Looking for a story about a man put into a "Skinner box" by aliens who are looking for intelligent life in the universe. He rebels against the concept and is considered too unintelligent for the Earth to be worth saving.
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1Please visit scifi.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9335/… and see if you can answer any of those questions to give us a better idea of what we're looking for. Who put him in the box? Aliens? Robots? Supernatural creatures? Gods? Was this a short story? A novel? A film? Are you referring to "Skinner boxes" with levers for Classical Conditioning? Was the man American? Chinese? African? :) More details will help.– FuzzyBootsCommented May 16, 2020 at 14:34
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1Could this be Keith Laumer's book The Ultimax Man? That is about aliens kidnapping and testing a human.– John RennieCommented May 16, 2020 at 15:39
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1The user accidentally posted this to the Meta question for how to improve a story-id question: "Yes, it is a skinner box. It was a short story of aliens looking for intelligent life in the universe."– FuzzyBootsCommented May 19, 2020 at 12:20
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1 Answer
This sounds like Learning Theory, by James McConnell, which I read in the collection Great Science Fiction By Scientists. I don't think the aliens in this story are necessarily searching for intelligent life, but they do decide to "destroy the colony" because it is "of little scientific use".
Upon due consideration, we returned the subject to its home colony. However, we also voted almost unanimously to request from you permission to take steps to destroy the complete colony. It is obviously of little scientific use to us, and stands as a potential danger that we must take adequate steps against. Since all colonies are under your protection, we therefore request permission to destroy it.
You can read it in full here.
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"Then, all at once, I burst into wild laughter. The room had been changed into a gigantic Skinner Box!"– DavidWCommented May 23, 2020 at 23:25