Comment by JonnieCache | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JonnieCache | Hacker News Reader

While this is framed here as a "radical" technique, it's just BF Skinner's Operant Conditioning, which has been one of the foundations of behavioral psychology for nigh on 100 years.

If you're wondering if it really works, yes, it does. One of the key elements of it, especially when using it on people, is accepting that the subject is likely to execute the behavior badly for the first few iterations, but you have to positively reinforce it just the same as if they'd done it perfectly if you want them to get better. If you can't manage this, and you get angry at them, you're jeopardising the whole thing.

There's a nice clip from one of Jordan Peterson's lectures here, talking about these techniques in the context of intimate relationships:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VM1UA0pCMQ

So... this is one of my pet peeves about developmental psychology.

This "punishment doesn't work" mantra is rampant in the field, and it's totally unsupported by the scientific evidence.

What is true is that punishment on its own is relatively ineffective, and that you need to reward desired behavior to shift it from something undesirable to something desirable.

But if you read the learning literature, it's pretty clear that the most effective way to change behavior is to punish undesired behavior and reward desired behavior.

The article is promulgating this ideological distortion of operant conditioning that's common in developmental psychology.

Maybe there are better or worse ways of implementing punishment, and the best thing is to combine it with rewards; in fact, sometimes rewards on its own will work. But the idea that punishment is ineffective is incorrect.

> One of the key elements of it, especially when using it on people, is accepting that the subject is likely to execute the behavior badly for the first few iterations, but you have to positively reinforce it just the same as if they'd done it perfectly if you want them to get better.

(Good) parents all do this all the time. I think it goes as far as being instinct. E.g. the first time your child uses a spoon by himself, there's going to be porridge all over him, table, chair and floor, with a comparably minute amount going into his mouth. But you still smile, applaud and praise him.

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