many times that you are misleading CSGnet forum with your private phylosophy and terminology you started to talk about PCT terminology and concepts . Archives are ruthless judges of truth…

BN : …though on CSGnet we evidently have been more tolerannt than stackexchange would be,

HB : Again. You’ll have to go through archives to see how tolerant Rick was in the past. And how tolerant were you and Barb and Alison toward those who were “attacking” Rick and “Control of behavior”, and “pushing” perceptions toward references and other nonsense and so on. Shall we go through archives ???

Boris

/Bruce

On Mon, Dec 23, 2019 at 1:19 PM Philip Yeranosian pyeranos@g.ucla.edu wrote:

I meant to say it like this: the more tolerant you are of others the less tolerant you are of yourself. So roughly, when you appreciate others you often belittle yourself privately.

On Dec 23, 2019, at 7:28 AM, Bruce Nevin bnhpct@gmail.com wrote:

[From Bruce Nevin 20191223.10:09ET]

Philip Yeranosian Dec 22, 2019, 7:22 AM –

PY:

by asking questions

instead of talking theory, we can express ourselves in a way that doesn’t

specifically involve PCT vocabulary.

We can. But your questions that follow are couched in PCT terms. If we don’t use PCT concepts and terminology either explicitly or implicitly how is the question relevant to PCT? If we put a question to a lay audience, or a ‘vulgar’ audience as you say, without them having any prior understanding of negative-feedback control of perceptual inputs (so called not because of differential equations but because inhibitory p is ‘negative’ wrt excitatory r and synapsing them is represented mathematically as subtraction, yielding e) aren’t they going to understand the question within a conceptual framework that is familiar to them? What conceptual frameworks are likely to be familiar to them? Don’t all the extant ‘common-knowledge’ conceptual frameworks grounded in linear causation rather than circular causation? That is, don’t they presume that environmental stimuli cause behavior, with perhaps some complicated symbolic representations and information processing intervening between input and output? If such readers down-vote your post, does it signify that you have a problem describing or asking questions about organisms and their behavior, or does it signify that their preconceptions make it difficult for them to understand?

PY:

beginning with the interneurons in the

spine, how far up the neural axis can we identify comparator like structures?

In PCT terms, I’m thinking: is there any evidence of an error signal in the

cortical regions?

I certainly don’t know the answers. Aren’t these questions for you to ask Henry, our only real neuroscientist? Or questions calling for a search of the neuroscience literature? Wouldn’t you then need some help interpreting the literature in PCT terms if it is couched in linear-causation terms? (In my experience, that is likely to be the case.) As Bill often said, this is a new field, with opportunities for original discoveries in every direction that you look. Go for it.

PY:

do people always try to control as many variables as possible?

This is a rather muddled question. I assume you mean “control as many variables at the same time”. On one level, you seem to assume that people perceive how many variables they control and try to maximize that number. Is the number of variables that one controls a controlled variable? How would you test that? Or is this about the number of controlled variables that one can be aware of at the same time? That’s quite a different question. What kind of control process is it to focus one’s awareness or to ‘multitask’ with it? On another level, one’s organism controls uncounted, indefinitely many variables without our awareness, and we can be aware of many but far from all of them. Are there any perceptions which are not controlled? A perceptual signal that does not synapse to a higher-level perceptual input function could not be controlled. What would be the value to the organism of recognizing such a perception? Can you identify any? You cannot use your physical output functions to control the sun rising in the east, but if you are driving directly into the sunrise you control your perception of it by pulling down the sun visor. And as Bill pointed out if the rising sun were behind you on that familiar road your consternation (in that imagined scenario) is evidence that you control that perception. The evidence that a perception is controlled is outputs tending to restore the perception to a reference value.

PY:

Use the following rule of thumb: the

more you quote others, the less common sense it is. Try to speak from your own

experiences only, and don’t try to ask questions, just describe the experience

and end the conversation.

This is what I offered and advocated in my “stalking perceptions in the wild” presentation in Manchester, and in the paper which I posted. I think more ethology and less ‘theorology’ would be a good thing.

PY:

the more tolerant

you are of yourself, the less tolerant you are of others. And the less

tolerant you are of yourself the more tolerant you are of others.

Do you mean if I believe I’m always right then I am more often going to perceive others as being wrong, and if I regard my conclusions as provisional, always subject to question and re-evaluation, I am likely to regard others’ conclusions the same way? Is the certainty that one’s opinions are correct a controlled variable? What does your observation of your on-the-fly experience tell you?

/Bruce

On Sun, Dec 22, 2019 at 7:22 AM pyeranos@ucla.edu csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

There’s nothing wrong with using the word feedback to refer to up/downvotes in
stack exchange. Everybody will know that feedback in PCT is refers to the
feedback in differential equations.
We could discuss on discourse, but it’s helpful to see how your posts are
received by a “vulgar� crowd. If you want to first develop the posts on
discourse, that’s fine. The thing we should do as a group here or on discourse
is come up with a question we all agree that we want answers to. We should do
this rather than explain PCT from the ground up. By asking questions, it will
help unify the group because we may all have different interpretations of the
theory, but we all share the same questions. Furthermore, by asking questions
instead of talking theory, we can express ourselves in a way that doesn’t
specifically involve PCT vocabulary. Thus, we can not only include others in
our conversations but we can immerse ourselves in other conversations too.
Like here’s a question for example: beginning with the interneurons in the
spine, how far up the neural axis can we identify comparator like structures?
In PCT terms, I’m thinking: is there any evidence of an error signal in the
cortical regions? Another question is: do people always try to control as many
variables as possible? I would like to see more questions and less answers.
And if you don’t want to ask questions and just truly want to rant and open
an interesting topic and let out what’s on your mind, please be original. The
way to do that is to talk common sense. Use the following rule of thumb: the
more you quote others, the less common sense it is. Try to speak from your own
experiences only, and don’t try to ask questions, just describe the experience
and end the conversation.
By the way, I noticed something interesting. I noticed that the more tolerant
you are of yourself, the less tolerant you are of others. And the less
tolerant you are of yourself the more tolerant you are of others. and because
I’ve just exhausted everything I have useful to say, I going to have some fun
and ruin this post by going off topic. I’m going to speak about people
directly here, which is rude, but please don’t be offended because this might
be genuinely interesting . And if I don’t mention your name, it’s not because
I dont like you, it’s just that you’re not easily caricaturized. Rick seems to
be very tolerant of others (he can summarize bills writings freely because of
this, and has in fact produced voluminously), me and Boris are very tolerant
of ourselves (although producing writing which is of the carefree nature of
rick’s writing is not necessarily what we do, we are nevertheless good at
producing constructive criticism as well as destructive criticism) , and
Martin is in between (he is working on a book, but he refuses to insist on his
role as an authority, and he often provides solid responses to topics, but
does not offer advice to his readers). It seems to me that being on one or the
other end of the spectrum and also being in the middle is a norm. While being
in the two middle thirds is an extreme.