Why I Hate This

At least I got to see this moose.  She looks like she got into it with some kind of predator in the past- she's got some pretty serious scars.

I spent the day driving around the woods looking for brooms and whatever other mutants I might find.  I was still getting over a pretty bad cold, so I wasn't able to walk very far.  I'd borrowed my dad's truck, which was not working well.  The muffler had come parially loose, and change in pressure in the exhaust system was making the computer wig out.  It died every time I let up on the accelerator.  Annoying.

I think I got spoiled last year.  I found a number of things without really spending much time at it.  This year, I I think I'm making up for it in the luck department.  I didn't see so much as a broom caused by disease.

Days like this make me wonder why I keep doing this.  It is frustrating and I really start to hate it sometimes.  Of course, I know why I do it- and why people do things like gambling.  Back in grad school, I had some coursework on behavior managment.  And as an undergrad, I had certainly learned plenty about Behaviorism.  There is something especially compelling about an intermittent reward schedule.  If you can't predict when you are going to get a hit, you just keep mashing that button in the box.  I feel very much like one of Skinner's rats.  When you win, it sure feels good.  You are filled with the sense that you are doing something truly fulfilling and good.

When no reward comes from pushing the button, however, it is maddening.  Who knows.  Maybe it really isn't worth it.  When I feel like this, I remind myself that any time spent out in the forest is not wasted.  I try to relax and enjoy my time out there.  Even if I don't find any botanical treasure, I often get to see wildlife like the moose.

Besides knowing that I'm being hooked by an intermittent reward schedule, I'm also aware of how my human brain tries to form patterns and predict events that are truly random.  Our brains just do this.  Over the eons, most people have unaware that our brains do this, and we get a plethora of irrational beliefs and superstitions as a result.

Some examples in this case are the superstitions about witch's brooms themselves.  In the old days in Europe, people believed that brooms were caused by witches landing in the trees.  More recently, among broom hunters, you can sometimes encounter similarly irrational beliefs.  Some people think that brooms are more common in cemeteries.  In my own anecdotal experience, this just hasn't been true.  It also just reeks of quaint superstition.

We have pretty cool brains that struggle to make sense of an unpredictable world.  As I'm driving or hiking around looking for plants, I can feel my brain generating irrational ideas about how to predict the next cool find.  There is an urge to believe that I can magically manifest something by wishing it to be so.  Sometimes I find myself imagining that my chances of finding a mutation increase with every trip to the woods.  (The latter is such a common fallacy that it has a name- the Gambler's Fallacy.)

Ultimately, I know these thoughts are pretty much bullshit.  They give my brain something to do while I'm staring at an ocean of green foliage, though.  And it gives me a chance to observe my own primate brain doing what it does.  By spending time in the woods letting my irrational thoughts just run, I feel like I get to know myself better.  I like to think that I can carry this insight into other parts of my life.  By knowing how my mind tries to form irrational beliefs, I might be able to avoid making mistakes in my thinking in other areas.