Algedonic Loop

Along comes a speaker of metalanguage one — call it Meta 1. This is a language designed to talk about colours and the emotions which colours evoke. He says: ‘I like red, but I don’t like green.” He cannot interfere with nature, which is spinning the wheel. He reckons he wants to train the machine to go red, and this is just like training a dog to respond to a command. He cannot explain in machine language, and the machine does not understand his language. So he communicates with the machine through an algedonic loop. Here is another new term which must be explained.

A trainer and his dog are in the same situation as the Meta 1 speaker and this machine. The dog trainer does not understand ‘how the dog works’, and the dog does not understand human speech. The trainer therefore stimulates the dog somehow, and observes its response. The dog’s response may be altered by punishment or reward. This entails altering the connectivity of the dog’s anastomotic reticulum. Of course that does not mean that neural switches «must be thrown in the dog’s brain. It means only that somehow a new output pattern has to be associated with a given input pattern. The dog at first ‘responds to a repeated stimulus arbitrarily. So the trainer tries to extinguish ‘the response he dislikes by a sharp rebuke (#\yos — algos — means ‘pain’) or ;5:._,;to reinforce the response he approves by administering a reward (féos “hedos — means ‘pleasure’). These activities create an algedonic mode of communication between two systems which do not speak each other’s language. The trainer is using an algedonic loop which translates Meta 1 into machine language. It involves a new receptor in the machine, an algedonic receptor, which will change the internal environment of the machine.

Beer, Brain of the Firm, p. 59.