Models of My Life

From observing Elliott Smith I learned that being a decent person is terribly important, but being a “nice guy” is not important at all.

During my first two years as an undergraduate, and a little less austerely during the third year, I lived as an intellectual. From 6:00 in the morning, when I rose, until 10:00 at night, when I went to bed, seven days a week, I was immersed in books and talk of books. That included mealtimes and most of my socializing hours. The survey courses prov

There has been no definable boundary between the sociability of work and of leisure.

The important lesson I learned from this analysis was that my conclusions depended at least as much on certain assumptions about boundary conditions as on the central assumptions of economic rationality that lie at the core of neoclassical theory. By boundary conditions I mean the assumptions that have to be made about which indirect effects of a c

One heuristic that has been of first importance to my work is missing, however, from the programs I have described in this chapter: To make interesting scientific discoveries, you should acquire as many good friends as possible, who are as energetic, intelligent, and knowledgeable as they can be. Form partnerships with them whenever you can. Then s

Organizational Golden Ages, whether in government, universities, or business firms, seldom endure beyond the generation of people who create them.

At school and church, I was a nonconformist in certain minor ways, and learned to bear the embarrassment that nonconformity brings with it.

Soon I was transformed professionally into a cognitive psychologist and computer scientist, almost abandoning my earlier professional identity. This sudden and permanent change came about because Al Newell, Cliff Shaw, and I caught a glimpse of a revolutionary use for the electronic computers that were just then making their first public appearance

You start every class by giving students the opportunity (or better, the obligation) to ask questions about their reading, about previous sessions, or about anything. You take each question seriously, and answer it without making a jackass of the student who asked it (no matter how foolish the question).