Somewhat Off-Topic Psychology lesson (WAS: Re: Help I'm new)

[Adam Read]

Sorry, I just had to add this:

As a proud rat owner, I cannot stand for these so called 'psychology'
lessons
learned from treating an animal in a cruel fashion.  I don't think the
rat
minded getting a treat for pushing a lever or even pushing it once in a
while(by the way, a rat is very smart, smarter than dogs), but to shock
it? 
Sad, I would like to see how the person delivering the shock would like
the
pain involved.

Next time, keep your off topic inhumane comments off the list.

Now, Back to our regularly scheduled discussion of Samba and computers.

Thanks,
Adam D. Read
It, Univera HealthCare WNY


>>> Barry Callahan 01/24 10:42 AM >>>

>On Wed, 23 Jan 2002, Joel Hammer wrote:
>
>> Isn't it great when things work? Intermittent reinforcement. I think
>> that is how they train pigeons and white mice.
> Joel
>
> On Wed, Jan 23, 2002 at 05:04:51PM -0800, Cheryl Pelletier wrote:
> > Thanks again Joel Changing the guest account to root really opened
up the
> > server. But it's no problem sence it's only for home... thanks
> > again...........Daryl

You know, it's well known that you can train a rat to press a lever by
giving
it 
a food pellet every time it does it.  Eventually, if you stop rewarding
the
rat 
with the food, it'll still sit there banging on the lever all day.

Now, after a long enough period of not being rewarded for pressing the
lever, 
the rat will give up and return to a more "normal" behaviour for a rat,
but 
it'll still press the lever every so often just in case (more so than a
rat
that 
hadn't been trained).

With training by intermittent reinforcement, you get the rat to keep
pressing 
the lever unrewarded for a much longer period of time because it's
always 
expecting that the next press will pay off.  Very much similar to the
people
who 
end up declaring bankruptcy because they couldn't resist sitting down in
front

of a slot machine.

What's more interesting is that during training, if you give the rat an
electric 
shock via the floor of the cage in addition to giving it food, when you
stop 
rewarding it, the rat will still sit there pressing the lever getting
shocked.
 
Depending on how obsessed the training program has made the rat and the 
intensity of the shock, it's entirely possible to end up with a very
fried
rat.

I'm thinking Daryl's setting himself up to be Samba-user flambee'.


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