. . . wouldn't you rather do it yourself?

A certain Mssr. Augustin Lignier, a professional photographer in Paris, built a photo booth for rats to take selfies as an investigation of why so many humans feel compelled to photograph themselves and share images on line. Lots and lots of selfies.

He modeled his experiment on behaviorist B.F.Skinner who developed the Skinner box which dispensed food pellets when a rat pushed the button. People so love to experiment on rats. Does that mean they are considered closest to us mentally just as pigs are closest to us physically? Hmmmmnnnnn

Mr. Lignier built a Skinnner box with an attached camera. Whenever the rats pressed the button they got a small dose of sugar and the camera snapped their photo and the rats could see their images displayed. Mr. Lignier said he didn't think the rats understood it all.

The sugar rewards then became intermittent. In the face of the unpredictable rewards, the rats persisted pushing the button. Sometimes they ignored the sugar even when it did arrive and kept pressing the button anyway.

Kept pushing the buttons anyway? It' not the "windmills of our minds it appears", but, rather the treadmills?

To Mr. Lignier, the parallel is obvious. "Digital and social media companies use the same concept to keep the attention of the viewer as long as possible."

"Social media has been described "as a Skinner box for the modern human, "doling out periodic , unpredictable rewards -- like, a follow, a promising romantic match, that keep us glued to our phones".

The metaphor is obvious for Mormons. They have employed this strategy for nearly two hundred years and some, like me, would say they practically invented it. They truly are pioneers.

Have you done your home teaching this month?

To me that is still B.F. Skinner's principle of starting with consistent rewards, and then moving to intermittent rewards. Teachers use that principle all the time. The rat remembers that he gets the treat at least some of the time.

You both describe a phenomenon Sapolsky discusses in his work on dopamine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axrywDP9Ii0

Dopamine surges not when the reward arrives but rather when it is anticipated. If you train an animal to expect a treat and then introduce uncertainty into whether that treat will actually arrive, levels of dopamine increase more than if the treat is always delivered and the frequency of the desired behavioral response accordingly skyrockets.

Las Vegas figured this out long ago.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/27/2024 02:05PM by Lot's Wife.

This would explain why ghawd doesn't always answer prayers!!

Well, when you got 8 billion prayers a day to answer then getting your lab animals to the point where pulling the prayer lever is enough, then you can have time to decide who will win the super bowl and who you "need" to be called back early to be a missionary in Spirit Prison.

He’s conducting an experiment?

Honestly, you crack me up man

Yes, Vegas figured this out long ago. There is a whole science around slot machines for instance. I figured out at 5 that gambling is for suckers and the house always wins in the end.

Yeah, I've never found it entertaining to lose money.

There are humans who lose it all if, during the process, they get the occasional dopamine jolt from winning.

Casinos would not exist but for the absolute certainty that the math that governs games of chance (aka games of certainty, for the casinos) do not fail.

This is why the mormons were fine with investing in casinos:

"Parry Thomas, a Mormon banker and key figure in the development of the Las Vegas Strip, financed many casinos through the Bank of Las Vegas starting in the 1950s.  Thomas's wife is a descendant of the famous prophet Brigham Young."



"In the late 1960s, Steve Wynn was a small-time investor in real estate and a minority owner of the Frontier Hotel.  E. Parry Thomas became a mentor to Wynn and helped him acquire his first big Vegas property, the downtown Golden Nugget Casino.

"Wynn went on to acquire or build many of the city's most prominent casinos, including The Mirage, Bellagio, and Treasure Island.  He remains one of the most successful and high-profile figures in the international gambling industry."



The church denies funding casinos, but the church made money via the growth of gambling in Las Vegas, but it was baptized and made clean of sin before they deposited into their accounts.

I know if I dig deep enough into Skinner’s work I’ll figure out why I’m not getting blowjobs anymore.

Coincidentally, I do take “selfies”.

My phone is for the few calls I get or need to make. Everyone who knows me knows that I don't usually answer as my phone is probably in some other room or in the car, so I call back when I see someone important called like my daughter.

I'm not into having many pictures of myself. I never have been even when I was young and pretty, but we didn't have automatic cameras hanging with us 24/7. I let my kids take pictures of me as long as they don't show me the pictures unless I ask.

My problem is when I get done working, I look at fb and I read and write e-mails and I read here. I should just go do something worthwhile rather than staying on the computer.

I hate apps. Something new to make me use my phone more and texting is not something I do. My daughter says I'm one of "those type" of texters. I hate texting.