Operant Conditioning and Conditional Expectations and Change

In Operant Conditioning, Path Dependency and Societal Revolution, Part 2, I brought in the concept of expectation management, but did not develop it too much. This post looks at it in more detail and how it relates to and reinforces the darker aspects of operant conditioning. The key variable is the application of rational actor/choice theory. In Why do we act in other than our self-interest? Is the rational actor/choice theory valid? I addressed the application of this theory, especially with the growing impact of social networking and memes.

The mathematical analysis in the reference below simply says we make rational choices based on inputs and the expectations we have about them. Operant conditioning depends on these expectations. We expect certain outcomes from the rewards and punishments based on our experience and watching what happens to others.

This dependency is rooted in rational actor/choice theory. The behavior shaping agent theory. The propagator of the operant conditioning in a way is also engaging in rational choice theory, as it depends on the conditioning target to act in predictable ways. And that is where it can start getting very interesting.

“Rational” is relative and can vary based on cultural, cognitive, and other variables. These other variables could be along the layers in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. “Rational” actions at the base of the hierarchy (Physiological) may differ from the in the Belonging and Esteem levels. Essentially, “rationality” is consistently acting on based on a set of rules and can be shaped by the above factors.

Puppet Master conditioners—the Dark Philosophers discussed in Part 2 of the Operant Conditioning series—use operant conditioning to alter the rules as well as to alter behavior. They may use unwitting iconoclasts as their vehicles for disruption. For example, white men, who once ruled and governed society are now the only group it is legal—and encouraged—to discriminate against. Those that were once discriminated against now get lower or no standards to be evaluated against, and preferential hiring and promotions. And they have been conditioned to expect and accept this discrimination and punishment if they speak out against it.

But it does not stop there. The puppet masters are changing rules that govern society. Where once society celebrated individualism, freedom, virtue, risk taking, and success, it now celebrates failure, low standards, and crime. Yes, we have set expectations that allow people to steal if it is less than $1,000. To let people burn and loot as long as it is in the name of social justice. Just look at LinkedIn and other platforms. They are rife with posts celebrating failure and “servant leadership”. Judges and politicians say the Constitution is no longer relevant. And the more we hear it and see people rewarded for this new behavior and punished for acting under the old rules, the more their operant conditioning changes society.

Now if traditions and rules are no longer relevant in a society, then they do need to be changed. Iconoclasts break rules and seek change. Heck, the founders of the Republic certainly did that. They broke away from an empire and set up a new, different type of society. They gave us the purpose in the Preamble to the Constitution:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The government is supposed to deliver tranquility, defense, general welfare, and liberty. That should be the standard against which iconoclastic changes are evaluated against. Tranquility without liberty, defense without prosperity are not good choices.

This is a linear programming problem that seeks to balance the five dimensions in the Preamble, with constraints that ensure a balanced approach for all categories of citizens and overall prosperity, not just prosperity for a particular group. In mathematical terms, this is a function like:

Optimal Point = ƒ (Justice, Domestic Tranquility, Defense, General Welfare, Liberty)

The preamble seeks to move people up Maslow’s Hierarchy. Let us ensure iconoclasts and puppet masters do not drive down it. As the iconoclasts attack the current social system and values, we must ask ourselves, “Is what the puppet masters create better than what the iconoclasts destroy?”

Expectations reference

Robert L. Wolpert, in Conditional Expectation, wrote:

Frequently in probability and (especially Bayesian) statistics we wish to find the probability of some event A or the expectation of some random variable X, conditionally on some body of information— such as the occurrence of another event B or the value of another random variable Z (or collection of them {Zα}). In elementary probability we encounter the usual formulas for conditional probabilities and expectations  P[A | B] = P[A∩B] P[B]   E[X | Z] =   R xf(x,Z)dx R f(x,Z)dx X,Z jointly continuous Pxf(x,Z) P f(x,Z) X,Z discrete but this notion breaks down either for distributions which are not jointly absolutely continuous or discrete, and also when we wish to condition on the value of infinitely-many (even uncountably-many) random variables {Zα}, as we will when we consider stochastic processes. There simply is no such thing as a joint density function for an infinite collection {Zα}, even if each finite set has an absolutely continuous joint distribution.