Behavior reinforcement

Over 4th of July weekend, as many of you already know, Mike and I went down to the Cda Tribal casino and put $40 in and came out with $230. We put it towards a small aluminum fishing boat, which we’ve already gotten some excellent use out of. Our previous gambling experiences had not been very productive at all - the best I’d done was to put 20 in and get 40 out, and Mike was actually the one pushing the buttons.

Tonight we were in Coeur d Alene and flipped a coin to see if we’d head down the the casino, half an hour away. It was about 8:45pm. At 9:50pm we were exiting the casino, empty handed, $30 poorer, without even a good crocodile jump or buried treasure dig behind us. By 10:15 we were back in Coeur d Alene.

I think that’s the quickest we’ve thrown our money away. As Mike’s dad likes to say, “Next time let’s just drive up and hand them the money through the door.”

Except next time, of course, we will win!! All of our instincts and none of our statistical reasoning tells us this!!

As a side note, I used to be totally against gambling because I never won aything and always would spend several hours following the money-throwing-away thinking about what else I could have bought with the money. It was usually a nice dinner out.

Ever since the boat winnings I’ve been thinking, “This dinner is only going to take me half an hour to eat and it’s going to make me fat anyway - let’s go gambling instead! We could win enough money to buy, like, really neat shoes. Or a bigger boat. Or Old Navy clothes.”