mice degens?
 

From Traheho's blog:

" Scientists were testing mice to see their behavior in certain situations. They locked the mice in cages and gave them two buttons. The Red button would give them some sort of pleasure (say vicodin or morphine for mice) 100% of the time they pushed it. On the other hand the Blue button would give them the same dose of the same drug but only 50% of the time. The other 50% they would get an electrical shock. The obvious logic would be after 5 or 10 pushes, one would push the Red button to get high all the time rather than risk getting the shock. To my surprise, this is not what happened. They found that the mouse was NINE times more likely to push the Blue button. (Now if your conclusion for why this happened was because mice like blue more than red then….. well your a moron) The reasoning for this was because they liked not knowing the outcome of a given situation. It was the closest thing to gambling they could get. They wanted the risk of getting the drugs, but also the shock."

wow if this is true. anyone have a anymore info or a link on this experimentt?

Re: mice degens?
 

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(Now if your conclusion for why this happened was because mice like blue more than red then….. well your a moron)

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Sweet.

Re: mice degens?
 

it doesnt explain how they arrived to that conclusion.

Re: mice degens?
 

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it doesnt explain how they arrived to that conclusion.

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Scientists were degens like us and thought "[censored] it, they gotta love to gabol, who doesn't? Write down results: gamblin' mice"

Re: mice degens?
 

Experiment is flawed. Nobody on morphine would give a [censored] about electric shocks.

BF Skinner did an experiment where he showed that pidgeons develop superstitious behavior when rewarded at random.

Re: mice degens?
 

There must be more to the experiment. Mice wouldn't choose 50/50 shock/drug if the alternative of 100/drug were available.

Re: mice degens?
 

It sounds like this experiment was conducted by a top scientist at a respected and prestigious university, imo.

Re: mice degens?
 

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There must be more to the experiment. Mice wouldn't choose 50/50 shock/drug if the alternative of 100/drug were available.

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Says who?

Re: mice degens?
 

Seems to me that mice like blue more than red.

Re: mice degens?
 

Maybe it was hard for the mice to remember what button did what. You know, cause of all the morphine and electric shocks.

Besides, mice are color blind aren't they?

Re: mice degens?
 

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Seems to me that mice like blue more than red.

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http://s21.photobucket.com/albums/b2...sh/21201-2.jpg

Re: mice degens?
 

Theres alot of reasons why they did this. I don't think "gambling" is the reason, they are probably just bright enough to understand that one button does the same thing every time, and the other does different things some of the time.

They aren't bright enough (especially on dope for crying out loud!) to ever figure out that the blue button doesn't have an option C, so they just kept pressing the button waiting for when it would happen.

Re: mice degens?
 

Skinner's pigeon experiment has been seen as an indicator why gambling has such an appeal to human beings.

A slightly related sidenote was told to us on a lecture on stress research. Cats in electroshock experiments grew fond of their ability to avoid electroshock. At first the experiments were your typical animal protectionist nightmare with scared cats, but after a while the researchers noted that the cats started to purr and seemingly enjoy themselves when they had mastered the techniques needed to avoid the electroshock.

Being a cat person I liked the end of that story atleast.