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Monkey Business and Freakonomics
marct22 writes "Stephen J Dubner, co-writer of 'Freakonomics' said there will be a second Freakonomics book. One of the items that will be covered is capuchin monkeys' use of washers as money, buying sweets, budgeting for favored treats over lesser treats. He mentioned that one of the experiments had similar outcomes as a study of day traders. And lastly, he watched capuchin prostitution!"
If you're thinking of buying Freakonomics, don't bother. Half the book is "letters from our website".
It's one of those books you buy at the airport before a long trip only to discover that it only takes half the trip to read it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
3 week later, in prison... "I need to learn how to spell Cancun."
And lastly, he watched capuchin prostitution!
Proof positive that it's the oldest profession?
I find it interesting how monkeys can be compared to day traders. I think to goes to show how similar us humans really are to other animals. In many ways we're more a fortunate combination of traits than having truly unique traits.
I don't read AC A human right
of our monkey-shagging overlords?
1) capture monkeys
2) provide a selection of washers
3) !!sex!!
4) profit!!
In Africa, monkeys shag you!
God, Slashdot is soooo predictable these days....
And why was my capcha 'incest'? Is someone trying to make a point?
If anything, Day Traders are the closest thing you can find to prostitutes.
Only difference is that prostitutes usually dress up nicer and generally have a better taste in men.
I remember watching this video about the sexual life of Bonobo apes (cousins of chimpanzee with a social life very similar to humans in many respects, in particular sex). One funny part was a young male coming to a female resting on a branch with a banana. The males makes it very clear what he wants in exchange, they do the deed and the the female eats the banana after he leaves. The funny part is that in the commentary they explain that this specific female never goes looking for food...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Or maybe, it just shows that you can compare anything to anything, if you carefully choose only the aspects that sorta superficially support your idea, do a lot of sophistry to make them look even more supportive, and keep your fingers crossed that noone notices all else you've ignored.
Let me tell you a joke: "A researcher puts a flea on a piece of paper and yells, "JUMP!" The startled flea jumps. The researcher cuts off the flea's legs, puts it back on the piece of paper, and yells, "JUMP!" The flea doesn't jump. The researcher notes, "Fleas hear with their legs. A flea whose legs have been cut off can't hear any more.""
Or here, let me offer definitive proof that cats are nerds, or at least nerds act just like cats. Cats:
- are naturally attracted to books and keyboards. Mine always used to come curl up on the book I was reading.
- aren't very social, and don't deal well with extended periods of social interaction. (Keep petting one too long after it signalled "I've had enough," and it might just scratch.) They also actually need periods of being alone or left alone. Also, bringing a new cat home might just result in a fight over who's alpha, instead of, "hi, welcome to the team."
- except for a few modified/selected races, only "talk" when they actually have something to say and/or when all else failed. (See the widespread myth that meowing is somehow only for communicating with humans.) They're also not good at telling you what they want or why. How introverted is that?
- have a problem with authority and obeying orders. (See, "herding cats.")
- have unbalanced diets, by human standard, and would rather not eat their veggies
- have weird sleep schedules, by human standards.
- like it warm. I can just see a cat coming to the office in mountain boots and a sweater in July, if it were anthropomorphic.
- really dislike being stuffed in a suit and tie.
- really don't like showering, or being given a shower. Actually, "loathe" just about starts to describe it.
- play (with) all sorts of stuff that makes no sense for a normal human.
- never discovered complex courting rituals.
Etc. There you go. I've proven beyond all doubt that nerds act just like cats. Funny how similar we are to animals, eh?
In practice it just shows how easy it is to find _some_ animal that matches whatever you want to match, if you just look hard enough and ignore what is _really_ happening there. E.g., I've thoroughly ignored the fact that a nerd surviving on say, chocolate or pizza/chinese food only, is doing it because of taste preferences or being too lazy for anything else, while a cat is actually biologically made to be a meat-only eater. ("Obligate carnivore.") E.g., I've thoroughly ignored the fact that a cat's attraction to books isn't because it actually wants to read, and to your keyboard isn't because it wants to program. Etc.
To get back to the topic, yeah, you can compare anything from the real economy to a monkey play-economy, but it's just material to make Joe Sixpack feel better about his not understanding the real economy. Day trading especially is a complex phenomenon, including such aspects as being, basically, a form of gambling. I.e., when you see monkeys playing cards/dice/3-cups/whatever, then you'll have an essential ingredient in it. Sure, you can look at it superficially being just like monkeys and bottle caps changing hands, but that's the kind of superficial over-simplification that's outright useless except maybe as an emotional metaphor.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
How can they use washers as money? I assume they're the normal kind made of base metal (not silver or gold) so anybody could mine some more zinc or steel and make more of them. Where's the intrinsic value? It's just another fiat currency like dollars except in this case the 'the man' is the zookeeper.
I will have a sig when the market demands it.
The only reason you don't see amoebas doing the same thing is because they don't have opposable thumbs.
What?
That may well be so, but that sorta misses the point that it's useless to compare a human to an animal that has been _trained_ to do something, as a way to draw conclusions about the human. E.g., sure, you can train a gorilla to understand sign language, and it sure says something about its intelligence. But then you can't go and write a book on the premise that, basically, "hey, what mutes do is exactly the same sign language as these gorillas are using! Mutes are just like gorillas!"
Basically it's bullshit to then compare a community of gorillas arificially _trained_ to do X to a community of humans who have a rationale behind doing X, as if there were no difference there. Whatever X may be.
In this case, "monkeys using washers/caps/whatever as money" conjures an image that is thoroughly misleading. It's not like those monkeys just saw a heap of washers and went, "I know, let's use those as money". They were _trained_ and coaxed to play a game they don't even understand.
Money was a hard concept to figure out even for humans. It took tens of thousands of years to figure that one out. Even if you look at the economy of, say, the Old Kingdom (an ancient Egypt period), it was based on barter. If you had some extra grain (e.g., you were a farmer) and wanted a pot, you'd go to the potter and ask, basically, "how much grain do you want for that pot?" Then the potter wanted a knife and went to the smith and asked, "can I trade you some pottery for a knife? What if I gave you some of this grain I earned too?" And so on.
Discovering money wasn't just an accidental seeing a round piece of metal and going, "oh, you know, we could use a bunch of those as money." It was a long and rocky road in itself, for example, discovering first the artificial value of jewellery and other rare luxuries. Then the fact that a golden chalice could be stored longer than a ton of grain, which would eventually rot. And only then the money wasn't just some rounded bits that could be traded, but a standardized quantity of such a valuable, non-decaying metal.
E.g., the value of the Roman Solidus, wasn't just being a round piece like a washer, but being a standardized quantity of gold. There wasn't some arbitrary assigned value to it, like when playing with washers or Monopoly money, the value was the exact value of the 4.5g of gold in it. Two pounds of Solidi weren't just an arbitrary value multiplied by the number of coins, it was the exact value of two pounds of gold.
Floating paper money with floating values are a _very_ recent invention, and it took lots of growing pains to wrap the human mind around _that_ notion. It took first assigning a value in gold, and getting people to believe that they can actually go and redeem a 100$ note for 100$ worth of gold. I.e., the value was _still_ tied to the idea of having an inherent value. It took a Great Depression to finally decouple money from an intrinsic value in precious metals, and some people _still_ can't really wrap their mind around it.
That was, in a nutshell, 40000 years after humans got out of Africa. Yep, 40k years. That's how long it took humans to arrive at the modern concept of money as just tokens.
So it's silly to believe that a bunch of monkeys would just see a bunch of worthless (for them) washers and immediately come up with the exact same concept. "Hey, we'll use these as tokens whose value is dictated by supply and demand." Nope, sorry, it's just not going to happen.
What you can have is monkeys _trained_ to play with washers in a mockery of an economy. We don't even know how much they understand there, and how much is mindless imitation and "pavlov's dog" kinda reflexes.
E.g., did someone actually figure out prostitution in all its human implications? Or more likely, a bunch of monkeys trained to give tokens to the researcher on all occasions, e.g., when they're fed, started also giving tokens as a reflex to anyone, including to the female they're mating with?
Did they really understand the concept of _buyin
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I enjoyed the first freakanomics, but they guy does seem to have a big head... each chapter starts with some quote by somebody else about how great the author is.
it does? In my "Revised and Expanded Edition" there's nothing of the sort.
Also, their blog (which was linked in TFA, but who reads TFA) is well worth a read if you enjoyed the book (or even if you haven't read it).
That is because there were twice as many chairs for this guy.
Be honest: Given the choice of hearing a guy speak about the new features of Vista and one speaking of monkey prostitutes and how they do it for bottle caps, which one would you pick?
Also, bear the probable audience in mind...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
and I've taken economics in college, but the kinda freakonomics people should hear more about (and do something about) is how the top 1% of the American population controls 95% of the wealth. Between 1979 and 1997, income for the middle class rose 9%m while income for the top 1% rose 140%! Now that's freaky!
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Just because we're genetically similar does not mean we have the same cognitive abilities. Which makes the fact that traders behave like monkeys so much more interesting.
For a nice expose on the myths of animal "training", take a look at "Do Animals Think?" by Clive Wynne (Easy search on Amazon). In a nutshell, there is no conclusive evidence that animals can "learn" beyond what is required for their natural environment. There is a big difference between Snake! Everyone watch out! and Hmm, I see a dangerous snake, maybe I should tell my rival that there is a nice juicy banana over there!
So you are saying you emerged from the womb with complete understanding of language, mathematics, and cause-effect association? When you were a child, did you have a clear rationale explaining why you were being taught how to divide or expand your vocabulary? I think you were sent to school where you received exposure to these and other concepts repeatedly until you began accurately repeating them to your instructors. Eventually you learned how to independently form sophisticated compositions of those simple concepts, possibly through repetition, for the purpose of solving problems. This seems a lot like training to me.
Why bother.
Sounds to me like the poor guy was bringing his girlfriend gifts and/or taking her out to lunch to get any action. If the bonobos were any more evolved, they'd probably have also seen him taking her to a movie ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
You're right, but IMHO, that just tells me that the monkeys and us are not so different. They haven'thad to evolve that behaviour, but they're capable of implementing it. It suggests that monkeys would be capable of arriving at a society similar to ours, given enough time and environmental pressure to do so (including specialization, see the post about the female bonobo monkey).
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Trained monkeys enacting a silly pseudo economic game *is* a decent description of the real world.
(Or do you think pretty, shiny diamonds truly are useful, and so on?)
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Lucky little bastages. I wish I could toss my wife some washers or food for some service. He needs to do experiments to see if a metal band around a Capuchin's ring finger stops the process of copulation. The males will give the females all of the washers and food, and the females will in turn become celibate or have intercourse with different monkeys.
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
The NY Times article on that study, from 2005, can be found here.
ustr: Managed string API with ave. 44% overhead over strdup(), for 0-20B
Koko the signing gorilla has been pretty well debunked. Actual fluent speakers of ASL couldn't understand a word she was "saying," and outside evaluators could never manage to verify the huge vocabulary that Penny Patterson claimed she had, only a much more limited one (I think something like 100-150 words instead of 1000+). Chimps and gorillas *can* learn to use various symbols as a vocabulary, but they cannot understand grammar. To them, "me eat banana" and "banana eat me" and "me me banana eat banana me" all mean the same thing.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
My first thought when I read that description was this:
1. Monkey finds money laying around.
2. Monkey brings the money home and shows it to his wife.
3. Wife is impressed and, after a little heavy petting, puts out.
4. Guy's happy, wife goes shopping.
Sounds to me as though the researcher's proved monkeys essentially get married. Nothing new there as far as I know.
You know the thing about UDP jokes? I don't care if you get it or not.
Considering how many internal memos, legal documents and news reports that I have read follow the same structure; I fail to see how their understanding is any different from a persons.