[From Bill Powers (940510.1400 MDT)]
Hans Blom (940510) --
If you were an expert already, you would not make mistakes. But
neither would you learn. Experts have learned already. They
have made their "mistakes" already.
Sounds like something written by an expert.
Yes, that is what I meant to say.
Wouldn't it have been better to say it, then?
But there are situations where a"current difference" is not
available, as when you are lost in the woods and don't know
where you are.
I think you're externalizing "error." Or are you saying that when
you perceive yourself to be lost in the woods and don't know where
you are, you don't wish to know where you are?
The newspapers just reported about two boys who escaped from an
institution and hid in a cave. When their dead bodies were
finally found, it turned out that the cave was only some 200 by
600 feet in size.
Sorry, I don't get the point. Would they have been alive if the cave
had been 2000 by 6000 feet in size? Are you saying they didn't
perceive themselves to be in a cave and wish to be out of it?
Control theories that explicitly model an error term consider
_any_ action to be something of a gamble, because _some_
information is always lacking.
Nothing to prevent adding an error term to any PCT model, if it
improves the match of the model to real behavior. The catch is that
the "error term" may not be random in the real behavior: it might
reflect a systematic aspect of the control process (perhaps at
higher levels) which the current model leaves out. I prefer to leave
the "random" hypothesis out until as much of behavior as possible is
covered by a systematic model.
As to your remark that humans tend to be optimists: I think
that this is due to a deep-seated recognition that learning
takes place, and that things that we cannot do today can be
done tomorrow. But then, this feeling can be exploited as
well...
I didn't say they were optimists, I said they were poor at
estimating actual probabilities. An error on the high side is still
an error.
<The results of this creative process of dreaming, phantasizing,
imagination seem to be rather haphazard.
Yes, in fact I believe it is random. Insights that are impracticable
or impossible of realization are weeded out when the attempt is
made, in reality or imagination, to use them. That's the
experimental method.
I see one bird, and it can fly. The same with a second, a
third, a twentieth. Can I now conclude that _all_ birds can
fly? The same with a hundredth, a tenthousandth, a millionth.
Can I now? When can I?
"All" birds is a logic-level concept. Arriving at an abstract
conclusion concerning "all" of anything is a logician's hobby, not a
real problem. After you have tried walking up and grabbing your 20th
bird, and it has flown away, you will decide to perceive bird-like
objects as capable of flight, and start sneaking up on them, even if
some of them can't fly.
Laboratory tests give us the opportunity to make the model
handle difficult cases and apparent exceptions, if it can.
That does not help. I gave the example of relativity theory
versus quantum theory.
Help what? It helps to find out if a model fails when confronted
with real phenomena, doesn't it? Are you recommending that we NOT
test models just because sometimes the experimental results don't
let us decide between alternatives? In fact, the only problem
between quantum theory and relativity theory (perhaps you meant
"continuous wave" theory) is that they seem to apply in different
experimental situations. So neither theory is complete.
The lab proves both accurate to full experimental precision.
They were let loose into the world. Yet they are in conflict,
i.e. they cannot both be true; most likely neither is.
Most likely. But they do not conflict. Quantum theory does not
predict that the the velocity of light DOES depend on the choice of
inertial frame. Relativity theory does not predict that radiation
does NOT occur only in quantized energy levels. The two theories are
concerned with different kinds of observations of nature, which so
far seem unconnected to each other. That is not a conflict.
The deep discrepancy between "truth" and "useful tool" remains.
I'm not concerned with "truth." Only with useful tools. But some
tools are A LOT more useful than others.
If you have no such encompassing theory, then you might as
well flip a coin. Not knowing in advance which theory to use,
you remain completely unable to make a prediction.
The solution is called "expertise". I remember my math classes,
where I learned the tricks of differentiation thirty years ago.
There was, much to my surprise, no "theory" that described how,
given a certain formula, to derive its differential. There was
just a bag of tricks, each one applicable under certain
conditions.
I fail to see any connection between my statement and your
statement. Are you saying that you "just know" which theory to
apply, when you have a choice of theories that will predict anything
you like?
You have undoubtedly seen the average housewife (excuse my
political incorrectness) operate a too big screwdriver on a too
small screw. You, as an expert on screwdriving, immediately,
without thinking, pick the right screwdriver.
That's not being politically incorrect, it's being an average
European chauvinist pig. I think your faith in your intuitive expert
rightness could probably be analyzed into something rather simple,
like comparing the sizes of the slot and the screwdriver bit, and
controlling for sameness. It's not my problem if you don't
understand how you do things.
For the moment I see no possibility to translate this kind of
expertise into something that you might call "laws".
Right, so why not leave such things in the hands of expert
theoreticians like me?
Stories _after_ the fact are pretty useless, isn't it? After
the fact, one can defend anything. What do you really mean?
That you'd rather talk about your theories than use them?
I guess you really did miss my point, which was that by relying on a
"took kit" of incompatible theories, you assure yourself of being
able to explain anything, however trivially.
Let me play the educator again. Can you think of conditions
where objects _do_ fall upward? It isn't difficult
Oh, shucks. I thought I had invented that theory.
No, it depends on understanding which variables are important
and which are not.
Is "important" an objective notion? Or do you mean the same
thing as I do: that the important things should reproduce (no
two experiments ever repro- duce in all aspects), that the
important things should remain constant over time (we probably
need not keep track of the identities of the atoms that
constitute a body cell), and that identity is taken as that of
the important similarities (no two objects can be composed of
the same individual atoms)?
No, that isn't what I meant. I meant that an important variable is
one which, when varied, has a discernible effect on an outcome
you're trying to explain.
Nature has its own logic, which immediately becomes apparent
when you do experiments and try to predict what will happen.
Take care of what you say here! We had just established that
people (philosophers, the ones who have thought hard about
these things) do not agree. So when you say that nature's logic
immediately becomes apparent, it is apparent TO YOU. Someone
else might see things differently. What makes you so special?
I just meant that nature has an inimitable way of telling you when
your logic is wrong, or rather inapplicable. You expect one thing to
happen, you stake your reputation and sanity on it's happening, and
it still doesn't happen. The way I said this, the referent of "which
immediately becomes apparent" was ambiguous. What immediately
becomes apparent is that nature has its own logic, but nature does
not tell you what that logic actually is.
What happens happens, quite independently of what we think or
hope will happen.
It's all perception. What happens may happen, but what I
perceive of what happens has a lot to do with what I pay
attention to and what I expect. I am sure that I will see
different things -- or things differently.
However you perceive, when you expect one perception and fail to get
it, or get a different one, you know that your expectation has been
incorrect. When you do an experiment expecting to perceive a reading
of 5, and read instead -5, there is no way to pretend that you were
right. Point of view has nothing to do with it.
I wasn't talking about philosophical agreements. I was talking
about making correct predictions of simple phenomena by
actually doing experiments, not just by talking.
I'm afraid that you do not take philosophers very seriously.
Don't be afraid. Philosphers may go into a snit if you don't take
them seriously, but they aren't usually dangerous.
They are, after all, the ones who have paid the most attention
to some of the things most central to PCT: how come we do what
we do, how come we know what we know, what _can_ we know, etc.
And how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Just what is
there about philosophy that we ought to take "seriously?"
They're all modellers, in a way.
Oh, come on now. Modellers? What philosopher can you mention who
actually constructed a working model of some process and then tested
its predictions against observations? From my reading in philosophy,
I have concluded that most philosophers are very careful to avoid
saying anything that could be tested experimentally.
If organisms behaved as randomly as you seem to believe they
do, life would be utter chaos. It is not. Organisms behave in
very regular ways most of the time.
That is what you perceive. You concentrate on control. I see a
lot of utter chaos, a lot of things that we would like to but
cannot control. Illness, death, unhappiness, loneliness. Very
organic themes all. Congratulations that you have everything
under control. I must admit that I do not.
It's very hard to argue with someone who keeps changing the subject
between paragraphs. I have never said or implied that we are capable
of controlling everything. What I said was that behavior is very
regular. You are completely surrounded by man-made artifacts, every
one of which required highly regular and reliable control processes
to be produced. When you turn your computer on it works. When you
type messages, they show up as you intended them to show up with a
very high degree of reliability. Practically everything in your life
that is concerned with human behavior is evidence of incredible
repeatability and regularity. While you can do little about being
dead, there is a lot you can do about being ill, unhappy, or lonely
-- and you very reliably will do what you can, usually with success.
The problem is that you are so used to having everything you want to
happen come about with an almost imperceptible amount of effort that
you have come to take this magical process for granted, and you
complain about the few deviations from regularity that do occur. You
seem to think that irregularity and chance predominate. In fact, it
is hard to find an aspect of your life and your interactions with
the environment that is not under continuous and precise control.
Don't look at the ripples on the surface: look at the ocean!
If things don't naturally go the way you want, you MAKE them go
the way you want. That's the PCT model, and that's how people
work.
Oh, how I wish that were true!
But it is true! You simply think of it as "nothing happening." You
had no difficulty typing "Oh, how I wish that were true!" You had no
difficult getting to work (or wherever you are) this morning. You
got your breakfast or lunch into your mouth without any serious
uncertainties. Practically every single thing you attempt to bring
about in your perceptions, today and every day, comes about so
nearly like what you want that you ignore this amazing fact: you
call this "doing things." How many times in the last month have you
fallen down while you were walking? How many times did you intend to
utter one sentence and hear something entirely different come out of
your mouth? How many times did you attempt to sit in a chair, and
fail?
The world you experience is exactly the world you intend to
experience, 99.9% of the time or more. That is what control theory
explains: the 99.9%, not the 0.1%.
I was not driven by an unfailing sense of certainty, but by
the knowledge that whatever happened, I could probably deal
with it.
That is much more in the spirit of what I intended to say all
along. It is what I call being able to live with uncertainty.
Control systems don't live with uncertainty; they remove
uncertainty. They impose order on chaos. They don't require the
world to be uniform and repeatable and reliable. In a nonuniform and
nonrepeatable and unreliable world, they can produce uniform,
repeatable, and reliable consequences minute by minute, day by day,
and year by year. They make randomly-growing forests fall down,
split into uniform sizes of timber, and line up in rows and layers
to make houses. They dig rocks out of the ground and turn them into
automobiles. They manipulate entropy and squirt men to the Moon, and
back. They turn sand into computer networks like the one we're
using.
Ban war? Ban poverty? Ban discrimination? Illness? Death? I'm
afraid that we will have to live with our human limitations,
now and forever more.
I have no doubt that we will ban anything we can agree to ban (I'm
not sure that wisdom would be on the side of banning death, unless
reproduction were also banned -- and evolution). It's up to us,
because we are purposive systems. I deplore the idea of simply
accepting what _is_ as the necessary natural order of human
existence. That is a great way to perpetuate whatever is wrong with
human life.
I would not say that many of our solutions to the big problems
are good enough. I think that most of them are lousy and
getting worse.
You just said: "The proper thing to do when there is a lot of
noise is to change the environment until the noise disappears.
You don't go on driving a car with a loose steering linkage.
You fix it." Please do. I would be very, very grateful.
Well, don't just sit there arguing and waiting for someone else to
do it for you. I don't want your gratitude, I want your help.
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