Skinner and Me Friday, 8th August, 2008
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I’ve had an uncomfortable feeling growing on me for quite some time now – a feeling that Freya is part of a dark psychological experiment that is unfolding in our lives. Anyone having a passing familiarity with B. F. Skinner’s experiments with superstitions in pigeons knows what bizarre behaviour you can introduce if you randomly confer reinforcements on a subject. Skinner’s pigeons associated the delivery of food with whatever chance actions they had been performing when it was delivered, and they developed some very strange “superstitious” rituals.
This domestic pigeon is about to participate in a psychology experiment
Well, we are clearly not far evolved from pigeons, and Freya is a powerful random reward system. If once I successfully get her to sleep, then the next time I am desperate to settle her down I develop an overwhelming desire to re-enact whatever peculiar action I may have been performing the last successful time. No matter how bizarre. It’s really amazingly powerful – and completely unreproducible and unscientific. Never before have I had such a clear window on what makes people swallow superstitious claptrap. By keeping Skinner in mind, I have managed to refrain from many weird rituals – but still I find myself singing Guantanamera at night to Freya far, far too often.
Bip and Hems Come to Visit! Friday, 1st August, 2008
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Our good friends Bip and Hems have just been to visit us from the UK! I think I scared them a bit when I used to rave on about how great it was in the Australian summer when it was really really hot. So instead they came in the bitter middle of winter. Still, it was great to have them here, and we went platypus viewing (didn’t really see one), touring (saw some wineries) and late night beer drinking (saw some Coopers, but mostly the blurry ones).
Hemel and Bipin at Light's Vision, Adelaide
Hemel cooks the best curry in the universe, and Bip has the magical ability to make Freya laugh hysterically at will. Which made us laugh hysterically, of course. It was great! Now they’re off to Sydney to see their son Mal beat Australia at rugby.
