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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."
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
Apparently, Valve got their hands on some of this stuff...
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.
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.
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
Since when do monkeys understand what a timeline or due date is?
They don't need to properly understand it. They can be your boss anyway.
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?
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.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
It's just another manic monkey... whoa whoa
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.