Opening Skinner's Box: Chapters 3 and 4

 Chapter 3

This chapter now delves into an experiment that I had never heard before: David Rosenhan's work titled "On Being Sane in Insane Places". I actually found this experiment to be fascinating because it, in a way, reflects something that I had actually suspected for several years. Many doctors, most perhaps, I find to dish out prescriptions on an almost on-demand basis. I found one can walk into most any doctor's office and you can claim to have enough symptoms to get whatever prescription you can find.

I found this kind of issue arose firstly because my family is large, and we mostly have differing minor bumps in health most like everyone else. But in some cases we find that one doctor's assessment of what we told him or her didn't quite satisfy us. Either we felt they prescribed a drug too strong after too little time talking to the doctor, or they seemed to have diagnosed the wrong thing, or any other kind of "blip" that we detected. My parents ran a pharmacy for nearly ten years, so they're able to tell different prescriptions apart, and based on the components that are listed in the drug information they know if one drug is appropriate for what they feel is not the appropriate solution. We'd go to other specialists for second opinions, then third. Then fourth. Sometimes even fifth.

Plenty of times I'd think that this is something abnormal for us. Is it really just us who want to double-, tripe-, quadruple, ..., n-check the doctor's diagnosis? We take prescription drugs pretty seriously, because based on personal experience we've found there are plenty of instances in which one drug solves one issue while simultaneously causes another. You naively go to a different specialist if the new symptoms require a different doctor, and that doctor prescribes a new drug that creates a new issue. It can snowball into such a large ordeal that we really strive to see which prescriptions are best for which scenarios and if they're even needed at all.So I did find Rosenhan's studies to be strangely comforting, that even though many doctors certainly mean well, sometimes they offer solutions in search for problems.

Chapter 4

This is another chapter that describes something often seen in a society, and I don't know if there is some strange voodoo with this book, but in fact I was wondering this exact thing today just before reading the book because something very similar happened to me today.

I was walking my dog along the neighborhood in which I live, and it's my usual route with a lot of different families living in a lot of different houses. In one of them, the front door is wide open. Completely wide open, almost making me think someone broke in, but in the second floor in between the blinds I can see a TV turned on, and as I keep walking past the house continuing my usual route I see a family car is parked there as well. Must not be a big deal, since someone's obviously home. I considered for a few seconds going up and ringing the bell to have someone come down so I could tell them their door was left open, except I thought they might think I'm some creep. We all know the stories of the crazy people involved in life-threatening car accidents and the victim ends up suing the person who saved their lives because they broke a couple of ribs when they were being pulled out of the wreck. Some acts of kindness can be misconstrued so horribly that I thought it was best to just leave it alone. The neighborhood I live it in is extremely quiet and not at all prone to any kind of crime. The worst they'll get is a bunch of bugs inside their house. Maybe if the house looked decidedly empty I might be compelled to do something about it...

Except I thought about that last part and realized I probably would've done nothing about that either. I would've walked past, thought "oh no, what to do?" decided to not be involved, and ignored it. After all, if you're the only person reporting the burglary to the police, you're likely to be interviewed as a witness. And I watched that video about never talking to the police, ever, because anyone can twist your words in such a way that they can implicate you even if you literally did nothing.

I did begin to wonder why I thought of it that way, and why this always happened. I actually think in some ways that not doing anything actually helps the person. Pretend you're at the library and you leave your laptop. Nice and expensive and it's all alone at a desk on the 4th floor. A proactive person is probably going to grab it and take it to the main desk, but wouldn't it be easier if it were just left alone there? Say you forget the laptop for several days, the laptop wasn't stored in the regular lost-and-found, and front desk guy who took in the laptop isn't working that day? What if nobody paid attention to the laptop and weren't proactive enough to do anything, such that it's right there waiting for you when you come back to retrieve it? Wouldn't ignoring taking action be a positive thing in that case?