/lit/ - Literature

The only psychologist worth reading. Skinner really changed modern psychology.

>>20868009

>Who was right in the end?
He.

The dominant psychologist.

Useful point of advice I just posted in a different thread: you don't have to turn to psychology and/or science for everything, and for most things it's entirely unnecessary. Social skills is an example of this. There's zero reason at all to read any technical psychological work if you just want to make better small talk, and I can guanretee you 99% of the psychological literature out there will be of no use to you. What you're looking for is advice. A football coach doesn't sit the quarterback down and bore him to death with the competiting theories of football or physics or whatever. He just tells him what he needs to hear to be a good quarterback.

Ok, with that out of the way, I'm going to contradict myself a little bit. There's another topic which I can't even call of genre on its own because I think there's only three books out there about it. But reading about this topic has helped me more than any other self-help book I've read. I'm talking about self-mangament.

Give me a second to set some background. Self-management is a topic in a broader field called ABA. ABA is applied behavior analysis, a continuation of the work done by the psychologist BF Skinner. BF Skinner's deal was he thought that while stuff certainly goes in people's minds, its a better use of our time not to speculate what that might be because we can't empirically observe it. He proposed it was better to acknowledge that thoughts and feelings are real, but the study of behavior should be limited to how behavior changes in response to stimuli that someone is presented with. Basically, everyone learns behavior like a dog learns tricks; the human nervous system is no exception to conditioning. That's behaviorism in a nutshell, and while its philosophical grounds has been debated, its invaluable if you're looking to change your behavior. Now, ABA is the study and application of behaviorism to modify someone's behavior for the better. Most ABA currently takes the form of therapy for treating autisitic kids so they don't sperg out if they want skittles or some shit. However, it can be applied to anyone, to modify any behavior.

Self-mangament, then, is the topic within ABA that concerns the ways in which one can modify their OWN behavior. The question of self-management is how can I modify the stimuli in my environment to change the behavior that results from it, and how can I modify the stimuli that comes about as a result of my behavior, to increase or decrease that behavior? I'm simplifying hard because I've already typed so much but a quick example would be: if you don't want to fap, then don't look at the stimulus that makes you fap, ie porn.

>>15583857
>Refutes your arguments before you even get the ability to argue them
heh, nothing personnel

>>14650110

>>14313737
Much like one updates a computer to run more efficiently or handle new tasks, so to am I updating your algorithm in hopes of instilling a new mode of program with which you operate and behave. A continual chain of bumping blocks in hopes that’s the result produced is the one your algorithm desires.

>>14304878
>as i said, anthropology and economic history is where to look
Oh? So we’re going to base human behavior off of examples not technologically relevant to our current scenarios where we have radically juxtaposed contingencies of reinforcement? Okay retard. No wonder they stopped teaching B.F. Skinner in academia. It’d tear the marxist’s running our universities right in half with how badly they’d be btfo.

>>14243553
They’ve just been born into a perspective which has predisposed them to not being receptive to realities which constitute an inherent lack of objective meaning. Can’t fault the plebs for being plebs. This does not mean you can’t learn and gain practical universal insights by observing their behavior.

>>14115739
Because he was retroactively btfo by our lord and savior, B.F. Skinner

>>13922408
It has some effect on people. The environment made its first great contribution during the evolution of the species, but it exerts a different kind of effect during the lifetime of the individual.

The combination of the two effects is the beahvior we observe at any given time. To the extent that either can be changed, behavior can be changed.

>”One of the greatest problems of individualism, seldom recognized as such, is death— the inescapable fate of the individual, the final assault on freedom and dignity. Death is one of those remote events which are brought to bear on behavior only with the aid of cultural practices. What we see is the death of others, as in Pascal’s famous metaphor: “Imagine a number of men in chains, all under sentence of death, some of whom are each day butchered in the sight of the others: those remaining see their own condition in that of their fellows, and looking at each other with grief and despair await their turn. This is an image of the human condition.” Some religions have made death more important by picturing a future existence in heaven or hell, but the individualist has a special reason to fear death, engineered not by religion but by the literature of freedom and dignity. It is the prospect of personal annihilation. The individualist can find no solace in reflecting upon any contribution which will survive him. He has refused to act for the good of others and is therefore not reinforced by the fact that others whom he has helped will outlive him. He has refused to be concerned for the survival of his children and is not reinforced by the fact that the culture will long survive him. In the defense of his own freedom and dignity he has denied the contributions of the past and therefore must relinquish all claim upon the future”

>>12457613
This massive flaming faggot, along with P*nker