[From Bill Powers (960401.0800 MST)]
Bruce Abbott (960401.0820 EST) --
I'll admit that I was considerably surprised by your results re
reinforcement vs control, and even a little discouraged, as you saw from
my post (to the point of suffering temporary amnesia). However, once I
broke the mind-set that made control theory seem so sensible, I realized
that Skinner had actually created a breaththrough in physics, not just
the basic science of behavior. His boldest idea, I now realize, was that
_in linguo veritas_: causality follows description! Lesser scientists,
observing that the rate of food delivery depended strictly on an
animal's operant behavior, would have thought that the observed
direction of causality was fixed once and for all by mere physical
relationships. But Skinner realized that by choosing the correct
description, one could actually reverse the apparent relationships and
give the passive consequences of the animals' actions a causal power
over those same actions.
After I recovered from the initial shock of seeing your data, my mind
broke free of its former shackles and delivered up a new application of
Skinner's insight that promises to make up for any fleeting
disappointment I may have experienced. You will remember that while I
was still fighting against Skinner's interpretation, I adopted your
example of an automobile engine and began nit-picking, hope to destroy
it. But I now realize that you had set me on the track of an even more
productive use of the same analogy. I realized that this need not be an
analogy at all -- that by adopting Skinner's principle, we can
reconceptualize not only the automobile engine, but the entire
automobile, and make it function in a way never before conceived. This
morning I tested my idea (I'm pretty sure I did), and while I prefer not
to discuss all the critical details just now, I can report on the
overall result.
As you pointed out, we can assign the role of primary cause essentially
anywhere within the closed loop of combustion, engine rotation, fuel
delivery, and generation of the spark. My first step toward seeing the
implications of this came when I realized that we could say that it is
the energy stored in the tank of gasoline that is the true primary cause
of the engine's operation. It is gasoline that controls the operation of
the engine, and ultimately the rotation of the wheels and the forward
motion of the car. The gasoline has a basic motivational property to
which cars respond in this way!
The final insight came in a flash. We all know that when a car is driven
downhill, it uses far less gasoline: the motivational strength of
gasoline is greatly enhanced by motion in the direction down a
gravitational field. Driving up the hill, furthermore, drastically
reduces the strength of this motivational power, confirming the
principle. It suddenly occurred to me that the apparent limit on the
motivational strength of gasoline set by the limiting degree of
downhillness is merely the result of a verbal convention. If we increase
the downward gradient _past_ the 90-degree mark, we would find that the
motivational strength changes sign, becoming negative. That alone would
not seem to be an advantage, but I realized that the arbitrary
convention of associating forward motion with a downhill direction could
be changed just by changing the definition of "downhill." If we said
that progressing, for example, from Pagosa Springs to the ski resort
near Wolf Creek Pass was travel in a "downhill" direction, we would find
that the downhill progress of the car (on a gradient, now, of -7%)
should provide a negative usage of gasoline. And the final insight was
that in travelling the opposite way, from the ski resort back to Pagosa
Springs, we could preserve the same negative usage of gasoline by making
the trip _in reverse gear_!
I have just returned from testing this idea. I definitely remember doing
this. In Pagosa Springs, I noted that the gas tank was 1/4 full. Firmly
holding the redefinition of downhill in mind was at first difficult; I
arrived at Wolf Creek Pass with only slightly more than 1/4 tank of gas.
But even that slight success encouraged me to try harder, and throwing
the car into reverse gear I returned uphill to Pagosa Springs to find
the tank over 1/2 full! The next round trip left me with a completely
full tank of gas.
However, I then found that I had a serious problem, or what seemed a
serious problem at first. Once having done this reconceptualization and
relabeling, I found that I couldn't get back to the old way of seeing
it. And since I was in Pagosa Springs, 55 miles from home, I couldn't
drive home without either bursting the gas tank or taking the gas cap
off and leaving a dangerous trail of gasoline behind me on the road, a
fuse just waiting for a spark. After pondering this problem over lunch,
I finally hit upon a temporary answer. Coasting uphill to the nearest
gas station, I persuaded the proprietor to buy back most of the gasoline
free, but we finally compromised on his paying me 50 cents per gallon).
That left me enough room in the tank to drive home, and enough more to
find another gas station that would accept the excess from my tank.
I'm sometimes very slow to grasp the significance of my own discoveries,
but this time I realized immediately what I had. If I could sell the
gasoline from my tank for 50 cents per gallon, why not $1.00 per gallon,
still tewnty-nine cents below the regional pump price? Simply by driving
down and up local gradients a sufficient number of times, I could make
about $15.00 per tank of gas. Unfortunately, my car's mileage is about
30 miles per gallon, so I would have to drive 450 miles to make that
$15.00. This would reduce my hourly pay, even at the new speed limit, to
about $2.00 per hour, less than half the minimum wage. But several
solutions came quickly to hand.
The first obvious step is to buy a large tractor-trailer and load it
with rocks. With a tank holding 90 gallons of fuel and a mileage of
perhaps 1 mile per gallon going uphill at 30 miles per hour, I can make
$30.00 per hour and over $90 between emptyings of the fuel tank. Doing
this four times per day should net me $360 per day, or over $100,000 per
year. And obviously, if I buy two trucks I could hire someone else to
drive the other one for, say, $50,000 per year, raising my take to
$150,000 per year. Of course in the traditions of capitalism, I could
then buy 20 trucks, hire 20 drivers, and make $1,000,000 per year
without having to do any driving at all.
But wait, I have just realized that I would have to teach the drivers
how to reconceptualize uphill and downhill -- and obviously, if anyone
talks too much, the market for gasoline will disappear. Also, the oil
companies will very quickly realize how dangerous I am, and I will fear
for my life. And the LaPlata County comissioners will see all my trucks
tearing up the local roads, especially going down and up the major hills
around here, and will tax away all of my profits...
An ambulance has just pulled up in our driveay. Pardon me a minute, I
have to ask Mary if someone is sick
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from my tank at a greatly-reduced price (initially I offered it to him
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Over and out.