[From Kent McClelland (2016.08.21.1700)]
Followers of CSGnet over the last couple of months have seen several threads emerge relating to the power law and Rick Marken’s analysis of empirical results that the velocities of a variety of organisms tracing curved paths have been found to follow the power law, which, if I understand what he is saying, he sees as a new kind of behavioral illusion.
Silent followers of these threads on CSGnet have had, no doubt, quite a number of different perceptions about them. My own feeling has been a hope that this controversy would soon be over and that messages about the power law would stop filling my inbox (just as I’ve been longing for a quick end to the American presidential election campaign). Nevertheless, these threads have held some interest for me in one respect. From my perspective as someone who has sought to apply PCT to understanding social conflicts, this online dispute seems to be an excellent example of what in international relations is called an “intractable�? conflict.
Many ethnic and religious conflicts, for example, are so entrenched, over so many generations, that there seems to be no possibility that they will ever be resolved. While I hope the power law controversy is not going to last for generations, at the moment it seems firmly entrenched and shows no sign of abating.
By my rough count, the threads connected with the power law dispute have included well over 200 posts. Something like half of these posts have been from Rick Marken, and the content of almost all of his posts has been his repeated assertion that his spreadsheet model for explaining the power law findings is correct in every particular and always has been. The other half of the posts have come from a variety of contributors, initially Alex Gomez-Marin, but recently Bruce Abbott, Martin Taylor, and a few others, and the content of most of their posts has been to call into question the logic and mathematics underlying Rick’s claims.
This dispute has followed the classic pattern of a social conflict that escalates until it reaches a kind of stalemate, where neither side is willing to budge, so that the conflict drags on and on without any resolution or lowering of the intensity. Following that classic pattern, each escalation of effort on one side of the power-law dispute has been met by an equal and opposite reaction from the other side. The initial exchange between Alex and Rick eventually escalated into a testy exchange of emails about bullshit, and Alex then exited from the dispute, apparently in disgust. Martin and Bruce carried the controversy on, and when Bruce escalated the intensity by invoking the Gulliver’s Travels motif, Rick answered post for post. Martin’s detailed expositions of the mathematical flaws in Rick’s reasoning have similarly been answered by dueling equations from Rick.
As I have been thinking about how PCT can be applied to social conflicts like this one, my conclusion has been that the way to resolve interpersonal disputes is in much the same way that, according to Method-of-Levels therapists like Tim Carey and Warren Mansell, intrapersonal conflicts can be resolved: by “going up a level.�? To resolve a social conflict, the disputants need to agree on some higher-level perceptions that they can collectively control, and which will then remove the need for them pursue their control of the lower-level perceptions that have been the source of conflict (because of the incompatible reference values that the disputants have had for controlling them).
Violent hostilities in the international arena, for example, sometimes come to an end when both sides agree that they have suffered enough, and the higher-level perception that they then can collectively control takes the form of a peace treaty in which both sides make some concessions, although the losers of the conflict typically have to make far more concessions than the winners.
In the power-law dispute, the nub of the controversy has been the perception of whether Rick’s claims are right or wrong. But might there be there any higher-level perceptions that the disputants could agree upon, which would then resolve the issue?
On the one side, Alex, Bruce, and Martin have gone up a level by appealing to a set of principles that belong to the system concept of “normal�? science. If mathematics is the language of science, to be scientific a researcher must be able to offer mathematical formulations that are transparent to other scientists and logically sound. By this principle, flaws in mathematical reasoning, when pointed out, must be immediately fixed.
On the other side of the dispute, Rick has apparently been unmoved by this appeal to the principles of normal science. His repeated response to the allegations of mathematical and logical flaws in his position has not been to fix the errors, or even to try to explain why they are not in fact errors, but to sidestep these questions entirely and call on his opponents to come up with PCT model in answer to his. The higher-level perceptions that Rick is controlling clearly do not include the normal-science injunction that one’s math and logic must be demonstrably free from errors.
What then might be the higher-level perceptions that Rick is controlling, perceptions that would make it impossible for him to admit any errors in his own position? I cannot say for certain, of course, but I think I got a clue from his presentation at 2014 CSG meeting in Evanston, Illinois, in honor of the creation of the Bill Powers archive at the Northwestern University library. On that occasion, the message I took home from his presentation was that he was tired of trying to spread the word about PCT to other scientists, and that he was giving it up as a bad deal and instead intended to concentrate henceforth on doing his own brand of PCT-informed scientific research, whether anybody else likes it or not.
My hypothesis, then, is that Rick’s self image (a high-level perception indeed!) is that he sees himself as a lone scientist, uniquely in possession of the truth of PCT, as well as of the knowledge of the one right way to do PCT research, and perpetually embattled against the forces of scientific error besetting him on all sides, even within the friendly confines of CSGnet.
What are the chances that I am right about this hypothesis? As Rick himself has often told us, the point of psychological research with PCT is to figure out the perceptions that the subject is controlling. I haven’t actually done the Test of the Controlled Variable to determine what perception Rick is controlling, since I myself haven’t introduced any disturbances to this hypothesized perception (until now, at least) to see whether he counters them or not, but it seems to me that the power-law threads can be taken together as a very thorough TCV for the high-level perception Rick is controlling. Rick has vigorously rejected every post from an opponent that might be construed as a disturbance to the hypothesized perception that he alone is the one true scientist involved in the dispute.
If I am right in my hypothesis about the perception Rick is controlling, I expect that my own post will be immediately met by a vigorous rebuttal from him explaining in detail why my analysis is incorrect and perhaps even going so far as to reject my pretentions to being a scholar of PCT. if so, I don’t intend to respond to a message like that, because it’s obvious that getting embroiled in an online controversy with Rick is a losing battle. If, however, he doesn’t come back with a strong rebuttal, I may have to admit the possibility that I'm wrong and reconsider my hypothesis about the perception he’s controlling.
As to the scientific credentials of the various disputants, CSGnet regulars must already be aware of the many outstanding contributions Rick has made to the science of PCT through the years, and the solid reputations of Bruce and Martin are also well known on CSGnet. However, I would invite anyone less familiar with Alex’s scientific work to take a look at these two websites:
https://agomezmarin.com/
https://behavior-of-organisms.org/
In my estimation, this young Portuguese scientist has already amassed an amazing publication record in several related scientific fields. He seems like exactly the kind of person who might be capable of carrying serious research in PCT forward for the next generation. Most of the current contributors to CSGnet are getting up in years, and I personally welcome the appearance on the scene of a promising young scientist like Alex. I would be sorry if the debacle of the power-law dispute had soured him on using PCT in his research.
My best to all,
Kent