Making a contribution

Bloom's 4th lecture looks at B.F.Skinner and the idea of Behaviourism in Psychology, which largely revolves around learning of behaviours through reinforcement.

Like his comments on Freud, he ends by largely dismissing the school of thought but emphasizing the contribution they made. This goes along with the idea of contributing or trying to do something despite the fact that you know you are likely wrong.

There is a strong likelihood that many theories we believe in today, and many things we believe to be facts but are theories, will be proved wrong. We believe that something causes or explains something else when it doesn't.

So where does this leave you when you need to be skeptical about even the findings of well respected professors in their field of expertise? Especially when people often elaborate or use their expertise in one area to feign expertise in another...

Robert Shiller comments on a guest lecture in his course by Stephen Schwartzman , co-founder of a private equity firm called the Blackstone Group:

There are many different kinds of expertise and when you listen to someone, you always have to ask 'what does he or she know that is specific to their expertise?'. The good thing is to listen to everyone, and not accept that anyone knows the whole truth.

I would just hope that the knowledge that you and everyone else is more likely wrong than right doesn't stop you from contributing.

So, like Skinner and Freud whose theories may have been largely wrong, being wrong still helps us get closer to be right.

Hope you enjoy my next few posts... and the ones in a few years (or weeks) which laugh (or celebrate) at how wrong I was.