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Ironic perhaps that this was the wartime work of B.F. Skinner, who went on to develop the theory of operant conditioning (he invented the 'Skinner Box' which tr
by jameshart 4y ago
Ironic perhaps that this was the wartime work of B.F. Skinner, who went on to develop the theory of operant conditioning (he invented the 'Skinner Box' which trains animals... usually pigeons... to push a button to obtain a reward. [1])
That work was of course famously the underpinning of the fast, addictive, reward
driven mobile games industry, which gave us Angry Birds, in which... pigeons once again are used as missiles.
The circle is complete.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber
- magundu 4y agoSeems interesting. Cell phone are new Skinner box
- llanowarelves 4y agoAlso interesting that Netflix's co-founder and first CEO, Marc Rudolph, is great-nephew of none other than Edward Bernays, pioneer in both PR and propaganda.
- leobg 4y agoAnd psychologists today say Skinner is no longer relevant. Makes me chuckle every time.
- threatofrain 4y agoSkinner's theory is no longer relevant because more predictive theories of animal learning have come along. Similarly, Newtonian theory is no longer relevant but that doesn't mean it now fails to predict.
- winReInstall 4y agoSkinner was replaced by Zuckerberg/Thiels datamining of all human minds. In hindsight it was a mistake to get completely naked.
- hbrav 4y agoWait, wait, wait - we might be just using the word differently, but I would definitely not say that Newtonian mechanics is no longer "relevant". Sure, there are more accurate theories - even in the absence of gravitational fields, and at scales where you can ignore any quantum effects, special relativity is more correct, in the sense that Newtonian mechanics will give you misleading results at very high velocities. But that doesn't mean it's not longer relevant. Suppose you want to model a fluid mechanics problem where the speeds are all well below the speed of light (so any fluids problem outside of a few astrophysics scenarios). You will be able to get far further using Newtonian mechanics, and derive far more results, because of the relative simplicity of Newtonian mechanics. Trying to derive everything using special relativity would get very messy, and would impede your understanding of what matters at slow speeds.
- kaushikc 4y agoSkinner likened psychologists to creationists in the field of brain and behaviour.