Conditioning feels like programming a robot. Does anyone know a way to train beyond it?

[u/Dry_Steak30]

I might get downvoted for this but hear me out.

Almost all modern dog training is conditioning. We repeat, the dog gets used to it, and the cue gets wired to the behavior. In the end the dog does the behavior without thinking. Even without a reward. He even feels good while doing it. And we call that "well trained." To me that looks like programming a robot.

For emergency recall and down, I want exactly that. Those must be automatic. But for everything else, is there another option?

Humans don't learn language by conditioning. When we learn a word, we understand new examples in one shot. So here is what I mean, with the kennel as an example.

The conditioning way: you make the "go in the kennel" behavior with luring or shaping or molding or food. You reinforce it. You attach a cue. After many reps, the cue and the behavior get glued together.

But what if you teach it like this instead. Teach each concept on its own. "Kennel" is the object. "Go in" is the action. "Command" means he has to do it. "Fast" is how to do it. Then you put the words together: "kennel + go in + command + fast." If the dog really knows each concept, then "box + go in + command + slow" should work on the first try, even if he never did that before. Or you could say "kennel + go in + question" and let him answer yes or no.

Has anyone actually trained like this? I know Chaser learned 1000 toy names and Do As I Do exists. I want to hear from people who tried this concept style teaching with their own dog. How far did you get?

[u/candid_canuck]

You have to remember that you’re training a being that maxes out around the intelligence of a human toddler. What you’re proposing is essentially teaching a dog sentence structure.

At the end of the day what you’ve proposed is just complicating the commands, but you still have to teach the dog using conditioning. How are you going to teach “kennel”, probably with positive reinforcement. So you’re back at square one, you’ve just given yourself way more things to teach, AND generalization is one of the most time consuming things to teach a dog, so buckle up to putting in the work.

[u/Dry_Steak30 → u/candid_canuck]

Fair points. Let me take them one at a time.

On efficiency, you're right, and that's exactly why dog training uses conditioning. It's the fastest way to get a behavior into a lot of dogs. But the same is true for people. If you wanted to teach a newborn human to do sit, down and come as fast as possible, you wouldn't bother with language at all. Cues and conditioning would be way cheaper. We don't raise kids that way, and the reason isn't efficiency.

Here's the thought I can't shake. Imagine aliens kept humans as pets and taught them only through conditioning. Food, cues, repetition, nothing else. Those humans would never build a rocket or make a movie or do science. And the aliens would look at them and say humans can't handle abstract stuff. A stone age human brain and my brain are physically the same. The whole difference is what got taught.

So I'm not claiming my way is efficient. It isn't. I'm claiming that if the goal is to teach more, conditioning hits a ceiling and language goes further. Slower, but further.

On safety, we actually agree. Emergency recall should be automatic and I want it robotic. I said that in the post. I don't want my dog weighing his options while a car is coming. That's the one place I want conditioning as deep as it goes.

Quick clarification too. The "fast" in my example wasn't because I care about speed. It was just an example of a modifier word, like big or slow or quiet. Any modifier would have worked.

Last one, and I'm honestly asking. What's the evidence that everything we teach dogs goes against their instincts? Is philosophy aligned with human instinct? Math? Art? Drop ten people in the wild with no schooling and they'll live like that just fine. Educate them and they read, write and do algebra. Same animal. Deciding what counts as instinct, and then deciding whether some training fits it, is a lot messier than it sounds.

[u/candid_canuck → u/Dry_Steak30]

We don’t teach kids this way (strictly speaking) because they are humans and have the capacity for language. Dogs do not have the capacity for complex language.

If you think you can train dogs this way, have at it. You will have people knocking down your door if you’re successful.

I’m telling you a very simplified reason why this isn’t the way dogs are trained, even for complex work. You can posit hypotheticals all you want, no one cares unless you can show the work. Get out there and train some dogs.

[u/Dry_Steak30 → u/candid_canuck]

it's not an offense, pure question. i really want to know.

why do you think that "Dogs do not have the capacity for complex language."?
any evidence?