The Perfect Control.

while taking a break, i just thought of this which was related to process control.
so if taking process control theories into real life situations...
i found it fit perfectly.

In General:
say i have a Mixing Tank that has Stream 1 and Stream 2 mixed to get Stream 3.
and the objective is to have an output of concentration X3.

so say flowrate of first stream F1 and concentration X1 is constantly changing, we can't control that cause it comes from upstream process.
and the concentration of X2 is constant and expensive cause it is like an additionally substance to make up for the changes in Stream 1.
like for example, i want to drink a cup of coffee with sugar concentration of X3.
there's already a free-flow free-for-all coffee from Stream 1, made by the kopitiam uncle.
but the amount of sugar he puts all the time can vary right?
so if the sugar does not reach X3 concentration, i will have to input concentrated sugar myself (Stream 2) so that i get what i want (X3).
the concentrated sugar is expensive and i can't change the concentration of the sugar right?
the only thing i can vary is the amount of sugar (F2) i put in so that i get X3.

Feedback Control:
in feedback control, we measure what we want to control and adjust what we can manipulate.
it's like you know, giving feedback.
so in the mixing tank, i will measure X3, which is what we want to control, and adjust F2.
in coffee example, i will sip the coffee, if not enough sugar then i add.
if too much, i will have to reduce the sugar that i've been putting in (note that it's a continuous flow).

Feedforward Control:
in feedfoward control, we measure the disturbances and anticipate what is needed to be done to the thing we want to control.
like we see how much sugar the kopitiam uncle put. if it's very little, we know we need to add more sugar so we add it before it affects the output (cause it's a continuous process).

Perfect Control:
feedback control is quite a good control actually because you know you will get what you want in the end.
only thing is you can only act when it has already happened.
like you can only know how much to put after sipping the coffee first.
feedforward is good in a sense that it doesn't wait for it to happen, it anticipates and does the necessary action.
but the thing with anticipating is that you could be wrong, and you can't rectify it because you have already acted.

so if you put both controls together, you get the perfect control which compliments each other and cancels out their disadvantages!

Real-Life:
moving on... i guess we are always using both controls in our daily lives.
like driving.
we anticipate what is going to happen, and act before it happens.
when we see with our eyes, we are giving feedback to our brain and our body carries out the necessary needed.

i guess these controls are also very important in dragon boat.
like feedback.
we have to constantly give feedback during trainings, especially negative feedbacks.
positive feedback - our power is good
negative feedback - not enough power
because if we don't give negative feedback, no improvements will be made!
we need feedback (especially negative) to know that we have to take action.
then again, don't forget to take ACTION when needed.
no point giving feedback and doing nothing right?
then the control loop is not closed and it doesn't become a complete cycle!
positive feedback is probably more for motivational purpose, no action is required except to maintain it.
ultimately negative feedback is the "thing" that is going to drive us to change.
because we want to rectify it.

and then recently i watched some videos and this guy was talking about confirmation bias.
so according to jiayi the psych major, it is where we have a confirmation, or a belief.
people will tend to seek evidence to confirm their belief instead of finding evidence to disconfirm it.
for example if we believe that long pull helps us win, we will find evidence or instances in which it does to confirm our belief, instead of finding evidence in which long pull didn't help us win.
it's good to believe in something, but we have to be extremely careful and be rational.
the guy was saying, maybe we should look for evidence that disconfirms our believes.
cause when we do that, and we do find evidence, then we can analyse the mistakes/errors and rectify or adjust accordingly, or maybe even finally realise that our believes were wrong from the start.
but hey, at least we learn from it right?
on the other hand, if we don't manage to find any evidence from it, it makes our stand stronger and we know that what we believed in is right.
it's kind of like a sidetrack, but i think it can be linked to feedback control.
too lazy to link it now but yeah roughly get the idea.

okay back to feedforward.
in feedforward, we anticipate and take action before it affects the system.
so it kind of also means we anticipate what our opponents are going to do.
or we anticipate the wind direction, or the water condition, etc etc.
we can even anticipate that our strokes are going to be short.
then we take the necessary actions needed before it affects us and affect the outcome.

if we put both feedback and feedforward controls together.
we are constantly improving with rational feedback control.
we are able to anticipate and "predict" events/situations and can take action before it affects us.

we get the perfect control system.
and we get the perfect set.