[betty boop]

...just a question of not thinking deeply enough to see the (Skinner) box.

By "Skinner" do you refer to B. F. Skinner, famous behaviorist psychologist? If you do, we can join together and praise the man as the foremost leading expert in rat behavior that has ever graced the planet with his presence.

But might we also acknowledge that he knew absolutely zero, diddle-dee-squat about man? And might we also entertain the hypothesis that he had a particular animus towards a man like you?

I have a story i could tell about how the "Skinnerian methodology" has been made manifest in actual human lives, and what it seemed to lead to in a certain case. Since the story is intimately personal, involving a close family member, i would prefer not to tell it. Unless you think the telling might be useful to you.

[Heartlander]

I would say the rats were smarter than Skinner if one used his own reasoning which existed in a box he created and observed to fit the views he desired. I ironically say, ‘42’ to Skinner’s ideals…

[Physicist]

It was sort of a pun. The "box" I was thinking of was the conceptual box of determinism that I was trying to go beyond with my actions. That "box" made me think of Skinner's stimulus-response formulation of psychology, which I always have thought was crap. (A "Skinner box"--what he called an "Heir Conditioner"--was of course a very different thing.) However, since coming to realize, through introspection, just how much of my conscious thought simply rolls down the groove of least resistance, I have decided that maybe Skinner's ideas weren't 100% unadulterated crap.

[Alamo-Girl]

But might we also acknowledge that he knew absolutely zero, diddle-dee-squat about man? And might we also entertain the hypothesis that he had a particular animus towards a man like you?

LOLOLOL! A person couldn't pay for better entertainment than this thread this evening.