No Way Out
Welcome to the No Way Out podcast where we examine the variety of domains and disciplines behind John R. Boyd’s OODA sketch and why, today, more than ever, it is an imperative to understand Boyd’s axiomatic sketch of how organisms, individuals, teams, corporations, and governments comprehend, shape, and adapt in our VUCA world.
No Way Out
Military Hardware to Mental Health: Perceptual Control Theory with Warren Mansell, PhD
What if everything you thought you knew about human behavior was backward? Imagine discovering that we don't actually control our behavior at all—instead, our behavior is merely the observable side effect of our brains controlling what we perceive.
Professor Warren Mansell, a clinical psychologist and expert in Perceptual Control Theory (PCT), takes us on a mind-expanding journey through this revolutionary framework developed by physicist William Powers. Drawing from control systems engineering, Powers recognized that living organisms operate fundamentally differently than most psychological theories suggest—we're not stimulus-response machines or prediction engines, but sophisticated control systems organizing our behavior to make our perceptions match our desired states.
The implications are profound. Psychological conflicts arise when different control systems within us fight over the same variable—like wanting to both remember and forget a traumatic memory. Consciousness itself emerges as a spotlight moving through our hierarchical control systems, helping resolve these conflicts through reorganization. This explains why activities that temporarily downregulate our habitual control patterns—from deep conversations to meditation to psychedelics—can lead to transformative insights.
For leaders and organizations, PCT offers a powerful lens for understanding human dynamics. By recognizing that people are controlling for different variables and experiencing different conflicts, we can create environments that help people explore what truly matters to them while aligning with collective goals.
Whether you're fascinated by psychology, leadership, conflict resolution, or simply understanding yourself better, this conversation will transform how you view human behavior and interaction. Ready to see the world through the lens of control?
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Yeah, so my name is Warren Mansell. I'm Professor of Mental Health at the Enable Institute at Curtin University in Perth. Originally from the UK, I've been over here in Perth for the last three years Before that University of Manchester. My background is in clinical psychology.
Warren Mansell:It's not in neuroscience, but to focus on the topic, uh, perceptual control theory, um, I came across it in the late nineties when I was searching for a theory that could, for me at the time, resolve the discrepancies between all the major therapeutic approaches cognitive therapy, behavior therapy, psychoanalysis, um, person-centered approaches and I stumbled upon the theory in a book called Without Miracles by an incredible guy called Gary Zico C-Z-I-K-O, and it was on the topic of what's called universal selection theory, and the chapter in there on PCT really drew me in to read more.
Warren Mansell:So I found the original book in 73 by William Powers, and for me at the time it just integrated and explained why each of these approaches are effective, why they're different and how they all combine and therefore how a much simpler and more parsimonious way of supporting someone listening to their story, working on a problem together can be far more efficient than other approaches. So that was my pathway in clinical, but perceptual control theory has been used by most disciplines across the social and life sciences, but it has its grounding in the physical sciences and engineering. So I met a lot of other academics and professionals along the way, including some in the military, sociologists, philosophers, etc. And I can explain the background of the theory in a bit. But where do you want to go next?
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:yeah, yeah, I'm interested that I don't think that's where we can make some interesting connections. So some of the background.
Warren Mansell:I think I saw cybernetics in there and you mentioned some physical sciences yeah, I mean you, you I think you guys would have loved to meet bill himself. I was lucky to meet him a couple of times before he passed away in 2013.
Warren Mansell:Um, he grew up at the time of World War II. He did a degree in physics and during the war he was in the Navy working on various anti-aircraft devices, various control systems that were being innovated at a really fast pace in the 40s and afterwards he worked as an electronics control systems engineer. But throughout his early life he'd been fascinated in psychology. His mother was a mental health nurse and he sometimes would shadow her in her work and was just fascinated and perplexed about trauma, the effects of trauma and more serious mental illness. And he got a hunch that he could use what he'd learnt about control systems to understand human psychology. And he actually made a commitment to himself after Hiroshima that he wasn't going to use his knowledge in physics to develop physics any further. He was going to use it knowledge of physics to develop physics any further.
Warren Mansell:He was going to use it for psychology and well-being and to help people build bridges. And so in the 50s he embarked upon laying down his theory and he read some of the early cybernetics work. But really he was grounded in the fundamentals. He was a real blue-collar guy. He was grounded in the fundamentals. He was a real blue-collar guy. He was grounded in the fundamentals of how do these control systems work.
Warren Mansell:And one day he just had this insight that these systems, although the common parlance including in cybernetics Norbert Weiner's landmark work proposes that output is controlled and that's just kind of shared down the generations. And he was looking at his electronic systems and he was looking and he realized wait a minute, these systems are looping around and controlling their input. They are controlling what is coming into their sensor, into their sensors. They're not controlling their output. Their output is varying quite drastically and dynamically to keep those inputs within pretty close to a reference state. And then he started to look at other physical devices like a thermostat that basically controls the temperature of the room. Again, its behavior changes on a continuum but quite dynamically to keep its set point controlled.
Warren Mansell:And then he started to read about psychology and neuroscience and in 1960, it's the first paper that came out and the theory is pretty much unchanged since then. There were two papers at that time unchanged since then. There were two papers at that time. And then he spent another ten years all the time while he was control systems engineer, working in astronomy and medicine, building these machines, writing his book and it eventually came out in 1973 where he just laid down the theory really clearly. The publisher was really successful in getting some good endorsements. Carl Rogers, who developed humanistic therapy, wrote a glowing endorsement of Bill's book and then he proceeded to raise awareness in psychologists and cybernetics about his theory which, to be fair, was not very successful in kind of permeating the mainstream and still isn't. And we are like 50 years on now and we can talk about that later.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Sounds familiar.
Warren Mansell:Okay, but in terms of theory. So the basic theory is what we see as a behavior is a system's attempt to control its inputs. So any behavior does not need to be planned or predicted in advance. It is the observable side effect of that organism, that system controlling its inputs. Those inputs are organized hierarchically in increasing levels of abstractness, increasing gestalts if you like, and there's a process, a learning algorithm called reorganization, which is analogous to evolution by natural selection, which kind of supplants variation at localized regions in this hierarchy for learning.
Warren Mansell:And the most important reason to do learning is to resolve conflicts. And that's where one part of this system is fighting with another part, where, for example, that in a thermostat it's when you've got, you know, two air conditioners in the same room, one's's at 30 degrees, one's at 20 degrees there is no stable state between, or if there is, there's a very high energy unstable state between those two systems. And so it needs a level above that to configure the reference points, the set points for those two conflicting systems. And Bill proposed that psychological conflict is wholly analogous to that process. So, for example, if I've been traumatized and every time I think of the trauma that happened to me it makes me feel distressed, I'm losing my mind, I'm going to want to not think about that memory and I'm going to want to avoid things that remind me of it. But at the same time, if I want to get back to work, go back into a high trauma job, or maybe if I'm a witness or a victim of a crime, I'm going to need to have to remember that memory in detail in order to get justice and make other people safe. So people in trauma are in the deep conflict between not ever wanting to think about the trauma and to maybe even tell themselves it never happened, but, at the same time, having to remember it in detail to maybe be a plausible witness or to be good at a job that has, you know, very challenging elements to it.
Warren Mansell:I've done work in phobias on this. So people are in conflict about whether to approach or avoid, how near to get to something physical they're afraid of, whether that be a, you know, a snake or or a spider or whatever. But the analogy just extends in, according to theory, to any part of our life, and even when we try and work out what flavor of ice cream to have, we're in a conflict state. So decision making is all about processing of conflict, of shows us that, whilst there are various ways out of a conflict, the way that's going to be lasting is to go to a level above the conflict and do the reorganization process, so basically develop a perception of these conflicting systems that is novel, that allows them to be regulated and balanced in a way that's never happened before.
Warren Mansell:And and it's that part of the theory that I've taken forward into my own theory of consciousness, based on PCT, which came out last year, and with the idea that and that's probably the bit that's the nearest to the free energy principle, which is that we are constantly looking for novel combinations of information to perceive something new in our worlds, because that will help us going forward in the future to kind of control and manage challenging novel situations. So, yeah, I know I've talked quite a lot there, but hopefully I've covered the basics. No, this is great.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Moose, you got a light bulb there, brother um what's going on your?
Mark McGrath:head dude well, warren, you're another guest that ponch and I would describe as knowing everything about john void, while knowing nothing about john void because the, the parallels and the synergies are just are off page. I hear, maybe, ponch, I hear so many things. I hear conceptual spiral, I hear destruction and creation, I hear mismatches, I hear novelty. I'd love to see, I'd love to have Warren look through the sources of destruction and creation, but also too like to peruse the, the list that Chad has on Slight Least of New, of all the books that Boyd read, because I would. I'm guessing that, like we found with McLuhan and like we found with others, that that that there's a lot of things that Bill Powers or Bill was reading, that Boyd was reading.
Warren Mansell:Yeah, but also, you know, they were kind of touching base with fundamental features of, you know, nature and humanity and behavior, and so there'll be convergent evolution between theories as well as direct influence.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, I mean, I don't know where to go. Yeah, it's like. Well, it's a doodle sketch. Yeah, yeah, the hierarchy is.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:I'm kind of building fractals in my mind the control.
Warren Mansell:Thing.
Mark McGrath:Let's just start with.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Sorry, yeah, can we walk through like an example? And, moose, do you have one in mind that we can use that we've used with the OODA loop before?
Mark McGrath:to kind of help us Like, like a, like a scenario or something.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Maybe, maybe if we pick something like you know, fifth generation warfare, cognitive warfare and start there.
Mark McGrath:Well, I think you just kind of piecing a lot of of what you're saying, warren, you know, I think of um would would powers say everything's conflict. Right, like everything, everything is uh you know conflict is not like yeah. No well conflict is actually very….
Warren Mansell:Everything that troubles the world and stops us progressing is unresolved conflict. But conflict has got a very tight definition in PCT. Conflict is having basically opposing reference points, set points for the same variable. So it's, and those set points are for control systems. So conflict doesn't exist if we just can't achieve something. You know, if I want a cheese sandwich and there's no sandwich in my house, I just need to go and get it. There's no conflict there. No one's deliberately trying to hide the sandwich from me.
Warren Mansell:So conflict in PCT has to be to do with two controlling systems that have inputs that they want and that can be as simple as a homeostatic or thermostatic device or as complex as a homeostatic or thermostatic device or as complex as a human being, um. But conflict only exists in the context of perceptual control according to um, according to pct, and that's kind of. You know, part of this is about um in in pct is explaining all this other stuff that isn't conscious before explaining what is conscious, and so there's so much that we do automatically. So when I'm talking to you in my consciousness, it's really just the point I'm trying to get across. I'm not having to be conscious of all of the ways I'm moving the muscles in my mouth and I'm choosing words and knowing syntax, and that is being done automatically, according to theory, by my hierarchical control systems and none of that processing needs consciousness. Even though it's control, it's purposive and it will resist disturbances. So if I'm in a very cold temperature, you've probably noticed this, that it actually slows your muscles down. They become tighter, harder to contract. But if you just kind of focus on what you want to say, even if you're struggling to speak, you will just, you'll just ride over those disturbances and say what you want to say.
Warren Mansell:So PCT points out that control is an automated process and we don't need very, we don't need to know about beliefs or probability or we don't need to predict anything in order to engage in control. That just happens very smoothly and it can operate in a device that has no information in it. So, for example, the Watts governor in a steam engine makes sure that the engine goes at a desired speed, a fixed speed set by the human in charge, and what it does is, every time it goes a little bit too fast, it closes the valve from the furnace, and every time it goes a little bit too slow, it opens the valve to the to the to the furnace. That's a negative feedback control device. It works entirely through physical forces and has no information state. Obviously the human controller decides the weight of these. There's a there's balls that turn around and it's a centrifugal force of those balls that sets the speed of the engine.
Warren Mansell:But that system, because of the way it's organized, it's organized in a closed loop. Because of that way it's organized, it controls but it clearly has no consciousness and it actually has no information. There are no bits in a what's governor. And so what consciousness? So consciousness doesn't need to come along yet. Consciousness only needs to come along in the context of having multiple, if having a brain that, unlike a Watts governor, a brain has neurons that can stand in for aspects of the world that we want to control, like our ambient temperature or my position from the screen. So it can, kind of it can have what we call perceptual signal for those that it controls.
Warren Mansell:But as humans we have this amazing open-ended ability to perceive and control many different things. So that's why we organize them in the hierarchy. But as soon as you start doing that, that you create this massive kind of hierarchical branching system which is going to be so vulnerable to conflict because one part of it isn't going to know what the other part's doing. And so consciousness in PCT is a, is a spotlight that goes around this hierarchy, kind of mending bits to stop them conflicting with each other and to help them perceive and control what matters to them better. So, um, within pct, uh, consciousness and um, a sort of novel learning. It comes quite late to the party. It's kind of form. The first part of theory is just the foundations of what is behavior in the first place.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Right. So here's. Here's a couple of ideas that I'm hearing. So you have these habits of mind, this type zero or type one, cognition, these these autonomic responses or automatic responses, intuition. So this is implicit guidance, control. That's kind of what I'm hearing when we're looking at the loop.
Warren Mansell:It's automatic control.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:It just kind of happens. Yeah, it just kind of happens, and it's built off of the behaviors and those habits of mind that you build into your muscle memory, or however you want to call it these days, those things that you can do, Just to pause a moment.
Warren Mansell:some of those terms are deconstructed by PCT. So, like a muscle? According to this, a muscle doesn't have a memory, but its proprioceptive sensory inputs might have a memory. But anyway, carry on.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Very cool, yeah, and I've been corrected to use habits of mind rather than muscle memory because I think it begins with that, and I've been corrected to use habits of mind rather than muscle memory because I think because of that. So we have that. You bring it up a little bit on control and novelty and consciousness, and one of the things we've been exploring is John Boyd identified this, not just through the Toyota production system, and I'll throw this statement out there. He pointed out that control is outside and bottom up. Statement out there. He pointed out that control is outside and bottom up, right Meaning that something you know when you have a customer or you're delivering a value to a customer or you're engaging with the outside world or you're meditating, control is outside and bottom up. You mean that's ultimately how things work.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So novelty could be something we connect with when we are in a flow state uh, steve jobs and LSD coming up with these ideas, um, connecting to something out there. So there's, there's information coming from the outside that's controlling these thoughts and that's that's. Again, we don't know if this is true or not, but that's the way we're kind of, uh, we, we kind of understand things, and then consciousness, um, you know, we, I know there's a lot of uh. There's different theories out there on it and there's no agreed-upon definition of it. One way I look at it is consciousness is global and we're all connected to it right, potentially, and it could be a local construct. I don't know, and maybe that's something we can dive into as well. But, moose, did I speak out of line on anything there, anything that?
Mark McGrath:you would add. No, I don't think so at all. I did a. I just did a quick scan of uh power sources versus voids and there's like 14 for sure that are in common, like that. That, um, when you sweep his papers, uh, destruction and creation and and powers works, they were, they were hitting, they were reading the same stuff. Like they're okay, they were, they were reading the same. Um the Okay, they were reading the same. The ones that jump off the page are just yeah, we can just tell from the course of the conversation that we've had so far. They were both looking into thermodynamics. They were both talking about Bayesian updating systems, thinking Gertl Heisenberg, thermodynamics, cybernetics. I mean, it's just like there's so much synergy.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:It's ridiculous yeah, and warren, based on anything you just heard from either moves for myself. Can you kind of correct us on on, you know, steer us correct or get us in a good direction where we find some thinking?
Warren Mansell:yeah, I mean, I guess um bill, at his heart, wasn't an academic, but he worked with academics in the 50s psychologists to get his paper into publication and so he did read, and need to read, some of those kind of key texts, particularly around cybernetics. But he was also aware of kind of information, entropy, cybernetics, but he was also aware of kind of information, entropy, etc. But he wouldn't necessarily integrate them wholeheartedly into his architecture, he would just be aware of them and think carefully about where to place them. But so you know, I think the key thing that differs and this goes right back to Ross Ashby, one of the early cybernetics and kind of organizational inferences on cybernetics in organizations is that that process of introducing variation into the system randomness, if you like, variation into the system, randomness, if you like, and in in powers theory that comes in to adjust the, the parameters of control systems that already exist and are working very successfully up to that point to control their inputs.
Warren Mansell:Um, so it's like a, it's like a two, there's like two separate things here, whereas ashby and, as I understand it, the free energy principle and other other people who've used information entropy much more wholeheartedly regard that that process as fundamental to to behavior rather than a process that comes in in a selective way to adjust the parameters of an existing system. And so yeah, bill powers was aware of that, parallel between his reorganization system and the kind of entropy reduction principles. That again goes right, right back to the, to the in psychology, to the, at least to before the 50s and he was very much an autodidact, too right.
Mark McGrath:He was more and more of an independent than an academic on the board.
Warren Mansell:Yeah, and that kind of independence kind of haunted him in a way, because he didn't necessarily have the connections and the students and the manner of expression to publish extensively in the kind of mainstream journals that you would hope. That said, he actually did. You know, there's a great paper in 1978 in Psychological Review, which is one of the leading psychology review journals, and it's well cited. What partly happened is that Bill's ideas, elements of them, permeated into some psychological theories, but not the whole theory bottom up.
Mark McGrath:But like Quad, shannon, gödel, heisenberg, second Law, thermodynamics and Piaget, we would think that they had those in common. They're citing all five of those things, uh yes, yes and no.
Warren Mansell:So, um, you know, I've read I don't I'm not an expert on information theory, but I have read claude shannon's biography, um, and it strikes me that the fundamental of information theory is that there are particles of information, bits, as it were, and the whole theory hinges upon understanding a system in either a categorical or symbolic or digital way. And that's been amazing for everything that we've done with the digital um technology and that's why we use phrases like bandwidth today. Um, but according to bill, the fundamental kind of embodied control systems in living organisms are not composed into bits of information. They are analog, dynamic, continuous systems. Obviously, an exception is the genetic genetic code, which is a symbolic system, but that genetic code interfaces with the rest of the cell and the living organism, which has a whole variety of variables that are not um easily decomposed into digital information. They are kind of concentrations of ions and salts and temperature and forces going around the body, none of which needs to be digitized. And so I've got some YouTube work, youtube talk, where I put it across and put it to people, that, and this is quite a profound point, but you know, take it or leave it, um, which is that? Because information theory, um and computing in this kind of serial digital metaphor, has been so successful that's literally led to the, the technologies and the lifestyles that we have today.
Warren Mansell:But actually in though, in that at that point in the late 40s and early 50s, there was a choice point in Norbert Weiner's work which was called control and communication. In the Human and Animal and the Machine there's a choice point to go down the lines of control and understand that better, or to go down the lines of information and communication and understand that better. And pretty much everyone went down the line of information Rather than trying to scrutinize. What is control, what is power? You know what is. How do we understand how people use information to exert control over others? And how can we understand those control, um, those dynamics, both within a person but also operating at the political and the economic level?
Warren Mansell:Um and bill powers chose down, chose to go down the control line and understand control in much more fundamental detail, um, and with it coming up with some, I think, some quite profound messages for psychology and mental health and sociology that really are almost like an orthogonal line of work to all the work that was done on information theory. The fascinating thing, it's so fascinating. Claude Shannonannon and alan cheering are kind of such fascinating characters.
Warren Mansell:Uh and incredible they were not boring that's very interesting, yeah, and you know I want. I watched the imitation game of my sons and I just kind of gets me very emotional. Um, but, alan, but Alan Turing actually believed again according to his biography that you couldn't explain the soul of a living person with his theory that actually a soul occupied a spiritual realm. And so he still held on to some quite supernatural ideas about human will and volition. And equally, claude Shannon spent the last 10 or 20 years of his life trying to understand how juggling works, and he built all these mathematical formulas of juggling, and none of that was information theory. He came up with some interesting formulas, but I don't think he explained it, and I genuinely believe that both these incredibly intelligent men missed out on that understanding because they wouldn't take the leap that Bill Powers did, which is to say, purpose, or teleology if you like, is inbuilt into a living system. It's even in a very primitive way, inside a thermostat, that you don't need consciousness, you don't need a soul to have a purpose, and a purpose in operational terms, literally means making the state of the world as you perceive it, the way you want it to be, and actually that can be done. Um, like manifestation, like, yeah, that is so. So just having some, any system that can internally specify some variable aspect of the world and has some way of acting against the world to keep that state of the world the way that it's internally specified, has a purpose and it has a goal and it can control, um, and so a thermostat controls. You know, I, you, I'd have to fight a thermostat if I wanted to change the temperature of a room. You know it can be pretty powerful just within the realms of temperature. Obviously I can. You know I can break the system. But if I wanted to counteract it with fires and you know, ice and whatever it would be, it would take quite a lot of effort on my part. So the world is a world of purposive agents. Most of them are living, some of them aren't, and we need to understand that.
Warren Mansell:One example where this is very challenging is in the world of algorithms. So whilst the programmers might think that their algorithm is innocuous because it's giving them revenue, sometimes these algorithms can inadvertently create control systems. So the Facebook algorithm to keep the users attending as long as possible, it will do anything that it needs to do to increase the user's attention and bring in whatever information and links that it needs to. It has no other goals. So it's a very, very simple control system, but it has incredible resources and that's why you get really disastrous effects sometimes of those algorithms, like in the Myanmar massacres where people were sharing all kinds of inflammatory dialogue, because the algorithm was purely controlling one variable, which is to try and get as much attention as possible, and in the heat of an ethnic conflict that's going to get the attention.
Warren Mansell:And that's a really good example of where consciousness is not involved and probably should be, because consciousness does the exact opposite. Consciousness is about how do you balance hundreds of different things that are important to the system in a way that's nimble and utilizes limited resources, resources, um, and kind of hopefully maintains the sort of survival and well-being of, you know, the person with the consciousness and those that they are connected with, um. So you know, I I guess I'm again a bit of a diatribe, but and I'm not trying to say understanding information and computing is bad in a kind of philistine kind of way what I'm saying is that far too much intellectual thought has gone into understanding information and hardly any has gone into understanding control. So, yes, claude Shannon and Turing were kind of incredible figures, but they weren't really the direct influences on Bill Power's ideas.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So social media, going back to the Facebook example there, in order to create these algorithms that target the orientation, using John Boyd's term, so the mental model, how we view the world. If we understand that through psychology, cognitive science and other sciences, how we can be manipulated, then you design that algorithm to target that right. So is this kind of connected back to that control idea?
Warren Mansell:I mean this connects it to it yeah, what pct always gets you to do and this comes through in method of levels, which is both a therapy but also a kind of introspective style of conversation it always gets you to ask the question of oh well, what's the point of doing that? What, why, why would, why would you want to do that? Who's in charge of this and who and what else does this matter? Who else does this matter to? So you're constantly interested in going a level above what's being done and trying to ask the question well, where are these goals being set and why are they being set that way, and how are they going to come up against other goals in the system?
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So you're looking at the system. So, going back to complex adaptive systems and systems theory, if you understand the system, you can understand the behavior or design a system that controls the behavior. Is that where you're going?
Warren Mansell:If, in PCT, you understand the system, when you understand its goals, and its goals are very complex and hierarchical.
Warren Mansell:Its goals and its goals are very complex and hierarchical. Um, you will only be able to predict the behavior in a in a quite a restricted environment because the behavior will change dynamically to for that system to uh control what matters to it. So we can predict what people want if we know what their goals are, although there will be some reorganization and we can predict their behavior, but only in a restricted environment. So, for example, if you build a control system, a simulation of tracking a target on the screen using PCT, and the person is only interfacing with, say, a mouse to track the target on the screen, you could actually build a very precise model of their behavior to about 99% level of accuracy. You know exactly where they're going to move the mouse next because they've signed up to that one goal of keeping the cursor trapped. And you can actually get someone to unconsciously and unknowingly write words on the screen that they are completely unaware that they're writing because you are pushing, you're making a disturbance that they have to push against to keep the cursor on the target. So they're like pushing this thing around to keep the cursor on the target and you've got a display of how they're moving the mouse, uh, whilst that's happening, and it writes the word hello at the top of the screen. And then you ask them did you write that word? Did you notice that words? Like no, I was just keeping the, the, uh, the, not over the dots.
Warren Mansell:I was keeping the, the cursor tracker there. So what it shows is yes, if you understand. You don't want to understand someone's behavior. You want to understand someone's goals, what they're controlling. If you know what someone is controlling, you can manipulate them very well, even without them being aware of it. And that's why people can be easily, you know, exploited when they're in vulnerable situations, particularly if they are focusing and they're overvaluing one goal in their life.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So someone who's addicted to a drug for example. So knowing the goal of the agent is important. The behavior is an outcome of that goal, potentially, yeah, the behavior is a means to that goal.
Warren Mansell:Potential behavior yeah, the behavior is a means to achieve that goal in a certain environment okay, so so, um, understand.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So this is like getting inside the oodle loop. Uh, that's what we talk about, and maybe someone ask you a question on this. So, if we understand what's driving, what the goal oriented approach is for that agent, if we understand that that's what we can manipulate and manipulation. We also talk about leadership, manipulation, leadership, being opposite sides of the same coin. So, um, can you use pct in a leadership? Uh, I guess. Uh, yeah, you know, not training, but to help understand leadership.
Warren Mansell:Okay, yeah, and there's no stocks man.
Warren Mansell:There's books written on that, because it's kind of exactly how do you do the opposite, how do you help people achieve their own goals and reorganize their own goals in a way that maintains their well-being? Questioning, so giving people a space to explore what matters to them, both in this context but also more widely, and just sustaining that that time period, uh, continuously. So method of levels is about, um, it's a, it's like a supercharged active listening. You are letting the person talk about the problem, the conflict, and you are keeping them there with your questions. Your questions are fairly brief, fairly regular.
Warren Mansell:It's like oh, how does that work? Where's that going? What do you want to do next? What's coming into your mind now? And so you just keep them there and, if you know, it probably takes about five or ten minutes to get going. But these conversations can be half an hour or so and people, by the end of those conversations, come out of it because they've been in charge of the conversation. They just use the questions to scaffold and explore in much more depth and detail. So they come out of those conversations with much better insight as to how to deal with this situation. Yeah, not.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:I'm just taking a look at some of my uh documents in here from like flow, flow states, red teaming techniques and I'm starting to see this pop up more and more, and then some of those books.
Mark McGrath:So there's a lot of overlap with what we talk about here I'm thinking yeah, I've been thinking boy, of course, and and I I also scanned their papers, so I guess powers papers are at Northwestern University.
Warren Mansell:Oh yeah, they are. Yeah, they're held there in the archive, but they're also online.
Mark McGrath:And Boyd's are at Quantico and they have what we would expect. Their overlap is around these ideas of cognition and cybernetics and other things, um, but at the same time I also, as warren was talking, I keep thinking of mccluhan and tayard too, because all medium work us over completely, right, all media work us over completely. And I wonder if that you know, we say all the time systems drive behaviors. Um, I think a lot of that like we were talking, like, say, example, we were talking about manipulation, actually started thinking of edward bernays, because I think that he understood that people were goal oriented and and by um, speaking to those goals and getting those people to act on those purposes of wanting to be, you know, pretty so by makeup or wanting to be fit, so they, by a gym membership they ended up not using or whatever, but like.
Mark McGrath:But then that also ties back into McLuhan, with the medium being the message and all the, you know, the environment and the technology being extensions of some human function. In the age of electric media, electronic media that's overriding our central nervous system, that's forcing these types of behaviors, of behaviors. I'm just, I'm curious if, like, uh, if, if powers ever talked about mccluhan, um, and the things that he was thinking about, because I think the other thing too. I'd ask you, warren. I mean, it seems like it seems like powers is not as lauded as he could be, just like boyd or mccluhan or not. Uh, that like powers has kind of thought as an afterthought. He wasn't a serious academic compared to others.
Warren Mansell:Yeah, and he also wasn't in the corporate world either.
Mark McGrath:Yeah. So I don't know. I guess I see some, I see more connections. Again, I ask you, I mean, did he have any Like the work of Marshall McL mccluhan did, did, did I mean powers? If he lived to 2013, then then they certainly were alive at the same time and he would have, he would have it, would have come into contact with his work yeah, I'm not sure.
Warren Mansell:he certainly had conversations with various other theorists about his, his work. Um, I know more about the psychologists he talked to, but you know, I do think that what Pau's is articulating are basically just laws of nature. You know, yeah, you can put his name on it and you can look at other people's names.
Mark McGrath:But you know't say about the other guys too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, discoverers they're not. They're not inventors they're.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:They're discoverers of how the universe worked yeah, yeah so I'm curious um the, the connection back to the free energy principle. I know you shared some information with me. Can you just walk us through the major difference between PCT and FEPP? I don't know if that's possible.
Warren Mansell:I mean I can't speak in too much detail on the free energy principle, speak to in too much detail on the free energy principle the paper that I shared I edited that's that uh that paper as part of a special issue that's in current opinion, of behavioral sciences, and richard kennerway wrote that article.
Warren Mansell:Um made his best attempt to uh describe the free energy principle, but I still think he, you know, would err towards those experts, particularly carl friston um in that regard um and I've I've had conversations with carl and he's got a real um respect for perceptual control theory. He wrote a wonderful endorsement for our uh interdiscipline handbook on perceptual control theory in uh 2023. So he recognizes the. You know that pct is foundational um. That said, most people that use the free energy principle do not reference powers um, and that is because they come from very different starting points um. They converge in the um in the fact that they are both describing closed loops whereby a system um is uh interacting with its environment in a in a dynamic closed loop manner um but, the starting points are different.
Warren Mansell:So, like I say, start points of pct are, in a way, they're very simple. They are um, they are classic control theory, so the negative feedback, control in its rawest sense, um, and they are introspection. So bill powers used his own introspection to make hypotheses about what the perceived aspects of the world might be that are human controls.
Mark McGrath:Um, they are the what's the purpose beyond stability, though? Like, like for pct like, is there a sense of direction? Is there? Is there? What's the purpose beyond stability?
Warren Mansell:yeah, no, the purpose is, is I only really goes back to well, in the long term it goes back to evolution and survival and reproduction. So, um, we're we're born with intrinsic control systems, so we have ones that maintain our body temperature, you know, energy supply, hydration, etc. So those control systems are, um, have evolved through evolution. We're born with them. Uh, they're probably some in in utero adjustments, um, but they are like the teaching signal for the perceptual hierarchy.
Mark McGrath:And they continue to evolve, like they would continue to evolve towards something. So what Boyd would say in destruction and creation? Like we destroy and create cognitive models in order to improve our capacity for free and independent action, in other words, that as time advances we're improving. Or there's some kind of like a teleological arc where, like you know, teilhard would say that we're evolving towards you know what he called the omega point, but like there's some kind of a forward evolution. And that's what I'm learning about PCT. Beyond stability, is there a sense of direction or purpose beyond just mere stability?
Warren Mansell:Well, according to PCT, stability is a purpose, but stability in the in the short term will not ensure the survival of the organism in the long term.
Warren Mansell:So that's why we develop this rich perceptual hierarchy, which doesn't have a lid, doesn't have a ceiling, and that's why we're conscious, because we continually are experiencing challenges to our stability and those are evolving dynamically in a biological, physical, social world. So we continually need to pay attention to those conflicting goals that are manifested in our current environment and that will lead us to develop higher level perceptions of ourselves in the world, so that process will go forward. But actually, the trading signal for that process is our biology. You know we are, ultimately, we have developed these sophisticated perceptions of ourselves in the world to um consistently maintain, um, those biological set points so that we're, you know, we're happy, we're comfortable, we are, we're surviving into the future, um, and that's how the, the, the uh hierarchy kind of develops, uh, but obviously, at any one moment we don't need to be thinking about those things. We're just thinking about you know how we want our lives and our and our families and our world to be, and that is a purpose in itself but he's not chasing equilibrium right.
Mark McGrath:Like he's not like stability. He's it's not like like the absence of things changing. Like he's he's not trying to get to like an equilibrium point.
Warren Mansell:Well, yes and no. So, like a controlled, a controlled variable is a special kind of equilibrium. So, um, it's not. A controlled variable isn't a static state. A controlled variable isn't a static state. A controlled variable is a perception. That's the way you want it to be. So I can have a desired state for what music I want to listen to, which evolves over time. I can have a desired state for how fast I want to run. So you can have a reference point for a variable that is changing in in a complex way, but it's changing in a complex way we're comparing between all states, right, like we're comparing that reference to something else to to aspire to that change.
Mark McGrath:So like if I'm cold I put on a sweater.
Warren Mansell:Like I'm comparing those things constantly so I can adjust and reduce the reduce the error, or to achieve that, that desired end result yeah, yeah, and your experience conflict if you're in a hot room and someone's just bought you a lovely, lovely sweater and you want to and you want to keep it on to show them that you like it okay yeah, because the other, because I guess now the other I start thinking of Ludwig von Mises and praxeology is that in our being, in our cognition, that we're constantly, you know, when we think as human actors in economic action we're thinking of, we encounter felt uneasiness and we envision what it's like to overcome that uneasiness.
Mark McGrath:So we make the necessary adjustments to make the decisions and actions to achieve that point where we think that I guess his powers would say we reach a point of stability.
Warren Mansell:Yeah, we reach the reference point.
Mark McGrath:Yeah.
Warren Mansell:Okay, but you know, I guess I made a decision a while back to, kind of when I saw and understood the architecture, to think this is kind of all I need. I'm not going to have to jump around different theories anymore and use different words for stuff. I've got this as my kind of Rosetta Stone for behavior and it's done me pretty well for the last few decades. So you know, that's kind of what I go back to, and it does make life a lot simpler when you only have to think of one theory rather than you know dozens or hundreds well, I get it, though you think it's interesting to point out that all these guys coming from different disciplines even come to a similar conclusion.
Warren Mansell:Yeah, they're finding this basic nowadays.
Mark McGrath:Psychology, economics, engineering. Yeah, what are the gaps, what are the limitations of PCT?
Warren Mansell:Well, it explains control and expands on all of those aspects of control. It doesn't try and explain something that doesn't involve control. So there are things that are in the world that don't control, so it doesn't try and explain those things. Maybe the other aspect is that it's a really it's kind of a meta theory. So you know a lot of psych, a lot of theories in science have gained purchase and um become popular because they've they've been much more uh, strategic about the, the topic that they're explaining, or the about the topic that they're explaining or the instance of behavior that they're explaining, and so they can be a bit more specific about those and therefore test them in much more deeply because they're in that one zone, say, of tracking or vision or flight or whatever.
Warren Mansell:And so a big challenge for PCT is that, because it's this kind of universal theory of control, it doesn't pre-specify how these architectures are organized for any particular context, for any particular animal, for any particular person in any particular context, context for any particular animal, for any particular person in any particular context. Those have to be derived um by the researcher using what's called the test for the controlled variable, which is to try and work out what is this person or machine trying to control um. So it has the tools for it, but it it. It can't sort of pre-specify and say you know what are the? What are the 10 most important goals for a person?
Warren Mansell:biologically, it's not in the job of doing that but obviously other people do that, like safety and shelter, you know, et cetera.
Mark McGrath:Does it assume a neutral environment?
Warren Mansell:It assumes an environment of feedback functions, disturbances and a load of other stuff. So the environment, I guess, is highly intricate and complex. But for the individual what's important to the environment is what are the feedback functions, which is basically, what are the aspects of the environment that I can use to make my, my sensory experiences, my inputs, the way I want them to be? Um, that some people call that affordances from uh ecological theory. But, um, feedback function has a more teleological kind of um, uh kind of way, a way of understanding it. So the environment is either a feedback function or it's a disturbance, and disturbances are what get in the way of making the world the way we want it to be. And those disturbances again can be of all different kinds, of all different levels.
Warren Mansell:And what bill powers kind of discovered very early on is that, um, a couple of things.
Warren Mansell:One is that the environment is so complex that it would be extremely computationally challenging to try and actually model the environment. It's just, there's just too many variables there of irrelevance to to the organism to even bother. The second thing he realized is that, again, because the environment is so complex, um, you have the system has to specialize in under in trying to counteract the disturbance and even trying to predict all of the possible disturbances to any one movement at any one time is again very computationally challenging. So what it just needs to specialize in is what, um, what it can do to um, counteract a disturbance to its current desired perception at that point. So it doesn't presume that it knows what the disturbance is going to be in advance, it just acts as soon as it notices that goal discrepancy. And we've built computer models and robotic models that work just fine without that capacity for prediction, so like an inverted pendulum, for example, that is just as stable as a model that actually tries to simulate and predict the environment.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:I'm curious if there's any AI approaches using PCT as a fundamental way to do predictive processing or anything like that.
Warren Mansell:Yeah, so good question, strictly AI in the sense of the current developments in algorithms, machine learning and generative AI. There's none that have come directly from pct. There are several people who are working in that area, particularly in terms of robotics, who are um, yeah, building software that is um, yeah, it's artificially intelligent, but it's not, it's not generative ai. So, for example, henry yin at duke university and rupert young both of them have got publications and uh videos of the robots that they've um designed, uh built the software controllers for using pct. Again, that you know part of the the.
Warren Mansell:Their advantages are their elegance, really, their computational simplicity and, yeah, they tend to achieve the same skills as robots that don't use PCT, but in a much more parsimonious way and in a more transparent way. You can look inside the network and you can just see exactly how it works. So this controls that and that controls this, so it's not a black box. So, um, rupert young has built, used um reorganization to build the, these control hierarchies, um, and so the system evolves, control hierarchies and and optimizes the ones that achieve the goal best, and so you can just look at the network and you can see exactly why it can balance or why it can walk or whatever, because it actually makes sense. It's not just a matter of tens of thousands of neural connections, even though that might end up achieving the same function.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Go ahead Misha.
Mark McGrath:No, it's just like. I guess, when I think of PCT, I'm thinking of like OODA loop. Pct seems more linear versus OODA loop, being more nonlinear, more simultaneous, more recursive.
Warren Mansell:No, that's not the difference.
Mark McGrath:You'd say there's no difference. Maybe it's just semantics then, but it's just what….
Warren Mansell:PCT is continuous parallel two-way hierarchical system.
Mark McGrath:Okay well then, what role does like? But like environment though, I mean you say you said disturbances and like a load of other stuff, but like I guess I'm trying to square how environment in medium over, you know, overcome our senses, um, because if something I guess I was kind of asking about, like the neutrality of environment, um, yeah, maybe I'm not sure what you're meaning by the word neutrality well, like how we're communicating now, I mean how we, you know we're, you're in australia, I'm in new york city, pontius and virginia.
Mark McGrath:I mean we're the, the like the medium is the message right, like the? The like the environment is driving how we, how Like the. The like the environment is driving how we, how we sense things, how we, how we perceive things, not necessarily the, the content. So that's restructuring our, our perception. And I'm just trying to square how, how, pct, if, if, our, if, if, if the form of the environment itself is what's restructuring our, our perception? Um, as McLuhan taught, like, how does um, how does, how does PCT model that form bias of the environment? Like, how does that? Does it allow for that, to you know, to shape our perceptions? Um, I guess that's. I guess I keep thinking of the environments aren't neutral. You know, there's there's cultural traditions, there's genetic heritage, there's, there's, there's physical environments, there's evolutionary environment. There's so many things that are not neutral. And I wonder if that's the load of other stuff, because you said disturbances plus a load of other stuff, and I'm just wondering if that's the load of other stuff.
Warren Mansell:I think the active according to PCT, yeah, the active elements of the environment are the disturbances and the feedback functions, but they are in a shared network.
Warren Mansell:There's really nice work written by Kent McClelland, who's a sociologist, who talks about how the environment is involved in these feedback pathways between agents and the environment is set up. We create our elements of our environment to achieve our goals for one another and for ourselves. So that's why we build the kind of tools and I think nearly everything I can see around me is something that someone's built at some point or designed at some point to achieve a goal. You know, in terms of, you know the table to put my stuff on and this screen to see you guys and so the idea is that environment the environments that the people create is is there either to help them or other people achieve what they want, or to get in the way of people achieving what they want. Um and that um, from a sort of anthropological context, that's what artifacts are. They are there, built by the purposes of the agents that design them, and then they come into use when they're scaled up at that global level.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So, warren, I want to kind of end on this note here, and that is uh, if you were to kind of summarize why either a leader or an organization, or why anybody should understand PCT, um, what, what do they get out of that? And I'll add some more context to this. Um, when people ask us that question about the OODA loop, you know we're like, once you see it, you can't unsee it, it's everywhere, right, when we see it, and I have a feeling that it's kind of the same thing with you, it's kind of, you know, pct is what you see everywhere, and then what we see is OODA loop, and we're not. We may be saying the same thing, but we're using different words. So could you help us frame it for what value people get out of any in any profession, what they get out of it by learning this?
Warren Mansell:Yeah, I've developed a form of conversation called Discovery Talk, which is essentially a method of conversation called discovery talk, which is essentially method of levels, the therapy that's developed by PCT, but in a much more scalable way, that people could use in all kinds of contexts to resolve problems, and the core to that is control and reorganization. And so PCT gives a really, I think, straightforward common sense but also scientific basis for what control is understanding how important control is, understanding that behind most problems that we have, or organizations have, is conflict, and we need to understand what's what, where that conflict is, and understand both sides of it in detail. And reorganization, which is this kind of inbuilt process of of change, and change in a way that you can't plan ahead and that that time spent thinking and contemplating and exploring and orienting towards a problem in all its aspects gives that opportunity for reorganisation, and you can't will it into existence, it just happens for reorganization and you can't, you can't will it into existence, it just happens. And so, um, those three aspects you know to understand, to understand who's controlling who, why they're controlling, who's controlling what, how do we, how do we build an organization where people control what matters to them in their lives and as an organization, we control what we need, and it all works in a harmonious, conflict minimal way.
Warren Mansell:When conflicts arise, what do we do? We pay attention to them, and how do we pay attention to them in depth and detail until we just get ideas, we get thoughts and that's reorganization happening. So, yeah, that's, that's how I would sell it to an organization. I also think it works well if people are are naturally humanists or if they're naturally engineers, because there's two very easy routes there to think oh, it's just, we work like uh. Or if they're biologists, oh, it's. It's a bit like homeostasis, but through the environment. It's a bit like how a thermostat works. It's a bit like what Rogers was saying about the self being fundamentally goal-driven, and help needs to be person-centered and person-led person-centered and person-led.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So again, the overlap between what PCT is and what we talk about with OODA loop is, I mean, I think they're you know, like a hand in a glove. It's just that we haven't heard this before, and that's why.
Warren Mansell:I'm scratching my head. Yeah, and I have read about the top, top end of the oodle loop. You know what comes up when you search for it?
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:and yeah, and that's that's not what it is. You know, that's garbage, yeah okay no, no. And that's important because when people you know academics, search for it, they find that horrible linear approach to observe, orient, to side act. First you observe, then you orient, then you decide and then you act. That's not what it was designed to do. Never was it designed like that.
Mark McGrath:Well, and they're also. When you think we talk about Boyd Buccleuch and Taylor, they're also extremely multidisciplinary. I mean, these were men that were coming at it from so many different angles simultaneously themselves.
Warren Mansell:I mean, I'd certainly be if you want to send me what would be a good summary of Boyd's account. I'll have a good look over it.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, I mean, he was a polyglot, not a polyglot, a polymath. I mean, he was an economist, an engineer, a fighter pilot, a historian, a philosopher. You know, teilhard was a Catholic priest, he was a theologian, he was a philosopher. He was a theologian, he was a philosopher, he was a paleontologist. Marshall McLuhan was an English literature scholar and a media theorist.
Mark McGrath:so they write for different audiences at different times maybe I see the synergies as like the technical things that I'm sensing when I'm gathering from PCT. It seems like none of them would disagree with any of that.
Mark McGrath:I think, where they would say that their theories take that and add a lot more because they allow for the simultaneity of the universe, the multidimensional of the universe. I mean it seems very, you know, cartesian flat and linear versus the way that they were looking at the world, very, um, very multidimensional, and that environment and terrain they're, they're not neutral, those things, maybe, they, maybe. What I'm hearing is that maybe that's a way of just saying there were disturbances, but but there's no claim that the there's no claim that environment, environment's neutral in PCT.
Warren Mansell:And you know, Powers was a physicist. He knew everything about the physical complexities of the universe, but they're just not parts.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, there's a lot of synergy.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Yeah.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, yeah, I mean Boyd also designed. I mean we forget about his physics, his physicist contributions of designing energy maneuverability theory, which informs all modern aviation design. So I mean there's, there's, there's, there's multiple angles. I do find it interesting that he was a physicist commenting on things that you know had like a psychological bent. So that's cool, um yeah, but I think, if anything, I think we've started something. We've started a dialogue like a like, like an avenue or an angle that people certainly aren't talking about and I love derided, suppressed thinkers like like a powers. You know that nobody knows of that, or that was dismissed because he wasn't a, an establishment academic, or that kind of thing, because neither was Boyd. So maybe we've started something neat.
Warren Mansell:You've lit a fire. You lit a fuse under this Create a virtual conversation between them, train a few AIs and get them talking to each other.
Mark McGrath:Oh, yes, I mean people are doing that Again. I think there would be a lot more. They wouldn't stop at psychology or physics. I mean, those guys would add a lot. I just think there's a lot more to it, because humans are so complex and unique, um, but as you say, it doesn't say that the environment's not neutral. Um, that's what? Because that that's the other. I guess that's the other thing I'm thinking because, like in like in boyd's case, like the enemy gets a vote, you know there's an adversary, you're in a competitive, you know what? What would PCT? Well, maybe I'll just ask you, like, what would, what would PCT? Uh, in a competitive situation? And like, say, you know, force A versus force B, or football team A or B or whatever, yeah, well, I mean.
Warren Mansell:So there's uh Phil Farrell, um, she's used PCT for the Canadian defense service, uh, for the Canadian Defence Service for a while. He's retired now, so Phil Farrell is a good reference for that. F-a-r-r-e-l-l. I've done a little mock-up of a predator-prey situation and modelling that uh, situation, um, and modeling that um. But essentially it's a conflict, uh dynamic, where you've got a, an agent that's controlling for what what its variables and you've got the competing agent controlling for its variables, uh, and obviously they will interface through the environment.
Warren Mansell:So you can, you can set up those, those. There's also a demonstration that Bill Powers made, called the Crowd Demo. So all of these, most of what I've been talking about, you can find on the IAPCT website, which is iapctorg, and that includes Bill Powers' computer demos, and one of those is from his 2008 book, which is like models these agents with specific goals and shows how they compete for space, for location, et cetera. So, yeah, it would. Basically, I guess the answer is it would build, build the simulation, test it and, um, use it to answer the questions that you might have regarding those that competition.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So I wonder if you could tell our listeners where they can find more about your work, uh, and the any work that's uh about to emerge from um, where they can find more about your work and any work that's about to emerge from your desk, your mind, where can? They find you.
Warren Mansell:Yeah, so in terms of my own work, I think probably my Curtin University web. If you search me up at Curtin University you'll see my list of publications, but also if you go to my thread on x then I think any new publications. I'll always put something up there, uh, and on linkedin I'll have a more of a academic introduction on those. So, other than then, of course, um, I've got a um web address, which is particularly we haven't talked too much about the mental health aspects today, but that's my, that's my main focus of my research. So we have a um, a research group called lex, called led by experience. So that's led by experienceorg and that's the focus of that is to um describe the particular research projects that we're doing to um improve mental health through universal, scalable solutions that are guided by pct but also because of cpt cpt guided by the lived experience of people who've gone through those mental challenges do they talk about, uh, psychedelic therapies at all?
Warren Mansell:um. So again I've got a great reference for psychedelic, which is Sarah Tai. What's the AI? So Sarah, One more time Sarah S-A-R-A. So I'm just realizing I need to print, I need to plug my computer in. This won't look very great on the podcast. So Sarah S-A-R-A. And then tai t-a-i and she's at university of manchester and so sarah trained up the professionals who supported people who use who use psych, uh, psilocybin psychedelics for resistant depression. So she's the kind of authority on perceptual control theory in the use of psychedelics. And she's got a couple of YouTube videos as well that she explains her work. Yeah, I mean, we're you know our interest.
Mark McGrath:We've done a lot of podcasts on the topic. Our interest are, you know, punch and I are both veterans and our, our other two business partners are, and we're, um, we know lots of our peers uh and that have gone through, uh, a lot of trauma. Um, they've gotten a lot of uh help and relief using psychedelic therapies for their, for their PTSD, versus SSRIs. So, um, I think I don't know part two, we have to like nine episodes on nine or 10 episodes on psychedelics. Oh yeah, and there's more coming, so there's a lot more coming yeah.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:You know, what's funny is people don't like listening to those things because they're. They're like well, that's, that's nonsense, that's woo. Tell me about how my dog can be a leader with Oodle Loop.
Warren Mansell:You're like really, that's what you're interested in so.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:I think the things that save lives and that are really cutting edge are difficult for people to tune into If their orientation, or, in this case, the variables they're not expecting that, or, in this case, the variables they're not expecting that.
Mark McGrath:Did people actively try to suppress, like we're talking about, how Bill Powers is not as well known I mean, did he have enemies that people tried to suppress his views? That didn't want to upset their own intellectual apple carts Like?
Warren Mansell:Void was like that yeah so he really wanted to join in with cybernetics but by the time he came onto the scene it was second-order cybernetics Not that he would totally agree with first-order cybernetics, but, yeah, he was apparently talked down at cybernetics meetings. I've talked with and presented at cybernetics meetings more recently and they're somewhat open, but there's certainly no plans, as I understand it, to bring powers back into the, you know, explicitly into the cybernetics realm. So, yeah, so he had a hard time in cybernetics and there's also an interesting debate with Albert Bandura, who developed the construct of self-efficacy. And so they were. It was through a different, it wasn't housed directly, but there's an interesting debate between Alfred Bandura and PCT through Jeffrey Vancouver, who uses PCT in an organizational setting. They're the two most obvious ones where there was actually kind of deliberate kind of questioning. You know it was still very respectful but somewhat dismissive. But most of the difficulties have been more in just people not noticing it, not thinking it's relevant, not wanting to read it in depth to really understand what it is, or using, as I say, elements of it for their own ends but not really incorporating the whole architecture. And I've written a book chapter in 2020 which I think I've called the 10 vital ingredients of perceptual control theory, their journey into the mainstream, something along that, along those lines. Can't remember the names of everything, um, anyway, I really track where, pct, where you see elements of pct where they've been explicitly acknowledged and some explanation of why it's not been um, I think.
Warren Mansell:I do think that one of the main reasons is that, um, people have a hard time thinking that purpose, uh, purpose is hardwired into the brain. You know. You know, as scientists we've come so far by not um, believing in creationism or kind of supernatural beings with purposes designing the world for us. You know we've got so far through it, going in a reductionist direction, and that I think people throw out the baby with the bath water and and don't want to see purpose where, where they find it.
Warren Mansell:And I would say a control system is a purposive system and it just is. You know it, just it. It makes happen what it wants and and yes, there's constraints on that but the, the control, is coming from within. It's not a stimulus response system, it's not a prediction engine, it's a control system. And I think people have a hard time thinking that something so simple could have a goal, you know of its own, and you know, and I think you know that's, that's just something, that that's kind of like a jump that you make when you grasp pct and think, oh yeah, I can see how that system wants this there's a, there's an odd connection, uh, that you just brought up there.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Um, so I just read out andrew gallimore's new book um, I can't think of the name of it off the top of my head's. Two words I'll think about in a second. But DMT he claims that DMT is, when you use it, yeah, psychedelic.
Warren Mansell:DMT, it's not psychedelic, is it? Yeah, yeah.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:That it actually controls you, right? Yeah, you're not experiencing something, so this thing from the outside is controlling you. So I mean, it doesn't matter what it's just an alien life form or whatever but that type of control, um is is possible, right, that's. And that's why, when you said that you know the purpose, there is um. It controls the experience that you're having in an outside world or in the world that you're not used to.
Warren Mansell:So I guess the simplest that I. I'm sure there'll be levels to the PCT explanation of psychedelics, but in its simple terms it basically down, down, regulates our control systems and that allows natural variation, natural variation in the neural systems, which we call reorganization, to be more evident. So we are reorganizing all the time. That's part and parcel of consciousness. But that degree of reorganization can vary. It varies very little in a normal person. But arguably psychedelics raise relative downregulation of all our habitual control systems. And the upregulation of the reorganization system is what is the active ingredient of psychedelics. But that's why it's so important that they're delivered in a, an environment that the person feels safe and in control, because it's quite feels quite uncontrollable anyway. So they need that environment of predictability and also the potential to direct that reorganization system to where it matters, which it might do quite naturally. But sometimes the person who's with them, with their sort of gentle questioning, can help them get more out of the, the, the experience, than they would have otherwise.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:And that's what sarah's been working on so what about prayer and uh like meditation and breathing, uh, some type of flow state?
Warren Mansell:it down, regulates it does all the same.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Okay there yeah, yeah, it's all the same as as. So what about prayer and like meditation and breathing, some type of flow state it down-regulates, all the same?
Warren Mansell:Okay, there we go. Yeah, it's all the same, as is exposure. Basically, you're holding off your usual attempts to push something that you don't really want to hold in mind back to the back of your mind, because we spend most of the time saying I haven't got time for that, you know. So, prayer and meditation and exposure, therapy, counseling arguably the active ingredient is just holding those off for a while and allowing the material that would pop into our heads anyway. But just let it happen, giving it a place to settle and form and connect. And so, whether you're talking through a traumatic memory with a therapist, whether you're praying, whether you're meditating certain forms of meditation do not do this, but some do they are allowing that unintegrated information about unresolved goals and conflicts to pop back in in a safe space where we can make something new out of it, and eventually we're like, oh yes, if only I can do it this way now, or this makes sense now can.
Warren Mansell:I've seen it all together. I wasn't thinking about this time when I, you know, when I was 18, and I wasn't thinking about my relationship now, and I wasn't thinking about this all at the same time together. And now I see that they're connected. I can see that it's about me and my tendency to be like this, and so now I want to do something about it. You know so consciousness does that anyway, but certain uh contexts, um, allow consciousness to do its work better, and those are coaching and counseling, arguably prayer, meditation, intrinsically from very small doses of psychedelics. All of them kind of suspend our usual internal control processes and allow a space for that material to be processed.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:I think that's fantastic and I think that's a great place to end for this evening. We do want to thank you, warren, for joining us tonight. I know Moose and I are just kind of like an odd going wait a minute. This sounds very familiar and the words are a little bit different. Reorganization reminds me of reorientation. So, moose, any last thoughts?
Mark McGrath:Well, I've been sitting here like Googling and downloading Powers of Papers and I just looked up Dr Tai about psychedelics. So, like I have, uh, you've added a lot to my, my stack of uh of things because, because I guess, like, I guess, like I detect a lot of synergies and I also think that they're probably more, um, they're probably these sorts of things that we've been talking about are probably a lot more complementary, not necessarily anything that would replace these things. Work in conjunction and understanding PCT would augment my understanding of Boyd and McLuhan or Teilhard or whatever, and vice versa. And then the psychedelic angle at the end. There, I was just sitting here looking up how to contact Sarah tie.
Warren Mansell:Drop her a line.
Mark McGrath:Her work looks fascinating and it looks like in. I guess in UK they probably have a different approach to psychedelics than we do here in the uh, the Puritans, and they sent them here and the Puritans are came over here and run our country.
Warren Mansell:It's an international research group that she works with, but Sarah, because she's guided by PCT, has a very particular way of understanding how the psychedelics work.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Again, we appreciate your time tonight, Warren.
Warren Mansell:No worries, we'll keep you on for a moment.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Yeah, thanks again.
