February 22nd, 2022
- NVC - see A case study: NVC as a great specific protocol and a terrible meta-protocol
- in meta-protocol doc
- from convo with Michael "Valentine" Smith
- convo with Divia Eden
- > I think some of the important insights of behaviorism are:
-timing often matters a ton more than other paradigms might predict
-a fuckton of behavior change can happen if you go more gradually than might seem intuitive
-some stuff about adding cues to behavior - > I think Alfie Kohn’s focus is really weird
I think “rewards” can be weird and patronizing and often aren’t really reinforcing if people don’t pay close attention
But from my perspective, it seems like offering kids upside to do stuff that adults want them to do is a lot better for relationships and more respectful than many other common approaches?
So part of my deal with him is that I really don’t get why he thinks that’s the interesting or important part
And then given that I think he does a lot of straw manning important and very useful ideas
I’m not left with much that I like
- I’m not left with much that I like
- this article is from a sort of behaviorist lens overtly
- critiquing Alfie Kohn
- but seems to kinda strawman him and not engage with his actual studies
- (which Divia points out may not have replicated, although even so, to not mention them at all is unimpressive)
- and a lot of what she says sounds more PCT-esque ("sated") than stimulus-response
- the whole concept of an "intrinsically reinforced behavior"
- feels very phlogistony from PCT's perspective
- but also it makes sense!
- as long as you don't overreify who/what is doing the reinforcement
- I find myself wanting to replace "reinforcer" with "what works"
- and so you can only reinforce someone else if you are satisfying some sense of what works
- and only they are the deciders of what workingness is!
- like if you're playing chess and you make a move and your friend you're playing against says "fuck you", that might be a reinforcer! even though the same friend saying that during an argument would not
- (unless in some sense you were trying to get them worked up!)
- and you may have multiple control systems
- in this sense, non-praise feedback is letting them know that what they did works/worked, which is a reinforcement!
- and I see & like how it dovetails with what Divia's saying, in terms of "timing matters"
- like in order to have "timing matters" you need to be able to measure the reinforcement event precisely
- but it seems like the "timing matters" stuff fails to model all of the higher-order control systems that operate more slowly?
- like, entire strategies
- > It's considered the height of success to have a career based on your passion. That is, by definition. external reinforcement for an intrinsically motivating activity. Sometimes it works out great for people. Sometimes people find that what is great as a hobby absolutely sucks as a job. Always though, it sticks within the laws of learning.
- this is doing a bunch of subtle equivocation afaict
- and the equivocation is probably caused by assuming that money is always a reinforcer
- money isn't necessarily functioning as a reinforcer/reward here, depending on how the person's psychology is relating to the situation.
- it could be that they're just not thinking about money anymore and doing what they want to do, in exactly the same way they would if they had a UBI and were doing it for no pay (this requires that the job feels secure, eg a prof with tenure or whatever)