# The cult / bubble/ religion thing

**URL:** <http://discourse.iapct.org/t/the-cult-bubble-religion-thing/16263>\
**Category:** Learning PCT\
**Created:** [September 6, 2026, 5:22am UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/the-cult-bubble-religion-thing/16263 "2026-09-06T05:22:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![JohnGraham](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/76d3ee/32.png) [@JohnGraham](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/JohnGraham)\
**Post date:** [September 6, 2026, 5:22am UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/the-cult-bubble-religion-thing/16263/1 "2026-09-06T05:22:25Z")

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Continuing the discussion from [Your brain may not actually make decisions](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/your-brain-may-not-actually-make-decisions/16260/6):

> [@Your brain may not actually make decisions](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/your-brain-may-not-actually-make-decisions/16260/6):
>
> I think the reason PCT might seem like a cult or a bubble is because it’s about a phenomenon that most behavioral scientists don’t recognize or fully understand:

Hi Rick, this might seem like semantic quibbling, but bear with me as I think through why your post didn’t quite “land” with me.

I wonder if you can see that your way of phrasing things _could_ be read as implying:  
your guess is that  
PCT being “about a phenomenon most behavioural scientists don’t recognize or fully understand” _ **is the cause of** _  
my expressing that I like something that reassures me on the cult/bubble front. (via some kind of “PCT seems like a cult” phenomenon.)

[I know you didn’t mention my expressing that, but presumably that was the bit of my post you were responding to]

If that were the guess then it doesn’t seem consistent with PCT!

Similarly:

> [@Your brain may not actually make decisions](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/your-brain-may-not-actually-make-decisions/16260/6):
>
> PCT …implies… that a large segment of conventionally done behavioral science research has to be “deposited in the wastebasket”. Obviously, that doesn’t go over well with behavioral scientists of any persuasion.

Maybe it’s obvious, but perhaps I may be so annoying as to try and render it non-obvious, as PCT’s implications and Bill’s statements don’t have a causal effect here. All I know for certain about people that have somehow been labelled “behavioural scientist” is that they are living perceptual control systems, each with a quite idiosyncratic perceptual hierarchy. We probably can’t get far without having some at least initial guesses beyond that…but if we’re going to guess rather than ask or investigate, the guess should be about what kinds of things they tend to control for. Shouldn’t it?

On this topic, I liked Mary Powers’ intervention “Is PCT a religion?” [Living Control Systems Publishing](http://livingcontrolsystems.com/intro_papers/mary_pct.html)

…and now I check I see you named there Rick! 😃

To the extent that it’s worth while to make generalised guesses about ‘behavioural scientists’, if something is happening relevant to this “seems like a cult” thing then my guess would be that they too might have systems concepts engaged in their work. So we and behavioral scientists probably have that in common!

> [@Your brain may not actually make decisions](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/your-brain-may-not-actually-make-decisions/16260/6):
>
> One of the things I liked most about PCT is that everything Powers said about it was based on clear and relevant demonstrations of behavioral phenomena

I like that about PCT too. I’m reading Robertson and Powers’ Intro to Modern Psychology, and so coming back to the rubber band experiment for the umpteenth time…this time getting ready to set up a spreadsheet to get to grips with the calculations around the loop. [Don’t worry, I intend to get to your Mind Readings spreadsheet before too long too].  
I liked a phrase I read there, “familiarity and self-persuasion”:

> With a little practice, you could become so adept at interpreting sensory phenomena as consequences of action that this would begin to seem the only reasonable view. But if mere familiarity and self-persuasion were the only reasons you had for looking at behavior in this way, you would be no better off than those who hold the other view for similar reasons. - (Robertson and Powers)

One thing I find reassuring is when PCT authors shows signs of being aware that they too might be being lulled by “familiarity and self-persuasion”.

A good example of this is in Carey, Tai and Griffiths’ _Deconstructing Health Inequity: A Perceptual Control Theory Perspective,_ where along with a lot of paradigm-busting talk they say:  
“We continued to entertain the idea that we were misunderstanding the literature and unintentionally building straw men that we could knock down”.

I guess I’m trying to reconcile two things I find in PCT: a certainty, but usually a kind of openness and curiosity as well - recognising that we absolutely know one thing about people i.e. that they control, while appreciating that given the idiosyncracies of 8 billion people’s hierarchies, there are approximately 8 billion gajillion things we _don’t_ know about people.

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**Author:** ![wmansell](http://discourse.iapct.org/user_avatar/discourse.iapct.org/wmansell/32/36_2.png) [@wmansell](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/wmansell)\
**Post date:** [September 7, 2026, 12:34am UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/the-cult-bubble-religion-thing/16263/2 "2026-09-07T00:34:28Z")

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Insightful response!

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**Author:** ![rsmarken](http://discourse.iapct.org/user_avatar/discourse.iapct.org/rsmarken/32/3553_2.png) [@rsmarken](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/rsmarken)\
**Post date:** [September 7, 2026, 1:47pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/the-cult-bubble-religion-thing/16263/3 "2026-09-07T13:47:50Z")

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Yes, it could be read as a causal statement. But as you probably surmised, there was an implicit guess about what you were controlling for in order to be sure that you weren’t in a cult. So you statement that:

> [@](#):
>
> We probably can’t get far without having some at least initial guesses beyond that…but if we’re going to guess rather than ask or investigate, the guess should be about what kinds of things they tend to control for. Shouldn’t it?

Is absolutely correct. We have to start the process of determining the variables organisms control by guessing, based on some previous behavior observations, what they might be controlling. So my guess about you was that you were controlling for not being Associated with a group that was rejected by the mainstream. I was also proposing a controlled variable that conventional behavioral scientists are controlling for that keeps them away from PCT: they are controlling for causal explanations of behavior. This one was tougher to notice since all I said is conventional researchers have ignored or not noticed controlled variables. Controlling for causal explanations is I believe, the reason for this. And I’m pretty confident that this is indeed the variable they control because I’ve been testing for it for over 40 years 😉

I just wish more people would take your advice and start testing for the variables organisms control.