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Perhaps this newly discovered drive—Harlow eventually called it “intrinsic motivation”—was real. But surely it was subordinate to the other two drives. If the monkeys were rewarded—with raisins!—for solving the puzzles, they’d no doubt perform even better. Yet when Harlow tested that approach, the monkeys actually made more errors and solved the puzzles less frequently. “Introduction of food in the present experiment,” Harlow wrote, “served to disrupt performance, a phenomenon not reported in the literature.”
Remember your math: an anecdote is not a trend. Remember your history: the fact that something is bad today doesn’t mean it was better in the past. Remember your philosophy: one cannot reason that there’s no such thing as reason, or that something is true or good because God said it is. And remember your psychology: much of what we know isn’t so, especially when our comrades know it too. Keep some perspective. Not every problem is a Crisis, Plague, Epidemic, or Existential Threat, and not every change is the End of This, the Death of That, or the Dawn of a Post-Something Era. Don’t confuse pessimism with profundity: problems are inevitable, but problems are solvable, and diagnosing every setback as a symptom of a sick society is a cheap grab for gravitas. Finally, drop the Nietzsche. His ideas may seem edgy, authentic, baaad, while humanism seems sappy, unhip, uncool. But what’s so funny about peace, love, and understanding?
Enlightenment Now
Steven Pinker
You think that because you understand “one” that you must therefore understand “two” because one and one make two. But you forget that you must also understand “and.” —Sufi teaching story
Thinking in Systems
Donella H. Meadows
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