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It's wild how you seem to think negative feedback has to include physical pain. Dogs are social animals that are easily trained without pain.
Punishment is not generally as powerful a motivator as reward, but if you are training a dog to specifically not do a certain action (leaving his position) then punishment is a necessary part of that training to indicate the boundary conditions he can't break.
How else do you recommend to punish the dog? The most important part is that the negative stimulus must be temporally as close as possible to the infraction. Was yelling the correct response? What if the yelling is not getting the point across? Are you going to, what, ignore the dog so he feels bad?
Honestly I'm really interested by the large number of commentors who really think that shock collars are beyond the pale. They are a normal and often necessary part of training a dog.
At the risk of being pedantic, we were training dogs for millennia before the shock collar was invented, and also in many countries the shock collar is banned, so it cannot be necessary even if sometimes useful.
I make no comment on the morality, I think that depends on how it’s used.
I would assume that before the shock collar was invented, the go-to immediate negative reinforcement was beating the dog or yanking on the prong collar.
My aunt just used a rolled up newspaper applied to the nose for a mild negative reinforcement, equivalent to the dope slap. But dogs are social animals, they’re as motivated by disapproval as much or more than pain. “BAD DOG” in the right tone of voice is usually all you need, I think.
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Why is physically negative feedback taboo but other negative sensations are not? They are all just dolors, negative hedons, whatever you want to call them. I’m fairly confident that dogs might choose a small shock over, I don’t know, being refused access to a particular treat. In my mind if a dog would prefer it I struggle in understanding what makes it wrong other than the squeamishness and moral purity of the pet owner
In theory sure, in practice it's a reliable signal that you're abusive. Furthermore, i don't want to give abusive people the social go ahead for using that tool and plausible deniability for going over the line.
I don't have a principle against physical negative feedback, I would support corporal punishment where there is a neutral third party evaluating and administrating said punishment, like Singapore style caning.
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Ah yes, withholding a bonus to an employee is the same negative hedons as whipping him. Clearly.
Yes. I would rather be whipped a few times than deprived a $10 million dollar bonus. Hedons ARE fungible. Maybe not perfectly fungible, but if you tell me there is no amount of money that would convince you to take one stroke of the lash then… I just won’t believe you.
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Well humans have all sorts of cultural taboos around physical violence that clearly dogs have no comprehension of. In the absence of cultural taboos and laws I think for a big enough bonus many employees would prefer a short electric shock over missing out on a 50k bonus. I know I would.
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