Alex Pentland Quotes
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It is not simply the brightest who have the best ideas; it is those who are best at harvesting ideas from others. It is not only the most determined who drive change; it is those who most fully engage with like-minded people. And it is not wealth or prestige that best motivates people; it is respect and help from peers.
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Only once we understand how social interactions work together with competitive forces can we hope to ensure stability and fairness.
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When people are working together doing the same thing in synchrony with others—e.g., rowing together, dancing together—our bodies release endorphins.
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Copying other people’s successes, when combined with individual learning, is dramatically better than individual learning alone.
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Cooperation is just as important and just as prevalent in human society as competition.
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Working together also requires more than shared habits; it requires habits that result in cooperation.
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The main source of competition in society may not be among individuals but rather among cooperating groups of peers.
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We can now watch human organizations evolve on a microsecond-by-microsecond basis and examine all of the interactions among millions of people.
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The largest factor in predicting group intelligence was the equality of conversational turn taking; groups where a few people dominated the conversation were less collectively intelligent than those with a more equal distribution of conversational turn taking.
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We are now coming to realize that human behavior is determined as much by social context as by rational thinking.