The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
B. F. SKINNERThe real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
More B. F. Skinner Quotes
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If you’re old, don’t try to change yourself, change your environment.
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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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When we say that a man controls himself, we must specify who is controlling whom.
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That’s all teaching is; arranging contingencies which bring changes in behavior.
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A disappointment is not generally an oversight. It might just be the best one can do the situation being what it is. The genuine error is to quit attempting.
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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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…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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A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.
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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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Problem-solving typically involves the construction of discriminative stimuli
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But restraint is the only one sort of control, and absence of restraint isn’t freedom. It’s not control that’s lacking when one feels ‘free’, but the objectionable control of force.
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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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The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.
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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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Something doing every minute’ may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
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