[From Rick Marken (940524.1125)]
For those who still think that perceptual control theory applies only to
"stick wiggling" manual control tasks, I submit the following as an example
of control -- collective at that -- of a rather high level variable, and
not a stick in sight.
···
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Gary Cziko (940524.1330 GMT) --
I could set things up so that only subscribers could post via
LISTSERV. But I believe that the only way to control access on
Usenet is to set up a moderator to screen posts, which I am
really not interested in doing (maybe somebody else is?).
Or perhaps we should all just blast the intruders with kilobytes and
megabytes the way Bill Powers did to the last villain.
Tom Bourbon (940524.1112) --
I tried that with the thigh cream poster, but the mail all bounced back to
me. Fortunately I only sent him eight replies. A clever bastard, isn't he?!
Bill Cunningham (940524.1115)
I kinda like Bill Powers' approach because it induces the
guilty bastard to choose to modify his behavior, rather than we
modifying ours.
Bill Powers (940524.1030 MDT) --
I replied to keough@anshar.shadow.net) about the Thigh Cream post
with the following paragraph, duplicated to create a file about 250K
long (if more of us did that we could use shorter files):
Do not broadcast commercial messages to the internet. If you
continue, thousands of people who are more intelligent than you,
out of millions who could easily qualify in that regard, will do
everything they can to frustrate your offensive attempts to
destroy a vital medium of communication.
Bill Powers --
My message to keough was rejected: user unknown. This is probably a big joke
in some cretin's tiny mind. I'll check on the address to see if it's bogus
too (U.S. Mail address, that is). I wish we had some kind of spray that would
get rid of pests like these.
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By the way, I don't think there is anything wrong with this controlling (I
think many people assume that if people are controlling then they are doing
something wrong; perhaps this is why many people are reluctant to see much of
their own behavior as controlling). I just thought that the controlling was
quite noticeable and it was all done by nice people who understand PCT and
have "good" goals . Moreover, it's good data for the "control of higher level
variables in naturalistic situations" database (and what could be more
natural than an Internet discussion)?
Best
Rick