# The Test for the Controlled Variable

**URL:** <http://discourse.iapct.org/t/the-test-for-the-controlled-variable/134>\
**Category:** Methodology\
**Created:** [November 1, 2019, 7:53pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/the-test-for-the-controlled-variable/134 "2019-11-01T19:53:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 12

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**Author:** ![bnhpct](http://discourse.iapct.org/user_avatar/discourse.iapct.org/bnhpct/32/34_2.png) [@bnhpct](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/bnhpct)\
**Post date:** [December 15, 2020, 7:36pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/the-test-for-the-controlled-variable/134/12 "2020-12-15T19:36:27Z")

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> [@rsmarken](#):
>
> > BN: Somewhere in the csgnet archive Bill wrote that yes indeed we control the sun rising over the eastern horizon, as witness our consternation should it rise anywhere else.
> 
> RM: Consternation is not really evidence of control. In order to control, the system doing the controlling must be able to have an effect on the controlled variable. We can have no effect on our perception of the sun’s movement relative to the horizon. Evidence of control is always the observation that a variable is maintained in a fixed or variable reference state, protected from disturbance by the actions of the system.

This nicely dices the question

```
 O where is that which is controlled 
 Or in the head or in the world? 

```

We control a _perception_ of the sun rising in the east by orienting organs of perception so as to receive inputs from which our brains can construct that perception. If the light of the sun is too bright for comfort, we don’t somehow turn down the rate of fusion in the sun, we shade our eyes.

A cat is intently staring at a mousehole. There is no mouse there. What sounds like gnawing behind the baseboard is actually an old toilet-paper roll stirred back and forth by air from a leaky heating duct. The cat obviously cannot capture a mouse that is not there. Nonetheless, the cat watching the mousehole is controlling a perception of capturing a mouse, irrespective of whether a mouse is there to be captured. The capture is the culmination of sequences of controlled perceptions–whether the sequence of sequences constitutes a program is immaterial here. The reference value for that culmination is the motivation for the first step of it, the intent watch over the mousehole. The visual image of a mouse would provide a reference value for the next step, reducing the distance between paws and mouse.

> [@rsmarken](#):
>
> > you expect that _d_ should disturb _X_ if it [_X_] is not controlled, just as you expect the sun to rise in the east.
> 
> RM: That is correct. But in neither case is control involved in the expectation.
> 
> > BN: Each of these expectations is control of some perceptual variable or variables
> 
> RM: Not true. In the test I do expect d to affect X if X is not under control but I am not controlling for d not affecting X. With the sunrise, I do expect the sun to rise in the East but I am not controlling for that to happen. I agree that expectations can become references for actual controlling but that’s not always possible (as in the case of the expectation of the sunrise in the east) or a good idea (as in the case of the expectation that d will affect X)

This has come up before, for example in [this 1998 exchange with Fred](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/trying-again/11788):

> [@Trying Again...](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/trying-again/11788/2):
>
> [From Bill Powers (980426.1105 MDT)]
> 
> Fred Nickols (9804236)
> 
> > I guess I was so taken aback by the equating of “expectation” and “reference  
> > level” that I posed my question too hastily. (I was taken aback because to  
> > date I’ve understood that expectations do not equal reference levels.)
> 
> How would you define an expectation in the HPCT framework? Or under any  
> other model?

And in 2017 in [our exchange](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/powers-1973-new-results/324/6) about some of Vancouver’s work:

> [@"powers 1973" - new results](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/powers-1973-new-results/324/6):
>
> > BN: (3) I remember Bill’s assertion that we control the sunrise, as would be evidenced by our behavior should it fail to occur. I’m not advocating slavish conformity to Bill’s passing comments, just suggesting that the distinction between recognition and control may not always be obvious.
> 
> RM: I think I know what Bill was talking about when he said that we are controlling for the sunrise. He was saying that we are implicitly controlling for the sun coming up but you wouldn’t know that was the case until the sun didn’t come up. What this has to do with Jeff’s model is not clear to me at all.

I agree with what you said in 2017, in which you agreed with Bill. I would throw away the verbal fog word “for”. To paraphrase Yoda, there is no “control for”, there is only control. (Tom Bourbon and I had a brief conversation about this unfortunate locution at the meeting in Vancouver.) And the word “implicit” only means that the observer is inferring control as an “implication” of other observations, something which is true even when control has been strongly confirmed by the Test, so throw that bit of verbal fluff away too. From the cat’s point of view, its control of the perception of a mouse is not implicit.

Your present assertion is that there can there be no control if the loop has perceptual input, inhibitory _p_ synapsed with excitatory _r_ yielding error signal _e_, and diverse means of behavioral output, but no effective environmental feedback path by which those outputs change _p_.

But we cannot say there is no control, only that control fails–in this case, due to outputs not addressing any effective environmental feedback path. Faced with less cosmic derangements, the usual response often starts with reorganizing in the perceived environment. Go get the needed tool, say. Faced with the appearance of the sunrise in the northwest, an obdurate emperor could have his servants arrange mirrors so that the current manifestation of sunrise appears to him through an east-facing window frame. But if the earth were actually to shift on its axis, failure to regain control by problem-solving strategies arranging an effective environmental feedback function would lead next to internal reorganization. This might result in establishing a new reference value for the location of sunrise (there are less sane possibilities). But if the location of sunrise is not controlled such reorganization will not occur. No control, no error. No error, no reorganization.

Bill’s examples are of sequences: the occurrence of perception A sets a reference for perceiving B. In 1968 I set a reference value of getting a PhD in Linguistics from Penn by means of writing a dissertation describing a language very different from English. I started work on the genocidally extinguished Yana language. In 1970, after giving a paper on this in La Jolla I was invited to work on a related language that was still spoken, and started work with the Achumawi language. In 1975 economic and (academic) political limitations presented overwhelming disturbances for a decade. In 1986 I resumed (while raising a family with unrelated work). In 1998 I turned in a partial description and received the PhD. I am still working on the description of the language. During that 52-year period control outputs were often not evident and elements needful for environmental feedback often were not available, but control has never ceased. It has involved the trial-and-error creation of many sequence perceptions, most of them adapted, diverted, or merged into another sequence after being only partially executed, many interrupted and taken up again, some abandoned.

> [@Trying Again...](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/trying-again/11788/2):
>
> When we’re talking about things like sunrise, we never do have to develop  
> an output function for this control system, because the sun always comes up  
> by itself, and there’s no effort we can make that will bring it up sooner  
> or keep it from coming up. We set the reference signal for sunrise when the  
> sky gets to a certain degree of lightness, and pretty soon the error goes  
> to zero.
> 
> I don’t know if that’s really true; it’s just my way of trying to explain  
> the expectancy we feel when sunrise is about to happen.
> 
> This does explain, however, why we often _do_ take action when something  
> that is expected to happen doesn’t happen.

It also explains how we can conclude that a variable _V_ (which we perceive) is controlled by the subject. Having first verified that the subject can and does perceive _V_, we perceive that concurrent environmental influences _d_ should ‘adjust’ the state of _V_ but are opposed by the subject so as to maintain _V_ at what we can conclude is its reference value. It is perfectly possible to control a perception with low gain in one loop and at the same time observe it with no control output in another loop. In the Test, we control a perception of the expected state of _V_ under influence of _d_ with the reference value provided from memory in the canonical way (“this is the way physics works”, or whatever). Concurrently, we observe a perception of the actual state of _V_ under the combined influence of _d_ and the subject’s observed outputs _q.o_. If we are ‘objective’ we are careful not to control this perception of the actual state of _V_, simply observe. A higher-level system compares the expected state (which we are controlling by means of _d_) with the observed state (which we are careful only to observe).

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_[View the full topic](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/the-test-for-the-controlled-variable/134)._