Rewards and punishments

Rewards and punishment modify behavior. I knew that. Everyone knows that.

But what I didn’t realize is this: a stimulus is a reward or a positive reinforcer if it increases a behavior.

A stimulus is a punishment or a negative reinforcer if it decreases a behavior.

Those definitions are simple. Take a moment and decide whether they make sense.

Really.

They seem correct to me, but they lead to some counterintuitive conclusions.

Jim and Bob are having a nasty argument. Both are saying nasty things to one another. Jim’s nasty comments increase the frequency and intensity of Bob’s nasty comments back. So Jim’s nastiness is a positive reinforcer—a reward—since it produces more nasty behavior from Bob.

Bob suddenly stops arguing. He looks at Jim and says: “Why are we arguing? We’re friends. And he hugs Bob. Bob stops arguing and hugs back. Jim’s action was a negative reinforcer—a punishment(?) since it produced less of the hostile behavior.

What?

That seems backward. When you behave angrily toward someone who is behaving angrily to you, it’ a reward, that’s what the definition says. That’s barely comprehensible.

When you show affection to someone who’s behaving angrily to you, it’s a punishment. That’s what the definition says. That makes no sense.

It might help to call it “positive reinforcement,” not reward and “negative reinforcement,” not punishment. But the fact remains: anything that causes a behavior to increase is—by definition—a positive reinforcer. Anything that causes a behavior to decrease is—by definition—a negative reinforcer.

A baby is hungry and starts crying. You give it food. The crying stops. Was giving it food a reward for crying? Not according to the definition. Giving it food was a negative reinforcer because it stopped the crying.

You ignore it. The crying intensifies. So not giving it food was a positive reinforcer for crying.

Really?

An older child is upset about something and starts having a tantrum. You ignore it. The tantrum continues. So ignoring a child’s tantrum is a reward, since it maintains and increases the behavior.

A writer writes something. Sometimes he posts it and sometimes he doesn’t. What rewards the writer for posting so that he does more? What punishes the writer for posting, so that he does less? What rewards and punishes him for not posting? How can the writer change his system of rewards and punishments to get more of what he wants?

In the case of this writer, the rewards are infrequent and inconsistent.

I like writing, and making words appear is rewarding by itself. But there must be behaviors that lead from written words to published posts whose rewards and punishments lead away from the behavior that I want to increase.

Here’s how the process might unfold:

1. Decide that the piece is done enough
2. Check grammar and polish
3. Find links and references
4. Find images (when needed)
5. Copy/paste into blogger
6. Press Publish
7. Celebrate success

If I decide that a piece of writing is done enough, it means that the fun part—writing—is over, and I have nothing ahead of me but the tedious steps required to publish. If I don’t declare it as finished, I’m rewarding myself, so of course, I keep writing and revising forever. That’s where the reward lies.

Conversely, every time I write a draft and start to publish it, I’m punishing myself. The hoped-for reward of being done may be enough to carry me through to completion, but the more I punish myself for trying to publish, and the more I reward myself for giving up, the more I get of the behavior that I don’t want.

The remedy is to fix the reward structure.

I need to reward myself a lot more for publishing. Daniel recommended victory laps, and I’ve done a few, but inconsistently. I need to reward myself with victory laps and to make sure I keep rewarding myself that way, and I need to reward myself for rewarding myself!

I need to celebrate declaring a post “good enough.”

Instead of moving immediately into the tedious process of spell- and grammar-checking, I need to take a moment and take pleasure in having produced an acceptable draft.

And then I need to fill that tedious process with small rewards. Every step toward publication needs an appropriate celebration.

I’m drafting this as part of my Daily Pages. When I hit 750, that’s cause for celebration. When I start to edit it, that’s cause for celebration. And so on.

So here we are at 750. Yay! And on to grammar checking.

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Attention on intention and metaintention

This morning I woke up with my attention on intention.

Still half asleep, I intended to do a lot of writing. But I realized that wasn’t enough.

I realized that I also needed to stay aware of the state of my intention.

So I needed two intentions.

Retrospectively, an assessment

Since I intended to write, I decided to write about intention first. Why not?

I decided to start by doing some research. As it happens, I’ve written about intention before. A lot. And as it happens, I’m one of my favorite writers, and I decided to read what I’d written.

So: I had an intention (and a metaintention). I’d made a decision. I had a plan.

I’d write a post that would include a checklist.

I predicted success

Intentional failure

In the post “Intentional failure” I wrote:

TL;DR: everything that happens comes from intention. If what I want to have happened has not happened, then I need to fix the intention. If I’m not fixing my (failed) intentions, then my metaintention needs fixing.

In the post, I recorded some questions that I might have asked:

1. Does the intention specify the correct endpoint?
2. Is the endpoint specific enough?
3. Is the intention strong enough?
4. Does the intention include producing a plan?

Thanks, Past Me. I’ll keep those in mind right now. My intention to write about intention meets all those criteria. My intention to monitor my intention—pretty good.

Intention deficit disorder

Next up, this post, “Intention Deficit Disorder”.

Since I came up with the idea, I’ve been reviewing how I carry out intentional acts and when unintentional acts intrude. I’ve been thinking about what I might do to improve my ability to use whatever powers of intention that I have.

What I learned:

1. Is the decision behind the intention clear?
2. Does the intention lead to a first action?
3. Does it include an intention to follow through to the end?
4. Does the intention anticipate obstacles and the intention to overcome them?

Intention lost, intention regained?

Next up, this one: “Intention lost, intention regained?”

In December 2016, I wrote a post about the purpose of life, the universe, and everything. In July 2017, I wrote a longer post on the same subject..

I know my purpose: it’s gaining knowledge, organizing it, and communicating it.

So I added this:

1. Is the intention aligned to your purpose in life?

Decision intention prediction

Next up: “Decision, intention, prediction”

Intention comes from decision. If an intention is strong enough, it will lead to action. To control action, start with a decision, and test with prediction.

I’ve already covered by the decision step. But here’s another:

1. Do you predict you’ll succeed in reaching your goal?

Why meditate? Redux

From this one, Why Meditate? Redux

Daniel said:

If meditating doesn’t enhance the other 15 hours of your life (8 for sleep and 1 for meditation) - I don’t know why anyone would do it.
You can learn detachment without losing 6.25% of your conscious life.

My goal in meditation and in life is not detachment. It is awareness. (Actually, awareness is a means, not an end. The end is knowledge.)

Especially awareness of the state of my mind

Especially awareness of my current intention (or lack) and awareness of any newly arising intentions of and any change in intention

1. Are you aware of any other rising intention or change in intention?

An intentional meditation on intention and meditation

In this post, “An intentional meditation on intention and meditation”, I quoted this from “The Mind Illuminated.”:

…while it may not be obvious, all our achievements originate from intentions. Consider learning to play catch. As a child, you may have wanted to play catch, but at first, your arm and hand just didn’t move in quite the right way. However, by sustaining the intention to catch the ball, after much practice, your arm and hand eventually performed the task whenever you wanted. “You” don’t play catch. Instead, you just intend to catch the ball, and the rest follows. “You” intend, and the body acts.

1. Are you maintaining your intention?

Excellent meditation

In this post, “Excellent meditation”, I riff further on intention.

In short: talk about how you use intention to learn to catch a ball.

We don’t know how to do anything. It’s all due to intention and magic.

If you’ve learned to catch a ball, you set an intention to catch it, and when a ball comes in your direction, you catch it.

Easy.

How? Nobody knows.

But first, you’ve got to learn how to catch a ball. And how do you do
that?

You intend to learn to catch. Someone throws balls in your direction.
You try to catch it. You alternately fail and succeed. And then one
day, you’ve learned that you can do it.

The point’s been covered, and this reinforces it.

The inner game of—whatever

This reminds me of Farnam Street Blog’s post in today’s Farnam Street - Brain Food No. 353.

The lead article is about “The Inner Game: Why Trying Too Hard Can Be Counterproductive”.

The article is about Tim Gallwey’s idea of “the inner game” as described in his book The Inner Game of Tennis.

Here’s a YouTube Video with as Tim Gallway gives a woman at tennis lesson. Her progress is rapid, and surprising:

Gallwey’s point and mine are: to get better, all you need to do is pay attention.

The more you try, the worse you’re likely to do!

Consciousness, Awareness, Attention, Intention

From here, “Consciousness, Awareness, Attention, Intention”, this idea:

Intention is a big deal. You can’t program the unconscious mind directly, but you can get it to reprogram itself by intention. The way you become skilled at a sport is by going through the motions, with attention and intention. Merely going through the motions is not enough.

Repeating simple tasks with a clear intention can reprogram unconscious mental processes. This can completely transform who you are as a person.

You get the idea, Future Me?

The checklist

So here’s my checklist for evaluating and monitoring intention:

1. Does the intention specify the correct endpoint?
2. Is the endpoint specific enough?
3. Is the intention strong enough?
4. Does the intention include producing a plan?
5. Is the decision behind the intention clear?
6. Does the intention lead to a first action?
7. Does it include an intention to follow through to the end?
8. Does the intention anticipate obstacles and the intention to overcome them?
9. Is the intention aligned to your purpose in life?
10. Do you predict your plan will succeed?
11. Are you aware of any other rising intention or change in intention?
12. Are you maintaining your intention?

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Things I'm excited about in 2020

Mira asked our extended family group to say what we’re excited about in 2020. What are we looking forward to?

Holy crap! What am I not excited about?

What am I not looking forward to?

(Fuck you, Grammarly. I like those sentences, even if they end with prepositions.)

The Tony Robbins story

I remember reading Tony Robbins’ book, “Awaken the Giant Within” years ago. IIRC he asks two men how their lives are going.

The first one: “Well, not so good. I planned to make $12 million this year and came in with just under $10 mill. And then I’ve been training to run a five-minute mile, and I can’t get it under 5:10.”

The second one: “Great! I woke up this morning, and I was still above ground!!”

That’s the way I feel.

I’m not dead yet, and that’s enough.

The lenses through which I’m looking at life turn everything into a miracle.

(Hint: the lenses don’t include drugs unless you count SuperPlacebo. And Modafinil, which seems less and less necessary.)

I am surrounded by miracles.

Like flowers!! How does that amaryllis bulb know how to make an amaryllis.

Like writing. How does that happen, anyway? Really, how is this blog post getting written? Where did this sentence come from? Don’t tell me it’s neurons. Are you kidding? Then neurons are a miracle.

And speaking of writing, I’m really excited about writing.

Writing

I started my blog a few days before I hit 70. Well, this blog, anyway.

It’s been seven years, and I’ve published 513 posts.

513!

That’s a worthy accomplishment.

I’m sure some of them suck, and maybe the all suck for you. But I didn’t write them for you. I wrote them for me. And for Future Me.

When I read one of my earlier posts, I’m usually surprised and pleased to see how good I think they are.

Thank you, Past Me, for writing all this stuff.

So I’m excited about writing a ton this year and looking forward to making my writing better.

Why? Are you kidding? Words are appearing on the page. Miracles in action!

And I’m also excited about reading more of those old posts and maybe doing something with some of them.

Podcasts

There are two reasons I’m interested. No, three. No…more.

No one expects that Spanish Inquisition!

More and more, people are getting information and knowledge from podcasts, either in addition to or rather than books. The reason that I think this is happening might be a topic for another post. Or not. The point is: they are.

One of my top fans (Mira) has told me that she doesn’t read much, but she listens to podcasts all the time, so if only to reach her, I’m motivated to put my posts in listenable form.

We’ve been talking about me doing one, or us doing one together, and I’ve got two ideas from our discussion: one is “I’m not dead yet’ or maybe better “You’re not dead yet.” Another is: “See one, do one, teach one.” More on both of these later.

Writing

Did I mention writing? Oh, right, I did. Well, the last section alone has a bunch of things that I want to write more about, and I’m excited about writing them.

Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality

AR and VR are happening, and they are going to change the world. (And I’m going to write about them)

A couple of years ago, I was given a Google Daydream headset (thank you Daniel (and Dana)), and a demo of an HTC Vive gaming headset (thank you, Konrad), and I was blown away by both. This year I got was given an Oculus Quest headset (thank you Alyssa and Kon) and holy crap! It was beyond amazing. I started thinking about things that I could do with that technology–and got myself an Oculus Go to experiment with, and I’ve just upgraded my power workstation to one that’s Windows Mixed Reality capable. (Thanks, Justin and Daniel for help getting me going)

AR/VR are entertaining, sure, but that’s not what’s got me stoked.

It’s the potential for transforming education. No, it’s the potential for transforming people.

There’s another post right there.

You won’t appreciate the difference between seeing a picture and being immersed in an environment until you put on your headset and travel somewhere.

Music

I love music. If I’m in a funk, I can defunk myself pretty reliably by playing some uplifting music.

A few weeks ago, I decided to try writing songs about some of the ideas that I’ve written about and some that I haven’t. The theory is (and here’s something else to write about) when you constrain the ways you can solve the problem, you sometimes come up with a better solution–one that you would not have discovered without the constraint. This is how poetry works. It’s also something I learned from reading Edward DeBono’s “Lateral Thinking.”

When I was around sixty-two or -three, I had the idea of writing rock opera, “Still alive at sixty-five.” Then Tom Rothschild died, and it seemed wrong to celebrate.

More likely, that was just a convenient excuse. But whatever. Seventy-five has passed (and would have sucked because of the extra syllable), but eighty-five and ninety-five both look good. So why the fuck not?

So I started digging into how people make music these days, and holy crap is that interesting!

Here’s the idea that’s stuck in my head (and another post) “Life plus tech equals music.”

Writing

Did I mention writing about what I’m learning about music creation? Not specifically. But, yeah.

Software development

I’ve been on a quest my entire professional life to create a set of tools to match a vision that I have about software creation.

This past year I collected some tools that others had developed that start to approach my goal. So I’m excited about that, too.

Writing

Did I mention that I want to write about that, too?

And so on

The world is full of possibilities. I am full of possibilities. This post could go on for pages and pages and pages.

But enough.

You get the idea.

More importantly, I get the idea. And now it’s time to post this and write and do some of the other stuff that I’m excited about.

Still with the prepositions, Grammarly?

Remember: you’re not dead yet. And neither am I.

(Bonus: Here’s Moby in his studio around the time he produced “Play,” one of my favorite albums. (YouTube)The reason there’s so little tech around him is: it was around 30 years ago, and it’s his apartment, and there’s not much room.

Enough!

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Recovering residual knowledge

Occasionally someone reminds me of a fascinating idea that I discovered in my web wandering. A few times, it’s been an idea that I created. Go me.

If I’m lucky, I wrote something about it, and I remember that I wrote it, and I remember where I wrote it. If so, I can find it pretty quickly.

If I’m less lucky, I didn’t write anything, and I have to Google my way to success.

Again.

Goddamn it!

If I’m sufficiently obsessed, I’ll spend hours retracing my steps.

Like the other day. A friend who was arguing for climate action invoked the “97% consensus.”

The fucking 97% consensus!

I’d researched that claim extensively. I’ve read many of the papers substantiating that claim. I’ve read critiques of those papers. I’ve read the authors’ responses to the criticisms. I’ve read the research done by other scientists who reached different conclusions.

I had come to my own conclusion about the claim: it was bullshit unsubstantiated and fraudulent misleading.

I wanted to recover the source material, so my friend could review it and draw her own conclusions and not just accept the correct conclusion I drew or the bullshit mistaken conclusion some asshole someone less diligent had foisted on conveyed to her.

The papers advancing the claim were easy to find, and so were articles echoing the claims and calling anyone a stooge or moron criticizing anyone who doubted their accuracy.

But it took time to rediscover the criticisms.

Then today.

A friend cited an article that exposed the terrible problems that owners of electric cars experienced when they needed to recharge. My friend has an electric car. He doesn’t have that problem. He called the article bullshit questionable.

That reminded me of an analysis of the economics of anti-Tesla articles and actions. The author calculated the increased profit that the fossil fuel industry would see if they slowed electric car adoption back by even a day, and argued that the economics justified them spending all sorts of money toward that end, including promoting bullshit articles.

I wanted to send a link to the article back to this friend. Luckily, I’d told someone about it, and I remembered who I had told, and how.

What to do?

To recover this marginal knowledge: I need to invest more time in “organizing my knowledge and making it universally accessible and useful.”
One way is to communicate what I know to someone else—by email, chat, whatever.

Another is to write about it.

Leaving shit in my head is a mistake.

If I blog about it, there are some problems, but I shall overcome.

One problem is Google’s search engine. I set up a “custom search” that goes through many of my blogs. But it doesn’t work correctly. I can find pages searching within an individual blog that I can’t find using the custom search. And the custom search gives me errors that I don’t know how to fix. My current plan is to post almost everything here and one of these days tag posts with the blog where I want them to go and write a program to do the distribution.

For the moment, anyone who reads this is going to have to put up with a mess.

It’s you or me, buddy.

Either I can’t find shit that I want to find easily, or you have to skip posts that you don’t give a fuck care that much about.

Sorry. You’re gonna have to skip until I fix stuff.

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NaNoWriMo re-redux

It’s almost November.

November is National novel writing month. NaNoWriMo.

Last year more than 300,000 signed up to write a 50,000 word novel in November.

I tried in 2010 and succeeded in 2011.

50,000 words is 1666 words a day. About 7 pages. Less than an hour if you keep at it. If you miss a day, you can catch up on the next day. Or you can get ahead.

They say, “Write what you know about.” They should know, I guess. In any case, I did.

The result was the story of a man (a lot like me) who sets out to write a 50,000-word novel and finds God. Or God finds him. Or they find one another.

On the say, there are struggles and distractions, but in the end, the guy in the book finishes writing the book he’s writing.

And in real life, so did I.

You can buy a copy for $15.00.

Or you can send me an email, and I’ll send you a PDF.

Last year I decided to write another book and announced it here and here.

And I didn’t finish.

Maybe this year we’ll find out why.

If you’d like to connect with me through NaNoWriMo (to write along with me or to cheer me on, or to hoot at me,) sign up for NaNoWriMo (email, Facebook, or Google) and buddy with me (“WolfReporter”)

See you in November.

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Or here

Or don’t.

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