Choose something crazy

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.
– Noam Chomsky

I first learned of Chomsky during my Masters studies. Actually, that’s probably not true. I first remember learning about him then. I probably heard about him sooner but his name didn’t stick with me. He was the guy who looked at language and looked at what the behaviorists were saying about human behavior and said, “Nuh-uh.” A behavorist would say that everything you say is something you have heard elsewhere because all human behavior is a result of response to a stimulus. We have no choice in the response, it’s all a result of stimulus/response programming.

I’m with Chomsky on this one. There are a lot of things I do I’m pretty sure Skinner couldn’t explain – like running marathons. Which is admittedly a bit of a crazy thing to do and can’t be a result of stimulus/response if you’ve ever seen me try to walk up and down stairs for a few days after a marathon.

If people were possessed by reason, running marathons would not work … but we are not creatures of reason. We are creatures of passion.
– Noel Carroll, Irish runner

And I don’t think anyone could convince me that graduate degrees are a result of stimulus/response programming either. I had good reasons when I started, but I don’t think I’d be this close to finishing if I wasn’t possessed of passion (and I’d probably be further along if I had any kind of passion at all for statistics).

Choose to do something crazy with your life, like learn to belly dance. It really messes with those behaviorists.