[Noisebridge-discuss] win scratch-off lotteries: an easier, more reliable way

Sai noisebridge at saizai.com
Thu Feb 3 05:23:17 UTC 2011


On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 22:31, Griffin Boyce <griffinboyce at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hack the system! =)  This reminds me of a classic animal behavior study.
> The gist of it is that people/animals will do things for fun, do them until
> they are satisfied, but when you add in a direct reward, they will basically
> half-ass it just to get as much of a reward as possible.

Actually, there's a couple neat twists in that particular literature.
(I meant to get to them in my 27C3 talk, but I didn't; might do stuff
about this etc in version 2 @ CCCamp.)

For simple, physical tasks, higher reward = higher performance.
For creative tasks, higher reward = lower performance.

Small rewards/punishments = higher internalization = more consistent
but less evident adoption of rules
Large rewards/punishments = higher externalization = high obedience
during enforcement presence, low otherwise

Low reward = low addictiveness (as in 'tolerance of non-reward period')
High reward = high addictiveness
Unpredictably random reward = highest addictiveness

I could go on. There are lots of very neat things in this field.

(Scientist hat: the above are generalizations, blahdeobviousblah, but
still true.)

> I'm in it for the fun aspect of breaking a ridiculous system that most people consider impenetrable. =)

Ditto.

- Sai



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