> This is not new ground. See Cybernetics
Control theory and cybernetics were supposed to transform psychology in a much more dramatic and all-encompassing way, as argued by W.T. Powers, for example[1]. In modern psychology, the concept of negative feedback control is treated like a metaphore, a vague connection between machines and living things (with the possible exception of the field of motor control) . If psychology would take the concept seriously, then most research methods in the field would need to be changed. Less null-hypothesis testing, more experiments applying disturbances to selected variables to see if they are controlled by a participant or not. That is the meaning I'm getting from the call to revolution.
[1] https://www.iapct.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Powers1978....
Ah. The linked paper goes into that in more detail.
This was a hot idea right after WWII because servomechanisms were finally working. In movies of early WWII naval gunnery, you see people turning cranks to get two arrows on a a dial to match. By late WWII, that's become automatic. Anti-aircraft guns are hitting the target more of the time. Early war air gunner training.[1] Late war air gunner training - the computer does the hard part.[2] Never before had that much mechanized feedback smarts been applied to tough real-world problems.
This sort of thing generated early AI enthusiasm. Machines can think! AGI Real Soon Now! Hence the "cybernetics" movement. That lasted about a decade. They needed another nine orders of magnitude of compute power. Psychology picked up on this concept, but didn't do much with it.
Looks like it's coming around again.