Temporary Nomad

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.