The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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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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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To say that behaviors have different ‘meanings’ is only another way of saying that they are controlled by different variables.
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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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The simplest and most satisfactory view is that thought is simply behavior – verbal or nonverbal, covert or overt. It is not some mysterious process responsible for behavior but the very behavior itself in all the complexity of its controlling relations.
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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 first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
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Somehow people get the idea I think we should be given gumdrops whenever we do anything of value.
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Do not intervene between a person and the consequences of their own behavior.
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Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
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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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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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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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We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word ‘admire’ then means ‘marvel at.’
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A piece of music is an experience to be taken by itself.
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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
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The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
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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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I may say that the only differences I expect to see revealed between the behavior of the rat and man (aside from enormous differences of complexity) lie in the field of verbal behavior.
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A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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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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Indeed one of the ultimate advantages of an education is simply coming to the end of it.
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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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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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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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