concept Updated 2026-07-15 Tags: Feedback, Identity, Literature, Learning

Feedback Regulation As Self-Adjustment

Feedback regulation as self-adjustment is the episode’s reading of the mushroom scene in [[AliceInWonderland|《爱丽丝梦游仙境》]]. In 179.爱丽丝梦游仙境:世界多荒诞,我也是自己的主宰(上), the [[BlueCaterpillar|Blue Caterpillar / 蓝色毛毛虫]] tells [[AliceWonderlandCharacter|Alice / 爱丽丝]] that one side of the mushroom makes her taller and the other makes her shorter, even though the mushroom is round.

Alice’s responses overshoot: she becomes too short, then has a neck so long that a pigeon mistakes her for a snake. The episode reads her later left-right nibbling as a negative-feedback process: test, observe the direction of error, correct, and converge toward a workable size.

Key Claims

  • Self-adjustment can work without full understanding when the person can observe error and correct directionally.
  • Feedback can be comic and bodily, not only technical or managerial.
  • Overshoot and undershoot are part of learning when the control surface is ambiguous.
  • The scene connects identity to practical regulation: Alice does not solve who she is abstractly, but she regains enough scale to keep acting.

Connections