I was just trying to replace “reward” by “reinforcement”, but hit the problem that “negative reward” makes sense, but behaviorist terminology is such that “reinforcement” is always after a good thing happens, including “negative reinforcement”, which would be a kind of positive reward that entails removing something aversive. The behaviorists use the word “punishment” for “negative reward”. But “punishment” has all the same downsides as “reward”, so I assume you’re also opposed to that. Unfortunately, if I avoid both “punishment” and “reward”, then it seems I have no way to unambiguously express the concept “negative reward”.
I was just trying to replace “reward” by “reinforcement”, but hit the problem that “negative reward” makes sense, but behaviorist terminology is such that “reinforcement” is always after a good thing happens, including “negative reinforcement”, which would be a kind of positive reward that entails removing something aversive. The behaviorists use the word “punishment” for “negative reward”. But “punishment” has all the same downsides as “reward”, so I assume you’re also opposed to that. Unfortunately, if I avoid both “punishment” and “reward”, then it seems I have no way to unambiguously express the concept “negative reward”.
So “negative reward” it is. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah, seems tough to avoid “reward” in that situation. Thanks for pointing this out.