When we talk about the paradigm for psychology described in The Mind in the Wheel, we often use the word cybernetic. 

Cybernetics refers to the study of negative feedback loops and control systems, things that function like thermostats to keep values at certain levels or a signal on one side of some threshold — keeping your vehicles at certain speeds, your blood sugar within a certain range, and your reactor temperature below critical levels.

But this paradigm is not just cybernetic. It’s also dynamic. 

Dynamics refers to the study of drives and motivations, analysis of something in terms of the internal forces that cause it to do the things it does. This term is no longer popular, but it has a long history in cognitive science. Ulric Neisser gives this definition:

Dynamic psychology, which begins with motives rather than with sensory input, is a case in point. Instead of asking how a man’s actions and experiences result from what he saw, remembered, or believed, the dynamic psychologist asks how they follow from the subject’s goals, needs, or instincts.

Calling the paradigm “cybernetic” is entirely accurate, because negative feedback and control really are core ideas that we apply to everything in the system. And it ties these ideas to previous cybernetic theories like William Powers and his Perceptual Control Theory and the OG cybernetics of Norbert Wiener. 

But going around emphasizing the cybernetics without mentioning the dynamics risks putting the cart before the horse. Arguably, The Mind in the Wheel is more dynamic than cybernetic. (Or at least we should be clear on how each label applies.)

Dynamics is the perspective, which is why it’s arguably the more foundational of the two. In this paradigm, we orient with the observation that there are multiple different motivations — that being hungry is not the same as being tired — and start by trying to understand the mind in terms of motives and inner forces. In a word, the drives. 

Once we accept the existence of the drives, that leads to a natural question: how do the drives work, what principles do they operate on? Cybernetics is one possible answer to that question. In our opinion, the most reasonable answer, maybe the only reasonable answer. The drives are homeostatic systems that work on negative-feedback principles from control theory. What else would they possibly be? 

The problem is not seeing that they’re root and flower. If psychology is cybernetic, then it has to be dynamic. Control systems are systems of goals and motivation! And if it’s dynamic, then probably it’s cybernetic. Homeostasis just makes sense! Previous traditions have tried both cybernetics and dynamics — maybe the reason they never went anywhere is that no one tried them both at once. 

Cybernetics and dynamics aren’t competitive – they’re complimentary. But dynamics is more fundamental.  

The Behavior and What we Get Out of It

Cybernetics sounds more flashy, but dynamics is more core. As a result, most of the early questions are about dynamics rather than cybernetics.

Psychology hasn’t found the drives; most schools of psychology don’t even have a list. It’s not that they think it’s boring; it’s totally outside their awareness. So zeroing in on the drives might seem a little strange.

But seeing dynamics as foundational explains why you need them first. Dynamics suggests that people have specific needs, different drives and motivations. Since people have different drives, you can make a list of what they are.

This is a serious departure from most cognitive science. Nobody acts like the drives are enumerable, like there’s a finite list of things you need. But you obviously can, there obviously are. The list of possible human motivations is either exactly one motivation, a finite number of motivations, or an infinite number. It can’t be an infinite number. No one accepts that there’s just one motivation — everyone realizes that there’s a sex drive distinct from the other things you want. So there must be a finite number of motivations, just like there’s a finite number of elements, and that means you can make a list. 

Once you have even a partial list, you can ask things like: are these all the same kinds of drive? Is there just one kind of motivation? Are the sex drive and the salt drive basically identical drives that happen to point to different targets? Or are there different kinds of drives? 

Do these drives split along some axis that we would find intuitive or familiar? Like, it would seem somewhat natural if all the physical drives (thirst, hunger, warmth) were one kind of drive, and all the social drives (status, belonging) were another. Or do they split in some way we find bizarre? It’s always been this way in the past: Elm trees are more closely related to strawberries and stinging nettles than they are to Maple trees. Maybe the salt drive and the sex drive are perfectly alike, while the drive to breathe is like the drive for status. We just don’t know.

(Slight digression: Why is it provocative that human psychology is dynamic? It seems more than a little taboo. Perhaps it’s that many of the drives themselves are taboo, and we don’t mean sex. Everyone admits a sex drive, it’s impossible to explain human behavior without it. It’s much more awkward to admit a status drive, or a touch drive. Perhaps it’s the fault of failed dynamic approaches like Freud’s. Perhaps it’s a squeamishness around admitting that we’re embodied. We’re not supposed to have deep, grasping desires, especially physical ones. Or maybe we’re uncomfortable with how dynamics is a mechanical rather than alchemical way of looking at human psychology. Why are people so comfortable blithely attributing their behavior to dopamine and cortisol? Who knows.)

We think that ultimately, the way to understand the drives will be cybernetic. The rules that explain the drives will be the rules of negative feedback, and the concepts will be the concepts of control systems, technical concepts of gain and error terms and set points. But those rules can’t be explored until we have the drives well in hand, so the first questions will be about drives. 

So many people have tried and failed to understand the social world in behaviorist terms like reinforcement; or cognitive terms like appraisal. Look how much more fruitful it is to approach everyday questions as questions about dynamics (emphasis added): 

In order to quit, one must realize that what is really being interrogated is not necessarily the thing itself (and yes this includes Phone Capitalism) but the behavior and what we get out of it. What do we want from Phone World? Is it companionship? Prestige? Reassurance seeking? Attention? Entertainment? What do we get from doomscrolling? Why even call it that? Can we not use grown-up words like self-soothing, numbing, rumination, avoidance, paranoia, insecurity, anxiety, despondency, resentment, despair, anger etc. to describe our behaviors and the feelings behind them? If we can name these things, these actions, these needs, only then can we actually take the necessary steps to put the phone down and seek either help for ourselves or satisfaction of these needs in less maladaptive ways, because that’s the thing: ultimately, phone use is not an existential battle between the human mind and nefarious powerless-making material and mechanical forces — it is a behavior.