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ashnistrikeNo thud yesterday; nothing happened. ("I am afraid of nothing." "Are you very afraid of nothing?" "Dreadfully." "I've got nothing in my pocket. Would you like to see it?" "I'd really rather not, if you don't mind.")
Thud today: I read and picked out readings for the Watson and Skinner classes. The Skinner is pretty cool. It's an article he did called "Why We Are Not Saving the World." (We're not saving the world because the people affiliated with governments, corporations, and religions are more reinforced by preserving those institutions, while the unaffiliated people aren't reinforced by organizing in large numbers or they would have joined an institution already.) He's talking about the need to create a culture that reinforces behaviors that will preserve the species and the world, the same thing he illustrated in Walden II. I suspect he died still frustrated by the paradox that it generally takes people who are the product of such a culture to be willing to go to the effort of creating it.
By the way, trying to teach any one session of a Learning Theory class without making reference to concepts from later sessions is near-impossible. Especially with smart kids. Today we were talking about Pavlov, but I had to bring up operant conditioning and Guthrian habit-formation theories just to answer some of their questions. And one of my students brought up the major phobia studies from the evolutionary psychology session on the first day. I love this, and the topic really is a web of concepts rather than anything linear. At the same time, my writer-mind thinks of the class as a narrative and worries about giving spoilers.
Thud today: I read and picked out readings for the Watson and Skinner classes. The Skinner is pretty cool. It's an article he did called "Why We Are Not Saving the World." (We're not saving the world because the people affiliated with governments, corporations, and religions are more reinforced by preserving those institutions, while the unaffiliated people aren't reinforced by organizing in large numbers or they would have joined an institution already.) He's talking about the need to create a culture that reinforces behaviors that will preserve the species and the world, the same thing he illustrated in Walden II. I suspect he died still frustrated by the paradox that it generally takes people who are the product of such a culture to be willing to go to the effort of creating it.
By the way, trying to teach any one session of a Learning Theory class without making reference to concepts from later sessions is near-impossible. Especially with smart kids. Today we were talking about Pavlov, but I had to bring up operant conditioning and Guthrian habit-formation theories just to answer some of their questions. And one of my students brought up the major phobia studies from the evolutionary psychology session on the first day. I love this, and the topic really is a web of concepts rather than anything linear. At the same time, my writer-mind thinks of the class as a narrative and worries about giving spoilers.
