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   skua (skua@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 27-Dec-2024 01:29:19 JST skua

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   Analysing #ElonMusk in terms of a #SkinnerBox.

   A psychologist #BFSkinner put a row of closed boxes up. Each with a pidgeon inside. A little food was dropped in at random intervals.

   After some days or weeks the boxes were opened.
   And each pidgeon was performing a stereotyped movement, (ascribing agency here) trying to get more food.

   Seems that whatever action the pidgeon happened to be doing when first random food arrived was biased to happen more frequently.

   • Bill repeated this.
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     skua (skua@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 27-Dec-2024 01:29:19 JST skua

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     And so was more likely to be happening when the next food arrived. But somewhere things got supercharged and when the pidgeon expected the reward for the movement but only got the food sometimes then the behavior (putting head under left wing, turning in circle to right, hopping on left foot) became heavily entrenched, well learnt.

     Dear Elon's beliefs about women, fascists, competition and what it is to be human can, at least in part, be understood as the products of a random reward system.