pushing the lever
by John at 11/08/2004 04:01:00 PM
It occurred to me that faithful GtB followers hit the blog multiple times a day, just hoping for a treat full of crunchy bloggy goodness (I do it too, but sometimes, I am invisible to the counter due to my administrative superpowers...). Don't feel bad about it. This is just typical mammalian behavior.
I've read about studies about this. I'm not going to look anything up on Google because that would be too much work. I'm not even sure what to call it, which makes a Google search a bit harder.
It turns out that mammals are naturally addicted to gambling.
It works like this. If you never give the rat a snack when he pushes the lever, well, he won't bother pushing the lever at all. If you give the rat a snack every time he pushes the lever, he'll learn to push the lever whenever he is hungry. But, (and this is the cool part) if you give the rat a snack only some of the times he pushes the lever, he will sit in front of the lever and push it all damn day. Conclusion: rats like gambling!
This is the same psychology used in some kinds of dog training, slot machines, and annual personnel evaluations. You keep doing something incessantly and if it pays off once in a while, you feel rewarded beyond the actual compensation received. It's all in our primitive electro-chemical brains.
I have no idea what the evolutionary significance of this behavior is, although I'm sure that the evolutionary psychologists can come up with a plausible just-so story to explain it's usefulness. Something about remembering where we once found food, I bet.
I really hope I didn't alienate anyone. Give in to your lower mammalian instincts and keep hitting the lever and checking for a snack. I know I will!
Update: I have no will power. I looked up rats lever gambling on Google and found out it is called "partial reinforcement".
I've read about studies about this. I'm not going to look anything up on Google because that would be too much work. I'm not even sure what to call it, which makes a Google search a bit harder.
It turns out that mammals are naturally addicted to gambling.
It works like this. If you never give the rat a snack when he pushes the lever, well, he won't bother pushing the lever at all. If you give the rat a snack every time he pushes the lever, he'll learn to push the lever whenever he is hungry. But, (and this is the cool part) if you give the rat a snack only some of the times he pushes the lever, he will sit in front of the lever and push it all damn day. Conclusion: rats like gambling!
This is the same psychology used in some kinds of dog training, slot machines, and annual personnel evaluations. You keep doing something incessantly and if it pays off once in a while, you feel rewarded beyond the actual compensation received. It's all in our primitive electro-chemical brains.
I have no idea what the evolutionary significance of this behavior is, although I'm sure that the evolutionary psychologists can come up with a plausible just-so story to explain it's usefulness. Something about remembering where we once found food, I bet.
I really hope I didn't alienate anyone. Give in to your lower mammalian instincts and keep hitting the lever and checking for a snack. I know I will!
Update: I have no will power. I looked up rats lever gambling on Google and found out it is called "partial reinforcement".
Haha!! Caught! I have a round of pages that I click through while waiting for this that and the other at work, Goose being one of the first hits..."partial reinforcement" eh? Could this be related to my 300-some games of Gravity Tiles each night too? Help...must stop pulling lever, must....stop...
A9.com - an amazon.com company. I'll give it a try - I better not see the things I search for showing up in "My Amazon"... But I don't have a good feeling about that, because it was already checking out my Amazon cookie so it could tell me my own name.
They do have a Firefox toolbar, which is good. And "generic.a9.com" if you don't want them to keep track of what you search for.
» Post a Comment