What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
B. F. SKINNERA vast technology has been developed to prevent, reduce, or terminate exhausting labor and physical damage. It is now dedicated to the production of the most trivial conveniences and comfort.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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That’s all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
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Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
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A person’s genetic endowment, a product of the evolution of the species, is said to explain part of the workings of his mind and his personal history the rest.
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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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I’ve often said that my rats have taught me much more than I’ve taught them.
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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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Some of us learn control, more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even understanding how it is possible, and blaming our failure on being born the wrong way.
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…not everyone is willing to defend a position of ‘not knowing.’ There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake.
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The problem of far greater importance remains to be solved. Rather than build a world in which we shall all live well, we must stop building one in which it will be impossible to live at all.
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I don’t believe in God, so I’m not afraid of dying.
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It is a mistake to suppose that the whole issue is how to free man. The issue is to improve the way in which he is controlled.
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To require a citizen to sign a loyalty oath is to destroy some of the loyalty he could otherwise claim, since any subsequent loyal behavior may then be attributed to the oath.
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A first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
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A child who has been severely punished for sex play is not necessarily less inclined to continue; and a man who has been imprisoned for violent assault is not necessarily less inclined toward violence.
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Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.
B. F. SKINNER