Posts by Riddley Walker
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What i meant to say about the intrinsic/extrinsic reward topic is this:
I am all for decent financial support of artists and artisans - my comment wasn't meant to be an argument for suggesting 'if they really enjoy their work they shouldn't get paid, or shouldn't get paid well', nor 'the thanks and adoration of the community should be sufficient recompense'. I also heartily disagree with the romantic agrarian psuedo-socialist view of poverty as having some kind of aesthetic and moral purity that makes it neato, and makes earning a decent living bad.
In cases like RB's, where the lucky sod does something he loves and is good at, and gets paid for it too, well that's fantastic. But I think the ongoing pleasure derived has a lot to do with the autonomy i presume RB has managed to build into his professional life. If on the other hand you were required to sit in a room and churn out copy (even if it was stuff you were interested in and chose) every day 9-5 and failure to do so had dire economic consequences, then the fun would dry up pretty quick i expect. (There's another issue in that most good writers actually need to write for their sense of wellbeing, but let's leave that to the side for now.)
Similarly there are many pass times I have that I love, but wouldn't love if I did them because I had to, because I needed or wanted to do it for the cash. Gardening, drinking and bonking come to mind, i'm sure there are many others. I guess the real issue (as with the 'stress effects' literature), is the locus of control. Typically, as merc alluded to above, getting paid to do something means a diminuition of autonomy. If you can get paid and maintain autonomy then that's likely a different matter again.
There is also a ton of research on the effects of extrinsic motivation on behaviour, particulalry in the pediatric/education area, that show teachers and parents ought to be quite thoughtful about how they employ extrinsic reinforcement. See the following for example:
overview
definitions
meta-analysis
implications
commercial applications
lit reviewthat's what i meant to say.
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yeah sorry steven, my apologies. and for the record i would much prefer to see the $ going to squiggle-makers than corporate advertising platforms masquerading as national heroes.
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yeah, amen to that. it certainly is a rare blessing to be able to live a life you like. although having said that it also takes a certain amount of courage and wit. actually it seems to take a lot of people a lot of courage to actually let themselves do what they really want to do. quite a powerful testament to the power of our self-repression education.
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Andy Warhol said 'if there's something you really, really want, and you get it... it drives you crazy'.
i think the references to common people are usually attempts faux egality and being on the side of the everyday people. corporates do it all the time. -
my pleasure m. trusttum's work and life seem pretty cool to me.
i love clairmont's stuff, but i used to know his daughter - she was an amazing, interesting, strong person, but i think really hurt by her dad's illness and death. i know it's silly to do so, but i always kind of resented him for inflicting his pain on others' lives. not that that's particularly unusual. he is nonetheless a great painter.
trusttum's work has always appealed to me, there are lots similar but he seems to manage to get just the right balance of light and dark humour and forboding. -
yes well it looks like you can paint to me so you were right to assume you could. i like philip trusttum's stuff too.
the issue of intrinsic vs extrinsic reward is an interesting one, i need to argue it a bit better on the other thread, but i guess the literal whoring is one good example of how to probably learn to really dislike something that might otherwise be a great pleasure. -
Why do we subsidize the Americas cup?
wow, that's some segue.
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thank you Master
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no i think the equivalent would just be driving through hamilton.
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perfectly serious hadyn. when something intrinsically rewarding is changed to being extrinsically rewarding, the peasure diminishes.
don't believe me? try it some time. or google some of the literature on the topic.