richardatlarge

It's easy to dismiss it, and that's quite predictable. In fact there are a number of fields wholly or party based on Skinner, including Behavioral Pharmacology and Cognitive-Behavioral Thera…

Not sure. Skinner was at Harvard and Chomsky was at MIT. But Skinner was much more established in his respective field at that time, which is why Skinner made the mistake of ignoring the review. Skinn…

As the article suggests, Skinner was a very rational person and often made the mistake of expecting the rest of the world to be just the same. He once said that if you come across something interestin…

Never did I say anything about culture and quality of life. Don’t make an argument from a false claim. I said nature is highly evolved, but human culture is young and untested, with little evidence fo…

I didn’t see anybody suggesting cars and cells were alike.

The lit crit community were into function, NC was all structure. Skinner was way ahead of them, and his time with his book Verbal Behavior. Language is a behavior guided by no special processes relati…

Looking at the images reminds me of when I started fixing cars. The more I learned about the nitty gritty, the more I wondered how it ever held together and worked. It was a worry.

That’s awfully optimistic. Humans evolved out of nature and into culture— and culture is only a millisecond old on the evolutionary timeline. All evidence points against a Star Trek future and instead…

Yes, true, but somehow I see HN as the exception. The problem is the quality numbers have been dwarfed by the mega quantity of noise

I don’t see what social media has to do with it. I browse websites that offer good material based on my interests, like the New Yorker or HN. I don’t need anyone else to tell me what’s good, except fr…

That’s right, if you leave a major publication your success is off the back of there’s. What examples are there of success from scratch?

Scale affects many things, including resources for investigations or having a whistleblower show up in your inbox. For so many blogs/newsletters it reads like it’s all from the sidelines, all sec…

Every is a business oriented collective, just to clarify

Or better yet, add a carnival feature where you pay x amount and you can create your own Substack reader, like building your own personal magazine

Would they though? Magazines live on ads. No ads on Substack. I really hate ads, too

I once signed a contract to write a textbook. The publishers were so busy swallowing up each other I had a clause added: if the house sold, I would be able to move to another publisher and keep my adv…

I read all my books on my iPhone. Who needs a kindle? I used to have a massive library of books. But now in NZ, ebooks are a dream, as print edition prices are a nightmare

On the one hand we have Donald Trump, which proves the rule, or is the exception. Then we have HN: plentiful in confidence, not so high in incompetence.

Alt title: In NZ, a bat in the hand is better than two birds on the ground (that don’t and can’t fly)

See here also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29066755

Well I keep hearing all kinds of people ranting about their freedom, often in relation to COVID restrictions. Or taxes, or... As if living off of the back of a highly complex society incurred no respo…

I see a lot of freedom in the US, don’t see much responsibility though.

What I’d add about Buddhism is the freedom that comes with letting go, of not letting ego make you feel you have to respond, by emotion or by action, to what seems wrong around you. Just let it go, fo…

On HN, I would think that would be obvious- not fit for purpose. It comes down to the old adage: what if everyone did this?

Much more possible today because we no longer need journals actually printed (do we?)

Yes, some of the most important moments in my life were getting a paper accepted in a prestigious publication. Standing has such importance. Still some (medical) journals have nevertheless lost reputa…