Corante: technology, business, media, law, and culture news from the blogosphere
OUR PUBLICATIONS:
Corante is a trusted, unbiased source on technology, business, law, science, and culture that’s authored by leading commentators and thinkers in their respective fields. Corante also produces premium conferences and publications that help decision-makers better understand their industries and the world around them.
Corante Blogs
Corante Blogs examine, through the eyes of leading observers, analysts, thinkers, and doers, critical themes and memes in technology, business, law, science, and culture.
Vin Crosbie, on the challenges, financial and otherwise, that newspaper publishers are facing: "The real problem, Mr. Newspaperman, isn't that your content isn't online or isn't online with multimedia. It's your content. Specifically, it's what you report, which stories you publish, and how you publish them to people, who, by the way, have very different individual interests. The problem is the content you're giving them, stupid; not the platform its on."
by Vin Crosbie in Rebuilding Media
There's a problem in the drug industry that people have recognized for some years, but we're not that much closer to dealing with it than we were then. We keep coming up with these technologies and techniques which seem as if they might be able to help us with some of our nastiest problems - I'm talking about genomics in all its guises, and metabolic profiling, and naturally the various high-throughput screening platforms, and others. But whether these are helping or not (and opinions sure do vary), one thing that they all have in common is that they generate enormous heaps of data.
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Now that the Web labor market is saturated and Web design a static profession, it's not surprising that 'user experience' designers and researchers who've spent their careers online are looking for new worlds to conquer. Some are returning to the “old media” as directors and producers. More are now doing offline consulting (service experience design, social policy design, exhibition design, and so on) under the 'user experience' aegis. They argue that the lessons they've learned on the Web can be applied to phenomena in the physical and social worlds. But there are enormous differences...
by Bob Jacobson in Total Experience
Clay Shirky, in deconstructing Second Life hype: "Second Life is heading towards two million users. Except it isn’t, really... I suspect Second Life is largely a 'Try Me' virus, where reports of a strange and wonderful new thing draw the masses to log in and try it, but whose ability to retain anything but a fraction of those users is limited. The pattern of a Try Me virus is a rapid spread of first time users, most of whom drop out quickly, with most of the dropouts becoming immune to later use."
by Clay Shirky in Many-to-Many
Over the last few years we've seen old barriers to creativity coming down, one after the other. New technologies and services makes it trivial to publish text, whether by blog or by print-on-demand. Digital photography has democratised a previously expensive hobby. And we're seeing the barriers to movie-making crumble, with affordable high-quality cameras and video hosting provided by YouTube or Google Video and their ilk... Music making has long been easy for anyone to engage in, but technology has made high-quality recording possible without specialised equipment, and the internet has revolutionised distribution, drastically disintermediating the music industry... What's left? Software maybe? Or maybe not."
by Suw Charman in Strange Attractor
Derek Lowe on the news that the Nobel Prize for medicine has gone to Craig Mello and Andrew Fire for their breakthrough work: "RNA interference is probably going to have a long climb before it starts curing many diseases, because many of those problems are even tougher than usual in its case. That doesn't take away from the discovery, though, any more than the complications of off-target effects take away from it when you talk about RNAi's research uses in cell culture. The fact that RNA interference is trickier than it first looked, in vivo or in vitro, is only to be expected. What breakthrough isn't?"
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Andrew Phelps: "Recently my WoW guild has been having a bit of a debate on the merits of Player-vs.-Player (PvP) within Azeroth. My personal opinion on this is that PvP has its merits, and can be incredible fun, but the system within WoW is horridly, horribly broken. It takes into account the concept of the battle, but battle without consequence, without emotive context, and most importantly, without honor..."
From later in the piece: "When I talk about this with people (thus far anyway) I typically get one of two responses, either 'yeah, right on!' or 'hey, it’s war, and war isn’t honorable – grow the hell up'. There is a lot to be said for that argument – but the problem is that war in the real historical world has very different constraints that are utterly absent from fantasized worlds..."
by Andrew Phelps in Got Game
Derek Lowe: "So, you're developing a drug candidate. You've settled on what looks like a good compound - it has the activity you want in your mouse model of the disease, it's not too hard to make, and it's not toxic. Everything looks fine. Except. . .one slight problem. Although the compound has good blood levels in the mouse and in the dog, in rats it's terrible. For some reason, it just doesn't get up there. Probably some foul metabolic pathway peculiar to rats (whose innards are adapted, after all, for dealing with every kind of garbage that comes along). So, is this a problem?.."
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Bob Jacobson, on shopping at his local Albertsons supermarket where he had "one of the worst customer experiences" of his life: "Say what you will about the Safeway chain or the Birkenstock billionaires who charge through the roof for Whole Foods' organic fare, they know how to create shopping environments that create a more pleasurable experience, at its best (as at Whole Foods) quite enjoyable. Even the warehouses like Costco and its smaller counterpart, Smart & Final, do just fine: they have no pretentions, but neither do they dump virtual garbage on the consumer merely to create another trivial revenue stream, all for the sake of promotions in the marketing department..."
by Strange Attractor in Total Experience
Kevin Anderson: "First off, I want to say that I really admire the ambition of the Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free. It is one of the boldest statements made by any media company that participation needs to be central to a radical revamp of traditional content strategies... It is, therfore, not hugely surprising to find that Comment is Free is having a few teething troubles..."
by Kevin Anderson in strange
Corante Developments
Here you will find the latest news from Corante including updates on upcoming events, new initiatives, product and publication launches, and more.
It was with shock that I returned home from a night out last night to hear the news of Russell's passing. How terribly, terribly sad. Most of all for him, as he'd seemed buoyant, healthier, and content when I'd last seen him several months ago when he was in town - he was happy that work was busy and rewarding and was having fun with it but most of all was thrilled about how things were going with his girlfriend, Ellen.
I've known Russ for what seems like ages now (in a good way) though in fact it's only been about six or seven years since the early days of "commercial" blogging when he started working on various projects at and around Corante. He was a diligent, committed, and prolific journalist who had impressively and more ably than others been able to make the transition from the old-school way of doing things to the new. He had his quirks, as we all do, but I greatly valued that he was good-natured, collegial, reliable, quick to adopt, trustworthy, eager to learn, and earnest in his interest in helping others better understand what he wrote about.
He was also, it should be said, a kind and thoughtful soul and it was the rare conversation in which he didn't ask, with sincerity, about what he knew of my life, e.g. our new babe, and we didn't talk as seemingly old friends about our lives and respective paths. I can't say I knew him very well, of course, but in our half-dozen get-togethers over the years and dozens of conversations I got a good sense of the man: he cared about learning and sharing and his bearing was earnest and ego-less and we'll miss him for that and more.
We wanted to let you know about a discount to New Comm Forum, the annual event event put on by our friends at the Society for New Communications Research. The conference, which runs from April 22-25, will feature many of the field's leading observers and is an important event for those looking, in the words of SNCR, to "better understand new communications tools, technologies and emerging modes of communication, and their effect on traditional media, professional communications, business, culture and society."
Check out the event's website and, if you're interested in attending, be sure to use the code supplied below for a special discount.
EARLY BIRD PRICING - NOW UNTIL FEB. 15th
NewComm Forum Conference - $995.
Pre-conference or post-conference session - $195.
SNCR Jam only - $75.
REGULAR PRICING - AFTER FEB. 15th
NewComm Forum Conference - $1095.
Pre-conference or post-conference session - $249.
SNCR Jam only - $75.
CORANTE READER DISCOUNTS
NewComm Forum Conference - save an additional $100
Use discount code: NCF08100
Pre-conference or post-conference session - save an additional $45.
Use discount code: NCF0845
We've been remiss in letting you know about two new independent blogs we've helped launch in the past month or so.
The first - the ConversationHub - is a companion blog to Supernova 2007, the latest edition of Kevin Werbach's excellent conference on all things connected. As the conference site says: "Supernova examines the effects of an increasingly connected world on business, life, and public policy. As disparate physical and social networks link with one another, a new societal network is rapidly evolving... The New Network is greater than the sum of its parts. It challenges us to re-create everything from the software and hardware we use...to the business models we employ...to the information and entertainment we encounter...to the ways we work and play."
Visit the ConversationHub and you'll find several dozen leading thinkers and doers, led by a few notable ringleaders, weighing in on the themes and trends of the day in technology and business. We encourage you to tune in - feel free to comment and even suggest topics and ideas for posts.
The second blog - Mobile Messaging 2.0 - convenes about a dozen top observers of the mobile messaging space for an intense discussion of the industry and where it's headed. Among its contributors are leading commentators, journalists and players in the field - tune in and you'll find them touching on topics such as mobile device design, messaging platforms, market pressures, user-generated content, interface design, and much, much more.
Also, if you visit the site, which is sponsored by Airwide Solutions, this week, you'll find live coverage and commentary from Global Messaging 2007, to which several of our contributors have traveled to hear about the latest developments from a broad spectrum of the industry's players and providers.
Be sure to catch the Office 2.0 Conference and hear from and engage with leading thinkers and doers in this exciting new market. Find out more here and be sure to use the code "GLDRK" for a special discount for Corante readers.
In the Pipeline: Don't miss Derek Lowe's excellent commentary on drug discovery and the pharma industry in general at In the Pipeline
There are few things as fascinating to me as the question of how our ancestors evolved from small-brained, tree-dwelling apes. But sometimes it all can feel a bit abstract. After all, we're talking about things that happened six million years ago. Recently, though, I had a weird experience that brought our evolutionary history smack into my face. Some Yale psychologists came to my daughter Charlotte's pre-school looking for volunteers for a study that would compare how children and young chimpanzees learn. It turns out that chimpanzees can be a lot more logical than children, Charlotte included. I've written an essay about the experience that appears in tomorrow's New York Times.
(For those interested in the scientific background to this experience, here's the paper that inspired the new study.)
1. Apesnake on December 12, 2005 11:18 PM writes...
"It turns out that chimpanzees can be a lot more logical than children"
True, but children shed less. They should really be comparing the learning ability of the chimpanzees with that of the fellows of the discovery institute. Now that might be enlightening.
And how do you explain a difference like this as the result of random chance? You don't. It's conclusive proof that an intelligent Creator designed humans.
3. Jason Malloy on December 13, 2005 03:33 AM writes...
This was also the experience of Winthrop and Luella Kellog, the psychologist couple that raised a baby chimp along side their infant son, Donald. Maybe they expected the chimp to act more like a human, but what actually happened was the chimp acted like a chimp and their son imitated the chimp! Key words: 'biting' and 'noisy hooting'.
4. Kai-Mikael Jää-Aro on December 13, 2005 04:05 AM writes...
Interesting. In the book "Rigidity of behavior" by Luchins & Luchins, the authors confirmed through a long series of experiments that humans, having found out a solution to a problem, will tenaciously stick to that solution method even when it is suboptimal (or even wrong). In the book it was hinted that this might be due to a misplaced emphasis on rote-learning in schools, but perhaps the issue lies deeper.
5. Theresa on December 13, 2005 04:20 AM writes...
Very interesting!
I wonder how children on the autistic spectrum would compare to non-autists and to chimps?
People on the autistic spectrum appear to have impaired 'mirror-neuron' systems, i.e. the mirror neurons of autists "respond only to what they [themselves] do and not to the doings of others."* Autists/Aspies also typically have difficulties imitating others, very likely due to their impaired mirror-neuron system.**
On the other hand, high-functioning individuals on the autistic spectrum are typically better in the realm of "folk physics" than non-autists (who are better at "folk psychology") -- that is they have a better feel for the mechanics of how things work.***
Given these two characteristics -- poor imitation skills & good folk physics -- I'd wager that children on the autistic spectrum might perform more like chimps and skip those unnecessary steps.
I think it's a good thing that humans are willing to accept that there might be reasons for something that aren't apparent -- yet. I recently started a new job and was trained to do a whole bunch of things that I thought were pointless at first: then, as I continued in the job, I realized there was a reason for all the "pointless" things I was shown. Don't tear down walls unless you know why they were erected in the first place. Don't be discouraged.
My take on this data is closer to Molly's. If children (and many adults) assume that others do things for a reason and not whimsically unless there is evidence for whimsy, then Charlotte would do what she had seen the experimenters do because she would believe they had good reasons for their actions, even if she couldn't figure out what they were. That is, she didn't do it for "rote" reasons, but for "reason" reasons. Surely scepticism takes some time to develop and it is the lack of scepticism that leads her to "blindly" follow. I would assume that the reason the chimpanzees did not follow the experimeter is not that they have a highly developed sense of sceptcism.
If humans follow the leader and do all the peripheral but apparently unnecessary things the leader (or group we want to be associated with) does, rather than just doing what needs to be done, what might the implications be with regard to religious (and other) rituals that humans follow that often seem so bizarre or at least pointless, but which we perform because...well just because that's how it's done (and it seems "important").
Interesting experiment. I wonder if there was any thought put into the fact that the demonstration was given by a human in both cases? In other words, would a child react differently if she were watching a chimp slide the bolt and tap on the top?
I think it would be unwise to conclude that chimps are more logical based on the results of this study.
Some factors that should be considered include:
a) the desire of the children to please the demonstrator by doing the task in the way that it was taught
b) as mentioned above - the concept that the children may have felt there might be non-evident reasons for the extra steps
c) the concept that the chimps may lack the intelligence to consider indirect effects resulting from their reckless disregard of the seemingly unnecessary steps
To make this clearer, imagine that the experiment was set up so that skipping the seemingly unnecessary steps did in fact cause an indirect negative result (such as the participant being sprayed with a foul odor). I would assume that if the experiment were re-run in this manner, the children would end up looking a lot smarter by comparison.
There are several factors that may contaminate the results of this study.
First and foremost, we know from Milgram’s classic psychology study that adult humans are susceptible to blindly following instructions – even if those instructions lead them to compromise their morals or logical thinking ability. The effect is especially notable when the person giving the commands is an authority. The children in the chimp/child study would be more likely to assign to the researcher a position of authority, thus making them more likely to follow directions strictly.
Second, the means of communication are incredibly different between the two groups. The child receives both verbal instructions and a demonstration, while the chimp can only watch the actions of the researcher. This solidifies even more in the mind of the child what is necessary to complete the task. Thus, the situation is not completely controlled between the two groups.
Finally, the rewards have vastly different meanings to the two groups. For the child, the actual reward being sought is likely – as other posters have mentioned – pleasing the researcher (and the parents that signed them up for the study). Thus, they will have a heightened sense of desire to follow directions. The reward for the chimp is food, which is tied strongly to their survival instinct – a very different part of their psyche.
Unless these factors can be more controlled, I am not sure that the conclusions drawn from the study have merit. We already know from human infant imitation studies that we are born with the innate desire to imitate. I do not believe this new study advances our understanding with enough justification to draw new conclusions.
this study is pretty loosey-goosey anyway;is there anybody with commentary on those valsequillo "footprints"?, i know the Renne/White/Feinberg group is a "dream team" but a lot of pictures(pathways?) do look like hominid type prints. Owen Lovejoy at Kent State is the expert on this subject-what does he think?
14. Stephen on December 16, 2005 04:33 PM writes...
Humans and chimps mature at unique rates. Human brain physiology takes a bit to get going, but no one will argue that they are higher functioning when they get there. So it's going to be very hard to have a chimp and a human that are "the same age".
Show a math major how to get from A to B, then from B to C, and he knows how to get from A to C. Even when A and C are nearby, he goes by way of B.
16. Gerry L on December 24, 2005 03:01 AM writes...
I spend quite a lot of time around adult chimpanzees. I have never done any studies, but I was not surprised by the results you reported. My experience has been that chimps are not inclined to imitate. Imitation is one way to solve a problem, but they have a plenty of others in their toolkit.
Corante: technology, business, media, law, and culture news from the blogosphere
OUR PUBLICATIONS:
Corante is a trusted, unbiased source on technology, business, law, science, and culture that’s authored by leading commentators and thinkers in their respective fields. Corante also produces premium conferences and publications that help decision-makers better understand their industries and the world around them.
Corante Blogs
Corante Blogs examine, through the eyes of leading observers, analysts, thinkers, and doers, critical themes and memes in technology, business, law, science, and culture.
Vin Crosbie, on the challenges, financial and otherwise, that newspaper publishers are facing: "The real problem, Mr. Newspaperman, isn't that your content isn't online or isn't online with multimedia. It's your content. Specifically, it's what you report, which stories you publish, and how you publish them to people, who, by the way, have very different individual interests. The problem is the content you're giving them, stupid; not the platform its on."
by Vin Crosbie in Rebuilding Media
There's a problem in the drug industry that people have recognized for some years, but we're not that much closer to dealing with it than we were then. We keep coming up with these technologies and techniques which seem as if they might be able to help us with some of our nastiest problems - I'm talking about genomics in all its guises, and metabolic profiling, and naturally the various high-throughput screening platforms, and others. But whether these are helping or not (and opinions sure do vary), one thing that they all have in common is that they generate enormous heaps of data.
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Now that the Web labor market is saturated and Web design a static profession, it's not surprising that 'user experience' designers and researchers who've spent their careers online are looking for new worlds to conquer. Some are returning to the “old media” as directors and producers. More are now doing offline consulting (service experience design, social policy design, exhibition design, and so on) under the 'user experience' aegis. They argue that the lessons they've learned on the Web can be applied to phenomena in the physical and social worlds. But there are enormous differences...
by Bob Jacobson in Total Experience
Clay Shirky, in deconstructing Second Life hype: "Second Life is heading towards two million users. Except it isn’t, really... I suspect Second Life is largely a 'Try Me' virus, where reports of a strange and wonderful new thing draw the masses to log in and try it, but whose ability to retain anything but a fraction of those users is limited. The pattern of a Try Me virus is a rapid spread of first time users, most of whom drop out quickly, with most of the dropouts becoming immune to later use."
by Clay Shirky in Many-to-Many
Over the last few years we've seen old barriers to creativity coming down, one after the other. New technologies and services makes it trivial to publish text, whether by blog or by print-on-demand. Digital photography has democratised a previously expensive hobby. And we're seeing the barriers to movie-making crumble, with affordable high-quality cameras and video hosting provided by YouTube or Google Video and their ilk... Music making has long been easy for anyone to engage in, but technology has made high-quality recording possible without specialised equipment, and the internet has revolutionised distribution, drastically disintermediating the music industry... What's left? Software maybe? Or maybe not."
by Suw Charman in Strange Attractor
Derek Lowe on the news that the Nobel Prize for medicine has gone to Craig Mello and Andrew Fire for their breakthrough work: "RNA interference is probably going to have a long climb before it starts curing many diseases, because many of those problems are even tougher than usual in its case. That doesn't take away from the discovery, though, any more than the complications of off-target effects take away from it when you talk about RNAi's research uses in cell culture. The fact that RNA interference is trickier than it first looked, in vivo or in vitro, is only to be expected. What breakthrough isn't?"
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Andrew Phelps: "Recently my WoW guild has been having a bit of a debate on the merits of Player-vs.-Player (PvP) within Azeroth. My personal opinion on this is that PvP has its merits, and can be incredible fun, but the system within WoW is horridly, horribly broken. It takes into account the concept of the battle, but battle without consequence, without emotive context, and most importantly, without honor..."
From later in the piece: "When I talk about this with people (thus far anyway) I typically get one of two responses, either 'yeah, right on!' or 'hey, it’s war, and war isn’t honorable – grow the hell up'. There is a lot to be said for that argument – but the problem is that war in the real historical world has very different constraints that are utterly absent from fantasized worlds..."
by Andrew Phelps in Got Game
Derek Lowe: "So, you're developing a drug candidate. You've settled on what looks like a good compound - it has the activity you want in your mouse model of the disease, it's not too hard to make, and it's not toxic. Everything looks fine. Except. . .one slight problem. Although the compound has good blood levels in the mouse and in the dog, in rats it's terrible. For some reason, it just doesn't get up there. Probably some foul metabolic pathway peculiar to rats (whose innards are adapted, after all, for dealing with every kind of garbage that comes along). So, is this a problem?.."
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Bob Jacobson, on shopping at his local Albertsons supermarket where he had "one of the worst customer experiences" of his life: "Say what you will about the Safeway chain or the Birkenstock billionaires who charge through the roof for Whole Foods' organic fare, they know how to create shopping environments that create a more pleasurable experience, at its best (as at Whole Foods) quite enjoyable. Even the warehouses like Costco and its smaller counterpart, Smart & Final, do just fine: they have no pretentions, but neither do they dump virtual garbage on the consumer merely to create another trivial revenue stream, all for the sake of promotions in the marketing department..."
by Strange Attractor in Total Experience
Kevin Anderson: "First off, I want to say that I really admire the ambition of the Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free. It is one of the boldest statements made by any media company that participation needs to be central to a radical revamp of traditional content strategies... It is, therfore, not hugely surprising to find that Comment is Free is having a few teething troubles..."
by Kevin Anderson in strange
Corante Developments
Here you will find the latest news from Corante including updates on upcoming events, new initiatives, product and publication launches, and more.
It was with shock that I returned home from a night out last night to hear the news of Russell's passing. How terribly, terribly sad. Most of all for him, as he'd seemed buoyant, healthier, and content when I'd last seen him several months ago when he was in town - he was happy that work was busy and rewarding and was having fun with it but most of all was thrilled about how things were going with his girlfriend, Ellen.
I've known Russ for what seems like ages now (in a good way) though in fact it's only been about six or seven years since the early days of "commercial" blogging when he started working on various projects at and around Corante. He was a diligent, committed, and prolific journalist who had impressively and more ably than others been able to make the transition from the old-school way of doing things to the new. He had his quirks, as we all do, but I greatly valued that he was good-natured, collegial, reliable, quick to adopt, trustworthy, eager to learn, and earnest in his interest in helping others better understand what he wrote about.
He was also, it should be said, a kind and thoughtful soul and it was the rare conversation in which he didn't ask, with sincerity, about what he knew of my life, e.g. our new babe, and we didn't talk as seemingly old friends about our lives and respective paths. I can't say I knew him very well, of course, but in our half-dozen get-togethers over the years and dozens of conversations I got a good sense of the man: he cared about learning and sharing and his bearing was earnest and ego-less and we'll miss him for that and more.
We wanted to let you know about a discount to New Comm Forum, the annual event event put on by our friends at the Society for New Communications Research. The conference, which runs from April 22-25, will feature many of the field's leading observers and is an important event for those looking, in the words of SNCR, to "better understand new communications tools, technologies and emerging modes of communication, and their effect on traditional media, professional communications, business, culture and society."
Check out the event's website and, if you're interested in attending, be sure to use the code supplied below for a special discount.
EARLY BIRD PRICING - NOW UNTIL FEB. 15th
NewComm Forum Conference - $995.
Pre-conference or post-conference session - $195.
SNCR Jam only - $75.
REGULAR PRICING - AFTER FEB. 15th
NewComm Forum Conference - $1095.
Pre-conference or post-conference session - $249.
SNCR Jam only - $75.
CORANTE READER DISCOUNTS
NewComm Forum Conference - save an additional $100
Use discount code: NCF08100
Pre-conference or post-conference session - save an additional $45.
Use discount code: NCF0845
We've been remiss in letting you know about two new independent blogs we've helped launch in the past month or so.
The first - the ConversationHub - is a companion blog to Supernova 2007, the latest edition of Kevin Werbach's excellent conference on all things connected. As the conference site says: "Supernova examines the effects of an increasingly connected world on business, life, and public policy. As disparate physical and social networks link with one another, a new societal network is rapidly evolving... The New Network is greater than the sum of its parts. It challenges us to re-create everything from the software and hardware we use...to the business models we employ...to the information and entertainment we encounter...to the ways we work and play."
Visit the ConversationHub and you'll find several dozen leading thinkers and doers, led by a few notable ringleaders, weighing in on the themes and trends of the day in technology and business. We encourage you to tune in - feel free to comment and even suggest topics and ideas for posts.
The second blog - Mobile Messaging 2.0 - convenes about a dozen top observers of the mobile messaging space for an intense discussion of the industry and where it's headed. Among its contributors are leading commentators, journalists and players in the field - tune in and you'll find them touching on topics such as mobile device design, messaging platforms, market pressures, user-generated content, interface design, and much, much more.
Also, if you visit the site, which is sponsored by Airwide Solutions, this week, you'll find live coverage and commentary from Global Messaging 2007, to which several of our contributors have traveled to hear about the latest developments from a broad spectrum of the industry's players and providers.
Be sure to catch the Office 2.0 Conference and hear from and engage with leading thinkers and doers in this exciting new market. Find out more here and be sure to use the code "GLDRK" for a special discount for Corante readers.
1. Apesnake on December 12, 2005 11:18 PM writes...
"It turns out that chimpanzees can be a lot more logical than children"
True, but children shed less. They should really be comparing the learning ability of the chimpanzees with that of the fellows of the discovery institute. Now that might be enlightening.
Permalink to Comment2. Daniel Newby on December 13, 2005 01:27 AM writes...
And how do you explain a difference like this as the result of random chance? You don't. It's conclusive proof that an intelligent Creator designed humans.
Designed them to memorize video game levels.
Permalink to Comment3. Jason Malloy on December 13, 2005 03:33 AM writes...
This was also the experience of Winthrop and Luella Kellog, the psychologist couple that raised a baby chimp along side their infant son, Donald. Maybe they expected the chimp to act more like a human, but what actually happened was the chimp acted like a chimp and their son imitated the chimp! Key words: 'biting' and 'noisy hooting'.
Permalink to Comment4. Kai-Mikael Jää-Aro on December 13, 2005 04:05 AM writes...
Interesting. In the book "Rigidity of behavior" by Luchins & Luchins, the authors confirmed through a long series of experiments that humans, having found out a solution to a problem, will tenaciously stick to that solution method even when it is suboptimal (or even wrong). In the book it was hinted that this might be due to a misplaced emphasis on rote-learning in schools, but perhaps the issue lies deeper.
Permalink to Comment5. Theresa on December 13, 2005 04:20 AM writes...
Very interesting!
I wonder how children on the autistic spectrum would compare to non-autists and to chimps?
People on the autistic spectrum appear to have impaired 'mirror-neuron' systems, i.e. the mirror neurons of autists "respond only to what they [themselves] do and not to the doings of others."* Autists/Aspies also typically have difficulties imitating others, very likely due to their impaired mirror-neuron system.**
On the other hand, high-functioning individuals on the autistic spectrum are typically better in the realm of "folk physics" than non-autists (who are better at "folk psychology") -- that is they have a better feel for the mechanics of how things work.***
Given these two characteristics -- poor imitation skills & good folk physics -- I'd wager that children on the autistic spectrum might perform more like chimps and skip those unnecessary steps.
*"Autism Linked To Mirror Neuron Dysfunction"
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/04/050411204511.htm
**"Impaired mirror-image imitation in Asperger and high-functioning autistic subjects"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=12593801&query_hl=2
***"The autism/engineering link: a replication of Baron-Cohen, et al. (1997)
Permalink to Commenthttp://www.int-pediatrics.org/PDF/Volume%2017/17-1/pd%2060-61%20mearns.pdf
6. Molly on December 13, 2005 12:15 PM writes...
I think it's a good thing that humans are willing to accept that there might be reasons for something that aren't apparent -- yet. I recently started a new job and was trained to do a whole bunch of things that I thought were pointless at first: then, as I continued in the job, I realized there was a reason for all the "pointless" things I was shown. Don't tear down walls unless you know why they were erected in the first place. Don't be discouraged.
Permalink to Comment7. Stan on December 14, 2005 08:54 AM writes...
My take on this data is closer to Molly's. If children (and many adults) assume that others do things for a reason and not whimsically unless there is evidence for whimsy, then Charlotte would do what she had seen the experimenters do because she would believe they had good reasons for their actions, even if she couldn't figure out what they were. That is, she didn't do it for "rote" reasons, but for "reason" reasons. Surely scepticism takes some time to develop and it is the lack of scepticism that leads her to "blindly" follow. I would assume that the reason the chimpanzees did not follow the experimeter is not that they have a highly developed sense of sceptcism.
Permalink to Comment8. B. J. on December 14, 2005 11:06 AM writes...
If humans follow the leader and do all the peripheral but apparently unnecessary things the leader (or group we want to be associated with) does, rather than just doing what needs to be done, what might the implications be with regard to religious (and other) rituals that humans follow that often seem so bizarre or at least pointless, but which we perform because...well just because that's how it's done (and it seems "important").
Permalink to Comment9. Dave on December 14, 2005 07:34 PM writes...
Interesting experiment. I wonder if there was any thought put into the fact that the demonstration was given by a human in both cases? In other words, would a child react differently if she were watching a chimp slide the bolt and tap on the top?
Permalink to Comment10. Chris on December 15, 2005 11:14 AM writes...
Good points above.
I think it would be unwise to conclude that chimps are more logical based on the results of this study.
Some factors that should be considered include:
a) the desire of the children to please the demonstrator by doing the task in the way that it was taught
b) as mentioned above - the concept that the children may have felt there might be non-evident reasons for the extra steps
c) the concept that the chimps may lack the intelligence to consider indirect effects resulting from their reckless disregard of the seemingly unnecessary steps
To make this clearer, imagine that the experiment was set up so that skipping the seemingly unnecessary steps did in fact cause an indirect negative result (such as the participant being sprayed with a foul odor). I would assume that if the experiment were re-run in this manner, the children would end up looking a lot smarter by comparison.
Permalink to Comment11. Zeteo Eurisko on December 16, 2005 01:36 PM writes...
There are several factors that may contaminate the results of this study.
First and foremost, we know from Milgram’s classic psychology study that adult humans are susceptible to blindly following instructions – even if those instructions lead them to compromise their morals or logical thinking ability. The effect is especially notable when the person giving the commands is an authority. The children in the chimp/child study would be more likely to assign to the researcher a position of authority, thus making them more likely to follow directions strictly.
Second, the means of communication are incredibly different between the two groups. The child receives both verbal instructions and a demonstration, while the chimp can only watch the actions of the researcher. This solidifies even more in the mind of the child what is necessary to complete the task. Thus, the situation is not completely controlled between the two groups.
Finally, the rewards have vastly different meanings to the two groups. For the child, the actual reward being sought is likely – as other posters have mentioned – pleasing the researcher (and the parents that signed them up for the study). Thus, they will have a heightened sense of desire to follow directions. The reward for the chimp is food, which is tied strongly to their survival instinct – a very different part of their psyche.
Unless these factors can be more controlled, I am not sure that the conclusions drawn from the study have merit. We already know from human infant imitation studies that we are born with the innate desire to imitate. I do not believe this new study advances our understanding with enough justification to draw new conclusions.
Permalink to Comment12. BOKE on December 16, 2005 02:38 PM writes...
[rhetorical verse / haiku]
Doesn't this explain
why monkeys don't need artists
to "un-play" patterns?
# # # BOKE {smile}
Permalink to Comment13. jim on December 16, 2005 03:25 PM writes...
this study is pretty loosey-goosey anyway;is there anybody with commentary on those valsequillo "footprints"?, i know the Renne/White/Feinberg group is a "dream team" but a lot of pictures(pathways?) do look like hominid type prints. Owen Lovejoy at Kent State is the expert on this subject-what does he think?
Permalink to Comment14. Stephen on December 16, 2005 04:33 PM writes...
Humans and chimps mature at unique rates. Human brain physiology takes a bit to get going, but no one will argue that they are higher functioning when they get there. So it's going to be very hard to have a chimp and a human that are "the same age".
Show a math major how to get from A to B, then from B to C, and he knows how to get from A to C. Even when A and C are nearby, he goes by way of B.
Permalink to Comment15. Ty on December 22, 2005 02:51 PM writes...
Proclaiming themselves wise, they became fools.
Permalink to Comment16. Gerry L on December 24, 2005 03:01 AM writes...
I spend quite a lot of time around adult chimpanzees. I have never done any studies, but I was not surprised by the results you reported. My experience has been that chimps are not inclined to imitate. Imitation is one way to solve a problem, but they have a plenty of others in their toolkit.
Permalink to Comment17. Sarah on February 16, 2006 03:14 AM writes...
That's interesting. But I can not even imagine what that experiment looked like.
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