Stupid, Ignorant, Delusional or Terrified?

Tyler Muto has expanded a bit on his previous excellent post, and his basic message is as before:  There is no "one size fits all" when it comes to dog training.

Of course, this is new and troubling information for those who put all their eggs in the basket of click-and-treat. 

And so what do they do?  Unable to understand the not-too-subtle idea that there are no silver bullet solutions that work on all dogs under all conditions for all problems, they assume that Muto must somehow reject reward-based training, which is simply nonsense.

Read the whole thing here. 

Now ask yourself why pure click-and-treat trainers have such a hard time holding more than one idea in their head at a time. 

• Are these folks that inexperienced with the full range of canine behaviors?
• Are they that terrified of themselves and their clients due to (perhaps) some past trauma or perhaps their own inability to control their own emotions when training a dog?
• Are they simply demonizing more balanced trainers in order to build their own brand, and so are willing to over-simplify and engage in intellectual dishonesty in order to achieve that goal?
• Are some people simply so stupid that they cannot hold two ideas in their heads at once?
• Is this simply a case of squawking parrots who seek to assimilate and insinuate themselves into the world of dog training by "flocking up" and repeating noises and behaviors they see others in the flock repeating?

This is a genuine question. 

The notion that consequences should always be positive is a bizarre idea that does not fit well within the real world of either human or animal learning. 

Neither does the rejection of 2,000 years of successful animal training.

So why hold on to an idea that does NOT reflect observable reality and that is not part of classical operant conditioning which is based on consequence rewards AND consequence punishments?

Has clicker training simply become a religion, as immune to logic and evidence as any religion, and now operating on faith and proclamation alone?
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