🚀 go-pugleaf

[From Bruce Gregory (990421.1430 EDT)]

Rick Marken (990421.0900)
>
> Me:
>
> > Real engineers who design real control systems have used control
> > theory to study humans as S-R devices; these same engineers have
> > dismissed PCT because they know that control systems control
> > objective variables in the environment, not their own perceptions.
> > These engineers are not students. Do they understand control
> > theory?
>
> Bruce Gregory (990421.1000 EDT) --
>
> > Do the control systems they design work?
>
> This is another non-sequiter.

I'm not sure how a question can be a non-sequitur.

> Did the bridges designed by
> the engineers who lived before Newton work?

Yes indeed. It would have been completely wrong to tell them that they
did not understand how to build bridges, and that only people who
understood Newton are able to build adequate bridges.

> > Since there are many more of them than there are of us
>
> "Us"???

Forgive my presumption.

> > Each model seems to works adequately for the modeler.
>
> The control engineer who rejected my paper on controlled
> variables did so for the following three reasons: 1) control
> systems are more properly viewed as controlling objective
> states of affairs, not perceptions

Perfectly understandable. We normally think that thermostats control the
temperature of the room, not their perceptions of the temperature. (This
is one reason we don't place a candle under the thermostat in order to
save fuel costs in the winter.)

 2) the presentation of
> control theory was way too elementary and

Definitely true from an engineer's perspective. All of PCT deals with a
section of the first chapter of any text on control.

3) psychologists
> already know all about controlled variables anyway.

Why would you expect an engineer to know anything about what
psychologists know or don't know?

> Would say
> that this fellow  understands control theory perfectly well
> because it "works for him".

Yes.

> Isn't it possible that there
> might be a fundamental flaw in this person's understanding of
> control theory, even though it "works for him"?

Yes.


Bruce Gregory