kokasexton

In the original article, there is a study on two lab rats. The first rat receives food after a fixed number of lever presses. The second rat receives food after a random number of presses. Fixed delivery vs variable delivery.

Intuition would say that the first setup is more addictive, as the rat with fixed delivery can predict and learn that pressing the lever results in food. As he wants more food, he will keep pressing.

But here's the rub... as soon as the food stopped being dispensed, it was the second rat that kept pressing the lever for a very long time (whereas the first rat quickly gave up). It was addicted by the promise that food could arrive `any time now'.

The claim that Ahmed Wali Karzai has been on the payroll of the CIA for the past eight years, as reported in the New York Times on Tuesday, won't come as a surprise to most Afghans, who have long considered his brother, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, to be an American puppet.

The experimental Google Social Search service, which went live today, adds opinions from friends and others to information a search engine provides on products and services like a new restaurant or smartphone.