"hacking the social system"

[Luke-Jr]

On Wednesday 04 May 2005 20:01, James Richard Tyrer wrote:
> 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. 

Well, then said behaviourist psychologist would be wrong.

> 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 :-))

Cats are controlled by their environment and DNA.

> 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. 

That relies on what you consider 'positive reinforcement' to be the same (or 
at least similar) to what they consider worth the effort of the repeated 
behaviour to get it.
Predictability, for example, would make something worth less the effort in my 
mind-- I enjoy being random and will sometimes go a bit out of my way to be 
so. :)
-- 
Luke-Jr
Developer, Utopios
http://utopios.org/