Re: Finding useful functions- part 1

From: David Longley (David_at_longley.demon.co.uk)
Date: 11/06/04 

Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 12:32:33 +0000

In article <10opfc6ii3ogjc9@news20.forteinc.com>, Stargazer
<fuckoff@spammers.com> writes
>Wolf Kirchmeir wrote:
>> Stargazer wrote:
>> [...]>
>> >
>> > The control of reinforcement schedules in an experimental setting
>> > (no matter if with fishes or mermaids) will inform you about how
>> > the animal reacts to artificially controlled reinforcement
>> > schedules. That's part of what I call "artificial environments". It
>> > will not inform you much about how the animal acts in natural
>> > environments, where contingencies are completely different.
>>
>> It's not clear what you mean by contingencies, not why you think that
>> natural ones would have different effects than artifcial ones. The
>> reinforcemnt schedule? The reinforcers? The animal's responses to the
>> reinforcers? The discriminators? Etc?
>>
>> Just what do you think you are talking about?
>
>It is an unwarranted assumption to suppose that studying particular
>schedules of reinforcement will generalize to natural settings,
>where these schedules will never happen sequentially (besides
>being intermixed with different sets of stimuli). Additionally,
>what behaviorists study is not an animal's response to specific
>stimuli, but the responses to what the animal _understands_
>of those stimuli. This may lead to false conclusions, because the
>experimenter observes ("perceives") the stimuli in a different
>way than the animal being tested. If that is not enough, there's
>the effect of neural plasticity. Schedules of reinforcement,
>operant reinforcement, generalization and discrimination studies,
>etc., all affect the organism's ability to respond to what the
>experimenter set up. The organism becomes more "apt" to produce
>particular behaviors that are a function of what the experimenter
>contrived. This leads not to an understanding of the true behavior
>of an animal, but to how behaviors of these animals change in
>face of a predefined (and artificial) schedule, and not their
>real capacity to handle stimuli from an unpredictable and hectic
>natural environment.
>
>*SG*
>
>
Idiot!

You are simply telling us the extent to which you are an incorrigible,
ignorant idiot.

Put another way, you're simply reporting on your own pitiful grasp of
matters of empirical and technological fact in the same quaint and yet
irritating way that other idiots do. There are lots of these about, some
with higher degrees. They reinforce this idiocy in others, which is
probably why you're in the sorry state that you are. Many of these
people write books expounding their idiocy, and saps like you spend
money on them! That I and others are not more sympathetic to your lack
of knowledge is a function of the quite outrageous arrogance which comes
with your ignorance.

Read your post again, and try to make an effort to see what I have said
above as *true*! Then try to do something constructive about it. 

-- 
David Longley
http://www.longley.demon.co.uk