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Daniel Bullock
Kurt Fischer
Department of Psychology
University of Denver
Denver, Colorado

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Gentlemen:

	I'm flattered that my lecture in the late 1970s made a sufficient
impression that you remember it in 1986.  Since I'm writing again on
this topic --- on which there really aren't certified experts --- I
would appreciate your views on why the various resource problems
interact so strongly that a global solution would have to differ
drastically from solving the problems separately.  After considering your
remark, my opinion is still that the problems interact weakly.  In
particular, the pollution problem dictates only minor modifications
in the solutions to the other problems, e.g. modifications that
increase costs by less than 20 percent.

	I enjoyed your vigorous review of Piaget's last statement of his
theory.  I hadn't realized that he relied so much on logic, and
I hope to find his approach quite congenial.  I don't know what
my opinion will be on the criticism contained in your review.

	I have thought about a related problem to Piaget's.  Namely,
suppose a person or group cannot think about all aspects of a problem
 simultaneously, because it is too complex.  Therefore, they think
about one or a few aspects and choose a policy to optimize them
separately.  Later some of the ignored aspects give trouble and
their treatment is optimized, forgetting about the aspects considered
previously.  Under some conditions this process will converge,
and under other conditions it will induce violent oscillations.
My guess is that often a conservative strategy can be formulated
that only goes part way towards optimizing what is being considered,
and this is more likely to converge without violent oscillation
than a strategy goes all the way on the current issues.

	The relation to Piaget's idea is that the search for contradictions
and the resulting adjustments are usually only partial.  Only
some contradictions are resolved --- those that have come to
attention --- and this resolution may create new contradictions
with beliefs that aren't being considered.  Which contradictions
come to attention depends on environmental events, so perhaps you
and Piaget can be reconciled.

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Sincerely,       

John McCarthy    
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