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Viliam_Bur comments on The Power of Reinforcement - Less Wrong
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Thank you Luke for this beautifully written post.
A while ago I saw a kindly waitress give my friend's two year old daughter a small cookie in a restaurant. Various emotions flickered across her tiny face, and then she made a decision, accompanied by a small smile.
She broke the cookie into three pieces and gave them to her brothers. Completely unprompted.
I couldn't believe my eyes. I asked my friend, who is a lecturer in experimental psychology, whether altruism was normal amongst very young siblings.
He looked a bit smug and said "Well we put a lot of reinforcement into that."
I hadn't really thought about what that meant until now. Your clear writing has made it obvious.
As a result of your post, I think I'm going to try deliberately modifying some of my own behaviours this way, and maybe try the techniques on some friends. (The first time, by the way, that I've changed my behaviour as a result of reading less wrong, rather than just treating it as philosophical crack.)
For friends it seems that sincere praise / avoiding criticism would be good, but what would you recommend as rewards to self? I'm pretty sure that nicotine and pizza slices would work for me, but I'm also sure that those aren't things I want to do more of.
M&Ms, one piece at a time -- they are small enough. (It would probably be good if you stop eating them in all other circumstances, but that is not big sacrifice.)
Or try a symbolic reward. For example put on your table two glass boxes, put 100 stones in first one, and every time you want to reward yourself, move one stone from the first box to the second one, and congratulate yourself on progress. When all stones are in the second box, give yourself a big reward (pizza or whatever), change the boxes, and start again. (This way the reward is still linked to pizza, but it is less pizza. And you see your progress all the time.)