The lead article conflates two process: habits and incentives. The very term “reinforcement” dates back to before the distinction was well-understood. Only in the last decade has it been known that habit operates from a neurology distinct from incentives. (The habit mechanism is in a much older part of the brain.) Only the first story, Yudkowsky and the jellybeans, deals clearly with reinforcement of habit. The others are probably primarily adjustment of incentives.
In using habit and incentive, different rules apply. Incentives require that the subject discern the contingency. The processes Skinner studied as “reinforcement” are mostly about incentives. You adjust schedules of reinforcement to alter the organism’s expectancies. For incentive effects, consistent reinforcement is not usually best, as the results are subject to extinction soon after the organism stops getting the reward.
Habits, on the other hand, are blind. The organism doesn’t need to see any contingency. Yudkowsky continued to be nice even after he no longer received the jellybeans. To form habits, as opposed to incentive structures, consistency is key.
In short, as a general rule, you want consistency to reward habits and considerable randomness to create lasting incentives.
But the difference extends also to the ethical questions raised. Altering others’ incentives for our own benefit is part of ordinary human interaction. If his colleagues surreptitiously timed the offer of jellybeans to Yudkowsky when he acted nice, this is something else; the ethical reason is that Yudkowsky need not recognize what he’s being rewarded for to be affected by the jellybeans.
Both habit and incentive are “powerful.” But they’re powerful for different reasons, in different ways; and to apply them effectively and ethically requires different procedures.
I must confess I don’t really understand the way ‘incentive’ is used in [deleted]’s post. Isn’t an incentive usually a reward you use to get someone to do something? When I give my cat a treat I to get her cat to come when I call her, the treat is the incentive. I didn’t create the incentive—the cat already liked the treats. All I did is get her to associate me calling her with getting a treat.
Can anyone here point me to the relevant scholarly literature discussing the differences between habits and incentives? I tried Google and Google Scholar but failed to find any paper or survey article that explicitly contrasts these two processes.
The lead article conflates two process: habits and incentives. The very term “reinforcement” dates back to before the distinction was well-understood. Only in the last decade has it been known that habit operates from a neurology distinct from incentives. (The habit mechanism is in a much older part of the brain.) Only the first story, Yudkowsky and the jellybeans, deals clearly with reinforcement of habit. The others are probably primarily adjustment of incentives.
In using habit and incentive, different rules apply. Incentives require that the subject discern the contingency. The processes Skinner studied as “reinforcement” are mostly about incentives. You adjust schedules of reinforcement to alter the organism’s expectancies. For incentive effects, consistent reinforcement is not usually best, as the results are subject to extinction soon after the organism stops getting the reward.
Habits, on the other hand, are blind. The organism doesn’t need to see any contingency. Yudkowsky continued to be nice even after he no longer received the jellybeans. To form habits, as opposed to incentive structures, consistency is key.
In short, as a general rule, you want consistency to reward habits and considerable randomness to create lasting incentives.
But the difference extends also to the ethical questions raised. Altering others’ incentives for our own benefit is part of ordinary human interaction. If his colleagues surreptitiously timed the offer of jellybeans to Yudkowsky when he acted nice, this is something else; the ethical reason is that Yudkowsky need not recognize what he’s being rewarded for to be affected by the jellybeans.
Both habit and incentive are “powerful.” But they’re powerful for different reasons, in different ways; and to apply them effectively and ethically requires different procedures.
How do you tell which things you want to reinforce are habits (and should therefore be reinforced consistently) and which things are incentives?
I’d think a habit is something that just goes on as long as nothing happens to disrupt it. You no longer need to reinforce it.
But the only difference in the process of creating to two is the amount of consistency? That doesn’t seem quite right.
I must confess I don’t really understand the way ‘incentive’ is used in [deleted]’s post. Isn’t an incentive usually a reward you use to get someone to do something? When I give my cat a treat I to get her cat to come when I call her, the treat is the incentive. I didn’t create the incentive—the cat already liked the treats. All I did is get her to associate me calling her with getting a treat.
Can anyone here point me to the relevant scholarly literature discussing the differences between habits and incentives? I tried Google and Google Scholar but failed to find any paper or survey article that explicitly contrasts these two processes.