"hacking the social system"

[James Richard Tyrer]

Luke-Jr wrote:
> On Wednesday 04 May 2005 17:20, James Richard Tyrer wrote:
> 
>>I believe that his point is that operant conditioning works on all
>>species.  And, yes I have found that his methods work on cats.  So,
>>developers are also motivated by positive reinforcement.
> 
> 
> Mice and cats are mere animals. Humans have free will and thought.
> I don't see how testing mouse/cat responses are going to tell you anything 
> about that of human response...

What can I say?  Obviously, a behaviorist psychologist would strongly 
disagree with you.  I tend to take a middle of the road position here. 
I believe that people do have free will (I also think that my cat has 
free will :-)) but also believe that people will respond to operant 
conditioning -- if you give positive reinforcement for desired behavior, 
the subject will (tend to) repeat the behavior.

-- 
JRT