From Tom Bourbon [940518.1300]
[From Bill Powers (940518.0930 MDT)]
. . .
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Rick Marken (940517.1400) --You are really getting a handle on how to think about PCT in
relation to society: "PCT doesn't say what to do; it does
say 'people are control systems; if you want to achieve social goal
X you will have to take that fact into consideration'".
That's true, but there are already many people who've taken it into account.
See below.
A couple of years ago, Greg Williams was suggesting that PCT would
allow even better ways of manipulating people. I really resisted
that idea, because I wouldn't want to find myself in the same
position as a nuclear physicist who discovers himself to be
responsible for wholesale deaths. But Greg was right, a person who
understands PCT could use it to find out what people want, and then
by applying cleverly-designed disturbances, get those people to
produce the actions that the manipulator wants to see.
That's exactly one of the points I was making (not too successfully) in my
previous posts on violence and controlling others. Heck, I've got a bunch
of single-loop PCT models lurking in my computer that can control _my_
actions, and I can counter-control their virtual actions in return. It's
trivially easy. All a would be controller of another needs to do is disturb
a variable that figures in a perception that the targeted controllee is
allowed to continue controlling. "You say you can't lift that pen and sign
your name to this confession? Well, my dear friend, let me open these
drapes and show you some very interesting things we can do to your young
child. Would you like me to turn on the speaker system as well?" . . .
"There, now. Wasn't that easy?"
For many centuries now there have been masters at this craft of controlling
the actions of another person. PCT theorists might not like it, but that's
the way it is -- and the reasons the techniques work are right there in the
theory.
When you
think about all the maneuverings and strategies that people use on
each other now, it's clear that these principles are already in use,
and that PCT could make their use work even better.
Yes.
The only defense against misuse of PCT that I can see is to make
sure that it isn't kept a secret. It's like having an infallible
method for making money on the stock market. Such methods can work
only if they remain your secret. When too many people start using
the same understanding, the method stops working, and it's time to
turn it into a book that will make you more money than you can make
from trading stocks, now that the secret's out. Controlling people
through use of PCT can work only as long as most people don't
understand PCT.
Yes. So we have no option but to keep talking to ourselves and to a small
number of others who listen in from time to time. That's all we can do.
However, I also like your image of using the principles of physics
to invent a perpetual motion machine. Understanding PCT can help you
devise disturbances that will generate wanted actions in other
people. But it won't help you to make people violate their own wants
and particularly their own needs (intrinsic reference levels). The
cleverest use of PCT in controlling other people's behavior would be
to disturb other people in such a way that in resisting the
disturbance _successfully_, they do what you want. The key word is
successfully. If the behavior you want to see causes any of the
other person's control processes to fail, you'll trigger off higher-
level resistance or reorganization. But if the behavior you want to
see doesn't succeed in disturbing anything that matters to the other
person, who but you cares that the other person does something you
want to see? That's just the normal give and take of life.
Right.
But there are ways to let the controllee decide which things matter the
most. Lifting a pen and signing your name isn't such a big deal, after all,
not when you are given the chance to instead watch someone torturing or
raping your child in the next room. Of course, the bestower of those
options might be wise not to turn her or his back on the one who signs
the confession. I guess that's why signers are so often eliminated once
the desired document is safely in the hands of the "controller."
So along with our erudite discussions about control theory, we need
someone to publish a popular book called "How to be uncontrollable."
This book should lay out in simple and direct terms how control
theory applies to individual behavior, and how an individual can
recognize attempts at manipulation using
PCT. Hand out the poison and the antidote at the same time, so to
speak.
Yes.
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Tom Bourbon (940517.1228)--Then all "you" need to do is convince enough other people --
that, or establish The Foundation. Not the PCT foundation, but
Isaac Asimov's Foundation(s). Or is there really a difference?
You know my secret: I always wanted to grow up to be Hari Seldon.
We never talked about that desire of yours, but I recognized the signs. 
However, along the way I somehow developed an aversion to becoming a
secret manipulator of the masses for their own good, which, when you
think about it, was what Asimov's Second Foundation was up to.
That's one of the many things that made the Foundation series fascinating to
me -- the many levels of intention to control, not to control, not to be
controlled, and so on. I just re-read the whole series and I realize my
first reading, which started when I was in junior high school, was one of
the many experiences that "set me up" to make the move into working with PCT.
Or
perhaps the aversion was to being FOUND OUT as a secret manipulator.
People like me who desperately wish the world to be different are
subject to a constant temptation to set things straight,
surreptitiously if necessary (and possible). Like, I'd really like
to fly around the world dropping contraceptive powder into all the
water supplies. That would be a lot simpler than trying to convince
people that we have passed the carrying capacity of the Earth for
human beings.
YES!
If you don't convince _everyone_, then eventually the only people
left will be those who can't be persuaded to limit their
proliferation.
And this was the point I stated less clearly than you in my replies to Rick.
And it sets us up, if we aren't careful, to start talking about a PCT final
solution, as in:
How much does contraceptive powder cost, per ton?
And while you're at it, what would be the going rate for sending a
hit man out after those fertility consultants?
Not everyone will be convinced that PCT is the greatest thing since grape
jelly and that their understanding of PCT won't allow them to do bad things
to other people. All it takes is one such person -- like the "Mule" in the
Foundation series, for example -- and the game is over. People have learned
many effective ways to control the actions of others and some of them would
find PCT a very useful source of ideas about how to improve their ugly
craft. It's better for us to face up to that possibility and get on with
the business of giving away the antidote.
Later,
Tom