Slashdot Mirror
Gene Therapy Turns Slackers Into Workaholics
DrLudicrous writes "According to a recent Reuters article, scientists have been able to cause monkeys to stop procrastinating by blocking the development of a dopamine receptor in the brain. The net result- the monkeys turned into workaholics. An article has appeared in the online version of Nature. Apparently, monkeys, just like human beings, tend to slack off on tasks until the very last minute. They become quite adept at judging how long they have till they absolutely must complete these tasks. The original article appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. An additional blurb appears here courtesty of Science Blog." NIH has a press release.
The scientists said "We're working on it. We'll get it done soon. Don't worry about it."
"Billy, go take your medicine...."
"Ahh... I'll do it tomorrow..."
Hmmm.
Do we start outsourcing more jobs to monkeys instead of India?
Liar... Liar...
Or, maybe, the members who don't have enough slack will have to undergo gene therapy in order to participate.
Sure, I can see it now: the High Priests of Slack will have a doping scandal.
John
Yes! Finally science has found a cure for my procrastination, now where can I get one of these worker monkeys?
Your mammas flamebait.
But it can wait.
Apparently, monkeys, just like human beings, tend to slack off on tasks until the very last minute.
Shouldn't it read "Apparently, human beings, just like monkeys, tend to slack off on tasks until the very last minute.
What with the evolution and all!
Free XBox, PS2
Slacking Is Dead!!!
So instead of happy procrastinating monkeys, you'll have sucicidal, workaholic monkeys? Sounds not so far off from a few people I currently work with.
I'm looking for something quite the opposite...
Wives everywhere will rejoice when they slip this drug in their husband's morning coffee! Now get off your ass and mow the lawn!
"This project needs to get done! You better take your pill so you don't slack it off"
/.*
*while readin
"Yeah yeah... I'll take it in a minute..."
Apparently, Valve got their hands on some of this stuff...
... attempt to get First Post, but I slacked off until too late :-(
What I'd really like to see is a drug which blocks/absorbs the dopamine before it gets too bad.
However, I can see this being the new ADD type excuse "Oh, Im too dopamine sensitive - I need special exemptions/extentions".
Another thing is - even if we do stop the procrastination, I don't think we'll be any less stressed, as now we'll simply be continuing to take in even _more_ work and end up just as burned out.
Cue all the parents of kids with "ADD" to start another Ritalin trend. When are people going to learn that, to some extent, we are the way we are. People learn differently from each other. People work differently from each other. Just because one person doesn't like to sit down and read from a textbook for two hours straight doesn't make him a deviant in need of drug (or gene) therapy, it means that he doesn't learn that way. While I wouldn't consider myself a slacker, I also wouldn't consider myself a workaholic, but the contributions that I make around my office are valuable because they are different from the contributions of those around me, and one reason for that difference is that I think and work differently. If everyone thought and learned the same way, as the current generation of attitude-changing psychiatrists is attempting to cause, we'd have a nation of mindless, workaholic zombies with few differences between one person and another.
This sig has been stolen. Return it to its original user for a reward.
... Seriously, read it (if you haven't).
The reason the monkeys worked harder was that they could no longer judge how much work had to be done before they got a reward. Essentially, they became unable to estimate how long the work would take to complete. I don't think this has any practical application for humans. It's just helpful for understanding existing human mental disorders.
So here I am reading /. at work to find out about how to stop slacking off. Good thing I'm too lazy to read the article.
do not read this line twice.
Since when do monkeys understand what a timeline or due date is?
If it wasn't for procrastination, would there even be a slashdot? I mean, how many of you out there are at work right now reading this when you really should be doing something else... Just throwing that into the mix.
Your mammas flamebait.
...but I didn't feel like it. Maybe later.
I suppose this used sparingly could become useful for those that find it hard to concentrate on work.
At least until your company makes you take one of this before going to work. Or you find yourself "forced" to do so in order to remain competitive with the rest of the workforce.
(I didn't RTFA) I hope there are no ugly secondary effects for long time users of this drug. Otherwise you'll find people that shine at work but then arribe home and hardly do anything but sit there staring the walls.
I like being 60% productive! How else would I be able visit slashdot if I were more prodoctive?
What is really so bad with slacking, or procrastinating? What is so great about getting something done right away? I'm no scientist or a study in psychology, but could there perhaps be a reason, a very valid reason, we slack and procrastinate? Perhaps it helps keep us sane?
I, for one, do not want to live in a world where slacking and procrastinating are eliminated by a pill.
Pez
Wow, schizophrenics are the bigest bunch of slackers I know, infact it's one of the requirement of being mad.
Dommine receptors are also partly responsable for schizophrenia.
The only question is, are the monkeys less 'mad' and is that a 'good' thing.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
to say, but I'm too lazy to type it. Where's that pill when you need it.
How long until my employer starts adding this stuff to my coffee?
When they find out Shakespeare already wrote all that stuff...
"It was the Best of times, It was the Blurst of times! You stupid monkey!!!"
I have read the article and I think the headline is a bit misleading. Blocking the dopamine made the monkeys pull the lever quicker because they couldn't make decisions properly. It didn't motivate them or make them super-workers, it just messed with how they think so they wouldn't hesitate to pull a lever.
Later on in the article, it mentions how people with mental disorders cannot associate work with reward. It goes on to say that people with mania will often work very hard to a futile reward. Sort of like monkeys who pull levers all day.
In other words, have they created manic monkeys?
Im sure Pat Volkerding already works a lot!...
It seems to me that it takes a form of cognitive damage, a defect in one's perceptions, to cause this anomalous behavior of working as hard as one can.
I guess I've been a superior being all along, what with my excellent slacking skills.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
Maybe now those 1000 monkeys with their 1000 typewriters will get to work and start cranking out some Shakespeare.
They work harder, but lose the ability to learn.
Might explain why I know so much, but never do a damn thing.
-Peter
Anyone read The Speed of Dark ? It's a good book (although it has a depressing ending, IMO). Oh, and just to stay on topic... one of the central plots in the book is an experimental treatment to cure Autism, and to make people workaholics.
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
That "Game Therapy Turns Slackers Into Workaholics".
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
"I just can't live without workahol!!"
Just remember: Hard work pays off eventually, but laziness pays off right now!
fair.org counterpunch.com truthout.com indymedia.org salon.com
eff.org guerrilla.net debian.org gentoo.org
From the Financial Desk...
Dateline 2004.08.12...
Shares of the popular slacker/hacker website Slashdot fell 97% this morning on news that gene therapy can cure procrastination.
(c) 2004 Reuters
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Three
One stinking monkey to do the job.
And two stinking monkeys to throw fecal matter at each other!
After the study, the monkeys proceeded to work out not only their script for Hamlet, but also the complete works of Francis Bacon, and the source to SCO Unix.
This side up.
Blocking out the Substantia Nigra to decrease dopamine levels is not exactly a safe thing to do, as this is essentially what happens when people get Parkinson's Disease. Don't expect any Anti-Procrastination Drugs to be coming out any time soon.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Workaholics? I say Zombies. Imagine just working and working with no idea about how much time is left until you're done.
What a nightmare.
Anyway, what's a project without those really late working nights right before deadline?
Now perhaps the buggers will finally finish typing their 'Works of Shakespeare' that seems to be taking an age to finish...
What should the drug be called?
I wrote that I wanted such a thing about a couple of years ago - I'm glad they were paying attention!
Xenu loves you!
I live in Japan. I think this technology must've been available here for a while now ...
Which begs the question...
Nope, it prompts the question, not begs the question. You would be begging the question if you declared that the million workaholic monkeys would come up with a cure for cancer more quickly because clearly they would work more per day.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
One of the points of the study was the relationship of work to the disorders of depression and Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Depression resulted in severe procrastination ("I Don't want to do anything"), whereas OCD was the extreme workaholic.
This may lead to treatment of depression using the D2 inhibitor and OCD using the NMDA inhibitor.
And here I was, loading Slashdot to pass the time instead of doing some work...
Hrm.
Time to stop monkeying around.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Just tell me where I should go to sign up for testing.
I can imagine companies doing genetic screening for the workaholic gene.
Parents, make sure your fetus gets that gene therapy it'll need to compete in the global marketplace!
Oh yah, and try to enjoy life sometimes.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Leave human beings alone and take beavers. Beavers are held up as a sort of Horatio Alger example of what hard work can bring to the humble, right? It's just not true. Beavers work pretty hard in the fall, to shore things up before winter -- but they take a long break during the height of the summer, during which they do stuff like swim upstream or downstream looking for other beaver colonies to party with and scouting for new lodge locations and stands of aspen they might want to snack on. A whole lot of their time is spent pretty easily; at most you'd say they were engaged in "open-ended planning" about how to build on that next addition to the lodge or whatever -- sort of like gardeners during the winter thinking out their next planting.
Evolution doesn't seem to favor supermotivated nose-to-the-grindstone workers any more than it produces superfast rabbits or superbig brains. Apparently a nice medium-fast rabbit is best. Someone who can work and play, both, is apparently the superior model of human.
(He said while posting to /. at work.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Experimenting on animals to cure serious human diseases is one thing...experimenting on them just to satisfy curiosity, justify research dollars, get written up in a journal, etc. is quite something different.
Advice: on VPS providers
Damn lazy-arse monkeys have been procrastinating all these years.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
In "A Deepness in the Sky", the evil-doers (not to be confused with axis-of-evil members) were able to "focus" people they enslaved to make them hundreds or thousands of times more productive workers. This article made me think of that so I posted it.
Now we get just them some typewriters and they can start reproducing works of Shakespeare.
Interviewer to Candidate: ... You should also be aware that one of the conditions of your employment is for you to take a Work2Death pill daily and sign this waiver to absolve SlaveTech from any responsibility for issues resulting from you taking Work2Death pills.
Oh and BTW, You are responsible to purchasing the Work2Death pills.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
No longer does the axiom hold true that states: If you have an infinite number of monkeys, with an infinite number of typewriters, given an infinite amount of time, sooner or later one of them will start writing Shakespeare.
.5 equals? I could probably figure it out myself but I don't need the answer till later, and it'll probably only take me 5 minutes to figure out.)
According to this study, they will wait to the last possible moment before writing Shakespeare, and if given the magic drug, you only need... what shall we say, half an infinite supply of monkeys?
Just think of the paradigm shift this will cause in those HR types could be very disturbing...
(Are there any mathemeticians out there that can tell me what infinity x
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
The topic reminds me of Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash character who works for the government and who's regularly probed for loyalty. When will corporations (or the government) start making this gene therapy mandatory to up productivity?
Some of that stuff mixed with Modafinil and you have an army of maniacal achievers.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
After the party dies down at the GOP and in the Management offices around the world, what's this going to do to our society? (Even presuming its effect on the economy is positive)
First, Workaholic parents put work before family. Now, I know some uber-management asshat somewhere is saying "Great!" but lets think about this for 1 microsecond at least. Parents working 23.5 hours per day -> kids raised by TV & school system -> not very smart kids, who (being workaholics) know everything about trig and all the lines of Hamlet. But, kids don't feel loved, and have lots of emotional/social problems (requiring more drugs & therapy). This is a good outcome? Noooo....
No matter how dedicated you are, after around 38 hours per week, your productivity dips. Yes, that means you with the Lexus and the gold Timex. Staring at your secretary's boobs doesn't count as "work".
Let's say that our society can adjust as needed (I'm not saying it could, I'm saying let's just say it did, nevermind how). Let's say productivity per worker DOES go up (cots in cubes, working weekends, and presume I'm wrong about diminishing returns of productivity). Great for business right? Well, yeah. Those of us/you who are already wealthy and have $$ in the market, might see a stock bump. Meanwhile, 15% of the workforce is laid off. Oh, yeah well.. at least my stock is up. That 15% isn't coming back. That's not gonna help the economy. It may or may not help the richest of the rich.
Now imagine what it's going to be like to be on this drug. You don't mind working 10 hours per day, cause your brain chemistry is in tune with that. Meanwhile, your home life goes to utter shit. Your spouse hates you. Your kids stop loving you. You'd go to church for solace (if you're that type) but, mandatory unpaid weekend overtime is enforced because "no one minds working overtime anymore, and if they do, they're fired and replaced before the workflow is impacted."
This might have an application, somewhere. But we should enact legislation NOWNOW NOW!!! to ensure that the use of this (or similar) drugs can NEVER become mandatory or even suggested.
Work-aholic... now where did that suffix come from?
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
... that this news article would make it to slashdot.
Problem: If people started taking the drug, would anyone visit this site anymore?
It's just another manic monkey... whoa whoa
... they'll rue the day they published this story.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
They wouldn't need to. If the ability to dramatically increase your productivity is available to anyone, then all employers need to do is to keep looking for employees with the best evidence for high productivity in their past career. Competition will take care of the rest. After all it won't matter to your employer WHY you are highly productive as long as it's not a risk to them, only HOW productive you are.
and i can see my boss giving everyone their daily "vitamin" every morning.
Is it 5:30 yet?
Maybe this research will, one day, provide a solution to all the slack-assed, hack-assed, half-assed open source code being written these days, by slack-assed, hack-assed, half-assed...... slackers.
One can only hope...
mmmmmmmmm.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
When will all kids by default be forced to take this pill so they can do their homework? How long before this pill is forced on you by your employers? I don't like the idea but the idea is useful, I just don't think working "harder" matters very much though. For some people working harder would get them into an elite school, but working harder only leads to working harder, you get a more difficult job, you get longer hours, and you get more responsibilities, wheres the reward? Isnt it logical to ask this question? its not that people are lazy, people just don't like to work when they can play.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
If I take this anti-slack pill, will I turn into a debianite? or a Susenite?
Even though the terms gene therapy are being bandied about in conjunction with this story, there is no such thing as a slacker gene.
What the experiment did here was essentially introduce a learning disorder into the primates, using a method to inhibit a dopamine (specific kind of neurotransmitter) generating process in a localized area. This made it impossible for the primates to connect the visual stimulus indicating the number of tasks remaining and the introduction of a reward - hence the completion criteria becomes effectively decoupled through this dissociation and they have no clue when they will be rewarded.
This does not translate well into humans, which have several other cues that can connect activity with the expectation of reward. The induced learning dissability would have to cover these as well, and would have a disastrous societal effect; no effective expectation of reward also translates to reduced expectation of punishment.
Alternatively this same behavior could be produced in the workplace without the chemistry by having managers arbitrarily provide discipline and praise. This technique has been known for some time, and even quantized into a specific practice (though without conscious concession to this premise as the genesis for the method) in the awful book "The One Minute Manager," whereby an environment is constructed to remove personal validation of the employees and place the entirety of that role on the manager, who is then free to act illogically (or semi-logically, personality and cluefulness depending) in their delivery of the same.
Any spoon would be too big.
The Whitehouse has announced President George W Bush will be taking less holidays
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
Wage slave that works as little as possible, putting off things to the last possible moment: Slacker.
Corporation that uses just in time logistics, so that it doesn't have to lease warehouse space, corporation that produces just enough to meet demand: A winner that everyone, shareholders and pundits, raves about.
Conclusion: It sucks to be a wage slave.
Yes, one can imagine you need all the help you can get with shitting into your own mouth...
Hey! Porductivity is down again, I think we need to hire some more gene-modified workers. I know, we should just fire all the normals and set up shop with half the number of modifieds! This'll save the customer lots of money be decreasing our cost of operation!
Oh wait, we'll put half the workforce out of a job and then we'll only sell half as much stuff...No mater, we'll still make the same profit and we'll reduce overhead due to space requirements! lets do it!
Just what we need.
What we really need is more vacation time and a livable wage!
A Call For A New Slashdot Moderation Level!
Apparently, monkeys, just like human beings, tend to slack off on tasks until the very last minute. They become quite adept at judging how long they have till they absolutely must complete these tasks.
/.
And in the meantime, we read
When you're not looking, this sig is in Latin.
If they start rolling this out for human consumption, then Slashdot's ad revenues could take a bath. After all, this is everyone's favorite means for procrastination at the office.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
Section 2 Subsection 3.1
The employee, herein after known as the "code monkey" shall, at their own expense, take such measures as are necessary to ensure their dopamine receoptors are suppressed. Failure to take such action and to be in the office with unsuppressed receptors shall be deemed, at the company's discretion, as gross misconduct and subject to summary dismissal without notice.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
You know, I'm getting really tired of this calling Graduate Students monkeys thing. It has to stop.
So, would an infinite number of workaholic monkeys in a room generate Shakespeare that much faster?
"Ford!" he said, "there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out." -- Arthur, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Blog,Twitter
Last fall when I was hallucinating and paranoid because of my schizoaffective disorder, I was completely unable to focus on my work for several months, and got absolutely nothing done.
The psychiatrist I saw about it said that I had psychotic breakthrough symptoms, and this would make it difficult to concentrate. Such symptoms are the result of too much dopamine activity in the brain.
My dose was raised from 3 mg a day to 5, and after a few weeks of time off to recover, I was able to start working productively again.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
All technological breakthroughs are driven by one common underlying theme: laziness.
Or in technical terms "quality of life".
Runnning water is great, now we don't have to carry buckets from the well, washing machines are great, now we don't need to stand around all day bent over a washboard, etc, etc...
The predominant measure of quality of life is how much time is spent on relaxation/recreation v/s work. By genetically redefining the meaning of quality of life, we threaten that which has driven all human progress.
If, at a genetic level, I _enjoy_ spending 12 hours bent over a washboard, what motivation is there to develop a washing machine?
If no one will buy the new widget that saves them 15 minutes doing task X, what motivation is there for a company to spend money on R & D to develop the time saving widget?
In closing, let me be the first to welcome our new hypo-manic overlords... the lithium is in the fridge.
Drinking habits can be dangerous. You can choke on the cloth and the nuns will wonder where their clothes are.
If humans were given this pill, given they have a bit more foresight than monkeys, if they would all just buy a coffin and hop in? I mean, why wait for the inevitable?
-- I speak only for myself
Last comment on this will probably be in may 2005.
I find it interesting that whenever we read about a possible discovery that could "enhance" a normal human (like the recent slashdot article on the mouse that got muscles from injections) or this one that scientists ALWAYS take great pains to point out that their research is ALWAYS to "understand" or to help people with disorders.
Why CANT we do research on human enhancement? What's ethically wrong with looking for ways to make us "Better...stronger...faster...smarter" by science? It's as if there is some un-written rule somewhere that most medical researchers that say " Though shalt not ever engage in research for the purpose of enhancing humans over the norm"
This year has a special bonus for the monkey-like U.S. taxpayers among us. The 4-month automatic filing extension deadline is usually August 15. However, since the 15th is on Sunday, the deadline this year is actually the 16th.
That means that you don't actually have to start working on your taxes until the evening of August 15th, which is a whole day later than most years!
...that the name of that journal is PNAS?
Come on...can't they think of a less juvenile and funny name for such an august publication?
Of course it is a story about monkeys so I guess the name is pretty relevent given their fixation on that part of the anatomy...
-Pinkoir
They say genes causes everything these days! Slacking monkeys, being overweight, producing proteins from amino acids...
---
"I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing and it was everything that I thought it could be."
You are thinking of the wrong brain produced drug.
ADD and ADHD are related to seratonin level in people not dopamine. When you do coke or other "speed" drugs it dumps huge amounts of serotin into your body which is what give you the feeling of having huge amounts of energy. This is also why the crash is so hard, because you body has used up its reserve of serotinin and it takes a few days to produce it again.
Dopamine is what you body naturally releases in it pleasure reward system. When you have an orgasm, your body releases dopamine, when you exercise, you body release dopamine. Heroin and othe ropiate drugs also cause your body to release its dopamine reserves.
For both drugs, "tolerance" happens after continued use because your body can't produce enough to get high so you need to do more to get the same amount released.
The whole idea of creating a drug to block your body from using its natural reward circuits is blasphemous in my opinion. We will become a race of cold uncaring people because we will never get that "warm fuzzy" feeling from being in love, seeing a neekid woman, whatever gets you off basically.
We will become like the Greys (yes aliens) who are totally emotionless and are all about business. I for one don't want to end up like that.
A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Since this is a geek site....
Thier is a old short story called "The Iron Standard" IIRC by Lewis Padgett who is psedoname for Henry Kuttner and CL Moore.
The basic story is that a group of astronauts land on mars or venus(written in the 40) and while waiting for the earth to get the correct location for a trip back they have to find a way to get food etc. But between having brougth worthless trade items and the locals have very stick laws which prevents them from trading other items, they are in trouble. Iron being scare but they had brough stuff rare on earth. So they come up a pill that allows the caste workers to work extra long, they proceed to give it away and go about ruining the economy until the local give in and provide them the provisions needed.
I procrastinate at work by starting my morning reading Slashdot, Wired, OSNews, BBC news, NY Times, Washington Post, The Economist, Google World News, The Register, LA Times, and more ....shit its lunch time already...
All I can say is Thank the Stars my wife does't read /. *whew*
~~~~ No One knows What It Is Like To Be The Bad Man, To Be The Sad Man, Behind Blue Eyes. ~~~~
from a common slacker ancestor.
- "They misunderestimated me."
I'd like to see a study that correlates problem solving (e.g. mazes) with the use of this new drug. Based on the article quote, I predict a significantly lower ability to solve puzzles, especially among the smarter monkeys/mice/whatever animial they test.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
True. Besides, I've grown weary of your mother's tedious pleadings to drop a few in her mouth.
IANAD, but don't many of the Parkinson's Disease treatments and depression treatments involve increasing dopamine in ones body?
A popular treatment for parkinsons at least seems to indicate so.
Maybe its just my paranioa being neither biologist, scientist or doctor, but getting excited over preventing procrastination seems like a minor benefit compared to what other problems this could possibly cause.
Of course, we're not on human trials yet... But I wouldn't be waiting in line for this treatment.
"God is dead!" - Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is dead!" - God
... I'm studying for a final exam.
It's the venusian sex-goddesses you want. The venutians all take the form of high school lunch ladies in hairnets! The /.'ers are doomed...
Oh wait... riiiight! *wink wink*
It's scary being a Flash and Flex developer on Slashdot. You guys are unnaturally rabid.
Because, when you mention "enhancing" humans, people throw in the "we are not God" argument, and next before you know it, some religious fanatic idiot forbids stemcell research and endangers science.
Oh.. wait..
"/Dread"
Unfortunately, the eugenics movement and the nazis have given any attempt at human enhacement a bad name. Researchers don't like to be associated those guys.
For fear of torch-wielding, superstitious villagers storming the castl...er, lab and destroying anything they don't understand?
For a second there, before I clicked on the link, I thought you might actually have a clever, itelligent retort. It turned out to be powerfully weak and pathetic (big surprise), my mistake.
If you'd read the article, you'd know that the "increase in work and concentration" is brought about by the supression of the monkeys ability to look forward to the eventual reward. The reason there is no slacking and or daydreaming is because the neural mechanisims have been surpressed. At the same time, other, more useful neural mechanisims, ALSO have been surpressed.
Thus, this would only have very limited benefits for anyone working a non-repetitive job. Might do wonders for garbage collectors though. The whole thing sniffs a little of "Brave New World".
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Why CANT we do research on human enhancement?
Behold the evils of your human-enhancement, devil science! Behold and shudder in shame and terror!
SharkJumper
Um.. maybe it's just me, but perhaps both Humans and Monkeys slacking is because there is some evolutionary benefit for us to do so?
I dunno what it would be, but it seems that it is a theme. Maybe it's conservation of energy... only take actions you HAVE to take, instead of stressing your body unnecisarilly (sic (i know it's WAY off, but I'm too lazy to look it up. Which fits my point nicely.))...
We spend all this time making technology to make ourselves more efficient, but we dont use that efficiency to work less... we use it to work more. Which is stupid. I don't believe my reason for being on this earth is to buckle down and do more work. I think its to learn and play and do interesting things. Which I suppose is why all the truly happy people have jobs that are exactly what they do for fun too. They play all the time.
Renewable Resources + Proper Planning + Automation = Semi-Permanent vacation. (in a utopic idealist vision anyway)
Oh well.. I hope there was a coherent point in there somewhere. But it's doubtful.
Come on, I can't be the only person who would seriously object to blocking the development of dopamine receptors! Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine, maybe you'll object to this on grounds other than that you like being lazy.
.... To eliminate personal accountability.
"It's not MY fault, it's society's fault!"
"It's not MY fault, I have a disease!"
"It's not MY fault, I have a chemical imbalance!"
And now...
"It's not MY fault, my parents gave me some bad genes!"
Unbelievable. We're so bent on finding a way to blame every character flaw that we have on a genetic problem that we never had any control over. I don't think medical science really knows a fraction of what it thinks it does. Is your crappy attitude caused by a chemical imbalance, or is your chemical imbalance caused by your crappy attitude? You can throw all the so-called "science" you want at it, but I think we have far more control over who we are than what many of us would like to admit.
But God demonstrates his love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us - (Romans 5:8)
At least in the office. And in college. I don't know about the real jungle, but in those places, procrastination lets you avoid doing unnecessary work, even if you don't have Dilbert's nose for it.
For instance, suppose you're told to write some software to fulfill requirements X, and given a month to do it. Even if it'll only take you a week, you'd be a fool to do it immediately. Because you know that within that month, requirements will be added, subtracted, and changed, until a week before the deadline, you're supposed to be writing software to fulfill requirements X'. Where X' intersect X = the empty set. By waiting until the last minute, you avoided doing the work many times over, and had more time for slashdot/surfing pr0n at work/etc.
In college, I had professors who would amend the assignments weeks after assigning them. Same thing applied there.
Chalk some points up for Reciprocality, and their theory of "The Anatomy, Life Cycle and Effects of the Phenomenologically Distributed Human Parasite M0." (google cache- their server seems to be down atm)
I loved the M0 story, (thought it was hilareous,) though I didn't necessarily buy their dopamine explanation. But hey- with research like this going on, who knows?
The monkeys just need more nagging.
Wow. This could mean disaster for certain Local unions that rely on not getting anything done so they get offered overtime.
What's ethically wrong in this particular case is the monkeys are not given a choice to participate in these experiments.
Let's ask the question a different way: "Why CANT we do research on human enhancement using human subjects? What's ethically wrong with looking for ways to make humans "Better...stronger...faster...smarter" by scientifically experimenting on them?"
Does that clear up the ethics thing for you?
Factor this in there somewhere: changing/enhancing the species is effectively evolving it. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, one should consider--and confirm--exactly what the end product of conscious evolution might be, particularly given the obvious flaws of the raw material (humanity) that you're starting with.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, The Histories
I would like to be more of a slacker. I need to spend some time with my wife, take a vacation or two, and not work so much.
I would have thought stopping slackers from smoking dope would have the same effect...
The1Genius - Littera Scripta Manet
They were, of course, talking about code monkeys.
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
Someone who has it appears to have parkinson's disease. TD is a "motion disorder" where one has involuntary, repetitive movements of some part of the body.
It's a form of brain damage that is presently incurable, and can put you in a wheelchair.
As I mentioned in a comment below, I take Risperdal, and since increasing my dose my psychiatrist has recommended I take another antipsychotic that has less likelihood to cause TD than risperdal. Most likely I will try seroquel, but am considering just staying on my present dose of risperdal because I'm doing so well these days.
I don't know what would be worse - having TD or having the symptoms that the risperdal treats. Being crippled would be no fun at all but neither is seeing the police everywhere, even when no police are present.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
I, for one, do not want to live in a world where slacking and procrastinating are eliminated by a pill.
Pez
How about if the pills came out of superman's mouth when you tilt his head back?
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
As ilustred by them procrastination can be good.
Why CANT we do research on human enhancement?
Well, in a nutshell, it probably scares the shit out of people.
You'll have one group screaming that it's "unnatural" and/or violates God's Will(tm) and should be banned based on that. You'll have another group protesting that only "the rich" will benefit (which they will, at first at least). Another will get all sci-fi and give us a bunch of doomsday scenarios based on that.
J. Random Voter will either a) bend over and take it all or b) not care and go back to watching football. :(
----
"Ours was a free culture. It is becoming much less so."-Lawrence Lessig
I can just imagine what the beer company executives are thinking at this point. Captive market and all that...
Wait, that said workaholics, not alcoholics..
... what the globalist technofeudalist billionaire overlords want--willing serfs. Add in implanted RFID chips, remote controlled drug delivery, then this type of drug, you start to get a lot closer to the alpha to epsilon society. You will learn your place, and stay in your place, slave, and like it, literally.
As it was a government study, they probably want to distribute it to civil servants and soldiers.
A civil servant that doesn't procrastinate could dramatically improve the service provided. As an added benefit, the IRS would be able to audit you much more efficiently.
A soldier with increased concentration would be invaluable for intelligence analysis. It might improve a gaurds ability to keep focused on the area he patrols.
As to how long it'll take to become obligatory, I don't reckon they'll be able to coerce anyone. Parents will probably use it as readily as they use Ridilin(sp?). College people will produce a thriving gray market. Employers can't to the best of my knowledge force employees to consume chemicals of any kind. Besides, it might fall into the controlled substance category.
Where's the reward? There is none for the consumer. (except a job well done?) If my understanding of the article is correct, the chemical suppresses the reward mechanism in the brain. So, you wouldn't care about the reward.
Thanks to the internet, we can now all die alone together! -SomeWoman
its not that people are lazy, people just don't like to work when they can play.
That seems to be exactly what this is about though. The work *is* the reward (feels good to get things done) when this D2 receptor gets zapped by their little DNA injection. A more difficult job and longer hours sounds like hell, but maybe in this altered state you'd actually enjoy that and find the challenge welcome.
I'll be the first to say that's no way to live, but many people are forced into that lifestyle anyway, so perhaps they can be helped to at least enjoy it without splattering their brains all over their office wall.
I had no idea! :)
:)
Let's rename this website to Slackdot...if it doesn't reflect a bunch of the readership, it'll reflect at least a handful of the dupe editors.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
"they could no longer learn to use visual cues to predict how their work was going to get them a reward"
Drugs to make you work harder are good for drones, but it blocks the view of the "big picture" for leadership. Seems to me I'd rather be a leader than a hard-working drone. Leaders will be picked from those that don't or can't take the drug.
I am a lazy person. That doesnt make me unproductive. I try to get my stuff done really fast so I can watch StarTrek or do some funstuff with my Linuxbox/girlfriend.
I keep my flat clean and organized since I hate searching thru all the cupboards for the carkeys.
I write shellscripts that make my work easier and if only I was smarter I would invent something really useful that makes all our lifes easier (like the car or the microwave). Most inventions are there to have more time for laziness. Never underestimate the power of laziness.
Hypthetical situation: I am a chronic procrastinator. I find that this is something that I don't particularly like about myself, and I'd like to change it, especially since I have a deadline rushing up, ready to swoop past if I don't get my doomaflotchy prototype ready before the big convention.
So here's the question: If I have so much trouble staying on-task that I can't finish a major project on which my reputation, credibility, and livlihood depend, when am I going to get around to heading to the nearest facility to offer this gene-therapy treatment? Even if it was in a pill form, it would probably be prescription only, and even if it was OTC, I'd still have to go to the pharmacy.
So, it seems likely that, if this ever sees the light of day in humans, we'll be getting a lot of instances of "Quick, I need that DontputitoffXL treatment, and I need it by 3:30 today!"
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
oooh it was the dop-a-mine making me lazy, and all this time I thought it was just the dope-of-mine making me lazy
How do monkeys slack off?
"Man, I know I should be throwing this poop, but I just don't want to right now."
Macintosh humor! MacComedy.com
Why CANT we do research on human enhancement? What's ethically wrong with looking for ways to make us "Better...stronger...faster...smarter" by science? It's as if there is some un-written rule somewhere that most medical researchers that say " Though shalt not ever engage in research for the purpose of enhancing humans over the norm"
Because western society is still smarting from early abuses of the concept of Eugenics (as applied to humans), and the rhetorical hijacking of such notions, by such toxic regimes as the Nazis, Khmere Rouge, Mao, and others, and we have chosen to throw the baby out with the bathwater rather than grapple with such complex and emotionally high-charged subjects in any rational public debate.
As a result, it will probably not be a western country that first engages in significant planned evolutionary enhancement (e.g. increasing people's intelligence). There are of course other factors (religious dumbing down of the masses, political dumbing down of the masses, corporate dumbing down of the masses) that are particularly pronounced in the United States, but to which even Europe, with its better educated and more critical populace, is not immune. In short, many regimes don't want smarter people, they want dumber people.
As a result, should scientists develope a way to enhance the intelligence of unborn children (as they have gender selection, and the elimination of many genetic diseases), it will probably be a country like India or China that first applies the technology and moves their people forward through a deliberate act of planned pro-evolution, leaving us behind. Those regimes don't appear to have an issue with intelligent people, chosing instead to control information flow or use other means to insure allegiance instead.
The real intersting question is that, once left behind like this for emotional, religious, or other irrational reasons, will we ever be able to reach parity again, or does that spell the end of western culture and the ascendance of another, smarter, less irrational culture instead?
Because rest assured, sooner or later, some group of people are going to choose artificially enhanced intelligence for their children (if not retroactively for themselves), and they will have a significant edge over those of us who remain behind. Decrying it, wishing it weren't so, praying to God, swearing allegiance to America, etc. will do nothing to make it go away, or to help those prosper who will have certainly lost any economic edge they might once have enjoyed.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
A civil servant that doesn't procrastinate, would defy the laws of physics. An object at rest will remain at rest, unless given a swift kick in the ass.
Well, because it is not an enhancement?
There's nothing wrong with making people "better, stronger, faster, smarter" with science, so long as being "better, stronger, faster, smarter" is beneficial to the people being made "better, stronger, faster, smarter"!!
If I was to be made a workaholic, who would benefit? My employer? Certainly. Me? Not a bit. And that's not even considering the long term side-effects and repercussions.
Because Our Techno-Dystopia Isn't Hellish Enough.
How long 'til this becomes mandatory for employment? Or citizenship?
Me? Pessimistic? Nah.
A civil servant who doesn't procrastinate is an oxymoron. If he's able to work efficiently, he will soon be lured to the private sector, where his new-found workaholism will gain him a handsome salary, which he would never get if he stayed in civil service.
Kinda reminds me of Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky, where the human clan (forgive me for not remembering what they're called) used a technique called 'Focus' to get the human mind to uh...well focus completely on a task. Kind of brainwashing by making the person so caught up in completing the task in front of them. Would you be brainwashed if your procrastination was taken away?
Is AdolF Hitler what you wanted to be?
I have a huge project due tommorow and I'm --- reading slashdot..
Must get hands on this drug
If slackers no longer exist, then who is going to read slashdot?
The reward is for those at the top of economic food chain, at least in capitalism. We've more than doubled our productivity since the 1960's. Are people working half as long? no. This is a byproduct of our economic system, if you don't like it, then you need to consider changing it.
BTW, I agree with you, it is a sham that no matter how much more productive we are, it just ends up leading to more abuse. Of course, being a better slave never made anyone free.
I am a government contractor... and I can tell you that we're WAAAY more like the monkeys BEFORE the lazy gene blocking.
Sean
Hard work sometimes pays off in the future. Laziness always pays off NOW.
Sean
... for example, when it appears in Dilbert.
... but I'm too lazy. I can't see any eventual reward I would see for doing something like that. Hey, I wonder if I can sell moderator points on eBay?
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
... Ergonomics researchers have discovered that people are more productive and efficient when they enjoy their work.
Mathematics is not a crime.
How long until this gets turned into an airborne thing that corporations pump into the air systems at work? Speaking of that, I also need a version that is both a birth control and workaholic pill for my wife. Then I can lounge around while she does all the work. :-)
When will all kids by default be forced to take this pill so they can do their homework? How long before this pill is forced on you by your employers?
It will happen in the exact same way as kids, employees and athletes are forced to take other pills that enhance your strength, wits or ability to go on without sleeping. That is, it won't happen generally, but in some sectors it will be rather common. And it will be partly due to the free will of the individual and partly because he is forced or tricked in to using these pills.
How exactly is this a bad thing? Seriously I know some true workaholics, depressed people who never take time off to relax because they are always pushing themselves to be earlier and earlier and to get yet more things done. Typically the end being acheived is overshadowed by the need to "do" the need to push more units rather than acheive any real effect or even get a good night's sleep. Depressed dot commers, or office slaves who consume a lot of booze.
The article states that the monkeys are very good at judging just how long each task will take and then, it seems, they do it when necessary. You call it slacking, I call it a combination of good time management and gathering roses while one may. Why should it be the case that everyone be working so far in advance that they burn out like true workaholics?
IMHO you shouldn't call someone a slacker unless they do nothing, and you shouldn't conclude that not working 24/7 is a sign of poor character, poor genes, or some disease that needs to be "fixed."
I'm in agreement with the other posters who compared this to Ritalin for ADD kids. Just another non-disease that was manufactured from hysteria and stupidity not real need.
The way I figure it, we might as well just give the kids crack. It does the same thing; you get wired, can't stop working, go to Walmart at 2:30 in the morning to get crayons, construction paper, glue and glitter to finish your latest project. Of course, only to through it away the next day and spend the rest of the next day curled up with crossword puzzles and jollyranchers. Not like I would know or anything...
So I can buy more drugs, so I can make money, so I can work harder...
Mathematics is not a crime.
The American Psychiatric Association invents diagnoses to perpetuate an industry geared to helping people with these newly discovered and (conveniently) medicinally treatable "diseases." They invent problems. This is discussed in depth in Making Us Crazy By Herb Kutchins, but alternate forms of therapy have been discussed for decades (see Jean Piaget, for example). Undeniably, some severe conditions like Schizophrenia are treatable within the Psychiatric paradigm. Most more pedestrain difficulties--bipolar, depression, ADHD, homosexuality (oh wait, the DSM finally stopped classifying that as mental illness in the 3rd edition!) are best treated with cognitive behavioral therapy. Change the behavior and you change the brain chemistry. Psychotropics are terribly harmful and do nothing to address the underlying behavior that's causing the difficulties.
It's not inflamatory or wild speculation to say that if this discovery with monkeys makes its way to a human treatment, that it will thrust upon every bored 10 year old who's lacking challenge.
This message has been brought to you by a person who was diagnosed with ADHD at 15, took ritalin in high school at 16, and who finally, through behavioral changes in his 20s, was retested at 27 and can no longer be diagnosed with ADHD.
I'm a friend of a friend of the working class.
Is working harder necessarily a better thing?
How many (good) programmers have seen over-zealous newbies write a huge amount of code because they didn't stop, think, and then implement.
Usually being lazy helps me find the fastest possible way to my destination. And usually it's the most(or one of the most) efficient solution too.
To programmers, "working" is more about pondering the problem than doing the implementation.
If we all were super-hard-working people, would we still care about re-use when designing a system? Heck, why have functions, you can just re-type the code when you need it?!
I believe you have a saying: "Work smarter, not harder."
If they consider giving it to federal workers?
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Why CANT we do research on human enhancement? What's ethically wrong with looking for ways to make us "Better...stronger...faster...smarter" by science?
From a pure evolutionary point of view: if we would eliminate the genetic deversity, the evolution of humans would stop. Also every improvement to ourselves comes at a cost, and nature made us better balanced than we could probably do ourselves. Its also dangerous for society because it might very well lead to forms of discrimination. See "Brave New World" and the movie "Gattaca".
And in other news, simian use of Slashdot has dropped by over 80%!
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
Is anyone else reminded of Focus from Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky? Kind of scary. (If you haven't read the book, then I highly recommend it. Don't worry that's it's a sequel -- or prequel? -- to another book. You really don't need to have read the first one.)
On the other hand, a mild version of Focus might not be so bad. Especially if it were people other than me who it was being done to. (Starting to feel like Pham Nuwen...)
This will just make you work harder, it won't make you good. Somewhere out there is an potential Evil Supervillian who hasn't taken over the earth simply because he couldn't be bothered to finish that Death Laser design he's been working on. Put this stuff in the water supply and he'd probably finish it within a week.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I was wondering how far down the thread I'd have to read to get to the first person thinking this article belonged under "YRO".
Now I know the answer.
Allegedly real newspaper headline from 1998:
Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge
Perhaps 400k years ago this is what got australopithecines on the road to homo sapien hood. :)
Or more mouth-watering monkeys!
I currently do factory work and my laziness is extremely helpfull there. It makes me determine exactly how I can arrange tasks so I get the maximum amount of sitting time. Of course this means that if the shit hits the fan I can use the extended sitting time to fix the crisis while the regular tasks don't have to wait.
Sadly I am enjoying this work a whole lot more. No after-work calls about work, no unpaid overtime, getting some of my muscles back, loosing some flab, talking to real people not suits, being reminded the world does not consist of white 30 something males.
Oh well, just my excuses for not looking for tech jobs.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If the stuff could make me stop surfing /. during the work day, it would way more than offset any negative effects!
So, let's see. The monkey's gene to detect when it's going to get a reward is disabled. The monkey then tries to work really hard, because it can no longer figure out when the next reward is coming. Thanks to evolution, humans have overcome that. If I can't figure out when the reward is coming, I don't do shit!
stuff |
the song, In the Year 2525? Seems Zaeger and Evans were a little optimistic about their timelines for technology. Seems that year 3535 should be re-written to 2010...
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
So now we have Stalin replying to Hitler? Nice ...
Nature surely would have gotten rid of it by now if it was useless.
i think that this would be classed as a performance enhancing drug, was it released onto the market... could you imagine taking a couple of pills leading you to be able to work your arse off before your finals and actually enjoying it? (or whatever sensation workoholics tend to get) im lucky in that i have the ability to do so, but ive never worked for anything more than 24 hours before the deadline (i cut it a bit close with a programming coursework this winter... but still) if i could get my hands on this stuff id be unstoppable (cue evil laughter)
I am very sucseptible to "let's have another drink"
From a pure evolutionary point of view: if we would eliminate the genetic deversity, the evolution of humans would stop.
1. Evolution is a process that operates over millions of years; genetic enhancements can be applied within decades. You do the math.
2. No plausible genetic enhancement scheme would have any measureable effect -- positive or negative -- on the overall genetic diversity of the human species.
3. Stopping the evolution of human beings is probably a good thing at this point. (I think you are under the mistaken impression that evolution is some magical process of never-ending improvement.)
Its also dangerous for society because it might very well lead to forms of discrimination.
Good thing we don't have genetic engineering, and thus live in a completely discrimination-free society! Genetic engineering wouldn't make discrimination any worse than it is today. All it might do is change which groups are discriminated against.
If no one has mentioned the movie Outland I would just like to say: AAAH! SPIDERS! GET IT OFF!!! GET IT OFF!!!
Or the science behind it. It's the moral, political and economic situation that forces you to take the pill that you ought to be concerned with.
(San Diego) by LifesABeach. Fast Food Employers collectively cheered when they were notified of the test results on making workaholic monkeys. "Its the best investment I've seen come out of this 'Gene Therapy'", said John Lopez, an owner McSwine's in San Yiesidro. He went on to say that these new monkeys would be placed in the food ordering process of making his product. Mrs. Warez, a resident of nearby TiaJuana, Mexico said she was fearful that the customers would not be able to understand what these monkeys were saying.
The President has sent Secretary Collen Powel to India to meet with India's Secretary of State on this issue. Secretary Powel stated that "India's native monkeys are just as hard working as america's monkeys."
Film at 11:00 p.m..
From a pure evolutionary point of view: if we would eliminate the genetic deversity, the evolution of humans would stop.
There are two parts to evolution: mutation and selection. As you say, eliminating mutation (or the fruits of it) would adversely affect the process, but we have always been seeking to stop selection.
THX1138
Dilbert established that males are born with an unnecessary work gene, that allows them to recognise when a meeting with be cancelled at the last minute. If anything, the scientists should find a way of installing this feature in the genetic make-up of women without the irritating side effects (bushy beards, poor fashion sense, wind trouble).
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy ...
I am a monkey you insensitive clod!
Anyone here familiar with bidding on eBay at the last minute?
The further off an auction is, the less likely we are to watch it (and consequently forget about it). The sooner it is, the more frequently we're likely to check it.
Hack out a bit of your brain and (rhinal cortex) and you'll start checking the auction every 10 seconds even if it's several hours off.
Or simply inject that part of your brain with a D2 inhibitor gene and you'll likewise become an auction zombie, but only temporarily (11-19 weeks for monkeys).
After that time, a second gene injection will make you a slow auction zombie. You still check it regardless of timing, but much less often (same amount of effort as normal). Congratulations, you're still lazy.
People aren't born leaving things until the last minute. They learn to live that way because they make short-term decisions based on HOW THEY FEEL (those feelings can be based on logic or pseudologic).
The consequences of leaving things until the last minute rarely changes the pattern of how we feel as the next deadline approaches.
Deadline... the word itself tells us how to behave.
I, for one, welcome myself as my new whip-cracking overlord!
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
And is supplied by my employer for free!
It's already available for humans in the form of a drug called metoclopramide, which blocks the dopamine receptor. I've taken this (I have ADHD and procrastinate alot) and it's fairly effective. The only major side effect was that it caused eczema.
Sounds like possible treatment for ADD. I would be more than willing to take it.
Understanding is a three-edged sword. -- Kosh Naranek
Can we just force the HURD development team to take this pill?
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
"Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!"
Ask your doctor for a drug called Reglan. It's a selective D2 receptor blocker. It's sometimes used for Tourette's Syndrome also.
You're so right that the researchers aren't asking "What makes a happier/more fulfilled monkey?" They're asking what makes a more productive monkey for the benefit of those who exploit monkeys, basically. Monkeys, I'm pretty sure, want to fool around a lot -- they being primates.
I have this conversation with a certain friend all the time, only it's phrased differently. He's treating individual decisions as if they're Yes-No, and he talks himself into or out of whatever impulse at a given moment -- only to feel remorse over whatever it was when the next option comes up. This produces a certain amount of debt and a whole lot of non-specific anxiety about how he really should keep himself under control -- but he then basically tries to deny himself each individual y-n choice, which doesn't work. Life is not full of yes-no questions. "Should I work out and become superstrong?" is not the question. You're choosing between working out and playing with your kids and going to work and calling your mom. And posting on Slashdot.
The utilitarian calculus involved in trying to work out benefits of all those different possible options, though, is just too much, so we simplify. I'm thinking the practical approach is more of a Kantian categorical imperative thing: could I accept the world if everyone made similar choices to those I'm making? On the fly, that's a much easier standard to apply, and it also builds in the inherent morality of actions.
So, let's get those rhesus monkeys to work on reading Kant in the original German. Except I'm not sure they'd put a higher priority on that than I did as an undergrad...
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
The reward is work that is satisfying in itself, and makes you want to come to work on the weekends, late nights, and early mornings. Makes the 60-70 yrs we all get just fly by. But people shouldn't forget that there are non-pharmaceutical methods of acheiving the same results - like discipline and encouragement, emphasis on the value of education, etc. etc. Of course these take years, but there's generally no weird neurological side-effects, and you don't have to line the pockets of Big Pharma executives to do it.
where are my modpoints when I need them
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
If I was to be made a workaholic, who would benefit? My employer? Certainly. Me? Not a bit.
While I agree with this sentiment for the most part, I disagree with the "not a bit" for personal benefit.
To illustrate, suppose you've got 2 weeks off.(through some miracle or other)
There are tasks that need doing around the house. Clean gutters, retile the kitchen, plant a garden, change the oil in your car, etc.
There are tasks that you would like to do. Play Grand Theft Auto, watch TV, go to Disney World, etc.
If, by taking this drug, you can improve your work ethic and finish all the not so fun tasks quickly, that'll allow you to get them out of the way, freeing you to pursue leisure activities later in your time off. And without the nagging thought that you really should be washing your car or something.
That's a personal benefit.
Thanks to the internet, we can now all die alone together! -SomeWoman
Phbbbt.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
One thing to notice: what drugs affect the same dopamine receptor? Amphetamine, Methamephetamine, Ritalin, Cocaine, etc. What are the effects of these drugs? Initially anyway, they all improve concentration, focus and the ability to work, just like these monkeys seem to experience. Are there side effects? Gee, duh. This research won't result in a capitalist nirvana any more than handing out Meth to employees would.
Let their problem, be your solution!
Out damn spot, out!
I recall from many moons ago reading something that went something like this:
With an infinite number of chimpanzees and an infinite number of typewriters, eventually you'll get "War and Peace".
I wonder if this'll get fast food execs to stop procrastinating taking the worst-offending fatty foods off their menus.
I wonder if those EATING those fatty foods will stop procrastinating taking power walks, going swimming, or the like.
I wonder what other infinite procrastinations might be reversed.
David Syes
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Ya well, this may be fine for my simian brothers, but try and take away my dopamine and chance loosing a hand.
Oh wait, you said SLACKING off. Never mind.
Any one else notice the picture of George W for the Larry King advertisement on the CNN link? It is placed right next to the image of the monkey in the tree! Kind of funny.
PRAY....FOR....MOJO
You should write a book on it! "The mythical monkey minute"
Music speeds up when you yawn, but does not change pitch.
You mean crank, don't you?
Well, according to this article from the EH.Net Encyclopedia of Economic History, In the 1800s, many Americans worked seventy hours or more per week and the length of the workweek became an important political issue. Since then the workweek's length has decreased considerably. Now, this isn't the 1960s, but I still have reason to doubt your raw productivity increase figures.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Boss: Johnson, have you taken your pill today? Johnson: er... no, I was just about to get to that!
Never.
The monkeys lost the ability to be motivated by the reward proximity indicator, and were only motivated by thirst.
So instead of finding more work challenging, they lost their ability to be motivated by reward.
That's not something you'd want in people, since it would probably knock out your ability to anticipate other things, such as impending disaster.
Also, since their antisense technology required an direct injection into the site, there's no pill or any other systemic means of administraton, now or in the forseeable future.
Personally, I have rarely found work to be anything more than drudgery. I think I speak for the majority when I say this. Do you think that someone flipping a hamburger at McDonalds is fulfilling their ambitions? Do they think they are making a positive contribution to the world? Or are they just watching the clock, waiting to get the hell out of there? IMHO "a good work ethic", is a bill of goods sold to the poor in order to inspire them work harder. Alas, hard work is rewarded with more hard work, and generally NOT an increase in pay. I have known people who are not happy unless they are working their asses off. Good for them --- they are in the minority.
Why don't they use some of their intelligence to find out why people slack in the first place.
Some people are depressed, don't like the job that they are doing, etc. That is reality, not a pill that will "magically" get them do "work".
They forget the problem is not that all employees are lazy, if they care to really put an effort into some research or get grants from someone with intelligence they could find out that you must hire the right people for the job.
This kinda reminds me of that saying "When you have a hammer all your problems look like a nail".
Lastly did they ever think that the reason people are slacking is because they don't know what they are doing? How will turbo charging them help?
To me this sounds like a goverment sponsored narcotic. Cocaine will deliver some of the same results and we look down as we should on users / abusers of these drugs but since this is 'researched' does this open the door to other narcotics being ok? Are abusers just merely people who want to get ahead in life and should get tax breaks for thier habbit?
Of course have they realized that this will not make anyone do the work *they* want them to do. It will just make them consentrate on what the user feels like doing. Sounds sick to me where do you think it could go from here?
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
Actually, the better question is: When will it be unsafe to drink the coffee, water, etc. at work, eat the free donuts, or even breathe the air? Corporations will drug us without our consent to become workaholic corporate slave monkeys!!! Those of us that aren't already, that is.
yes, what's in that pipe anywho?
Any good Sub-Genius knowns it's not dope, no my friend and DEA spy, no. It's "frop". Find THAT in the controlled substances schedule.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
What you don't seem to realize is that thanks to the pill, people will no longer be able to use depression or not liking their job as an excuse not to work. Working becomes a reward in its own right.
Combined with controlling what sorts of things people want to work on, the ability to make them want to work brings us closer to the day where man can be reduced to a machine controlled by pills.
"begs the question", while probably not grammaticaly correct, has come into modern popular use. The grandparent used the phrase correctly (by modern standards) in his comment.
Gene therapy turns monkeys into workaholics. This begs the question: can a million workaholic monkeys come up with a cure for cancer more quickly than the slacker human doctors?
I don't see what is wrong with using that phrase. I think most people (excluding grammar Nazis) would find it acceptable in modern everyday use.
That is the best line I've read all day!
...to Linux? Seriously, the big reason I haven't switched is because I'm lazy. I'm too lazy to get it all set up, and WINE working for my games..etc...
Too lazy to deal with it, so I keep putting it off (That doesn't mean I don't install it to play once in a while...)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Maybe later.
% mkdir
% ls -dF
Storm
1. Do we work half as long as in the sixties? No, but we do work far less than we did in 1900.
2. We own _way_ more stuff than we did in the sixties. Buying power has increased massively. In the sixties your family might (or might not) own 1 TV. Most families now own several. Ditto for cars. Not to mention that a car in 1960 probably got 50,000 miles before the engine was shot, 10,000 before the tires were shot, had no seat belts, air conditioner or anything other than an AM radio. In short, if you want to live like people did in 1960 you could work a 20 hour week. Few of us really want to.
Why?
While procrastinating in BioChem one day, talking of the enrgy state of atoms, it was spoken/written, that atoms have an affinity for being in the lowest energy state possible. Now put togehter a whole bunch of these atoms, say in a biological system (such as a human/monkey/programmer) and you have sort of the collective state of billions and billions of atoms that are all desperately trying to reach its lowest energy state at all costs! What happens? Instinctive procrastination/laziness/lack of energy-motivation! I am of course theorizing here (rather jokingly), but what if there is some truth to that? We as humans will always be looking for the drug/gene-therapy to get us (and when I say "us", I mean our collective atomic BORG ) into an excited state!
That sounds great! Does it have a down side?
If ever there was a time to "Just say no to drugs" this is it.
If this treatment ever becomes mainstream for human beings, Slashdot can close up shop.
If you're not part of the solution; at least there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem - Despair
How much do we need to see that we as a human race have gone nutz? Let me see if Iunderstand this, I am a slacker, yep you read I admit that I'd much rather have a "smarter" solution than a harder one. I do realise this contridicts the BS puritan work mottos. I degress...so we get monkies high, they don't remark about the work environment being complete shit, and inside 12 months we'll see on TV: do you hate your boss? Do you think working in chemical filled halls known to cause skin rash, RSS, and eye strain complete BS? Well we have it now happypill!
I hate it when philosophy types bring this up.
Look, even if you accept an archaic definition of the word beg (to assume) as still current (which it isn't) the phrase (as used in logic) still doesn't make sense. You're not assuming the question, you're assuming the answer to the question. So the phrase (in logic) should be "Assumes (or begs, if you must) the answer."
But even if you accept the logic falacy phrase as semsible (which it isn't) that still doesn't preclude other gramatically and semantically correct usage of the phrase, such as "That begs (urgently pleas for) the question [to be asked]: {insert question here}."
Just because, say, "power triangle" refers to the vector diagram of real, reactive, and apparent power in electronics doesn't mean sombody couldn't refer to a three-sided battery pack, or a group of three nearby power plants as a "power triangle".
funniest...post...in...a....while!!!
"being a better slave never made anyone free." I love that phrase. May I use it elsewhere?
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
http://deoxy.org/endwork.htm
"Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx's wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists--except that I'm not kidding--I favor full unemployment..."
If we had this pill 150 years ago, we would not have the technologies we have today. Many of our innovations and inventions are developed because we are lazy. We made a car because we are too lazy to run to work. We made calculators because we are too lazy to do the calculations our self.
Imagine how backwards our world would be if we were not lazy.
You just invented eXtreme Cleaning
"Laziness is a virtue. The wheelbarrow was invented by someone who was too lazy to carry things; writing was invented by someone who was too lazy to memorize; Perl was invented by someone who was too lazy to get the job done without inventing a whole new computer language"
Caffeine works, but it is not a medication that works consistently for 16 hours. And, for the length of time it does work, it works strongly at the start and then tails off. When you take ADHD medication, you are taking a specific dosage at specific times and the medication lasts for well known lengths of time.
That I need this therapy more than anyone else in my workplace because I jus
Woo new color scheme in slashdot!
are the reasons God (or whoever) created us?
All I know is I'm not drinking the water at work anymore!
Why eugenics doesn't work:
It's as if there is some un-written rule somewhere that most medical researchers that say " Though shalt not ever engage in research for the purpose of enhancing humans over the norm"
I certainly hope it is more than just the researchers that say this. Watch the movie Gattica and you might change your mind. Let's let a generation or so go by where we've got enhanced people coming down the pike.. We reach a point where a large segment of the population was born 'modified'. The rest of the world is populated by poor slobs that couldn't afford to have their babies jacked up in this fashion. Do you not see a problem with that scenario? The wealthy, already advantaged, would have first dibs on becoming even more advantaged, while the rest of the lower-class world dips even lower by comparison. I know that we do need 'Gods and Clods' as Mr. Brovlovski put it on South Park, but I do not think this is the way to maintain it, nor should we be trying to choose who gets to be 'a God' and who has to be stuck with being 'a Clod'. The way things run currently, a stroke of good luck can turn a Clod into a God overnight, there is always the chance you will rise up and suddenly start outshining the rest. But not if you live in a world where the ones with all the good stuff were born that way and carry a card to prove it.
And remember the words of Geordi LaForge: "Kind of ironic isn't it, that your world is being saved by a man who wouldn't even have existed in your society?" (referring to his blindness, which would have earned his fetus a termination had he attempted to be born there)
But in 1800 you didn't have to be done everything like "the day before".
I thought that they were supposed to be making super-intelligent engineer rats, not wage-slave monkeys!
Dear...........God....
A morning without coffee is like something without something else.
Wat is so bad about procrastination is that it deprives you of leisure. If you finish work fast, you can rest afterwards. If you postpone it, you aren't working, but you can never really rest either. And there is no more 'after work', because it consumes all available time..
Z
Wow, now people can own several TVs, this is *so* useful...
I just got my first one in years, I'm starting to wonder why I even bothered...
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Gosh! The first read of the title lead me to think this article is about Slackware users...
I rather be free in hell than a slave in heaven.
My vote for human R&D is to make all our females look as good/better than porn stars, not care about how ugly/dorky a guy is, and to always be in the mood...
The pushoff until the last moment is only about half the population. Using MBTI terms, it is a P thing. Js tend to do things right away.
:)
Perhaps this is where lazyness got trhe term "monkeying around"?
Have you read my journal today?
We're now thinking about implementing gene therapy in humans. Oh, why not save a few lives by curing this disease otherwise uncurable. But doesn't the whole premise of messing with genes produced through evolution have BAD IDEA written all over it? Oh we can be good judges of whats good for the human race in today's environment, but who knows how long this environment will stay intact, especially the way we are messing with it. We talk about curing diseases using gene therapy: ie curing genetic diseases essentially by removing them from our system. lemme try elaborating a bit After all, why do we care about sick people anyway? Its because their genes help us preserve variation in the population. If there weren't any diseased or ill (ie genetically different) among us, we'd be totally screwed the day disaster strikes. Take sickle cell anemia. If in a world where there was no quinine (and we couldn't cure or prevent malaria), if a vicious malaria attack took place, most humans would die. But all humans that have one sickle cell anemia gene would live, as malaria does not particularly thrive in such people. And gene therapy is potentially trying to eliminate genetic diseases, of which one is sickle cell anemia. In a world where sickle cell anemia is potentially eliminated (through gene therapy), and the malaria protozoan involves into something we cannot battle, we are totally screwed. Sure, there will be a few survivors, arousing from some other genetic alteration, but these survivors stresss my point further. The survivors contain genes that are incompatible with malaria, and therefore extremely beneficial in this environment (where malaria is a little too prevalent). The whole thing that bothers me wiht gene therapy is that we are assuming the fundamental uselessness of certain genes, where the uselessness is only true if our surrounding environment were to stay constant. I mean, altering our genes eventually amounts to what hitler was trying to do. Oh, sure we are doing it for the good of mankind. Of course, thats what hitler thought HE was trying to do too. He was trying to filter out all those he thought were polluting the human gene pool. No mass massacre needed though. We will be taking out genes this time. Enough ranting. And see gatica: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00004CXW W/qid=1092372146/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_10_1/026-3078605- 7556419
"...I just don't think working "harder" matters very much though. For some people working harder would get them into an elite school, but working harder only leads to working harder..."
Ahhh!!! This reminds me of my all time favorite despair poster: "Incompetence"
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
I worry that a pill like this will be accompanied with a lot of ignorance.
Pain killers, flu tablets and caffiene are already overused by many people in the workforce to help them get through another working day.
I drink two cups of coffee a day. However, when I was pulling 14 hour days, I drank six to eight cups of coffee. At the end of the day, I was exhausted and sick. I didn't even know it was the coffee. Many people think that if you just keep drinking it you work better.
How hard will it be to convince people to take something like this ? Not very hard ! How many people will avoid a drug with side effects ? Hardly anyone ! ALL drugs have side effects ! Do people care how drugs actually work ? How many people who take them know how Neurofen, Prozac or even Alka Selter works ?
All this "the people will rise up against the drugs" sounds extremely naive to me. The People will put just about anything in their mouths.
Whew, that was theraputic. Time for a stress pill.
I'm a workaholic, I need workahol!
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
RTFD. No Mr. English wiz, the 'for' is not needed. Go back to the dictionary here and you will see under the section from the M-W unabridged the following uses of the word with the "To ask earnestly for; to entreat or supplicate for; to beseech" definition:
The dictionary (which we use as our primary source of proper word use, not you) says the use of beg to mean "to ask earnestly" is perfectly appropriate."Begging the point is an attempt to convince someone of a point because its the point your trying to convince them of. "
Yes, I am perfectly aware of the third use of the word, as I stated in my last post. However (also as I stated in my last post) the word is ambiguous. There are several definitions for it and in order to know what the writer meant you must read the context which here clearlly shows what the writer meant.
"But the two are easily confused, so "prompt" is a good choice to avoid the confusion."
A) Who, other than you, gets confused when someone says "Begs the question" in that context? Anyone with half a brain and the ability to read English can figure it out.
B) So are you now admitting that his use of the word 'beg' was only confusing, not improper?
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
The 'for' is most certainly needed. You've spent too much time by your computers and seem to think English is a programming language.
"Begs the question" is a special case. And "anyone with half a brain" knows that there are many special cases in the language which don't follow the rules.
Case in point. Decimate. Decimating the protestors is all but wiping them out. Decimating a fraction of the protestors is wrong because if you are going to consider a fraction the original definition comes into play - to destroy a tenth.
So pull up all the dictionary's you'd like and look up the word beg until your blue in the face. After your done being a jerk, go look at a grammar book which specifically deals with the term we are discussing. Yes, you are very astute for pointing out that there are several definitions for "beg" in the unabridged (how does having more words help when we're only talking about a phrase anyway?) dictionary. "Begs the question" is a loaded term.
Sheesh. RTFD doesn't explain English nuances. Nice try though. BTW, what does your dictionary tell you "Go push off" means?
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Thanks for asking. I'm pretty sure that I'm not the first person to write something like that, but after doing a preliminary search on google, I can't find any references, which I found surprising. If you want, you can attribute it to my screen name, but feel free to use it however you wish, I'm not posting on slashdot for any kind of fame.
If you find a different source, let me know. I'm still questioning the originality of that quote. I'd hate to take credit for some else's quote. You can just reply here if you do.
Given the argument I was having with someone else in this thread, you're absolutely right. The old meaning is pretty much disregarded these days.
A good quote from worldwidewords.org:
The meaning you give is the newest. It is gaining ground, and one or two recent dictionaries claim that it is now acceptable--the New Oxford Dictionary of English, for example, says it is "widely accepted in modern standard English". I wouldn't go so far myself. Because of possible confusion over what you actually mean, and inevitable condemnation from people who have taken the trouble to find out what it once did mean, it's better avoided altogether.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
My point being that while the number of hours we work hasn't really gone down, our buying power has increased significantly. Yeah, I agree that multiple TV's isn't a great acheivement, but people have chosen to buy more crap rather than cut their hours. (I actually don't own one).
Why?
*nods* I will, thank you.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
It seems to me that the buying power has remained more or less the same but that there's lots more cheap crap around. If you want decent stuff, it's the same price as it's always been.
So people buy more crap. That's all they can afford anyway.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
I suppose if you have no family and friends, your job would be everything. Most of us work so we can spend time with our family and friends.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Why would scientists spend time trying to make monkeys more productive? Methinks these scientists were trying to get 50,000 monkeys to write hamlet on 50,000 typewriters.
OH CRAP!!! They are on to me!
Ill have to avoid this thereapy somehow... in a bit....
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?