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A Pixelated Mind

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Pavlov had too much time on his hands

Apparently, it’s hard to classically condition people.

For a while now I’ve been trying to condition people to check my blog regularly like malnourished orphans hoping that the lady who runs the bread line will get over her hangover soon. To do this, I took a page out of Pavlov’s book and started posting regularly (see June/July… no seriously) with regular intervals of positive reinforcement (in the case of jabby dialogues, quick witticisms, hot topics, interesting history and insightful arguments).

Because I want a high degree of resiliency to deconditioning in case I don’t blog regularly for a year (see 2006/2007… but not really), the ideal training period is one in which neither the time nor the amount of positive reinforcement is fixed. This is perfect for me, because I have no idea what I’m going to write, think, or say from day to day.

However, I haven’t blogged in two days and, rather than my classical conditioning paying off, the amount of people that checked the second day dropped off by 80 percent. This suggests to me that my audience deserves an F for docility. I’ll even write a note in the report card saying “Needs to learn to have high, and false, expectations”

Thanks to my little vacation, I’ve definitively decided not to kill myself, which was always one of my top three possible actions.

I just read the most excellent poem by Jorge Luis Borges. If you get the chance to learn Spanish and read “Aprendiendo” I heartily recommend it… I mean, you can use Spanish everywhere! And in some places other people actually understand it!

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Apparently, it’s hard to classically condition people. For a while now I’ve been trying to condition people to check my blog regularly like malnourished orphans hoping that the lady who runs the bread line will get over her hangover soon. To do this, I took a page out of Pavlov’s book and started posting regularly…

2 Comments

  1. I think you might be going about this the wrong way. Nothing beats a nice big chocolate chip cookie for reinforcement. Unless you are alergic to chocolate. In that case maybe one of those white chocolate and macadamia cookies. Beats ego-stroking 4 out of five times. Or was that 4 out of five dentists? The fifth guy has to be eccentric. Maybe he would like some sardines or something, but going after him is not good business. The next eccentric will just want something else. You could always throw reason out the window and reinforce someone’s pre-packaged delusions. You will attract a different class of people, but they tend to keep coming back for more. I just re-read the first part of this comment. Maybe I’m just hungry and don’t know what I’m talking about.