Re: feedback (an example thereof)

Damien Broderick (damien@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au)
Mon, 22 Sep 1997 16:40:02 +0000


At 12:37 PM 9/22/97 +0000, I wrote stupidly:

> New
>Age types, and many others, are always smiling gratefully when they receive
>what they call `positive feedback' (meaning, for them, encouragement or
>praise) and recoiling from the dreaded `negative reinforcement' (meaning,
>they suppose, disapproval).

This is what happens when you sit at a computer screen with yr eyelids
coated in thick antibiotic ointment. `Negative reinforcement', which has
nothing much to do with the case, *does* imply disapproval, if not a smack
in the ear. I meant, as everyone will have realised through a cunning use
of semiotically rectifying negative feedback, `negative feedback'.

Damien Broderick