Just because North Korea, as a country, is made up of people, does not mean that as a country, it will behave the same way as a human being would. I think operant conditioning is a psychological phenomenon. But in the context of a government, with judicial laws and policies, a different perspective is necessary.

For example, while you can teach a child to be nice to his friends by giving him candy, a government may still choose to be mean to neighbouring countries if it logically decides that it is in the best interest of its people. If US attacks china, no matter how many encouragements china sends out, US will still continue its conquest. Perhaps the key difference is whether the source of reinforcement is from a greater authority. Right now in the world stage, each country is independent. But if we have a “UN” that is strong enough to have absolute power over the doings of all countries, then its use of reinforcements or punishments may be more effective.

I agree with your points about the variable nature of conducting measurements for the relative effectiveness of reinforcements and punishments, especially taking into account the highly complex socio-political nature of this situation. The degree to which we can empirically assess the effectiveness of conditioning within such a context is, indeed, a debatable topic.

However, I disagree with the latter half of your argument. There is a major fallacy in your syllogism. Your interpretation (in paragraph 8 ) of my argument failed to mention one key point: humans are animals that can be taught by Operant Conditioning. This is how a correct syllogism would sound: since Operant Conditioning is applicable to all animals, and since human beings are animals, Operant Conditioning is applicable to human beings of the North Korean nationality. You would have found this argument more convincing had you examined it without the syllogistic fallacy.

Also, I must point out a further misinterpretation of my original argument. Your statement, “because operant conditioning is applicable to a 6 year old boy”, should not have been a part of your syllogism since this was a claim that I was arguing against. From my essay, I stated that some may falsely believe that Operant Condition is only applicable to a young child, perhaps under the influence of the “mother-hit-boy” example. I then went on to say that despite these misconceptions, Operant Condition teaches all animals. This clearly refutes your claim that “[s]omething that is applicable to children may not be applicable to adults” since Operant Condition shapes all animals, from the most simple to the most complex. Now, I hope you see how flatworms are very relevant in furthering my point.

Your comment was 790 words long — a new record! Thanks for pointing out my biases, though Myers 8th Ed. did not provide any “advantages of punishments” or “disadvantages of rewards”. Psychologists generally agree that reinforcement is a more superior form of conditioning than punishment. Nonetheless, I need to do more research to get a more definitive answer.

Personally, I do believe that friendly gestures (reinforcement) would lead to improved relationships, which may result in desired behaviour. After all, tension and dissonance rarely, if ever, resolves a conflict — “an eye for the eye makes the world blind”.

Rhetorical gymnastics!

Now diving into a juicy debate:

Your first contention (paraphrasing) is that “rewards is more effective than punishments”.

The reasons you state explicitly are that the former leads to faster and longer lasting learning. I do not know how the tests on these are done so I cannot contend on these particulars. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe experiments of this kind is primarily done on animals, or atleast small children. I think this type of experiments on adults (ethics aside) would not only be harder to conduct but also be subject to much greater variability. While you can reward a dog with a treat for doing a cool trick, asking a man to hop across the room on one foot with a cookie is a bit more complex. The effectiveness of a reward would then depend on whether the reward is desirable, how desirable the reward is, how many times it’s been used, how desirable the task is, etc. etc. etc… For example, it has been show that rewarding a child for doing an intrinsically rewarding task like drawing actually decreases the child’s motivation to do that task (you can ask me for clarification on this case study if you didn’t learn about it). While I’m sure the general principle that rewards reinforces behavior still stands most of the time, it is a lot harder to discern among humans, especially adults, whether rewards lead to faster and longer lasting learning.

You also list reasons why punishment is ineffective. By logic alone, this is not sufficient to prove that reward is better than punishment, since you make no mention of the advantages of punishments or the disadvantages of rewards and then show why collectively, one side outweighs the other. You provided an example about how the boy, after receiving punishment from his mother, will display the disadvantages of punishments. However, not all boys will display the same behavior after receiving punishment. Some will actually get the message, and correct his behavior entirely.

Factors such as the severity, frequency, and method of punishment also play a role. I think extreme cases of harsh punishment does lead to negative effects in teaching, but just as too much reward also ends up being ineffective. Ultimately it’s hard to say that reward is decisively better than punishment; it’s certainly difficult to imagine a world where only rewards or only punishments are applied.

The second issue is: how applicable is operant conditioning to what’s happening in North Korea.

To summarize your argument, because operant conditioning is applicable to a 6 year old boy, and because it’s applicable to animals including flatworms, and because human beings determine policies in North Korea, that therefore it is applicable to North Korea as a country. I don’t find that convincing. Something that is applicable to children may not be applicable to adults. Something applicable to an individual is not applicable to a government run by a group of people or to an entire culture of people. Theories around operant conditions at the moment are certainly not complex enough to account for the effects of social context. I also don’t see how the fact that operant condition is applicable to flatworms is very relevant in furthering your point.

To apply operant condition to North Korea is to say that their behavior is a result of the punishment. While I agree that punish North Korea is not proving to be effective so far, I wouldn’t go so far to say that North Korea is “becoming more agressive” and developing missles in response to punishments. Personally I think there are a number of internal reasons why North Korea might see that it’s beneficial to develop nuclear weapons such as national defense or respect on the world stage as a major power.

Furthermore, I don’t think positive reinforcements would be very effective in stopping North Korea’s research, unless substantial steps are taken, like “we’ll give you a trillion dollars a year if you stop developing nuclear weapons.” Even then it’s hard to say that North Korea’s behavior won’t be “suppressed and will occur elsewhere”, like continuing to develop nuclear weapons in secret.

Overall I think the article poses an interesting connection and raises many questions. While it speaks with a very definite tone, it is still much harder to find conclusive answers than to point out gaps in how much science knows about this subject right now.