First off, I’m new to these forums, so hello everyone. Hopefully this question is in the right forum as it is more philosophical.
On to the main point: I was at an event a few weeks ago moderated by Gary Wolf, and he said something which stuck out to me to the effect of, “QS doesn’t like the idea of behavior modification.” I think I got that quote right, but I was taking notes quickly and may not have (Gary, apologies if I’ve misquoted you.)
This surprised me as behavior modification, or making positive changes in one’s behavior, seems core to QS. I want to open up and clarify the question here.
Does QS hate the idea of behavior modification? If so, why?
Welcome Andrew! I did probably say something like that, perhaps prefaced with “some of us” or another cover-my-ass phrase, but even with that qualifier it was too arrogantly expressed. Can I take it back and just say that I hate the concept of behavior modification? In fact I’ve had many debates and discussions with QS folks and I’m often at the extreme end of the range of views. I don’t even believe that there is a worthwhile concept of “behavior” as a distinct category of human experience. I treat the word behavior as an intuition pump that influences us to use a too very narrow vocabulary in describing what we learn from Quantified Self tools and experiences. A powerful source of our behaviorist vocabulary is BF Skinner’s work with animals. There are some things that derive from this work that I find really useful, such as Seth Roberts’ “magic dots” for getting things done. But I’m not at all convinced that reinforcement in the commonly used behaviorist frameworks will help us very much in areas of our lives that are more complex. For instance, I think most of the marketing of weight loss techniques based on feedback loops are over optimistic.
There’s much to discuss here! Thanks for raising this, I look forward to what others have to add.
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(One excellent reference for thinking about this, if you have a taste for scholarly critique, is Noam Chomsky’s “A Review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior” published in 1959. I’ve attached it to this post.)
I’m on the opposite side of the spectrum from Gary (a rare occurrence) on this particular point.
Not only do I not hate the idea of behavior modification, I think the question “how do we change ourselves?” is perhaps the most interesting/important question a human can strive to answer.
That said, I do hate the way people market false answers to the question with absolutely no shame.
And I’m also not 100% certain that there is an answer to this question. Or rather, that perhaps there are a few other questions that need to be answered first, before getting to this question. For example, I think behavior change is really belief change. Or identity change. And that identity change is largely brain change, or habit thought change. But I could be on the entirely wrong course… I don’t know.
I am interested to learn more about what you mean when you say,
“I don’t even believe that there is a worthwhile concept of “behavior” as a distinct category of human experience. I treat the word behavior as an intuition pump that influences us to use a too very narrow vocabulary in describing what we learn from Quantified Self tools and experiences.”
Do you mean that our current theories of human behavior are lacking? If so, in whats ways? Do you mean that humans don’t have behaviors, that is to say humans don’t have definable ways in which they act in response to a particular situation/stimulus?
The magic dots exception is interesting because unlike almost all Skinnerian-type research, it started with (a) an attitude of not knowing the answer and (b) sophisticated experimental design. The magic dots method came from experiments on “quasi-reinforcement” with pigeons by Neuringer and Chung, and those experiments were based on Allen Neuringer’s doctoral dissertation research. In Neuringer’s dissertation research, he used sophisticated experimental designs and found some results that puzzled him. In all of Skinner’s research, I can’t think of a single sophisticated experimental design or even one puzzling result. I think his approach (poor experimental design, disinterest in puzzling results) had a big influence on people who did his type of research. Looking over all of that field (called operant conditioning research when done with animals and Applied Behavior Analysis or behavior modification when done with people), the Neuringer and Chung experiments stand out for me – way more interesting (and also better done).
My initial inclination is more aligned with Buster on this one (hi again Buster, been awhile since we chatted, hope you’re well!)
Gary + Seth, I’m intrigued and puzzled by the idea that humans don’t really have “behavior” as a distinct category. Are you suggesting that what we categorize as “behaviors” is just an external/visible manifestation of something deeper, which we should be focusing on instead? Or would you throw away the categorization entirely and focus on something different?