How To Negotiate With Terrorists from Planck's Constant

Some of my readers who attended psychology class in college may recall an experiment involving the Skinner box [Wiki].

The idea was to isolate animals in a soundproof, light-resistant cage for experiments in behavior modification. The box or cage was usually outfitted with a bar or lever to be pressed by the animal to gain a reward, such as food, or to avoid a painful stimulus, such as a shock.

In the early 1930s B.F. Skinner trained two groups of rats to press a bar for food; one group was "paw slapped" or mildly punished for ten minutes and the other was a normal group. The punished group suppressed the bar-press during the ten minutes of "punishment" but then slowly recovered and caught up to the unpunished group. Skinner thus concluded, erroneously, that punishment was ineffective in permanently modifying behavior.

In 1967 Boe and Church replicated Skinner’s study, using varying levels of shock as punishment. What they found was that with more intense shocks than Skinner supplied, there was significant suppression of a particular behavior. In addition, if the punishment is egregiously severe enough, the behavior is permanently modified.

I recall reading an experiment where a dog was given a shock of 50,000 volts to induce it to jump into another cage. That initial shock was so severe that subsequent shocks with even greater voltage could not persuade the dog to return to the offending cage.

Consider this: Cage A has food. Cage B does not. Put a dog in cage A, give it a mild shock, and it may or may not jump to cage B to avoid the shock. But if it does jump to cage B, after a while, it gets hungry and jumps back to cage A.

However, give the dog a horribly severe shock that smokes its paws and it will not only jump into cage B, it will stay there and starve rather than go back into cage A and face another shock. In fact, even if one gives a shock that is many times more severe, the dog will still not return because the memory of that initial shock is permanently seared into its brain.

Which leads us to a discussion on how to negotiate with terrorists.

Hurricane Harry over at HH Blowhard [now defunct blog] has this most excellent advice:

How To Negotiate With Terrorists

This brief blog entry takes you through a series of negotiations over time between peacemakers and terrorists:

A peacemaker walks up to the left side of a line. A terrorist walks up to the right side of the line. The peacemaker introduces himself. The terrorist kills him.

A peacemaker walks up to the left side of the line. A terrorist walks up to the right side of the line. The peacemaker asks, "why did you kill my friend?" The terrorist kills him and rapes his wife.

A peacemaker walks up to the left side of the line. A terrorist walks up to the right side of the line. The peacemaker says, "Stop that!" The terrorist kills him, rapes his daughter and kills his wife.

A peacemaker walks up to the left side of the line. A terrorist walks up to the right side of the line. The peacemaker says, "I'll pay you $1000 if you stop attacking us." The terrorist agrees to the deal, takes the $1000, and kills him.

A peacemaker walks up to the left side of the line. A terrorist walks up to the right side of the line. The peacemaker appeals to the United Nations. The United Nations says the peacemaker is at fault. The terrorist kills him.

A peacemaker walks up to the left side of the line. A terrorist walks up to the right side of the line. The peacemaker now has a gun, and threatens to use it. Other peacemakers start chanting the old 60's whine, "Can't we all just get along?" The peacemaker hesitates. The terrorist kills him.

A peacemaker walks up to the left side of the line. A terrorist walks up to the right side of the line. The peacemaker tries to convince his peacemaker friends that the terrorists aren't going to respond to negotiations, but they insist that if he kills the terrorist it'll just make the other terrorists mad. The peacemaker reluctantly agrees to try negotiating again. The terrorist kills him., his entire family, and his neighbor's family.

A heated debate now ensues between the peacemakers who want to be nice to the terrorists and the peacemakers who believe that there can never be peace until the terrorists are all dead. While they are debating, the terrorists kill 15 more peacemakers.

A peacemaker walks up to the left side of the line. A terrorist walks up to the right side of the line. The peacemaker asks himself, "Which is more important: being liked by everyone, or protecting my family?" The terrorist pulls a knife to kill the peacemaker, but the peacemaker pulls a gun and kills the terrorist first. The United Nations condemns the peacemaker's use of unproportional force. Many of his peacemaker friends turn against him.

A peacemaker walks up to the left side of the line. A terrorist walks up to the right side of the line. The peacemaker apologizes for what his friend did to the other terrorist. The terrorist kills him, his entire family and his neighbors, and threatens to destroy the city as soon as they develop a bigger weapon.

A peacemaker refuses to meet at the line because every time a peacemaker goes to the line the terrorist kills him. A terrorist walks up to the right side of the line and fires rockets into the peacemaker's town. The United Nations condemns the way the peacemaker provoked the terrorist by refusing to come to the line and meet with him.

Generations pass and not much changes until one day when the son of a peacemaker decides that the old strategy simply won't work. He walks up to the left side of the line a little early. As the terrorist approaches the right side of the line the peacemaker shoots him. Another terrorist approaches to replace the first, and the peacemaker shoots him too. This scene plays out several more times. Then a terrorist approaches carrying a white flag, but he also has weapons. The peacemaker shoots him. A terrorist next approaches with a ceasefire resolution from the U.N. The peacemaker shoots him also. A large group of terrorists approach and the peacemaker shoots them all and drops a nuclear bomb on the city they came from. The peacemaker continues killing the terrorists until the terrorists are all dead.

There is finally peace on earth and the United Nations takes the credit.

Obama, you cowardly appeaser, are you listening?

See the photo introducing this post? This is an actual negotiating tactic we used with the Japanese that proved highly successful in ending mutual hostilities. (Photograph courtesy of Truman Presidential Museum & Library Photographs)