From[Bill Williams 18 March 2004 11:30 AM CST]
[From Bill Powers (2004.03.18.0802 MST)]
Well it looks as if Rick's revival of his porposal for a moderated list
doesn't
have much more life this time than it did the previous time. I am
disapointed.
I had looked forward to seeing what would happen with Rick as moderator.
I would even have lent Rick a special pair of my Princess Lady Diana
sunglassess with which to read the posts.
In my view the economics threads will if they continue, continue to be a
problem. Bill Powers regards it as an insult for me to suggest that he
might benefit from a familiarty with the existing economic literature.
But, I fail to see, despite Martin's disagreement, the point to re-inventing
the wheel.
The Keynesian system represents a fundamental achivement in
understanding the macro-properties of a capitalist monetary economy.
I expect that in the future they Keynesian system will be the subject of a
very drastic revision-- revision in its mode of expression and exposition
rather than its content. The current version is far too difficult to
learn.
Unfortunately, Powers aspiration to revolutionize economic theory
enters into the problem of economic understanding from a very awkward
angle-- an angle that amounts to a cultural and intellectual delusion. The
delusion consists of a belief that it is possible to do meaningful work in
economics without an understanding of the Keynesian system.
As I see it this delusion has nothing to do with the genuine contribution
that control theory has to offer regarding a theory and practice of human
behavior. The economic threads however haven't been about control theory,
or even control theory applications in economics. Rather what they have
been occupied with is an attempt by Bill Powers to generate an
understanding of the economic process all by himself. In issolation I don't
believe he is up to it. He could prove me wrong, but then he isn't really
working entirely in complete issolation either.
I would suggest that CSGnet would be better off if the discusions returned
to questions much more directly related to applications of control theory
to human behavior. Disputes concerning theoretical economics are not
really of much interest to most of the people who make up the CSGnet
community.
Bill Williams
Rick Marken (2004.03.17.1620)--
> I know that there are problems with list moderation. >> Mainly, the
problem is that it's a job that someone
has to do.
That's a problem, all right -- someone has to read each > post, doing this
several times a day, and make a decision about whether to let each one
through, and carry out the decision.But the biggest problem is electing someone to the position of moderator.
Who would you trust (other than yourself) to decide whether any of your
statements (for example, about the Pope, or about Bush) are offensive and
should be censored, or should cause your entire post to be rejected? What
if you, the originator of a post, or other people, don't agree with the
moderator? Do we set up an appeals committee? Do we assign attorneys for
prosecution and defense?Or do we decide that the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the posts but in
ourselves? Judging from my own history, I think it is difficult not to
respond in kind when someone offers provocations. I also think that
learning how to avoid doing that is part of a growing-up process, a
process
in which we learn to identify our own true interests and our own natures,
so what someone else utters can't cause disturbances so threatening that
we
have to strike back.
I have had to protect myself by cutting off posts from specific
individuals. But that isn't how I want things to continue. I want to be
able to read anything from anyone, whether in good taste or bad, whether
friendly or hostile, and not feel called upon to imitate what I don't
like.
I don't want to be worried that others will believe untrue things said
about me, I don't want to be worried that perhaps scathing criticisms of
me
are really justified.In short, I don't want to let others, through what
they say, control my life.Many of the problems on CSGnet have come from letting lower-order control
systems act before higher ones have had a chance to perceive, judge, and
adjust. In other words, from reacting to surface appearances without
taking
the trouble to work out what is wrong and what to do about it, if
anything.
If I feel anger about the content of a post and want to strike back (the
sequence is actually the other way around, of course), that alone should
be
a warning not to reply just yet. Striking back will not accomplish
anything
I want; just the opposite. There are really only two ways to handle such a
situation: delete the offending passages and ignore them, or search for
something in them that does call for a substantive reply and focus on
that.
I guess what I'm saying is that each of us needs to moderate his or her
own
traffic, the posts that show up on the computer screen as well as those
that are composed there. Perhaps others, like me, need to put up a filter
temporarily until they can figure out a better way of handing unwanted
inputs. But I think we all want to be able to handle difficulties in
better
ways than just avoiding having to deal with them.
We could do worse than looking to Martin Taylor as a role model here. I
have had disagreements with him, but he has never lost his cool even when
I
···
did. Quite remarkable.
Best,.
Bill P.
The it's hard to refrain from denial and