Adaptive Behavior Quotes

Instinct perfected is a faculty of using and even constructing organized instruments; intelligence perfected is the faculty of making and using unorganized instruments.

The human brain long ago evolved a mechanism for rewarding us when we encountered new information: a little shot of dopamine in the brain each time we learned something new. Across evolutionary history, compulsively seeking information was adaptive behavior.

Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it.

There are two options: adapt or die.

If a cat sits on a hot stove once, it will never sit on a cold one either.

I purposely put myself in new, stressful situations so that I can continuously learn.

I have an odd theory on happiness, and it bothers people. My general theory is that happiness is a reward for an animal doing what it should be doing. So if a horse runs, it feels happy. Or if you are too thin, you can't be happy, because evolution wants you to be tense and anxious, trying to wake up in the morning looking for food.

A dying organism is often observed to be capable of extraordinary endurance and strength. .. When any living organism is attacked, its whole function seems to aim towards reproduction.

Man is a tool-using animal.

Jesus did not always like the Apostles' way of acting, but by adapting himself to their temperament, praying for them to his father, giving them a holy example of conduct, he loved them, and that love changed them.

When a lion doesn't get its prey, it remains hungry. When the prey saves himself, he has not won, but has saved his life.

When I am talking to someone, I can constantly see whether I am failing or succeeding. I am regulating what I am saying in terms of how I think I'm doing. I'm always searching for the truth of a subject or person, and I look at every meeting as a grand experiment.

Intelligence is: (a) the most complex phenomenon in the Universe; or (b) a profoundly simple process. The answer, of course, is (c) both of the above. It's another one of those great dualities that make life interesting.

Introverts are capable of acting like extroverts for the sake of work they consider important, people they love, or anything they value highly.

The phoebe-bird is a wise architect and perhaps enjoys as great an immunity from danger, both in its person and its nest, as any other bird. Its modest ashen-gray suit is the color of the rocks where it builds, and the moss of which it makes such free use gives to its nest the look of a natural growth or accretion.

Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions.

Success tends to go not to the person who is error-free, because he also tends to be risk-averse. Rather it goes to the person who recognizes that life is pretty much a percentage business. It isn't making mistakes that's critical; it's correcting them and getting on with the principal task.

If we ... ask Nature: "Who are the fittest: those who are continually at war with each other, or those who support one another? We see at once that those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest. They have more chances to survive.

Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not.

Everyone is just making the choices they think will help them get by.

Docility is the observable half of reason.

There is something uncannily adaptive about anti-Semitism: the way it can hide, unsuspected, in the most progressive minds.

No species ... possesses a purpose beyond the imperatives created by genetic history ... The human mind is a device for survival and reproduction, and reason is just one of its various techniques.

We instinctively fear snakes, but we appear not to be afraid of fast cars, which are a real danger now. This suggests our emotions were shaped by our evolutionary environment not the one we grew up in.

You could not have evolved a complex system like a city or an organism - with an enormous number of components - without the emergence of laws that constrain their behavior in order for them to be resilient.