The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
B. F. SKINNERGoing out of style isn’t a natural process, but a manipulated change which destroys the beauty of last year’s dress in order to make it worthless.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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Twenty-five hundred years ago it might have been said that man understood himself as well as any other part of the world. Today he is the thing he understands least.
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Something doing every minute’ may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
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To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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In a world of complete economic equality, you get and keep the affections you deserve. You can’t buy love with gifts or favors, you can’t hold love by raising an inadequate child, and you can’t be secure in love by serving as a good scrub woman or a good provider.
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We have seen that in certain respects operant reinforcement resembles the natural selection of evolutionary theory. Just as genetic characteristics which arise as mutations are selected or discarded by their consequences, so novel forms of behavior are selected or discarded through reinforcement.
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I did not direct my life. I didn’t design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That’s what life is.
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It is not a question of starting. The start has been made. It’s a question of what’s to be done from now on.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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I will be dead in a few months. But it hasn’t given me the slightest anxiety or worry. I always knew I was going to die.
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To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.
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The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
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Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
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I don’t believe in God, so I’m not afraid of dying.
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At this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of goodwill are trying to build a better world. But problems are born faster than they can be solved.
B. F. SKINNER