The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.
B. F. SKINNERWas putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment, and unfortunately most people often are.
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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I’ve often said that my rats have taught me much more than I’ve taught them.
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That’s all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
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We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
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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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A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.
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A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
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Society already possesses the psychological techniques needed to obtain universal observance of a code – a code which would guarantee the success of a community or state. The difficulty is that these techniques are in the hands of the wrong people-or, rather, there aren’t any right people.
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The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
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Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes.
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An important fact about verbal behavior is that speaker and listener may reside within the same skin.
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The only geniuses produced by the chaos of society are those who do something about it. Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
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Death does not trouble me. I have no fear of supernatural punishments, of course, nor could I enjoy an eternal life in which there would be nothing left for me to do, the task of living having been accomplished.
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The alphabet was a great invention, which enabled men to store and to learn with little effort what others had learned the hard way-that is, to learn from books rather than from direct, possibly painful, contact with the real world.
B. F. SKINNER







