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To: Cage Rattler who wrote (86113)	5/30/2002 2:59:31 PM
From: E. Charters	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116896

The problem of dealing with "defectors" who have different political interests have been dealt with for centuries and at a very theoretical level. The other thing you have to look at is every group has the same self interests of survival, hegemony and paranoia, so that they don't necesarily in any universal domain have any less justification as we or anyone else. On the other hand it does not diminish our legitimate concerns or the necessity of self defense. Here defectors mean people who seem to opt out of agreemetns not people who "go over". If you do not come to agreement with all those so called bad guys eventually then there is no doubt that you guarantee their continual defection rate, or antipathy. What distinguishes the bad from the good, so called? It is only from an objective point of view, self interests that collide. To the Arabs, who do not have to think like us, or do anything like us at least at first glance, it is we who are the people who defect on agreements, or seek to dominate or interfere. Oil, Israel, and arms in the ME are a continual thing that sticks in their craw. Is this fair? Is it necessary? What did they do to deserve this, no matter what their religion or government. On the other hand, what could we do from this point onward to make things much better, given pretensions in many ME countries to be unstable, unfriendly, expansionist and rattle sabres of all kinds? It is OK for them to say that Amoco and the CIA were a bad seed in the ME for many yearsm but given that, do they have any good ones? EC<:-}

To: Cage Rattler who wrote (86113)	5/30/2002 3:42:46 PM
From: E. Charters	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116896

Negative reinforcement being harder to overcome than positive reinforcement. Thesis. I suppose it means that after aversion is imprinted, or associated as in Pavlov's experiment extended beyong S-R in a negative way, or food+bell+beating (the dog bites and won't eat :) that it is hard to get the subject to try again. Of course not, or it would not be imprinting. What you are saying is that the positive leads to a behaviour, and the negative cancels it and you cannot get repeat tries after that. (Not entirely, as complete aversion is actually a neurosis) So now how do you entice experimentation? Well the answer might be to put them into a different circumstance. Certainly both positive and negative reinforcements fade. Aversion it would seem however takes lower energy, so in some individuals with a goal of low energy behaviour this would seem to dominate the equation. I don't know about negative behaviour or aversion dominating behaviour or lasting that long. What you mean is that aversion caused by negative reinforcement or punishment leads to longer term behaviour imprinting than positive reinforcement does its behaviour. I am not sure this is the case. In fact trauma does heal. And is all traum as it is defined, the same as just negative therapy or punishment "scheduling"? Is it the cause of ALL bad behaviour? Or is too much candy as bad? Does this explain drug addiction and physiological addictions, from purely memory feedback and not physicals needs state, when the bad experiences of even physiological, not physical drugs are manifold? If punishment exceeded candy then all a parent would have to do is whip and beat and threaten and good behaviour would be a no-brainer. Since this does not work it is moot. But does the aversion from bad experience imprint stronger than the taste of candy? hmmmmmm... hard to say. People always reach for candy, electric shock notwithstanding. There is such a thing as sensitization. What that means is that too shocks and too many aversion responses fade into oblivion when the individual is thus exposed, and the subject become inured to the "pain". (Note: Most people use desensitization which really means "making sensitive by withdrawl from stimulus" -- and the term sensitization, which really means "making insensitive by overexposure to stimulus" -- in the layman's way, or incorrectly.) The entire medical profession confuses the issue, because exposure to small amounts of an allergen is called "sensitization", causing as it does, hypersensitivity to dosages. The same sort of process does not work in psychology anyway. Repeated exposure to stimulus dulls the senses, or does not elicit responses as much, (unlike the medical situation), and adjusts the subject to not responding aversely, and it is called, believe it, -- sensitization. They don't mean making sensitive either, but insensitive! If repeat exposure in psychology DID make the subject sensitive, it would be called desensitization! So the process is opposite, AND it is called oppositely for what it does, in the most knowledgeable of circles. Many psyche people with PhD's are confused semantically on this issue as well, so it is hard to get actual confirmation of this, except through highly competent authority who are key researchers in the field. The point to remember is no matter what you call the process, and this the psyches will agree on at least, is that repeated exposure to stimulus will not always make a person sensitive to it. It has the opposite effect often. (Trauma or high level consciously unexpected shock is one thing. How long it lasts is completely another.) Detraumatizing can involve exposure to the stimulus to dull the senses to it. Call it what you want. I wish to add that low level irritation may have different effects. Like the medical physical effect of allergies, there may be a hypersenstivity effect in psychology. What we are talking about above is exposure to stimulus in a controlled way at perceived levels "up front" in order to adjust the senses. So is candy weaker than the whip? Or sweet vice versa bad device. Is the imprinting of bad stuff a bogeyman? What overcomes this? Is aversion from bad epxerience in the lab in controlled goal-directed testing, the same thing as trauma in life, and is trauma influenced carried forward always the results of exterior frustration of unexpected or bad results? So the question is how do you overcome lassitude, low energy behaviour, aversion. How do you get them to press the lever. More on trails of candy later. EC<:-}