Assignment #10 - Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 1 - Opening Skinner's Box
"I wonder if I am worthwhile." It amazes me that even people who have done so much with their lives still wonder this. I think Skinner's experiments were quite amazing in the pure discoveries they made and in the affects they had in the world. His work in operant conditioning has helped countless people suffering from disorders such as anxiety-disorders and schizophrenia. No one focuses on these things though. They let rumors and assumptions, such as locking his baby in a box for years, rule their thoughts of him and his experiments, and this is a shame. Some of the world's greatest successes have been tarnished by people just believing all the rumors they are told and not learning for themselves. Skinner and his boxes are just another victim. I would like to add though that I don't completely agree with the fact that we are completely controlled by our environment. While these 'silvery webs' do influence us greatly, I think that a person can take control sometimes and exercise their free will because there are many instances of people growing up in the exact some environment and making different choices.

Chapter 2 - Obscura
When I first saw that this chapter was over the same thing the last book was over, I was disappointed. I thought it would be boring and add nothing to my knowledge, but I was very wrong. The last book we read was chilling and cold with its factual basis, but this book is frightening in that it really brings home the fact that you very well may be one of the people who went all the way. The way the book is written really made me think about my personality and if I was a person that could do such a horrible thing. "The power of Milgram's experiments lies in the great gap between what we think about ourselves, and who we frankly are," and this chapter really make me think about who I am, how I approach authority and conflict. I am now terrified that I would be one of the 65%, but I think this is a good thing because now I can, like Jacob, reevaluate myself. "Milgram's discovery was not that people will hurt or kill one another; we have always known that to be true. Milgram's discovery was that people will do so in the absence of aggression; he effectively disentwined murder form rage." This terrifies people. If normal people, people like you and me, can do such horrid thing, what does that say about us? People shrink and hide away from thoughts like these, thoughts that make us question who we truely are, but that's the great thing about this experiment. It hits us right where it hurts and makes us think about these hard questions. To quote Milgram, " From these experiments come awareness and that may be the first step towards change." He is forces these hard life changing questions on us, and maybe if enough people let themselves accept this, we, as a society, can grow and change for the better.

Chapter 3 - On Being Sane in Insane Places
I found this chapter very interesting. I think psychological disorders are very interesting and like to read up on them. Each one has multiple ways that it can be expressed and there are such wide ranges of severity. It is still too subjective as David Rosenhan showed. You can talk to the person and see that something with them isn't normal, but who is to say what is normal? And even once you know they aren't normal, how can  you help someone when you don't even know why they aren't normal? I do think the author and Rosenhan are being to hard on psychiatry though. Medicine in the past was at the same point that psychiatry is at now. At one point, people use to think drilling into people's heads to alleviate headaches was a good idea. If society gave up back then because they didn't understand, we would be way worse off. Just give psychiatry some time. I think they will find their answers.

Chapter 4 - In the Unlikely Event of a Water Landing
Nothing in this chapter was quite surprising to me. To me it is almost an extension of Milgram's experiment. People pretty much don't have enough will power to break out of social norms whether it is the bystander effect or obedience to authority. People no matter how good inside are quite capable of doing bad things, either doing the action themselves or just allowing it to happen. It does make me wonder if I would have done the same or not. I hope I would spur into action, but hopefully I will never find out for sure. I do agree with the author though that things like this should be included in schools. Schools, especially elementary schools, already have programs in place to teach good character. They have pictures of pillars of different traits that should be exhibited. It would be pretty easy to integrate this and Milgram's findings into a program and I guarantee it would leave a much better mark.

Chapter 5 - Quieting the Mind
Okay, there is going to be a lot of complaining about this chapter. I didn't even like this chapter, so I am sure everyone else hated it. She spends way to little time on the actual experiment and way too much time talking about the mother of the girl. It was an interesting side story, but it is so weird that she focused that much on it.  The experiment that started it wasn't even really an experiment so much as a mini ethnography. They just observed a group as events occurred. And then she spends at max a page on 'paid to lie' experiment. I wonder if this guy did any other experiments the author didn't share. We also didn't learn much about his life which is weird for her. Definitely not one of her best chapters.

Chapter 6 - Monkey Love
Disturbing. That is the only word for these experiments. I don't necessary agree with her that animals have the exact same worth as people do, but I do think they deserve better treatment than they are getting. If I had to pick between saving the life of a person and an animal, I have no doubt that I would pick the person, but I would do anything I could to save them both. We can learn a lot from animals, and I am not against using them for experiments. I am against going to extreme measures for very little useful knowledge. Taking babies from mothers, isolating them from everything in 'wells of despair', and putting them in 'rape rack's just to find out what factors are needed to make a well adapted child is wrong. Of course if a child never interacts with something living of it's own kind it won't know how to correctly interact! What is new about that idea? Nothing if you ask any normal person, so I don't think that was a valid reason to torture monkeys. I think sometimes scientists get to entralled in their experiments and don't lift their heads out of their work long enough  to determine if what they are going to learn is worth the affect if will have.

Chapter 7 - Rat Park
I quiet enjoyed this chapter. I thought she balanced her own little life stories quite well with the actual experiments over addiction. I have heard many times before about the experiments where animals in cages used drugs instead of ate until the point of starvation and death. I have not however heard of Alexander's experiments with the rat park. I found it fascinating that the rats in basically rat heaven didn't want to use the drugs. The fact that we don't live in people heaven doesn't disprove his findings, it just shows that they cannot be directly applied currently. Maybe they should be used as motivation for working towards a better life, such as better schools and cleaner housing projects. I personally fall somewhere between Alexander and Kleber. I completely think that addiction lies outside the drug, but I think that it is partly to blame on the person and on the environment. I believe that most of the time addiction is from the life circumstances people are currently facing, but I also think that some people are more predisposed to become addicted to substances because of other biological factors, such as a person who is bipolar or experiences chronic depression.

Chapter 8 -  Lost in the Mall
The idea behind this experiment is quite interesting. I've always thought the memories were not something to be relied on. Every person remembers the same experience differently, and memories change over time. I never thought about the fact that memories could be so easily implanted though. The idea is very interesting that just by telling someone that something happened to them, they start believing it and fabricating memories. Slater does not show Loftus in an attractive light though. She seems a little crazy and off, but I am realizing almost all of the experimenters are like that. One interesting thing to note is that Slater included very little of her own life in this chapter. I actually kind of missed it.

Chapter 9 - Memory Inc.
This chapter reminded me of the movie Limitless, where the guy took a pill that made me super smart by allowing him to access all parts of his brain and therefore he could recall everything he has ever heard or seen. If they ever come out with a pill that does allow us to remember better, I think there will be chaos. It would be like a performance enhancing drug for the mind. Obviously, poorer families won't be able to afford such a luxury pill, so that would put all their kids at a severe disadvantage when it came to college entrance exams and GPA and such. Is it really fair for kids who have to do it the old fashioned way to be compared to children of the privileged who can just pop a pill and remember everything they study no problem? I can see such pills extending the gap between the upper and lower class even farther than it is. This is something I think the world will have to face one day though. Science isn't going to stop advancing, and such a pill would be such a great help to Alzheimer's patients that there is no way the development process will stop. Even if the pill would only be allowed in such instances it will be sold just like ADHD medicine is currently sold around campuses. I don't think memory reducing pills should be developed at all. No matter how bad your past is, it is what made you and shaped you into the person you are today and taking that away will be changing the person you are. I think it is better to face the past and move on. Then again, I don't have a bad past experience so maybe my opinion would change if I did.

Chapter 10 - Chipped
I thought this chapter was very interesting! I am very interested in biology and medicine, and at one point considered going to medical school. It was very enlightening seeing the progression of such a hated and branded surgery. When the average person thinks of lobotomies, they only know of the shady past with the random cuttings and lost knifes, which is honestly all I knew too. I did not know that they were still performed and had a success rate like they do. I do agree with her that both cingulotomy/lobotomies and the pills we give to patients are both stabs in the dark. We don't know how the brain works all the way, so of course the surgeries are in a way taking educated guesses, but we also don't know why/how the pills we give help either. They basically soak the brain in chemicals, and that doesn't sound like a great idea either. I think science supports this method though because of the distance of responsibility  Yes they prescribe the pills, but the is still a distance there that doesn't exist when they actually poke and probe the brain itself. I think it will be interesting to see where the medical field goes from here.