Rats shown to feel regret over bad decisions

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Re: Rats shown to feel regret over bad decisions

#21  Postby DavidMcC » Jun 09, 2014 5:13 pm

Just as the rats were disappointed that they couldn't have it all, so I'm disapppointed that you can't see the issue here.
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Re: Rats shown to feel regret over bad decisions

#22  Postby jamest » Jun 09, 2014 5:13 pm

I agree with you DavidMcC, for whatever that's worth.
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Re: Rats shown to feel regret over bad decisions

#23  Postby DavidMcC » Jun 09, 2014 5:16 pm

kennyc wrote:Not playing your games. Go ahead, publish you paper in response and straighten them out.

I would certainly consider writing a letter to Nature about it, but it isn't important enough, frankly. It wouldn't be the first time that a poor article was published, and won't be the last, no doubt.
Still no argument in support of your position, I see. :whistle:
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Re: Rats shown to feel regret over bad decisions

#24  Postby kennyc » Jun 09, 2014 5:18 pm

jamest wrote:I agree with you DavidMcC, for whatever that's worth.



Great, you two could collaborate.
:roll: :roll: :roll:
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Re: Rats shown to feel regret over bad decisions

#25  Postby kennyc » Jun 09, 2014 5:19 pm

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Re: Rats shown to feel regret over bad decisions

#26  Postby jamest » Jun 09, 2014 5:22 pm

kennyc wrote:
jamest wrote:I agree with you DavidMcC, for whatever that's worth.



Great, you two could collaborate.
:roll: :roll: :roll:

The problem, Kenny, is that applying 'regret' as we feel it to the behaviour of a rat, doesn't stack up. Do rats 'feel' regret as we do?!!
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Re: Rats shown to feel regret over bad decisions

#27  Postby DavidMcC » Jun 09, 2014 5:34 pm

kennyc wrote:
jamest wrote:I agree with you DavidMcC, for whatever that's worth.



Great, you two could collaborate.
:roll: :roll: :roll:

I can't help it if an idealist shows more understanding of a science issue than you do.
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Re: Rats shown to feel regret over bad decisions

#28  Postby DavidMcC » Jun 09, 2014 5:36 pm

... Actually, this isn't the first time jamest has tried to hitch himself to me, but there's nothing much I can do about it. :(
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Re: Rats shown to feel regret over bad decisions

#29  Postby kennyc » Jun 09, 2014 5:38 pm

It's regrettable, even the mice can see that.
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Re: Rats shown to feel regret over bad decisions

#30  Postby DavidMcC » Jun 09, 2014 5:44 pm

kennyc wrote:It's regrettable, even the mice can see that.

Indeed, because no-one on this site would want to be seen dead agreeing with anything jamest says, which is fair enough, except that it prevents the correct answer about the rats' thinking from being openly agreed among us.
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Re: Rats shown to feel regret over bad decisions

#31  Postby jamest » Jun 09, 2014 5:47 pm

DavidMcC wrote:... Actually, this isn't the first time jamest has tried to hitch himself to me, but there's nothing much I can do about it. :(

Your grandkids will love that anecdote.
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Re: Rats shown to feel regret over bad decisions

#32  Postby DavidMcC » Jun 09, 2014 6:16 pm

jamest wrote:
DavidMcC wrote:... Actually, this isn't the first time jamest has tried to hitch himself to me, but there's nothing much I can do about it. :(

Your grandkids will love that anecdote.

A. I will not have grandkids.
B. It was not an anecdote.
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Re: Rats shown to feel regret over bad decisions

#33  Postby jamest » Jun 09, 2014 6:32 pm

DavidMcC wrote:
jamest wrote:
DavidMcC wrote:... Actually, this isn't the first time jamest has tried to hitch himself to me, but there's nothing much I can do about it. :(

Your grandkids will love that anecdote.

A. I will not have grandkids.
B. It was not an anecdote.

You're right. Telling people that I want to hitch myself to you isn't an anecdote. It's just bullshit. But your grandkids would have loved it regardless.
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Re: Rats shown to feel regret over bad decisions

#34  Postby DavidMcC » Jun 09, 2014 6:37 pm

jamest wrote:
DavidMcC wrote:
jamest wrote:
DavidMcC wrote:... Actually, this isn't the first time jamest has tried to hitch himself to me, but there's nothing much I can do about it. :(

Your grandkids will love that anecdote.

A. I will not have grandkids.
B. It was not an anecdote.

You're right. Telling people that I want to hitch myself to you isn't an anecdote. It's just bullshit. But your grandkids would have loved it regardless.

Whatever...
I just think it is regrettable that the only poster to support my rational argument should be an idealist! :o
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Re: Rats shown to feel regret over bad decisions

#35  Postby jamest » Jun 09, 2014 6:51 pm

DavidMcC wrote:
jamest wrote:
DavidMcC wrote:
jamest wrote:
Your grandkids will love that anecdote.

A. I will not have grandkids.
B. It was not an anecdote.

You're right. Telling people that I want to hitch myself to you isn't an anecdote. It's just bullshit. But your grandkids would have loved it regardless.

Whatever...
I just think it is regrettable that the only poster to support my rational argument should be an idealist! :o

Just don't demonstrate this regret by looking for food in the fridge, or Kenny will be rotfl.
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Re: Rats shown to feel regret over bad decisions

#36  Postby chairman bill » Jun 09, 2014 7:20 pm

DavidMcC wrote:I don't think it's regret over a bad choice, I think it's the rat trying to have it both ways - the second choice AS WELL AS the first choice!
And your evidence to support your thinking is what precisely?

That is more likely to be the rat's POV than this nonsense about regretting bad choices!
Why so? What is your evidence that this is the case?

They don't care about the humans' rules about their making choices, let's face it, they just want to have their cake and eat it!
I'm not sure how you can know the latter, though I'm happy to accept the point about human rules, not least because they won't have been told about these.

EDIT: If there were any bad choices, it was by the neuroscientists who tried to work out what was in the rats' minds.
Could you explain that? Maybe with reference to the literature?

I'm going to wait until the online article appears in the published edition. Then I'll read it & come to a judgement.
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Re: Rats shown to feel regret over bad decisions

#37  Postby jamest » Jun 09, 2014 8:23 pm

You can't really counter the findings of the experiment without doing philosophy. That's why David's fucked.
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Re: Rats shown to feel regret over bad decisions

#38  Postby r.c » Jun 10, 2014 5:47 am

I think David, these paras might help

Occasionally the rats decided not to wait for a good option and moved on, only to find themselves facing a bad option - the scientists called this a regret-inducing situation.

In these cases the rats often paused and looked back at the reward they had passed over.

They also made changes in their subsequent decisions, being more likely to wait at the next zone and rushing to eat the reward that followed. The scientists say such behaviour is consistent with the expression of regret.

When experiments were carried out where the rats encountered bad options without making incorrect decisions, such behaviour was not present.


The researchers had a control experiment where the results were same but didn't include decision making (I haven't read the actual paper but this is what I gathered). The behavior was different. It means that the decision making process played a part in the rat's behavior, which is what characterizes regretful behavior.
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Re: Rats shown to feel regret over bad decisions

#39  Postby r.c » Jun 10, 2014 6:52 am

I've skimmed through the paper. I'm not a biology student ( no where close) but the paper was easy to read and understand. The first requirement in science when you're proposing something is a proper definition. The following definition was provided in the paper to differentiate between disappointment and regret. I'll try to paraphrase as best as I can.
1. Disappointment is when the result obtained is not as good as what you had expected, and in addition you had no choice in the matter.
2. Regret is when you encounter an unfavorable result and you are aware that this happened directly as a result of your actions, and also that a different action would have resulted in a better outcome.
The key difference here is the awareness that your actions had a role to play in the outcome.
The evidence for the claim that rats displayed regretful behavior comes from two sources:
i. Direct observation of the rat's behavior
ii. Observation of the Orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). Humans with damage to this region do not express regret.

The following was the regret-inducing situation used in the study :
The rat first encountered a low cost (less wait time)/high reward (choice of treat) (let's call it the first stop) which it skipped, and then encountered a high-cost (more wait time)/low reward ( not a favorable treat) (second stop). The rats were then observed for regretful behavior. The rats had been trained and each rat had developed a threshold wait time.

There were two controls used for the above situation : i) a control for the sequence of offers, ii) a control for the rat's actions.
In control (i), the only difference from the experiment was that, at the first stop the rat didn't skip the high reward and then went on to the second stop. Control (i) served to differentiate between potential regret-inducing situations from situations that would just cause disappointment.
In control (ii), the rat encountered the same sequence, but at the first stop the wait time had been increased to a value greater than the rat's threshold time. So, by skipping it, the rat had actually made the right decision. This control served to differentiate a good decision (skipping the treat when the wait was too long) from a bad decision.

By looking at both the rat's behavior and the response in the rat's OFC and how they differed from the observations made in the controls, the conclusion that the rats expressed regret was made.

Obviously, I've skipped a lot of the detail. Reading the full paper is definitely worth it. I found it very interesting. I felt the authors did a very good job to back up their claims.

Edited for grammar and clarity.
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Re: Rats shown to feel regret over bad decisions

#40  Postby kennyc » Jun 10, 2014 10:29 am

r.c wrote:I've skimmed through the paper. I'm not a biology student ( no where close) but the paper was easy to read and understand. The first requirement in science when you're proposing something is a proper definition. The following definition was provided in the paper to differentiate between disappointment and regret. I'll try to paraphrase as best as I can.
1. Disappointment is when the result obtained is not as good as what you had expected, and in addition you had no choice in the matter.
2. Regret is when you encounter an unfavorable result and you are aware that this happened directly as a result of your actions, and also that a different action would have resulted in a better outcome.
The key difference here is the awareness that your actions had a role to play in the outcome.
The evidence for the claim that rats displayed regretful behavior comes from two sources:
i. Direct observation of the rat's behavior
ii. Observation of the Orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). Humans with damage to this region do not express regret.

The following was the regret-inducing situation used in the study :
The rat first encountered a low cost (less wait time)/high reward (choice of treat) (let's call it the first stop) which it skipped, and then encountered a high-cost (more wait time)/low reward ( not a favorable treat) (second stop). The rats were then observed for regretful behavior. The rats had been trained and each rat had developed a threshold wait time.

There were two controls used for the above situation : i) a control for the sequence of offers, ii) a control for the rat's actions.
In control (i), the only difference from the experiment was that, at the first stop the rat didn't skip the high reward and then went on to the second stop. Control (i) served to differentiate between potential regret-inducing situations from situations that would just cause disappointment.
In control (ii), the rat encountered the same sequence, but at the first stop the wait time had been increased to a value greater than the rat's threshold time. So, by skipping it, the rat had actually made the right decision. This control served to differentiate a good decision (skipping the treat when the wait was too long) from a bad decision.

By looking at both the rat's behavior and the response in the rat's OFC and how they differed from the observations made in the controls, the conclusion that the rats expressed regret was made.

Obviously, I've skipped a lot of the detail. Reading the full paper is definitely worth it. I found it very interesting. I felt the authors did a very good job to back up their claims.

Edited for grammar and clarity.


:thumbup: Thank you!
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