During my college days, I remember reading about BF Skinner and his “Skinner Box”.  I also remember that the “intermittent reinforcement” was always the strongest reinforcement to control behavior with Skinner’s rats.  Intermittent reinforcement works as a variable ratio scheduled reinforcement, where (in Skinner’s design) a rat would press a bar to receive a pellet “n” amount of times, but the “n” would vary.  So, sometimes the lever would deliver a pellet in 5 times, then 4, then 8, and so on variably.  This variable ratio schedule is used in jackpots (gambling), where a person would pull the lever “n” amount of times to hit there first jackpot (let’s say 5) and then in order to receive the next jackpot, the gambler would need to pull the lever 40 times to receive the second jackpot and so forth. Which reinforces Skinner’s idea that intermittent reinforcement is a really good way to “control a person” – i.e. gambling addicts and so on…  Then, I thought about the variable ratio schedule as it pertains to life.  Most days are scheduled and the same (for those that have a family and work) and don’t bring the jackpot type of feeling, but then there are random days that are really good, whether it be a raise at work, getting married, having a great date with your wife, and so on…  So, life if you measure a normal day as 0 and a fantastic day as 1, could go something like this 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, etc.  If you added negative days to the equation as -1, then you could have something like this: 0, -1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, -1, 1… It’s this unpredictability that makes life sometimes amazing, and other times not so amazing.  I would guess that the intermittent reinforcement for most people motivate them to try and succeed and make the most out of life – as it’s the best reinforcement for controlling a person.  But, I also could see issues with problems arising, such as if there are too many -1’s (bad days) in the person’s life or not enough 1’s (good days).  Maybe life is a variable ratio schedule, and that’s why most of us cherish it and try to make the most out of it – in essence, to receive those intermittent positive reinforcements.