[From Bruce Abbott (960916.1550 EST)]
Rick Marken (960916.1050) --
Bruce Abbott (960916.0905 EST)
I have what I believe are excellent reasons for disagreeing with your
premise, but I have no desire to argue with you about it for a second time.I hear ya!
Indeed, I've already spent far too much of my time trying fruitlessly to
present a couple of Simon's ideas I still think are relevant to modeling and
support the PCT approach to analysisIt seemed like time well spent to me. I think it's good mental exercise. Kind
of like discussing evolution with creationists.
Funny, I had _exactly_ the same feeling (that this is like discussing
evolution with creationists, with me being the evolutionist, of course).
Waste of time, have better things to do, like PCT research. (:->
Anyway, the PCT explanation fit the data extremely well. But then Bruce
Abbott discovered (as Bill Powers (960916.0630 MDT) noted) "that 'rate of
pressing' is determined, in a very common type of experiment, primarily by
how long the animal takes to collect and consume food, with the actual rate
of pressing being essentially constant at a high rate otherwise". So now we
don't even know if what we are seeing in the EAB data (reinforcement rate as
a function of pressing rate) is a control phenomenon because pressing rate
might not be a variable that could be making up for the ratio requirement;
pressing rate is possibly just an artifact of how often the animal eats.
Sorry Rick, but this needs to be corrected; I didn't discover any such
thing. What I discovered was that this alternative explanation fit the
extant data extremely well; unfortunately the crucial data needed to test
this explanation -- observations of what the rat was actually doing -- were
lacking. I hope to begin collecting the necessary data in a week or so.
Regards,
Bruce