You are—I think - ignoring the potential value of this information.
When assessing how useful a post is, one should consider the product of the weight of evidence it brings to bear with the importance of the information. In this case, PJ Eby and Kaj are telling us something that is more important than—in my estimate − 99% of what your or I have ever read. We should thank them for this, and instead of complaining about lack of evidence or only weak evidence, we should go forth and find more, for example by doing a literature search or by trying the techniques.
I wasn’t saying the post wasn’t useful—at least it brought my attention to
Richard Kennaway’s post on the interesting concept of explaining brain
functions in terms of control systems.
But, the thing is that every day brings us new theories which have great
potential value—if true. But most of them aren’t. Given limited time, we
cannot pursue each of them. We have to be selective.
So, when I open that PDF linked in the first line of the article… that is,
to put it mildly, not up to LessWrong-standards. Is that supposed to be ‘more
important than [...] 99% of what you or I have ever read’? It even ends in a
sales pitch for books and workshops.
So while Control Theory may be useful for understanding the brain, this
material is a distraction at best.
There are lots of PCT textbooks out there; I wrote based on two of them (combined with my own prior knowledge): “Behavior: The Control Of Perception” by William T. Powers, and “Freedom From Stress”, by Edward E. Ford. The first book has math and citations by the bucketload, the latter is a layperson’s guide to practical PCT applications written by a psychologist.
Wait a second. There’s a guy who writes textbooks about akrasia named Will Powers? That’s great.
“Behavior: The Control of Perception” has very little to say about akrasia actually. The chapter on “Conflict” does a wee bit, I suppose, but only from the perspective of what a PCT perspective predicts should happen when control systems are in conflict.
I haven’t actually seen a PCT perspective on akrasia, procrastination, or willpower issues yet, apart from my own.
I haven’t actually seen a PCT perspective on akrasia, procrastination, or willpower issues yet, apart from my own.
If I’m not mistaken, there is a little cottage industry researching it for years. See e.g. Albert Bandura, Edwin A. Locke. (2003). Negative Self-Efficacy and Goal Effects Revisited. (PDF) (it’s a critique, but there are references as well).
Fascinating. However, it appears that both that paper and the papers it’s critiquing are written by people who’ve utterly failed to understand it, in particular the insight that aggregate perceptions are measured over time… which means you can be positively motivated to achieve goals in order to maintain your high opinion of yourself—and still have it be driven by an error signal.
That is, the mere passage of time without further achievement will cause an increasing amount of “error” to be registered, without requiring any special action.
Both this paper and the paper it critiques got this basic understanding wrong, as far as I can tell. (It also doesn’t help that the authors of the paper you linked seem to think that materialistic reduction is a bad thing!)
And how’s that at all important? The info isn’t unique, so the progress in its development and application doesn’t depend on whether you or I study it. If the fruits of whatever this thing is (which remains meaningless to me until I study it) prove valuable, I’ll hear about them in good time. There is little value in studying it now.
Firstly, this reasoning presents a tradgedy of the commons scenario.
Secondly, acceptance of this kind of theory—if it is true—could take say 20-30 years by the scientific community. You will then hear about it in the media, as will anyone else with half a brain.
This seems urgent enough to me that it is worth putting a lot of effort into it.
Perhaps you could clarify why you feel it is urgent?
I agree that if this theory is correct it is of tremendous importance—but I’m not sure I see why it is more urgent than any other scientific theory.
The only thing I can see is the “understanding cognition in order to build AI” angle and I’m not sure that understanding human cognition specifically is a required step in that.
I was literally asking about what in particular makes this topic so important as to qualify it as “something that is more important than—in my estimate − 99% of what your or I have ever read” (and doubting that anything could).
You gave only a meta-reply, saying that if anything important was involved and I chose to ignore it, my strategy would not be a good one. But I don’t know that it’s important, and it’s a relevant fact to consider when selecting a strategy. It’s decision making under uncertainty. Mine is a good strategy a priori: 99 times out of 100 when in fact info is dross, I make room the the sure shots.
I was literally asking about what in particular makes this topic so important as to qualify it as “something that is more important than—in my estimate − 99% of what your or I have ever read” (and doubting that anything could). You gave only a meta-reply
Well, it seems to me that the most important knowledge a person can be given is knowledge that will improve their overall productivity and improve the efficiency with which they achieve their goals. This piece (by Kaj) claims to have found a possible mechanism which prevents humans from applying self-help techniques in general. This knowledge is effectively a universal goal-attainment improver.
What were the 100 last pieces of text you read? Some technical documents about static program analysis, some other LW posts, maybe some news or wikipedia articles, etc. It seems to me that none of these would come close to the increased utility that this piece could offer you—if it is correct.
The info I have gives me good confidence in the belief that studying PCT won’t help me with procrastination (as I mentioned, it was out there for a lot of time without drastically visible applications of this sort, plus I skimmed some highly-cited papers via google scholar, but I can’t be confident in what I read because I didn’t grasp the outline of the field given how little I looked). The things I study and think about these days are good math, tools for better understanding of artificial intelligence. Not terribly good chances for making useful progress, but not woo either (unlike, say, a year ago, much worse two years ago).
Secondly, acceptance of this kind of theory—if it is true—could take say 20-30 years by the scientific community. You will then hear about it in the media, as will anyone else with half a brain.
By the way, PJ Eby mentions a relevant fact: PCTwas introduced more than 30 years ago.
From the second edition of B:CP , commenting on changes in the field since it was first written:
Gradually, the existence of closed causal loops is beginning to demand notice in every field of behavioral science and biology, in cell biology and neuroscience. They are simply everywhere, at every level of organization in every living system. The old concepts are disappearing, not fast enough to suit me but quite fast enough for the good of science, which must necessarily remain conservative.
Sure, there are lots of mentions of the terms, in particular “control system”, as something that keeps a certain process in place, guarding it against deviations, sometimes overreacting and swinging the process in the opposite direction, sometimes giving in under the external influence. This is all well and good, but this is an irrelevant observation, one that has no influence on it being useful for me, personally, to get into this.
If it’s feasible for me to develop a useful anti-procrastination technique based on this whatever, I expect that these techniques would already be developed, and their efficacy demonstrated. Given that no such thing conclusively exist (and people try, and this stuff is widely known!), I don’t expect to succeed either.
I might get a chance if I study the issue very carefully for a number of years, as it’d place me in the same conditions as other people who studied it carefully for many years (in which case I don’t expect to place too much effort into a particular toy classification, as I’d be solving the procrastination problem not PCT death spiral strengthening problem), but that’s a different game, irrelevant to the present question.
That’s not why I referenced the quote, it was to address the, “so if it came out 30 years ago, why hasn’t anything happened yet?” question. i.e., many things have happened. That is, the general trend in the life sciences is towards discovering negative-feedback continuous control at all levels, from the sub-cellular level on up.
If it’s feasible for me to develop a useful anti-procrastination technique
Actually, PCT shows why NO “anti-procrastination” technique that does not take a person’s individual controller structure into account can be expected to work for very long, no matter how effective it is in the short run.
That is, in fact, the insight that Kaj’s post (and the report I wrote that inspired it) are intended to convey: that PCT predicts there is no “silver bullet” solution to akrasia, without taking into account the specific subjective perceptual values an individual is controlling for in the relevant situations.
That is: no single, rote anti-procrastination technique will solve all problems for all people, nor even all the problems of one person, even if it completely solves one or more problems for one or more people.
This seems like an important prediction, when made by such a simple model!
(By contrast, I would say that Freudian drives and hypnotic “symptom substitution” models are not actually predicting anything, merely stating patterns of observation of the form, “People do X.” PCT provides a coherent model for how people do it.)
Rote, not-rote, it doesn’t really matter. A technique is a recipe for making the effect happen, whatever the means. If no techniques exist, if it’s shown that this interpretation doesn’t give a technique, I’m not interested, end of the story.
That’s not why I referenced the quote, it was to address the, “so if it came out 30 years ago, why hasn’t anything happened yet?” question. i.e., many things have.
The exact quote is “If the fruits of whatever this thing is (which remains meaningless to me until I study it) prove valuable, I’ll hear about them in good time”, by which I meant applications to procrastination in particular.
A technique is a recipe for making the effect happen, whatever the means. If no techniques exist, if it’s shown that this interpretation doesn’t give a technique, I’m not interested, end of the story.
To most people, a “technique” or “recipe” would involve a fixed number of steps that are not case-specific or person-specific. At the point where the steps become variable (iterative or recursive), one would have an “algorithm” or “method” rather than a “recipe”.
PCT effectively predicts that it is possible for such algorithms or methods to exist, but not techniques or recipes with a fixed number of steps for all cases.
That still strikes me as a significant prediction, since it allows one to narrow the field of techniques under consideration—if the recipe doesn’t include a “repeat” or “loop until” component, it will not work for everything or everyone.
The statement of results needs to be clear. There are no results, there might be results given more research. It’s not knowably applicable as yet. You may try it at home, but you may whistle to the wind as well.
My usage of “technique” was appropriate, e.g. surgery is also very much patient-dependent; you cut out a cancer from wherever it is in a particular patient, not only in rigid pre-specified places.
Since I made my meaning clear in the context, and you understood it, debating it was useless.
You are—I think - ignoring the potential value of this information.
When assessing how useful a post is, one should consider the product of the weight of evidence it brings to bear with the importance of the information. In this case, PJ Eby and Kaj are telling us something that is more important than—in my estimate − 99% of what your or I have ever read. We should thank them for this, and instead of complaining about lack of evidence or only weak evidence, we should go forth and find more, for example by doing a literature search or by trying the techniques.
I wasn’t saying the post wasn’t useful—at least it brought my attention to Richard Kennaway’s post on the interesting concept of explaining brain functions in terms of control systems.
But, the thing is that every day brings us new theories which have great potential value—if true. But most of them aren’t. Given limited time, we cannot pursue each of them. We have to be selective.
So, when I open that PDF linked in the first line of the article… that is, to put it mildly, not up to LessWrong-standards. Is that supposed to be ‘more important than [...] 99% of what you or I have ever read’? It even ends in a sales pitch for books and workshops.
So while Control Theory may be useful for understanding the brain, this material is a distraction at best.
yes, this is true. I wonder if PJ could produce something rigorous and not-for-idiots?
There are lots of PCT textbooks out there; I wrote based on two of them (combined with my own prior knowledge): “Behavior: The Control Of Perception” by William T. Powers, and “Freedom From Stress”, by Edward E. Ford. The first book has math and citations by the bucketload, the latter is a layperson’s guide to practical PCT applications written by a psychologist.
Wait a second. There’s a guy who writes textbooks about akrasia named Will Powers? That’s great.
“Behavior: The Control of Perception” has very little to say about akrasia actually. The chapter on “Conflict” does a wee bit, I suppose, but only from the perspective of what a PCT perspective predicts should happen when control systems are in conflict.
I haven’t actually seen a PCT perspective on akrasia, procrastination, or willpower issues yet, apart from my own.
If I’m not mistaken, there is a little cottage industry researching it for years. See e.g.
Albert Bandura, Edwin A. Locke. (2003). Negative Self-Efficacy and Goal Effects Revisited. (PDF) (it’s a critique, but there are references as well).
Fascinating. However, it appears that both that paper and the papers it’s critiquing are written by people who’ve utterly failed to understand it, in particular the insight that aggregate perceptions are measured over time… which means you can be positively motivated to achieve goals in order to maintain your high opinion of yourself—and still have it be driven by an error signal.
That is, the mere passage of time without further achievement will cause an increasing amount of “error” to be registered, without requiring any special action.
Both this paper and the paper it critiques got this basic understanding wrong, as far as I can tell. (It also doesn’t help that the authors of the paper you linked seem to think that materialistic reduction is a bad thing!)
It is in fact so great, that I suspect it might be a pen name.
It really is his name. I know him personally. (But he is informally known as Bill, not Will.)
Can you tell him that many of the links on this page are broken? http://www.brainstorm-media.com/users/powers_w/
Then both are of little relevance. More recent studies and surveys will be closer to the truth.
Can you name any other theories that have (in your opinion) as a great a potential value to you personally as this one that you read yesterday?
And how’s that at all important? The info isn’t unique, so the progress in its development and application doesn’t depend on whether you or I study it. If the fruits of whatever this thing is (which remains meaningless to me until I study it) prove valuable, I’ll hear about them in good time. There is little value in studying it now.
Firstly, this reasoning presents a tradgedy of the commons scenario.
Secondly, acceptance of this kind of theory—if it is true—could take say 20-30 years by the scientific community. You will then hear about it in the media, as will anyone else with half a brain.
This seems urgent enough to me that it is worth putting a lot of effort into it.
Perhaps you could clarify why you feel it is urgent?
I agree that if this theory is correct it is of tremendous importance—but I’m not sure I see why it is more urgent than any other scientific theory.
The only thing I can see is the “understanding cognition in order to build AI” angle and I’m not sure that understanding human cognition specifically is a required step in that.
I was literally asking about what in particular makes this topic so important as to qualify it as “something that is more important than—in my estimate − 99% of what your or I have ever read” (and doubting that anything could).
You gave only a meta-reply, saying that if anything important was involved and I chose to ignore it, my strategy would not be a good one. But I don’t know that it’s important, and it’s a relevant fact to consider when selecting a strategy. It’s decision making under uncertainty. Mine is a good strategy a priori: 99 times out of 100 when in fact info is dross, I make room the the sure shots.
Well, it seems to me that the most important knowledge a person can be given is knowledge that will improve their overall productivity and improve the efficiency with which they achieve their goals. This piece (by Kaj) claims to have found a possible mechanism which prevents humans from applying self-help techniques in general. This knowledge is effectively a universal goal-attainment improver.
What were the 100 last pieces of text you read? Some technical documents about static program analysis, some other LW posts, maybe some news or wikipedia articles, etc. It seems to me that none of these would come close to the increased utility that this piece could offer you—if it is correct.
The info I have gives me good confidence in the belief that studying PCT won’t help me with procrastination (as I mentioned, it was out there for a lot of time without drastically visible applications of this sort, plus I skimmed some highly-cited papers via google scholar, but I can’t be confident in what I read because I didn’t grasp the outline of the field given how little I looked). The things I study and think about these days are good math, tools for better understanding of artificial intelligence. Not terribly good chances for making useful progress, but not woo either (unlike, say, a year ago, much worse two years ago).
By the way, PJ Eby mentions a relevant fact: PCT was introduced more than 30 years ago.
From the second edition of B:CP , commenting on changes in the field since it was first written:
Sure, there are lots of mentions of the terms, in particular “control system”, as something that keeps a certain process in place, guarding it against deviations, sometimes overreacting and swinging the process in the opposite direction, sometimes giving in under the external influence. This is all well and good, but this is an irrelevant observation, one that has no influence on it being useful for me, personally, to get into this.
If it’s feasible for me to develop a useful anti-procrastination technique based on this whatever, I expect that these techniques would already be developed, and their efficacy demonstrated. Given that no such thing conclusively exist (and people try, and this stuff is widely known!), I don’t expect to succeed either.
I might get a chance if I study the issue very carefully for a number of years, as it’d place me in the same conditions as other people who studied it carefully for many years (in which case I don’t expect to place too much effort into a particular toy classification, as I’d be solving the procrastination problem not PCT death spiral strengthening problem), but that’s a different game, irrelevant to the present question.
That’s not why I referenced the quote, it was to address the, “so if it came out 30 years ago, why hasn’t anything happened yet?” question. i.e., many things have happened. That is, the general trend in the life sciences is towards discovering negative-feedback continuous control at all levels, from the sub-cellular level on up.
Actually, PCT shows why NO “anti-procrastination” technique that does not take a person’s individual controller structure into account can be expected to work for very long, no matter how effective it is in the short run.
That is, in fact, the insight that Kaj’s post (and the report I wrote that inspired it) are intended to convey: that PCT predicts there is no “silver bullet” solution to akrasia, without taking into account the specific subjective perceptual values an individual is controlling for in the relevant situations.
That is: no single, rote anti-procrastination technique will solve all problems for all people, nor even all the problems of one person, even if it completely solves one or more problems for one or more people.
This seems like an important prediction, when made by such a simple model!
(By contrast, I would say that Freudian drives and hypnotic “symptom substitution” models are not actually predicting anything, merely stating patterns of observation of the form, “People do X.” PCT provides a coherent model for how people do it.)
Rote, not-rote, it doesn’t really matter. A technique is a recipe for making the effect happen, whatever the means. If no techniques exist, if it’s shown that this interpretation doesn’t give a technique, I’m not interested, end of the story.
The exact quote is “If the fruits of whatever this thing is (which remains meaningless to me until I study it) prove valuable, I’ll hear about them in good time”, by which I meant applications to procrastination in particular.
To most people, a “technique” or “recipe” would involve a fixed number of steps that are not case-specific or person-specific. At the point where the steps become variable (iterative or recursive), one would have an “algorithm” or “method” rather than a “recipe”.
PCT effectively predicts that it is possible for such algorithms or methods to exist, but not techniques or recipes with a fixed number of steps for all cases.
That still strikes me as a significant prediction, since it allows one to narrow the field of techniques under consideration—if the recipe doesn’t include a “repeat” or “loop until” component, it will not work for everything or everyone.
The statement of results needs to be clear. There are no results, there might be results given more research. It’s not knowably applicable as yet. You may try it at home, but you may whistle to the wind as well.
My usage of “technique” was appropriate, e.g. surgery is also very much patient-dependent; you cut out a cancer from wherever it is in a particular patient, not only in rigid pre-specified places.
Since I made my meaning clear in the context, and you understood it, debating it was useless.