Reward

"Pavlov rung his bell. The dogs approached, wretched and scurrilous, after a hard day of not being fed. Nothing occurred to Pavlov, nothing except feed the animals. He passed out the scraps, one by one, careful to avoid giving the good meat or larger pieces than normal.

It had been a good project. Wreckless things had happened, but the research team had been fed fat and happy on statistics and results. There wasn't much left to do but coach the dogs a little more aggressively.

The days passed, weeks turning into months, as Pavlov's team studied the behavior of the canines. The dogs had been treated much worse, less and less food and substantially more mean treatment. But the bell. It quelled the dogs' hearts, remembering days of fatter and happier existence, as they trudged slowly into an unknown abyss. An abyss of the future, and the mistreatment, which they would soon suffer.

The dogs died, miserable and unatoned, with the ringing of the bell still in their heads. They had promised. Pavlov stood up, his team in pieces over the difficulty of the study and wondered. They had little good data, the dogs did something obvious, they routinely practiced lying and mistreatment. And the dogs were dead.

Confused and shaken, they had died of expecting things that they were promised. The promises were then taken away, and the hunger and fear had set in. Pavlov wondered again. Were we studying their intelligence, for the purposes of control? Or were we just rote liars, who abused and mistreated the animal subjects out of greed and malice towards life?

An alarm went off, and Pavlov headed out the door."