Go to Religion in the Modern World
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- Go to Dynamite won't remove some ideas from people's heads
If you want a rat to push the reward button forever, then reward it
just every once in a while. If you never reward it, it quits after a while. If you reward it every time, it quits after a while. If you reward it now and then randomly, it will not stop to sleep, mate or party...
posted by
Ciel
on January 13, 2007 at 6:29 AM
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Troosha - that is my general feeling of those places as well
They are for the most part a social obscenity. With a noticeable upspike in business when welfare checks come out to the numbers of gamblers who ruin themselves financially, are our societies better off with legalized gambling? I cannot see how we could possibly think that we are better off but it seems that once we had collectively accepted this obscenity, the genie cannot be put back into the bottle.
posted by
gomedome
on January 9, 2007 at 1:41 PM
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gome
I think it’s an entirely different breed of people that frequent Casinos. Sure… everyone is entitled to a vice (or two) but the few times I’ve been I can’t help but notice the glazed over look of people who, in some instances, are betting their paycheck or the next box of Pampers. They’re betting against a machine for God sake. I left there feeling sorry for those people and admittedly some what grateful for the life I have.
posted by
Troosha
on January 9, 2007 at 1:29 PM
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In my early school years, Gome...
I learned critical thinking. This was actually taught in my school – how to examine a situation, critically analyze its elements, extract available information, and then draw conclusions.
Today's grade school teachers are for (the most part), themselves, incapable of critical thinking, let alone being able to convey the idea to impressionable minds. It is no wonder, therefore, that your "young man" seemed incapable of seeing what to you was intuitively obvious.
As I mentioned in an earlier response to one of your posts, this explains the modern day fascination with the "psychic" world in all its manifestations. Thirty-seven years ago Neil Armstrong stepped on our moon for the first time – yet every morning millions consult their horoscopes for guidance and insight. Go figure...
posted by
arGee
on January 9, 2007 at 11:35 AM
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arGee - the analogy lies in the level of comprehension between the rodent
and the young man.
He doesn't know why it works and that doesn't even matter to him. The only thing he wants to see is that his belief in magic will overcome modern technology. Unlike the rodent that inevitably got his reward, despite the superfluous actions taken to arrive at it, this young man is headed for financial disaster.
posted by
gomedome
on January 9, 2007 at 11:19 AM
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In my younger days, while studying experimental psychology, Gome...
We were training lab rats to do things for food. Each of the rats had, basically, figured out that if they performed the "right" trick, a pellet of food would appear in the feeding tray. In fact, the idea was to get them to push one of three levers. Once trained to push the right lever, we would change the working lever, and measure how long it took for the rat to unlearn and relearn his response. It's a classical experiment.
We had one exceptional rat. This little guy was particularly active, and when we put him into the cage – which also contained a running wheel and a couple of trapeze-like bars hanging from the cage top – he ran into the wheel, ran a couple of laps on the wheel, apparently got a claw stuck in the grid and rolled to the top of the wheel before working his claw loose, fell out an an angle, hitting one of the trapeze bars in the process, and landed on the "right" lever with his back.
Of course, he was rewarded with a food pellet. As I said, this little fellow was exceptional. From then on, every time we put him in the cage, he went through the entire routine: two laps in the wheel, ride it to the top, spring off, turn over, hit the trapeze bar, and land back-first on the lever. When we changed the "right" lever, he modified his routine ONLY as to which lever he landed on, experimenting until he got the right one.
The entire rest of the routine remained exactly the same.
Make any analogy you wish...
posted by
arGee
on January 9, 2007 at 11:02 AM
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