The reason why expressing the connection between not having a mate and seeking a mate in terms of PCT is so difficult is because "not having a mate" is not a perception, and because "seeking a mate" is not a behavior. Rather, these are an abstract world state with multiple perceptual correlates, and a broad class of complex behaviors that no known model explains fully. Given such a confusing problem statement, what did you expect if not a confused response?

What a pitiful excuse.

Let's get some perspective here: the model I'm trying to understand is so vague in the first place (in terms of what insight it has to offer), despite all of my efforts to understand it with basic questions about what it does to replace existing models. Of course my questions about such an ill-supported paradigm are going to look confused, but then again, it's not my responsibility to make the paradigm clear. That burden, currently unmet, lies on the person presenting it.

If you're familiar with the tools of rationality, it is a trivial task to handle "confused" questions of exactly the kind I just asked -- but that pre-supposes you have a clue what you're talking about. All you have to do is identify the error it makes, find the nearest meaningful problem, and show how your model handles that.

A confused response is neither appropriate, nor deserved, and only reflects poorly on the responder.

Let me show you how it works. Let's say I'm some noble defender of the novel Galilean model, trying to enlighten the stubborn Ptolemaic system supporters. Then, some idiot comes along and asks me, "Okay, smarty, how does the Galilean model plot the epicycle for Jupiter?"

In response, do I roll my eyes at how he didn't use my model's terminology and hasn't yet appreciated my models beauty? Do I resign myself to giving a "confused response"? No.

And do you know why I don't? Because I have an actual scientific model, that I actually understand.

So in response to such a "hopeless" dilemma, I marshal my rationalist skills and give a non-confused response.

Ready to have your mind blown? Here goes:

"When you ask me about Jupiter's epicycle, what you're really looking for is how to plot its position relative to earth. But my point is, you don't need to take this step of calculating or looking up epicycles. Rather, just model Jupiter as going around the sun in this well-defined eilliptical path, and the earth in this other one. We know where they will be relative to the sun as a function of time, so finding Jupiter relative to the earth is just matter of adding the earth-to-sun vector to the sun-to-jupiter vector."

There, that wasn't so hard, was it? But, I had it easy in that I'm defending an actual model that actually compresses actual observations. Richard, OTOH, isn't so lucky.

Notice what I did not say: "You find Jupiter in the sky and then you draw an epicycle consistent with its position, but with the earth going around the sun", which is about what I got from Richard.

Moving up to higher levels of consciousness, things get significantly more muddled.

Yeah, that's the point. Those higher levels are exactly what pjeby attempts to use PCT for, which is where I think any usefulness (of the kind seen in biochemical feedback loops) loses its compression abilities, and any apparent similarity to simple feedback control systems is superficial and ad-hoc, which is exactly why no one seems to be able to even describe the form of the relationship between the higher and lower levels in a way that gives insight. That is, break down "finding a mate" into related controllable values and identify related outputs. Some specification is certainly possible here, no?