Criticisms and Evidence
Game theory suggests that even during a panic in a burning theater actors may conduct themselves rationally. This is a striking suggestion, given that panics have been described as the purest form of collective behavior. If the members of the audience decide that it is more rational to run to the exits than to walk, the result may look like an animal-like stampede without in actuality being irrational.
Read more about this topic: Collective Behavior
Famous quotes containing the words criticisms and/or evidence:
“I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the communist system; I cannot enquire into whether the abolition of private property is expedient or advantageous. But I am able to recognize that the psychological premises on which the system is based are an untenable illusion. In abolishing private property we deprive the human love of aggression of one of its instruments ... but we have in no way altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“No doubt Jews are most obnoxious creatures. Any competent historian or psychoanalyst can bring a mass of incontrovertible evidence to prove that it would have been better for the world if the Jews had never existed. But I, as an Irishman, can, with patriotic relish, demonstrate the same of the English. Also of the Irish.... We all live in glass houses. Is it wise to throw stones at the Jews? Is it wise to throw stones at all?”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)