NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #20/NN_1992_20.iso/spool/bit/listserv/csgl/964

Text File | 1992-09-08 | 9.2 KB | 200 lines

Comments: Gated by [e-mail]
Path: sparky!uunet!paladin.american.edu!auvm!MCIMAIL.COM!0004972767
Message-ID: <85920909115358/[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Wed, 9 Sep 1992 11:53:00 GMT
Sender:       "Control Systems Group Network (CSGnet)" <[e-mail]>
From:         Hortideas Publishing <[e-mail]>
Subject:      You got it... but there's more to get
Lines: 189

From Greg Williams (920909 [really!])

Chuck Tucker asked for the full citation for the following; maybe other
netters also will be interested in this book (especially, I think, the chapter
titled "Intentionality in Animal Conditioning"; because our older son probably
would be called "dyslexic" by the (some) psychologists, Pat and I were
intrigued by the chapter by a university-trained mathematician who essentially
cannot read):

L. Weiskrantz, ed., THOUGHT WITHOUT LANGUAGE, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988,
xvi + 533 pp. ["A Fyssen Foundation Symposium"]

>Bill Powers (920908.0730)

>>Greg Williams (92090[8]) --

Too early for me to get the date right... sorry.

>>Manipulation can be aided by the manipulee having a high gain for, and
>>paying close attention to, the actions you want to see.

>Disagree. Control is never done by paying attention to actions, unless
>it's specifically the perception of the action that you're controlling
>(as in dancing).

Sorry. I meant "can be aided by the manipulee having a high gain for, and
paying close attention to, his/her perceptions which result in the actions you
[the manipulator] want to see."

I also want to make it clearer that manipulation, as I want to define it, can
be of the "rubber-banding" (purposive disturbance of controlled perceptions)
OR of the "setting-the-context-for-'natural'-control" types.

>If the manipulator can get the Mark to accept the manipulator's description
>of v2, instead of the Mark perceiving v2 directly, the manipulator can
>misrepresent the state of the environment and thus gain control of the Mark's
>action.

Right!

>In the con game this happens when the wallet (v1) containing the valid
>bond or Treasury note or whatever (v2) is switched for the similarly-
>wrapped one containing newspaper. The Mark has control only of the
>wallet (v1), but is shown by the con man that the wallet contains
>something valuable (v2). The Mark doesn't want to perceive the wallet
>alone (v1) but the  wallet with something valuable in it, which is the
>perception p = f(v1,v2).

>The action that gets the wallet and v2 into possession of the Mark is
>to hand over cash to the con man. This does get the wallet into the
>possession of the Mark. The Mark perceives this, however, as getting a
>wallet with something valuable in it. The con man sees to it that the
>Mark gets the wallet, but without the something valuable in it.

>This is the same con game played by advertisers; when you hand over
>your money, you get the flashy car, but the nice pretty girl isn't in
>it any more and never will be. What you get is a dumb promiscuous
>broad who can be conned into thinking that a flashy car contains a
>terrific guy, and when she hands over the price she will give you a
>baby you didn't particularly want, or AIDS. And when she looks in her
>package all she will find in it is plain old you. Great design for a
>relationship.

You got it, in spades!

>I agree with you that lots of this kind of deception goes on.

YOU GOT IT!!! But there's still more to get....

>What's good about it?

First, there is usually nothing good -- for the mark -- about exploitation,
which is "negative" manipulation. The mark ends up sorry he/she was fooled.
But there is also (I claim, plenty of) manipulation which ends up being good
for the manipulee (as judged by the manipulee, whether in fact or
hypothetically judged). Remember from several days back that I am trying to
develop a precise way of talking about (right now, I'll generalize it to)
human interactions, based on PCT ideas, and my most general category is
influence (altering another's variables, purposively or not). One kind of
influence is manipulation (so termed because it requires some skill to do --
according to PCT; NOT so termed because it is necessarily negative for the
manipulee OR because it necessarily involves deception) -- Rick used the term
"suggestion" in a recent post, and perhaps that has a less-negative "folk"
connotation than "manipulation," but I'll continue to use "manipulation" for
now. There are four kinds of manipulation (I claim): those which, if
successful (from the manipulator's point of view) result in the manipulee's
(after completion of the manipulation) judging them (to him/her) harmful
["exploitation"], neutral ["?"], good ["facilitation"], or mixed/who
knows/can't say ["?"].

I claim that all four types are extremely common. I further claim that
much of what parents, teachers, therapists, and counselors (such as Ed Ford)
do is facilitation. In saying that, I want to make it even clearer (especially
for Rick) that my own judgement about whether facilitation (remember, defined
as "good" from the facilitee's view) is a "good" thing to do is an IDEOLOGICAL
judgement NOT derived from PCT. Facilitation need NOT involve deception: Ed
tells the juvenile offender the full tale about how Ed sees the relationship
between what the kid might do and what the results will therefore be -- but
the kid might otherwise have not seen the relationship quite so clearly or
might not have thought through what he/she wants MOST if Ed hadn't been there.
It CAN involve deception: the mother puts the medicine in applesauce and says,
"Here's some yummy applesauce," NOT "Here's some yummy applesauce with
medicine."

Once again, PCT says that for manipulation to work (even of the rubber-banding
kind, since the manipulator needs to have confidence that the perception under
control won't change unpredictably), using The Test is important. I'm not
saying that many teachers/therapists/counselors know explicitly about The
Test, but they use it without knowing its name or theoretical basis because
they NEED to. However, I suspect that part of why Ed Ford is such an EFFECTIVE
facilitator is that he understands the PCT-basis for what he needs to do.

Clearly, facilitation can be viewed as patronizing. My own view on patronizing
depends on the particulars of the situation, and can extend far beyond "non-
coercive" (non-physical/non-threatening) facilitation to tieing up an
attempted suicide. That's more ideology, not PCT. The bottom line is that
patronizers can sometimes be VERY wrong in their predictions about how the
facilitee will ultimately judge the outcome.

        He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars:
        General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite & flatterer,
        For Art & Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars
        And not in generalizing Demonstrations of the Rational Power.

                                        -- William Blake, JERUSALEM

Bill, I think we've reached an important consensus about my claims. Now, we
can go back and nit-pick some more, or work together toward exploring the
nature and limits of manipulation from a PCT point-of-view, or press on toward
considering what I have termed "long-term" influence (involving
reorganization) and my critique of "autonomism," or... what? Your choice...
influenced, of course, by the history of our recent interactions.

-----

>Rick Marken (920908.1030)

GW>> another part
GW>>of my ideology is my belief that more work on PCT can be fostered by
GW>>emphasizing how it connects to other ideas, rather than how everybody else
GW>>is wrong.

>I think my "Blind men" paper fills that bill. It says that psychologists are
>right in the sense that control DOES look like response to stimulation, adapt-
>ation to constraint (reinforcement) and output generation. But these appear-
>ances, taken at face value, give a misleading impression of how behavior works.
>At no point in the paper do I say that anyone is "wrong" -- just that they have
>missed one little thing: the fact that all these appearances are aspects of
>the phenomenon of control. The paper also connects current approaches to
>psychology with the PCT approach. Is this consistent with your ideology?
>I hope so.

Absolutely! Right on!!

>Rick Marken (920908.1400)

Greg Williams (920906) says:

>Now that I think of it, Greg (and Pat too, I presume) maybe we can find some
>common ground on child rearing in terms of levels of control....

Yep. No problem. Our ideologies mesh in large measure. But that fact doesn't
follow from PCT.

GW>>you apparently believe that PCT DOES imply that a PARTICULAR KIND of
GW>>manipulation (NOT control) is best for teachers to practice:

>No.

Good.

>There is no manipulation or control involved in what I described as
>education.

Uh oh. See the above for one (last?) attempt at defining "manipulation."

GW>>Here you are agreeing with me that education makes great use of
GW>>manipulation.

>I am imagining a person who wants to produce some results and doesn't
>know how. The teacher tries to communicate POSSIBLE perceptions to control
>and possible ways to control them so that the person can produce the desired
>end.

Thaaaaat's manipulation, folks!!! (Is there an echo in here?)

Best wishes,

Greg