Re: [CANSLIM] New to the group

From: Spencer48@aol.com
Subject: Re: [CANSLIM] New to the group
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2003 12:53:38 EST

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Ed:

     Funny, and clever.

jans


In a message dated 1/24/2003 10:33:44 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
ed@macktracks.com writes:

<< Has anyone determined whether pigeons can differentiate between the
 colors Green and Red? Assumptions, assumptions, assumptions.
 
  
 
 Ed Gjertsen II
 
 ed@macktracks.com
 
 -----Original Message-----
 From: Gene Ricci [mailto:genr@swbell.net] 
 Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2003 10:06 PM
 To: My Friends
 Subject: Puritanical Pigeons
 
  
 
 
 Puritanical Pigeons 
 
 
 The Quotation . 
 
 A beer never tastes as good as when you drag yourself over a hilltop to
 get it. Jeans always look better when they cost a couple of hundred
 dollars. The same is even true of university courses: the chemistry you
 struggled with somehow seems more worthy than the Spanish you coasted
 through. Social psychologists have tended to view this sort of twisted
 logic as uniquely human - fobbing it off as "cultural". But a group of
 pigeons in Kentucky has now exploded the myth that humans alone have
 such a work ethic. They have shown that even dumb birds tend to value
 hard-won rewards more than freebies. 
 
 
  
 
 Thomas Zentall, a psychologist at the University of Kentucky, was
 suspicious of the idea that humans were the only creatures to behave in
 this way. With the help of a graduate student, Tricia Clement, he
 trained a small band of pigeons to tap on a button if they wanted a
 snack. Sometimes the pigeon had to tap only once, whereupon the button
 turned red and some grain appeared. Other times, though, the pigeon had
 to tap a tiresome 20 pecks before the light turned green and the grain
 was delivered. 
 
 
  
 
 The pigeons soon learnt that the red button meant one thing and the
 green quite another. But given the choice between them, which would a
 pigeon go for? Classical theory suggests that the pigeon should not
 really care; both buttons, after all,
 
  
 
  
 
 
 preceded the same reward. If anything, a clever pigeon would associate
 the red button with less work, and might prefer it. 
 
 
  
 
 What Dr. Zentall and Ms. Clement found, however, was quite the opposite.
 Pigeons, like humans, are tricked into thinking that what they have
 worked hard for is actually better. They selected the green button twice
 as often as the red one. The effort seemed, according to Dr. Zentall, to
 make the grain more valuable. The phrase "bird-brained" somehow comes
 winging irresistibly to mind.
 
 - The Economist, August 5th, 2000  >>

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