Mike's ego trip

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and also Shraff dissapoints me a bit too aswell

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Well, mike, I have got to say that your non-apology to Charles disappointed me. ("I'm sorry, charles, but I'm actually not, and I am also justified in calling you names"."Your refusal to admit that you have no basis for thinking that NDE's happen at any particular time is also disappointing to me.You used to be much more honest in your discussions, mike. You used to be able to take in information and recognize when you had made an error. You used to be a much better dabator from a rational standpoint.Now you seem to be sliding into dogmatism and refusal to doubt anything which you prefer to be true, no matter how much evidence is presented to you or how contrary to logic your preferred view is.That is the most disappointing thing of all to me.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 02-26-2005 20:05 AM

Another example,Quite astounding experiments have been conducted with Capuchin monkeys who display a wide range of astounding traits.One experiment put two monkeys in adjoining rooms with only a small window in the transparent wall. One Monkey had a flint type stone, the other a fixed tube with a thick film lid that can only be opened with a sharp object. In the container are about 8 hazelnuts. Both monkeys can see the nuts, both would like the nuts but they have to work together to get them.Rock monkey takes the rock and smashes it on a hard plate to fracture it (creates a flint tool) he then takes the tool to the window and gives it to nut monkey. Nut monkey then uses the tool to pierce the film lid on the nuts.Then , and here’s the killer, nut monkey takes about half of the nuts and gives them to rock monkey!!! Cooperation and reciprocity.Also on the topic of morphological traits, the capuchin monkey lacks sharp claws, that would have opened the container with ease so the creation and use of a flint type tool puts a sharp ‘claw’ at the end of their arms they don’t normally possess.I think this was on an episode of the BBC program ‘Wild life on One’--edit--added comment on morphological traits --This message has been edited by ohnhai, 27 February 2005 12:32 AM

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I see Mikes post as a statement about how he as a creationist regards POM, more than a selfish post on his behalf, perse or as a jest. I've been in town about 2 years and got my first POM in January. Yah, it required a two year wait, but to get it from her majesty, the queen, herself made it well worth the wait.

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Point taken, but he has stated that he nominated that post because he thought it was worthy enough, not because he wanted to protest the seeming lack of creationist POTMs.

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1. Being creos are outnumbered many fold by evos, it would be right and logical that there should be quite a larger proportion of evo POMs than creo POMs.

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2. I and my fellow creos, especially ID types, being relatively few, can't possibly even read, let alone post in many threads, whereas there's plenty of evos in aggregate to cover for all the board for recognition of good posts.

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3. If I and my fellow creos were to be as careful to support one another as good bud Mike has been for me when I've needed him in other ways, I/we might've noticed POM quality posts of our people so as to have given recognition when it was due. Possibly I/we have been remiss in keeping track of one another's stuff so as to notice POM quality posts for recognition. So what I'm saying, maybe this would be a better approach to the POM problem. Having said the above, I'm not suggesting that we should, as creos go on a search, quote mining for POM material so as to stack the deck on our behalf.

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Well-said, my friend. An elegant solution, I think - and I of course trust that the creationists at EvC have too much integrity to stack the deck, as it were.As for Mike's comment about being disappointed in me... the feeling is entirely mutual.The Rockhound

Mike - are you serious?You haven't responded to the list in message #38 of this thread - do none of those examples (brought up before) falsify your statement?What is the specific difference between the spider example and the examples that I and others have given?I really am trying to understand your logic here - perhaps you could explain?Thanks...

Sorry, my BS detector just went off big time. No criticism of you, Ohnai, but is there any link to the data? Animal behaviorists are right up there with Parapsychologists when it comes to 'interpreting' their own data.Does the monkey share 'about' 50% of the nuts EVERY time? Or just once in a while. Or just on that program? (sorry I meant 'programme,' it was BBC right?) I have to wonder what kind of reward the monkeys get from their researchers if they do the 'experiment' (read 'routine') correctly. I also have to wonder how many times 'rock monkey' ended up throwing his feces at 'nut monkey' out of frustration when 'nut monkey' ate all the goods.Ideally I'd like to see how many times the experiment was run, how much help the monkeys had 'learning' to cooperate, how frequently cooperation and sharing occurred, etc.I realize you probably don't have access to this info, but that's the data I'd need to see before I felt comfortable accepting it as and example that falsifies Mike's claim.This message has been edited by custard, 02-27-2005 23:05 AMThis message has been edited by custard, 02-27-2005 23:24 AM

Hi again, good bud. Oopsydo! My sincere apologies for missing this'n. A belated thanks very much!! Well, this shows how you've been doing your stuff here and I've been the remiss on in this area.My apologies also to all for erroneously stating my first one was in Jan o5.

A sincere thanks for the nice comment, Schraf!

Yah, I see that, but not sure there wasn't the other underlying reason from some of his comments. Hey, thanks to you for the nice comments too and thanks again for time and effort on my behalf.

I'm NOT piling on Mike, but I think Pink Sasquatch did provide examples every bit as compelling, albeit mundane, as the aquatic spider. (C'mon Pink, is poking a stick into a nest full of ants anywhere near as dramatic as a scuba diving arachnid?) I agree with this statement. IMO there is no comparable analogue in the animal kingdom.

Mike,There's a really excellent speech done by Dr. Robert Sapolsky during a conference called "Brain, Mind, and Emergence" at Stanford U. in 2003. Sapolsky is a neuroendocrinologist.His entire talk is all about what makes humans special, as compared to other animals. His answer is in the same vain as this recent post of yours--that, yes, we're special, no, it isn't due to unique traits, but rather due to the degree and application of these non-unique traits. He goes in depth with many examples which he knows from his own research and reading. His conclusion is one which is harmonious between known historical evidence (i.e. evolution) and your view.
Here's the reference:Sapolsky, Robert, (2003). The Biology of Our Uniqueness. [In Becoming Human: Brain, Mind and Emergence] [online] Stanford University Available from No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.counterbalance.net/stanford/sapolsky-body.html.I would encourage all here to take a look. It's 40 minutes of fascinating science and interesting perspective. The man's an engaging speaker, and I enjoyed every minute of the talk.Ben
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Sorry cant find a link to any info on the program other than a CV page for the composer and also couldn’t find any links to the research ( will mail the BBC to see if they will release any info)But the program was very interesting. And yes while the experimental procedure would bee good to look at in regard to that particular experiment and others, studies in the wild also showed some interesting traits that shed a similar light on the monkeys in question.Namely there is this nut or something similar that they eat, but it’s too tough for them to bite through, so they climb up on this big boulder and prop the nuts in little indents and whack them with large rounded stones. The boulder has obviously been in use for generations by the ware on it’s upper surface. But when you study the hammer rocks you find they are not local and, it seems, were gathered from a river some miles to the west and brought to this boulder for this communal nut cracking.Not too bad so far we have tool use and tool creation. But the next thing is the really interesting bit interesting bit. As it happens the nut doesn’t grow locally either and can generally be found a mile or so east from the hammer platform. Also the nut is protected by a very fibrous husk that defeats any attempt on the monkey’s part to bludgeon it open. They however have found a solution.They wander to the area where the nuts grow and climb the trees and pick an amount of nuts, but they don’t take the nuts they pick. These are left to rot down a bit so weaken the outer husk enough to get through it. The monkeys pick some fresh nuts then take an equivalent amount of rotted nuts in return and then heads off to the communal anvil to open his meal.This level of cooperation and forward planning astounds me, normally you would expect a wild animal to be out for themselves, and just take the nuts that were ready either by wind fall or the harvesting of others, but they understand that to maintain a supply for them each time they go to gather nuts they must harvest some fresh ones for the communal larder.As I said I will try and get more info on this program.--edit-- found some info, see the following links , but nothing yet that stipulates the methodology, practice and result of the mentiones experiment -- BBC link; some basic info on the brown capuchin
Another link regarding Brown Capuchin reasers (this was also in the program)
A link in regard to resiprocity in the brown capuchin
Experiment to coperation in Brown Capuchins
ok still not the experiment I mentioned but still interesting stuffThis message has been edited by ohnhai, 28 February 2005 12:52 AM

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I've been in town about 2 years and got my first POM in January. Yah, it required a two year wait, but to get it from her majesty, the queen, herself made it well worth the wait.

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1. Being creos are outnumbered many fold by evos, it would be right and logical that there should be quite a larger proportion of evo POMs than creo POMs.

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This is not directed at you in particular buz but I am curious why POTM would even be an explicit goal of posting here? I'm an evo and have been here about the same amount of time as you and have been nominated 2x...and both times by Quetzal. I think what creos and evos should be aiming for are post that generate sustained (and interesting) debate. I for example have a fairly miserable record in this regard compared to you or mike the wiz. Virtually all my posts or topics I start die after about 3 maybe 5 responses tops..part of the reason I have cut my posting way down. You and mike have several over the 300 post limits threads. Frankly, I rather have that than the talking to myself posts that I have experienced since my favorite debate opponent Peter Borger was banned...though I do appreciate that the two of you can become overwhelmed by multiple people debating at the same time with just the two of you.

To add to Ohnai's links above;FB de Waal has done a lot of work on cooperation in capuchins, and he is definitely not an anthropomorphism-prone animal behaviorist of the type you criticize. "de Waal FB" put into http://www.pubmed.org will give you plenty of interesting abstracts. I'll list a few interesting refs below, but to waylay some of your specific concerns: The researchers are not training these monkeys to do 'tricks'. The only reward is the shared food reward that they work to get. Statistical analyses are applied to the research like any other - if non-cooperative feces-throwing confounded results, they would not be significant, and thus not publishable. In many papers certain groups (age, sex) excel at a task while others fail, and the failings of those groups are reported. The monkeys are not taught to cooperate - they are often naive to the experimental conditions, or have simply been shown how to manipulate a situation to get the food (but not shown how to cooperate). Check some of the sources below for specifics - the one Ohnai mentioned is not among them, by the way...It may also ease your mind to realize that cooperation and sharing is part of natural social interactions in wild monkeys and apes. The degree of sharing is proportional to degree of relation and labor put toward getting the food. This is real research, and not fubsy "look at what my monkey can do" tricks...

Thanks for the links Ohnai. Interesting stuff.I thought the last one, 'Experiment to cooperation in Brown Capuchins,' was certainly the most detailed. I'm not surprised the monkeys cooperated in this experiment (don't they display similar behavior in the wild?); but I did find it interesting that the success rate for that experiment was so low.Also the experiment does seem to indicate that the monkeys communicate visually to some degree; but it could also be that the monkeys figured out that it wasn't worth pulling the rope/lever unless they knew their partner in the cage next to them was also doing it - which they could only verify visually.I know none of these is the experiment they showed on BBC, but I appreciate the effort.Pink Sasquatch: I looked on Pubmed, but I couldn't find any raw data, nor anything about the controls or actual parameters of the experiment like Ohnai's link provided.One of the reaons I am so skeptical about the conclusions reached in the abstracts I did find on pubmed (pretty much the same things you posted), is that I have seen data on similar experiments with chimps showing the exact opposite - that chimps have incredible difficulty mastering the 'bigger reward later for immediate reward now' concept.In those cases the chimp A would not do something like split the reward 50-50 with chimp B; chimp A would simply eat the reward himself.I'm certainly not saying de Waal is a quack, and perhaps it was a bit unfair to compare him to parapsychologists without knowing anything about him; but my experience with animal behavior experiments is that the more impressive the claim, the more subjective the conclusion on the part of the researchers. Especially when it comes to communication and concepts like sharing, etc.It also isn't like the BBC has never shown misleading information as fact before.The experiment sounds great and I'd love to see the data, and I think requesting the data before accepting the conclusion of the study, like ANY scientific claim, is fair.I remember an animal communication thread last year where someone posted an item about an African gray parrot who could actually communicate - not just repeat phrases and words learned as tricks. Sounded great. I requested the data. Someone posted the links to the article, which showed the amazing conclusions of the researcher; however, when I went to the homepage of the 'owner/researcher' of the parrot, I found that the woman also claimed the parrot had psychic abilities. This wasn't mentioned in the initial article, nor did the person who proffered the article as evidence know this until I pointed it out.

After your comments, I too am interested in the details of the experiment I saw on TV.To this end I have emailed Dr SF Brosnan,(one of the experts in this area) to see if she know of this experiment and any online data for itI wait with baited breath