A certain mother habitually rewards her small son with ice cream after he eats his spinach. What additional information would you need to be able to predict whether the child will: a. Come to love or hate spinach, b. Love or hate ice cream, or c. Love or hate Mother?
— Gregory Bateson, "Steps to an Ecology of Mind"
Originally posted on Google+ · February 19, 2013
If the kid puts vinegar on his spinach he may hate his mother.
Ice cream plus spinach with vinegar equals curdled green sour milk vomit.
Source:
I threw up a lot as a kid. Took me years to figure out the whole vinegar + milk product thing. 🙂
Too many unaccounted variables.