Behavior Quotes - page 51
The lack of freedom suffered by those who advise the powerful may of course be due to coercion or force. But the slavish behavior typical of such counselors may equally well be due to their basic condition of dependence and their understanding of what their clientage demands of them. As soon as they begin to ‘slide into a blind dependence upon one who has wealth and power', they begin to desire ‘only to know his will', and eventually ‘care not what injustice they do, if they may be rewarded'.
Quentin Skinner
During the 1960s and 1970s, when cartographers were embracing the communication model and a behavioral approach to empirical research, psychology was undergoing a revolution in its perspective on what to study and how to study it. Psychologists began to realize that stimulus-response laws do not explain human perception or behavior (any more than the gravity models used by geographers can explain spatial interaction).
Alan MacEachren
Though the man-apes often fought and wrestled one another, their disputes very seldom resulted in serious injuries. Having no claws or fighting canine teeth, and being well protected by hair, they could not inflict much harm on one another. In any event, they had little surplus energy for such unproductive behavior; snarling and threatening was a much more efficient way of asserting their points of view.
Arthur C. Clarke
We are not talking here about mere bad frat-boy behavior or professorial eccentricity but about orchestrated campaigns to assault the fundamental liberties of the American republic, tolerated by campus administrators who, in equal measure, fear confrontations with student activists as a threat to their career advancement, and hope that no news of their cravenness leaks out to the press and the alumni.
Allen C. Guelzo
Rosen suggests that the rule of the few might simply be the result of coordination problems confronting the many in overthrowing the few. ... The coordination problem explanation of why the few rule the many is that the many can't coordinate their behavior to overthrow the few, but the actual phenomenon the Marxist theory explains is that the many don't even see the need to overthrow the few, indeed, don't even see that the few rule the many!
Brian Leiter
Should we worry about social media sites sharing everything they know about us with third-party commercial interests? Of course, no one wants to be pestered by targeted advertising. More sinister, however, is the prospect of health insurance companies learning whether you had been Googling research on specific illnesses or prospective employers prying into your personal social history by analyzing your data trail on the Web to spot potential quirks, idiosyncrasies, or even possible antisocial behavior.
Jeremy Rifkin
The characteristic paranoias of youth - the attribution of intention and duplicity to almost all human behavior. The young suffer terribly from the belief that the people they encounter are most of them up to something and that something has some relation to themselves. Actually, of course, most people just bobble along like apples in a stream. Usually it takes many years of experience to realize this.
Kenneth Rexroth
Emergence is not really mysterious, although it may be complex. Emergence is brought about by the interactions between the parts of a system. The galloping horse illusion depends upon the persistence of the human retina/brain combination, for instance. Elemental gases bond in combination by sharing outer electrons, thereby altering the appearance and behavior of the combination. In every case of emergence, the source is interaction between the parts - sometimes, as with the brain, very many parts - so that the phenomenon defies simple explanation.
Derek Hitchins
Charles Faulkner tells a story about Seykota's finely honed intuition when it comes to trading: I am reminded of an experience that Ed Seykota shared with a group. He said that when he looks at a market, that everyone else thinks has exhausted its up trend, that is often when he likes to get in. When I asked him how he made this determination, he said he just puts the chart on the other side of the room and if it looked like it was going up, then he would buy it... Of course this trade was seen through the eyes of someone with deep insight into the market behavior.
Ed Seykota
