Frases de B.F. Skinner

“Los únicos genios producidos por el caos de la sociedad son aquellos que hacen algo al respecto. El caos engendra genios. El caos es una razón para ser un genio.”

“La fortuna también se gana a expensas de los demás. Aun los honores bien merecidos del científico o erudito son injustos para muchas personas con iguales merecimientos que nunca reciben ninguno. Cuando se coloca a unhombre en un pedestal, se relega a otros hombres a la oscuridad. Desde el punto de vista colectivo no hay ganancia en absoluto y quizá sí una pérdida.”

“La matoría de la gente vive al día, y, aunque tenga algún plan a largo plazo, no es más que una pequeña anticipación de algún proceso natural: esperan tener hijos, verlos crecer, etc. La mayoría de la gente no quiere hacer planes: quiere sentirse libre de la necesidad de planificar. Lo único que quiere es alguna seguridad de que podrá vivir decentemente. El resto es un diario disfrutar de la vida.”

“El verdadero problema no es saber si las máquinas piensan, sino saber si los hombres lo hacen.”

“La sociedad ataca pronto, cuando el individuo está indefenso.”

“Nowadays, everybody fancies himself an expert in government and wants to have a say.”

“Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.”

“Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.”

“At this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of goodwill are trying to build a better world. But problems are born faster than they can be solved.”

“If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that’s necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom.”

“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.”

“We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.”

“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.”

“No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn't die out, it's wiped out.”

“The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.”

“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.”

“We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It is the teacher's function to contrive conditions under which students learn. Their relevance to a future usefulness need not be obvious.”

“Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.”

“A fourth-grade reader may be a sixth-grade mathematician. The grade is an administrative device which does violence to the nature of the developmental process.”

“What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.”

“"I have been misunderstood" An interview with B. F. Skinner 1972 March/April Center Magazine, pp. 63−65”

“I do not admire myself as a person. My successes do not override my shortcomings.”

“The strengthening of behavior which results from reinforcement is appropriately called "conditioning". In operant conditioning we "strengthen" an operant in the sense of making a response more probable or, in actual fact, more frequent.”

“It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student's life.”

“We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word "admire" then means "marvel at."”

“Ethical control may survive in small groups, but the control of the population as a whole must be delegated to specialists—to police, priests, owners, teachers, therapists, and so on, with their specialized reinforcers and their codified contingencies.”

“The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.”

“Many instructional arrangements seem "contrived", but there is nothing wrong with that. It is the teacher's function to contrive conditions under which students learn. Their relevance to a future usefulness need not be obvious.
It is a difficult assignment. The conditions the teacher arranges must be powerful enough to compete with those under which the student tends to behave in distracting ways.”

“We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.”

“The strengthening of behavior which results from reinforcement is appropriately called "conditioning."”

“The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.”