| > Praise and blame are an inherent part of that communication. Language acquisition presents what is perhaps the easiest falsification of your claim. Children don't learn verbal communication so well because of a system of instruction inescapably based on rewards and punishment from an instructor who can teach the lessons that the child wishes to learn (or thinks they should learn). They learn so well because their brain essentially builds them a nice filter chain based on the sounds they hear at an early age range (thus language exposure is an important factor in later language learning). We hoist praise and blame onto that process mainly because most parents have decades- (or sometimes centuries-) old concepts of learning that aren't based on modern research. Still, I'd much prefer they err on the side of too much praise rather than risk abusing their children. We have plenty of research that tells us the clear risks when that happens. > In certain circumstances, especially where (b) is less true, then praise and blame get upgraded to reward and punishment. The example above is a case where (b) is less true. Infants don't desire to build a language filter based on the sounds they are hearing. It happens involuntarily. But your system would actually guide a parent in the wrong direction-- escalating praise/blame to reward/punishment in a situation where neither are warranted. > For example, in a computer game you're learning optimally if your win:lose ratio is somewhere around 80:20. I would guess this applies to our relationships too. For that to be testable, your character in the game would have to stay dead once it gets killed. Or at least its injuries would need to follow it everywhere. Like a friend tries to show you a new move and hands you the controller, then the game says, "Hey, you're that guy with the broken leg," and doesn't allow you to do the move. I think the win:lose ratio would change significantly in that case. |
Reward and punishment are an amplification of a generally unwanted signal. I'm not advocating these; I'm not taking a moral stance. Rather I'm talking about what people already do irrespective of what they think or say they are doing.
Children learn language because it helps them to get what they want. If reward and punishment guaranteed results then adults would be able to reliably recite the multiplication tables (which they can't).