Aldous, The Personable Computer

Since most of the participants in this conference have been prefacing their remarks by saying
that they really have no business being here, I would like to insert my claim to a similar
distinction. I think I can make a more convincing case than the others who have tried.
Not only am I innocent of any intimacies with computers, but I am the fellow who has sworn
off using most of the psychological constructs that have·been tossed around during the last
three days. For example, some time ago I discarded "motives" and have been living quite
happily without recourse to "motivation" ever since. "Affect" makes no sense to me
anymore; nor do "drives," "reinforcements," " stimuli," "responses," "emotion," or
"cognition." As a matter of fact, I decided to abandon "learning" some years ago, a hold step
that opened up a whole exciting new world to me. Having had a taste of this exhilarating
way of life, it seems quite unthinkable now that I should ever return to the days when I
allowed my time to be taken up with learning things rather than making something out of
them, with being pushed around by what people kept telling me were my motives, or with
being forever prodded into some senseless activity by events that happened to be labeled
"stimuli."
But while I, myself, have abandoned most of the vocabulary of those who keep the
American Psychological Association journals going, I do regress, from time to time, in the
interest of classical humanism. So just to make it clear I have not lost respect for the older
generation who imagined there really were such things as "affect," etc., I have tried to put
some of the thoughts expressed in this conference into poetical form:
There once was an ardent young suitor
Who programmed a female computer,
But he failed to connect
The affective effect,
So there wasn't a thing he could do to 'er.
I suppose I really shouldn't have recited that-the sentiment being quite antithetical to my
own personal convictions. But I find, sometimes, it is helpful to give my opponents an
argument or two with which to defend their positions. lt makes for better feeling when we
get through.
Following World War I the intellectuals of Central Europe were searching desperately for
values to replace the romanticism they believed they had lost. During the Twenties a play by
Karel Capek appeared, entitled "R.U.R.-Rossun's Universal Robots." The word "robot" was
new in those days and Iremember there was considerable discussion of how it should be
pronounced-"rah'but," "row-boat','' "ro-bow'." In any case, what happened was that, in the
play, the robots, whose outlook on life was pretty much what we would call that of the
"hard scientists" nowadays, got out of hand and began to take over from the natives. Just
about the time the last inefficiently sentimental human being was being mowed down by
machine gun fire, a couple of the late model robots began to exhibit some quite unrobot-
like behavior. A girl robot and a boy robot fell in love with each other. Thus, right at the
moment of triumph for the ingeniously constructed simulators, the whole project collapsed.
The robots got to acting so much like human beings that they actually became human. All of
which goes to show you can't really win at this game of simulating the human personality;
for the moment you succeed, you are right back where you started. If I may paraphrase
Camus, simulation is a Sisyphian enterprise.

As a matter of fact, at the Ohio State University we have taken this hazard into account and
have developed a simulator that goes just about as far as you can expect to go in this
direction without getting set back to where you started. The model is called the OSU-401.
We have quite a number of units of this device available for research in the Department of
Psychology, although from time to time the more objective members of the staff express
doubts about how well it simulates the human personality and, indeed, occasfonally raise
some very grave questions about its statistical reliability. (Perhaps I should say that 401 is
the number of our elementary psychology course and the units are made available to us
free of charge through an arrangement that requires students enrolled in the course to
serve as subjects in experiments.) But as I say, this is getting perilously close to the ultimate
in personality simulation, so I wouldn't blame some of you if you voiced objections over the
extent to which we have allowed our enthusiasm for computer verisimilitude to override
our obligations to science.
Actually it was some years ago, when I was in the Navyduring the war, that I discovered that
you could carry this simulation business too far. lt had been suggested that the Navy should
purchase some Link Trainersand rig them so that primary flight instruction could be given in
them. This was known as "The Visual Link Project." The Link Trainer is a mock-up of an
airplane cockpit which can be rotated on three axes by the occupant' s using stick and
rudder. It has little stub wings sticking out from the side that are supposed to suggest the
wings of an airplane. I might add that this bit of simulated realism always struck me as
extremely amusing because of what it revealed about the mentality of Naval officers.
Be that as it may, one of the problems that seemed to stand in the way of the use of the
Link Trainer as a primary flight instructional device was the fact that it could not simulate
the noise, the laboring of the engine in a climb, the Vibration, and the acceleration effects
one experiences in a turn. As they thought it over, the engineers decided they could
simulate everything except the acceleration effects. But those effects are especially
important in the early stages of learning to fly.
After giving the matter some thought myself, I came up with a definitive solution to all
aspects of the problem. I suggested that the Link Trainer be enlarged so that a real engine
could be installed, that the stub wings be extended, and that certain other modifications
could be adopted to provide greater realism. I was able to point out an interesting feature
of my proposal-the fact that the cost of all this would be only about one thirtieth that of a
regular Link Trainer, which was a pretty expensive gadget. But this is where I made my first
mistake; no one was interested in reducing the cost of anything. Enthusiasm for my project
immediately declined.
But this was only my first blunder; the whole project completely collapsed when they
discovered that my invention would actually fly. "Why," they said, "that would be nothing
but an airplane!" They were right, of course; I had made the fatal mistake that all computer
enthusiasts run the risk of making-the mistake of carrying simulation too far. If I had only
doubled the cost, instead of cutting it, and bad stopped just short of something that would
actually fly, I am sure I could have won a Green Commendation Ribbon.

At this point perhaps I should make my own theoretical position clear, so as to forestall any
frivolity that may grow out of my outspoken enthusiasm for computer simulation of
personality. I think truth can be approached by simulation, and by simulation only. This is
the thesis behind the phrase, "the psychology of personal constructs" (Kelly, 1955). Man
gets at the truth of things, not by some special revelation on Mount Sinai or in a laboratory,
but by erecting constructs to simulate it as best he can. The point at which the simulation
and the reality will converge is, I assume, a very long way off.
So we devise machines to simulate-not man directly-but theories about man. The machines
are actually two steps removed from personality. The circuitry of the machines is designed
to simulate the logical connections within the theories they are supposed to approximate.
The theories, in turn, are constructed to simulate the human processes they are supposed
to explain.

But the simulation does not stop there. The persons themselves are simulators. They
attempt to simulate each other-too much, some say. They simulate their parents, their gods,
a presumed rational way of life, and the expectations of others. In fact, a lot of people even
make a big to-do about simulating themselves. This is known as "trying to be yourself" and is
often regarded as quite an accomplishment. Sometimes people simulate machines. This is
sometimes called "being objective." Doctor Blum (Chapter 7) has even programmed his
people to behave like computers. Some psychologists undoubtedly will take this to mean
that he has succeeded in getting people to behave psychologically. All this, it seems to me,
brings us to a situation of infinite regression-like that of the cat looking in the mirror at a cat
looking in a mirror at..., etc. Persons act like models that are supposed to act like persons
that act like models that are supposed...., etc.
Some persons raise the objection to computer simulation, as they have for many years
objected to factor analysis, that "you get out of the system only what you put into it." For
my own part, I cannot see this as anything to fuss over. lt would be a sorry state of affairs if
it turned out that you didn't get out of it what you put into it. If that were true, you could
never use the computer to test the outcome of anything, for you could never tell whether
you were getting out of it the consequences of something you put into it or the
consequences of something you didn't put into it.
I suppose what the critics who raise this objection mean is that you don't really discover
anything by firing up your computers, that the outcome is biased by what you have
invented, not governed by what nature really is. But since, as I have already indicated, the
inventive approach to truth is the only one that works anyway, I see no fault in this kind of
bias.
To be candid about it, there is considerable virtue in the fact that computers do not simulate
persons perfectly. If they did, they would produce some pretty complex results. We would
probably have to go looking for some human simulators to give us a down-to-earth version
of what was going on-a version we could grasp. To be sure, we would have the blueprint
that had been used in manufacturing the gadget, but that would not mean we could tell
what was happening inside the mechanism, nor would it mean we could read backwards
from a similar bit of human behavior and say it came about in the same way.
As long as the task of science is to reduce matters to terms our pedestrian minds can grasp,
the instruments of science will have to select, distort, and simplify the vast complexities of
nature. In other words, I hope Aldous does not behave like a human being. He would turn
out to be quite a problem if he did.
There are two major ways in which I see a computer simulation program contributing to an
experimental science of psychology. First, as I have already intimated, it can simulate the
logic of a theoretical system and, with a series of inputs, explicate the theory and its
implications in ways the original theoretician would take a lifetime to figure out on his own.
Moreover, the output should, at various stages here and there, be sufficiently parallel to
human observables to enable the theoretician to check himself against the behavior of a
human subject.

The second contribution can be to the processing of data provided by a given subject, as
suggested by Doctor Colby's research (Chapter 9). This, too, can be compared with the
subsequent behavior of the subject at various check points along the line.

In this connection I would like to make a plug for the psychology of personal constructs
(Kelly, 1955). Not only is it a system built on the notion that scientists and human beings,
alike, approach truth by erecting simulation devices-called constructs-but it is a theory
deliberately formulated in a language system which is based on binary elements and which
does not accept the so-called subject-predicate error of the Indo-European language
system.
Without burdening you with the radical assumptions of the theory, may I simply mention
the fact that a personal construct is defined by extension through being applied to a series
of events. The events are not regarded as stimuli but as objects of construction. If we
imagine a matrix with events ranged along the top, then a construct, defined by extension,
would be a horizontal row of plusses and minuses within the matrix-or, better incidents and
voids. The construct would be symbolically ' ~~ defined as such a row pattern. Another
construct would be defined as a somewhat different row pattern. There is a theorem here
to the effect that ü two constructs match, cell by cell, throughout the length of their rows,
clear out to infinity, they are identical.
Such a matrix is a representation of a person's psychological space. The dimensions are his,
not necessarily those of his psychologist or of his culture. They are not likely tobe
orthogonal to each other. There are many interesting matrix relationships that can be
directly explored by means of machine processes, using personal construct data produced
by an individual person or by a group of persons. Such exploration may throw light upon the
dimensions which define the space in which individuals are free to move and live their lives.
While Aldous, as he is now constituted, would not, of course, be prepared to explicate the
theory of personal constructs, I am sure Doctor Loehlin could, ü he wished, sire a fellow
called Suodla who could explicate the theory. Suodla is simply Aldous spelled backwards.
Of course, Suodla would, and should at best, be an imperfect simulator. I am sure that for
some this would spell disappointment.
There once was a passionate dame
Who wanted some things made plain,
So she punched up the cards,

Filled tape by the yards, But-somehow- it just wasn't the same!