Pavlov's Dog

A woman with a petition went among the crowds attending a state fair, asking people to sign her petition demanding the banning of dihydroxymonoxide. She said it was in our lakes and streams, and now it was in our sweat and urine and tears.

She collected hundreds of signatures to ban dihydroxymonoxide — a fancy chemical name for water. A couple of comedians were behind this ploy. But there is nothing funny about its implications. It is one of the grim and dangerous signs of our times.

This little episode revealed how conditioned we have become, responding like Pavlov's dog when we hear a certain sound— in this case, the sound of some politically correct crusade.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

Ivan Pavlov won a Nobel Prize in 1904 in Physiology and Medicine for his research on the digestive system of dogs. Today, when we hear the term Pavlov's dogs, it refers to conditioned response. Going to school to get a high-paying job, saving your money for a house, and investing in a diversified portfolio of stocks and mutual funds is an example of a conditioned response. Many people cannot articulate why they do these things. They simply do it because it is what they were taught, a conditioned response.

— Robert Kiyosaki; Rich Dad's Conspiracy of The Rich

History is full of success stories of those who ignored conditioned responses and forged their own path. The Wright Brothers and Henry Ford never finished high school. Bill Gates, Michael Dell, and Steve Jobs never finished college. Sergey Brin of Google suspended his PhD studies at Stanford. Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook in his dorm room at Harvard, traveled to California, and never returned to finish his education. All of these world-changers dropped out of school because they no longer needed to look for a job. They had an idea and the courage to act on that idea. They started businesses and created jobs for others. Today, entrepreneurship is exploding all over the world. More important, the most successful entrepreneurs understand that we are in the information age. They have the vision to see the changes happening that most do not.

— Robert Kiyosaki; Rich Dad's Conspiracy of The Rich