The Skinner box in the Parking Lot
There is a machine standing in our parking lots, that made me worry about man’s ability to truely understand cause and effect. I am off-course talking of the humble ticket dispenser. It usually dispenses tickets when we give it coins, but sometimes they just pass through. At times it does not accept oddly shaped ones, and only randomly accepts these coins, depending if it gets stuck in it’s mechanism or not. But some people think that if they scratch the coin, they will “magnetize” it and it will get accepted. Soon the manufacturers, since people were damaging their machines, instead of educating people with a simple sign, provided a scratch patch, enforcing the deluded behaviour!
Big brains don’t always mean big intelligence… But why do I say that this proves to be a window into our ability to understand cause and effect? Well, this machine turns out to be a kind of Skinner box. I have always felt absolute horror when reminded of it. (I can hear Skinner’s evil behaviourist laughter every time I might add!)
Richard Dawkins describes it well in his book,“Unweaving the Rainbow “(p162 to 165). The idea is very simple: you put a pigeon in a box. First you give it a button and a light. When it presses the button the light goes on and out comes food. Simple. How does it learn to push the button? Sheer accident at first, but it soon learns to use it.
Now, what if you dissociate the button from the food? What if the food comes out randomly irrespective of button presses? Yes! Pigeon still presses the button and expects food. It does not know that the button and the food aren’t connected. The food just gets stuck sometimes!
Now take the button away and only despense food when it say, twirls to the right. Soon you will have pigeons twirling to the right. Now, randomly despense food. Low and behold the pigeon soon starts to perform strange rituals – sometimes pecking at the sides, doing strange dances etc., undoubtably thinking they are influencing the box to feed it!
Sure pigeons are dim. But consider this: In front of the Ticket Machine, the Ticket is our Reward, the Coins are OUR Button Press and scratching on the machine’s surface to “magnetize” it, is our own inane ritual.
More examples anyone?(Do you hear that laughter? Shudder)
