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True Tales of Tech Hoarding

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the hands-outta-my-closet dept.

Recently some member of my household forced me to watch several episodes of A&E's Hoarders. This led to several *ahem* discussions about hoarding tendencies and the closet of cables, wires, boxes and parts in my basement. But I'm not doing bad compared to some of these tech hoarders. My favorite is the guy using a stack of 9 VA rack machines as an end table.

1 of 268 comments (clear)

  1. Partial Reinforcement by BlueBoxSW.com · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Any psych-turned-CS person will tell you that the hardest behaviors to break are partial reinforcement.

    Behaviors that don't pay off all the time, but sometimes do.

    Anyone who has saved hours of time by pulling out an obscure manual from the bottom of a pile, or recovered data with the help of a rare connector type from the junk closet, is getting partially reinforced.

    And therefore, will continue to collect.