“Evolutionary theory informs our understanding of some frankly inexcusable social behavior and renders it perfectly normal.” SocialUnderstandingTheoryBehaviorNormalPerfectly NormalSocial Behavior Author:Richard K. Morgan
“The notion that a society could be regulated entirely by market forces is a utopian fantasy: an impossible dream generated by imagining what the world would be like if everyone's behavior was utterly consistent with some abstract moral ideal-in this case, economic theories that assume all human action is based on calculating, systematic, (but scrupulously law-abiding), greed.” IfsWorldHumansDreamWould BeActionLawForceMoralCasesFantasyImpossibleEconomicTheoryBehaviorIdealsAssumingNotionGreedLibertarianAbstractConsistentAbidingSystematicUtopianCalculatingHuman ActionsEconomic TheoryImpossible Dream Author:David Graeber
“Paradoxically, it has turned out that game theory is more readily applied to biology than to the field of economic behavior for which it was originally designed” GamesEconomicFieldsTheoryBehaviorBiology Book:Evolution and the Theory of Games Source: Evolution and the Theory of Games
“Whatever their limitations, Freud and Marx developed complex and subtle theories of human nature grounded in their observation of individual and social behavior. The crackpot rationalism of free-market economics merely relies on an abstract model of how people "must" behave.” PeopleHumansIndividualSocialHuman NatureTheoryBehaviorModelsEconomicsComplexesObservationLimitationBehaveRelyAbstractSubtleGroundedFree MarketRationalismSocial BehaviorCrackpots Author:Ellen Willis
“Behavior is the theory of manners practically applied.” TheoryBehaviorMannersBehaviour Author:Bill Vaughan
“Monotheistic religions in the West have tended to conflate having a general orientation in life, having a specific theory of the world, having a sense of the positive meaningfulness of one's existence, and having a fixed set of rules for behavior, but these elements are in principle separable. ... The "metaphysical need," ... both Marx and Nietzsche held, is a historical phenomenon that arises under determinate circumstances, and could be expected to disappear under other circumstances that we could relatively easily envisage.” WorldNeedsExistencePrinciplesTheoryCircumstancesBehaviorElementsHistoricalWestDisappearExpectedAriseFixedPhenomenonMetaphysicalOrientationMeaningfulness Author:Raymond Geuss
“Stock prices are likely to be among the prices that are relatively vulnerable to purely social movements because there is no accepted theory by which to understand the worth of stocks....investors have no model or at best a very incomplete model of behavior of prices, dividend, or earnings, of speculative assets.” SocialMovementTheoryBehaviorModelsInvestingAcceptedVulnerableAssetsInvestorsEarningIncompleteDividendsSocial MovementsStock Price Author:Robert J. Shiller
“No one thinks anything silly is suitable when they are an adolescent. Such an enormous share of their own behavior is silly that they lose all proper perspective on silliness, like a baker who is nauseated by the sight of his own eclairs. This provides another good argument for the emerging theory that the best use of cryogenics is to freeze all human beings when they are between the ages of twelve and nineteen.” ThinkingHumansUseAgeLosesHuman BeingsShareTheoryPerspectiveBehaviorArgumentSightSillyEnormousTwelveEmergingFreezeSuitableNineteenBakersSillinessEclairs Author:Anna Quindlen
“Profanation and violation are part of the perversity of sex, which never will conform to liberal theories of benevolence. Every model of morally or politically correct sexual behavior will be subverted by nature's daemonic law.” LawSexTheoryBehaviorModelsAbuseConformViolationBenevolencePolitically CorrectPerversity Book:Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism Source: Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism
“A second possible approach to general systems theory is through the arrangement of theoretical systems and constructs in a hierarchy of complexity, roughly corresponding to the complexity of the "individuals" of the various empirical fields... leading towards a "system of systems." [...] I suggest below a possible arrangement of "levels" of theoretical discourse...(vi) [...] the "animal" level, characterized by increased mobility, teleological behavior and self-awareness...” SelfIndividualAnimalLevelsAwarenessFieldsTheoryBehaviorApproachSelf AwarenessVariousComplexityArrangementsDiscourseConstructsHierarchyTheoreticalCorrespondingMobilitySystems Theory Author:Kenneth E. Boulding
“Psychology should be the chief basic science upon which the practices of education depend. It should have supplied education with the information it needs concerning the processes of understanding, learning, and thinking, among other things. One of the difficulties has been that such theory as has been developed has been based primarily upon studies of behavior of rats and pigeons. As someone has said, some of the theory thus developed has been an insult even to the rat.” ThinkingNeedsShouldHas BeensSaidProcessUnderstandingPracticeStudyPsychologyInformationTheoryDependsBehaviorShould HaveDifficultyChiefsInsultRatsPigeons Author:J. P. Guilford
“Widely dispersed knowledge concerning the important role of basic cooperative processes among living beings may lead to the acceptance of cooperation as a guiding principle both in social theory and as a basis for human behavior. Such a development when it occurs will alter the course of human history.” HumansMayImportantCoursesSocialProcessPrinciplesRolesAcceptanceTheoryDevelopmentBehaviorBasesCooperationHuman BehaviorHuman HistoryCooperativesGuiding PrinciplesSocial Theory Author:Warder Clyde Allee
“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.” FormCertainNaturalNovelTheoryBehaviorConsequenceAriseCharacteristicsSelectionNatural SelectionSelectedDiscardedMutationReinforcement Book:Science And Human Behavior Source: Science And Human Behavior
“The possibility that stock value in aggregate can become irrationally high is contrary to the hard-form "efficient market" theory that many of you once learned as gospel from your mistaken professors of yore. Your mistaken professors were too much influenced by "rational man" models of human behavior from economics and too little by "foolish man" models from psychology and real-world experience.” MenWorldHumansLittlesRealHardFormValuesPsychologyToo MuchPossibilityTheoryBehaviorModelsEconomicsContraryFoolishRationalProfessorsReal WorldEfficientMistakenHuman BehaviorFoolish ManEfficient Markets Author:Charlie Munger
“I'm not on Twitter. In theory, I really like Instagram. I think it's a warmer environment. I think, though conversations can erupt that aren't always friendly, you have an opportunity to jump in and redirect and even caution people against language and behavior that I personally object to.” PeopleThinkingOpportunityLanguageEnvironmentObjectsTheoryConversationBehaviorFriendlyCautionInstagram Author:Sarah Jessica Parker
“The thing about drugs is this ... the Libertarians kind of have the right idea on this: Basically, their theory is that you own your own body, and the government should get out of your face. But, you also do not have the right to harm other people or to impinge on their rights or space. So, let's apply that to drugs . If you want to get wrecked, and you could afford it, and you have a place to do it where the results of your behavior can't harm another person, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be allowed to do it.” PeopleIfsWantShouldKindPersonsIdeasReasonBodyGovernmentFacesSpaceResultsRightsTheoryDrugBehaviorHarmLibertarianReason WhyYour FaceRight Ideas Author:Frank Zappa
“I think that we have basically nothing in the field of human behavior. Maybe that is just a condition of temporary ignorance. But it may be that we are simply not intellectually equipped to develop such a theory.” ThinkingHumansMayConditionsFieldsIgnoranceTheoryBehaviorTemporaryHuman Behavior Author:Noam Chomsky