Tags / 35 quotes from 9 sources
#behavior
Beyond Zero and One (Andrew Smart)
Algorithms herd more than human investors
Today, the stock market is almost completely automated. Complex algorithms execute trades in milliseconds, making decisions involving billions of dollars without any human intervention. Each innovation to these algorithms makes them faster, so that one investment bank can…
A quick trick instead of the truth
more polarization the better. In the environment in which they evolved, this trick was a useful guide to behavior and allowed them to avoid constructing a complex understanding of the truth.
Infinitely many goals explain any behavior
The problem arises because we know that we are intentional systems—our goals are somehow real because we feel like we have goals. Other people might attribute different goals to us. For example, perhaps a Freudian might explain your neurotic behavior in terms of your…
Brain Rules for Baby (John Medina)
The car keys: children imitate their parents
Couples who know about the Four Grapes of Wrath and who begin preparing in advance are much less likely to trample on them once baby comes home. When conflicts occur for these couples, the effects are usually much milder. I can attest to that. I grew up in a military household…
Television and aggressive children
decades we have known of the connection between hostile peer interactions and the amount of kids’ exposure to television. The linkage used to be controversial (maybe aggressive people watch more TV than others?), but we now see that it’s an issue of our deferred-imitation…
Temperament versus personality
Parents have known for centuries that babies come to this world with an inborn temperament. Scientist Jerome Kagan, who studied Baby 19, was the first to prove it. Human temperament is a complex, multidimensional concept—a child’s characteristic way of responding emotionally…
Blowing off steam increases aggression
It’s a myth that releasing emotions makes everything better (that blowing your top will defuse your anger, for example). “Better out than in,” the saying goes. Almost half a century’s worth of research shows that “blowing off steam” usually increases aggression. The only time…
Punishment must be firm, consistent and swift
How not to punish kids? Try the 1979 movie Kramer vs. Kramer. The film is about a divorcing couple and the impact of the experience on their young son. Dustin Hoffman plays the workaholic, unengaged dad whose parenting instincts have the subtlety of dog food. The scene opens…
Cry-It-Out and graduated extinction
It is not often a scientist becomes so engrained in popular culture that his name becomes a verb. But that is exactly what happened to pediatric sleep researcher Dr. Richard Ferber, a prominent advocate of the Cry-It-Out method. Dr. Ferber, founder of Boston’s Center for…
Life, The Multiverse And Everything: An Introduction To The Ideas Of Humberto Maturana Interpreting Maturana
Consensual behaviour (linguistic behaviour)
Consensual behaviour is behaviour between two systems as a result of living together. These would not have appeared had they not lived together. The behaviour is contingent upon their ontogenies. These behaviours can be described as interactions in the medium. This consensual…
Consensual behaviour (linguistic behaviour) has not semantics
An observer could describe these interactions in semantic terms, i.e. one could ascribe meanings to the elements in the coordination of behaviour e.g. "the cat is telling his owner that he wants to go out". However Maturana is keen to point out that there is no intrinsic…
Language is recursive coordinated linguistic behaviour; difference between first order linguistic behaviour (among animals) and second order lnguistic behaviour (among humans)
When we get a recursion in the coordination of consensual behaviour, so that there is consensual coordination of behaviour of consensual coordination of behaviour then we have this new phenomenon which is language....."So, we can also say that language is a domain of recursive…
Mind: A Brief Introduction (John R. Searle)
The argument from analogy lacks an independent check
According to the argument from analogy, I infer the existence of mental states in other people, by analogy with myself. Just as I observe a correlation of my own behavior with my mental states, so I can infer the presence of appropriate mental states in others when I observe…
Behaviorism: the mind is the behavior of the body
The earliest influential form of materialism in the twentieth century was called “behaviorism.” In its crudest version, behaviorism says the mind just is the behavior of the body. There is nothing over and above the behavior of the body that is constitutive of the mental…
Mental states as dispositions to behave
According to a typical behaviorist analysis, to say that Jones believes it is going to rain just means the same as saying an indefinite number of statements such as the following: if the windows in Jones’s house are open, he will close them; if the garden tools are left…
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen R. Covey)
The lens shapes how we see the world
As I researched and prepared these presentations, I became particularly interested in how perceptions are formed, how they govern the way we see, and how the way we see governs how we behave. This led me to a study of expectancy theory and self-fulfilling prophecies or the…
Getting by in artificial social systems
In the short run, in an artificial social system such as school, you may be able to get by if you learn how to manipulate the man-made rules, to “play the game.” In most one-shot or short-lived human interactions, you can use the Personality Ethic to get by and to make…
The wrong map of Chicago
Suppose you wanted to arrive at a specific location in central Chicago. A street map of the city would be a great help to you in reaching your destination. But suppose you were given the wrong map. Through a printing error, the map labeled “Chicago” was actually a map of…
We assume things are as we see them
We seldom question their accuracy; we’re usually even unaware that we have them. We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are or the way they should be. And our attitudes and behaviors grow out of those assumptions. The way we see things is the source…
Change paradigms, not just attitudes
Both your attitude about her and your behavior toward her had to be congruent with the way you saw her. This brings into focus one of the basic flaws of the Personality Ethic. To try to change outward attitudes and behaviors does very little good in the long run if we fail to…
Paradigms are the source of behavior
Our paradigms, correct or incorrect, are the sources of our attitudes and behaviors, and ultimately our relationships with others.
Character is a composite of habits
OUR CHARACTER, BASICALLY, is a composite of our habits. “Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny,” the maxim goes.
Environmental determinism
Environmental determinism basically says your boss is doing it to you—or your spouse, or that bratty teenager, or your economic situation, or national policies. Someone or something in your environment is responsible for your situation. Each of these maps is based on the…
Daily behavior betrays how we feel
pressing problems, immediate concerns, and outward behaviors. I become reactive. And the way I interact with my children every day often bears little resemblance to the way I deeply feel about them.
The Book: On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
The ant as a responsive hollow
When at last the whole vast list is compiled, and the scientist calls “Finish!” for lack of further time or interest, he may well have the impression that the ant’s behavior is no more than its automatic and involuntary reaction to its environment. It is attracted by this…
The Diggicore Project: Aggregating And Mining The World Of Open Access Articles
Mining open access for research trends
identify patterns in the behaviour of research communities, to recognise trends in research disciplines, to learn new insights about the citation behaviours of researchers, to discover new features that distinguish papers with high impact, etc.
The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian)
Awareness of roles presupposes unity
the fact that the person acts and is treated differently depending on the social situation doesn’t threaten the fundamental unity which underlies those diverse roles. It could be argued that without an awareness of the different roles we play, we would be unable to fulfil them…
Character judged beyond the evidence
The belief that character predicts action can be so strong that people sometimes confidently say they are certain how someone acted, even when they cannot possible know what they actually did.
Situation versus character: the dime experiment
important is it in determining what we do? It is a truism to say that how we behave is a result of two factors: our own natures and the situations we find ourselves in. Many are now claiming, however, that it is situation, not character, which often makes the biggest difference…
A good mood makes people nicer
More likely is that, as other experiments have suggested, being put in a good mood, even by something small, makes people temporarily nicer. Character has nothing to do with it.
Prison guards bounce back
It had taken Zimbardo five days to fall into this mentality, and a furious hour-long argument to change his mind back. But, as is usually the case, having stepped back, he was in no sense corrupted for life. ‘Most people, including all the research I know on Nazi guards, bounce…
People typically lack character
‘situational factors are often better predictors of behaviour than personal factors … In very many situations it looks as though personality is less than robustly determinative of behaviour. To put things crudely, people typically lack character.’
Traits are never purely active or passive
it should be clear that, in real life, traits are never purely active or passive. Rather, they tend to greater activeness the more they reflect deliberate efforts to mould our own behaviours.
The habits practised inside the building
But for Akong, these aren’t the most important things at all. What really matters are the habits that are practised inside the building, and which give the space a strange kind of character that persists even once the walls have come tumbling down.
Theories of Childhood, Second Edition (Carol Garhart Mooney)
Scaffolding self-regulation in young children
In addition, research shows that children develop the foundational skills for self-regulation in the first five years of life. These findings have many implications for early childhood education and highlight the important role teachers play in helping young children develop…