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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.
Apparently, Valve got their hands on some of this stuff...
... 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.