Humans and Their Relation to Ill-Defined Systems

Using a taxonomy of systems proposed by Ashby this paper examines the various species of ill-defined systems which may occur in man-machine interaction. A distinction is made between objectively ill-defined systems and effectively ill-defined systems. Various properties of humans as information processors are examined, and it is claimed that humans turn almost all systems, whether initially well-defined or objectively ill-defined into effectively ill-defined systems. It is suggested that while conscious decision making is particularly ill-suited to controlling ill-defined systems, sheer practice frequently enables humans to control them through skills which are not understood even by their owner.

[1]  D. Greenspan.  PREFATORY REMARKS FOR THE SPECIAL ISSUE ON DISCRETE MODELS , 1980 .

[2]  C R Kelley,et al.  Manual and Automatic Control , 1968 .

[3]  Kamesh Ramakrishna.  Review of "Systems Engineering Models of Human-Machine Interaction by William B. Rouse", North Holland. , 1981, SGAR.

[4]  Lorenz P. Schrenk,et al.  Aiding the decision maker--a decision process model. , 1969, Ergonomics.

[5]  Brian R. Gaines,et al.  On the Complexity of Causal Models , 1976, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics.

[6]  L. Beach,et al.  Man as an Intuitive Statistician , 2022 .

[7]  David L. Kleinman,et al.  An optimal control model of human response part I: Theory and validation , 1970 .

[8]  R. Conant.  SET-THEORETIC STRUCTURE MODELLING , 1981 .

[9]  Laurence R. Young,et al.  On Adaptive Manual Control , 1969 .

[10]  A. Tversky,et al.  BELIEF IN THE LAW OF SMALL NUMBERS , 1971, Pediatrics.

[11]  Viktor Mikhaĭlovich Glushkov,et al.  An Introduction to Cybernetics , 1957, The Mathematical Gazette.

[12]  H. Dale,et al.  Weighing evidence: an attempt to assess the efficiency of the human operator. , 1968, Ergonomics.

[13]  Duane T. McRuer,et al.  NEW APPROACHES TO HUMAN-PILOT/VEHICLE DYNAMIC ANALYSIS , 1968 .

[14]  Neville Moray.  Human Information Processing and Supervisory Control. , 1980 .

[15]  W. Ashby,et al.  An Introduction to Cybernetics , 1957 .

[16]  Roger C. Conant,et al.  Laws of Information which Govern Systems , 1976, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics.

[17]  W. Ashby,et al.  Every Good Regulator of a System Must Be a Model of That System , 1970 .

[18]  Joseph Saleh,et al.  Aircraft Emergency Decisions: Cognitive and Situational Variables , 1979 .

[19]  Neville Moray.  The Use of Information Transmission as Nonparametric Correlation in the Analysis of Complex Behavior: A Preliminary Report. , 1980 .