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Member (Idle past 289 days) Posts: 4149 From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Mike's ego trip | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
nator Member (Idle past 2426 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: 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
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ohnhai Member (Idle past 5418 days) Posts: 649 From: Melbourne, Australia Joined: |
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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IrishRockhound Member (Idle past 4693 days) Posts: 569 From: Ireland Joined: |
quote: 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.
quote: 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
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pink sasquatch Member (Idle past 6279 days) Posts: 1567 Joined: |
You're the first to have falsified my statement according to the parameters I stated. I am assuming everyone else was being wilfully obtuse or you're just the first one to understand me. 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...
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custard Inactive Member |
ohnai writes: Then , and here’s the killer, nut monkey takes about half of the nuts and gives them to rock monkey!!! Cooperation and reciprocity. 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 AM This message has been edited by custard, 02-27-2005 23:24 AM
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Buzsaw Inactive Member |
Buz my friend. I must refute myself, and you. Maybe you didn't notice this, Here Nobody's fault - just one of those things. It's not too late to be happy for the nomination. 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.
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Buzsaw Inactive Member |
A sincere thanks for the nice comment, Schraf!
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Buzsaw Inactive Member |
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. 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.
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custard Inactive Member |
mtw writes: You're the first to have falsified my statement according to the parameters I stated. I am assuming everyone else was being wilfully obtuse or you're just the first one to understand me.I do take this as a falsification pertaining to breathing under water. 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?)
mtw writes: Now my argument becomes somewhat quantative, in that I still think humans posess an overwhelming ability to overcome multiple natural traits it has not got. Is this reasonable? I agree with this statement. IMO there is no comparable analogue in the animal kingdom.
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Ben! Member (Idle past 1655 days) Posts: 1161 From: Hayward, CA Joined: |
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. BenNot Found
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ohnhai Member (Idle past 5418 days) Posts: 649 From: Melbourne, Australia Joined: |
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 capuchinAnother 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 stuff This message has been edited by ohnhai, 28 February 2005 12:52 AM
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Mammuthus Member (Idle past 6732 days) Posts: 3085 From: Munich, Germany Joined: |
quote: 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.
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pink sasquatch Member (Idle past 6279 days) Posts: 1567 Joined: |
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. 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:
I have to wonder what kind of reward the monkeys get from their researchers if they do the 'experiment' (read 'routine') correctly. The researchers are not training these monkeys to do 'tricks'. The only reward is the shared food reward that they work to get.
Does the monkey share 'about' 50% of the nuts EVERY time? Or just once in a while. Or just on that program?... 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. 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.
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. 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.
Nature. 2003 Sep 18;425(6955):297-9. Monkeys reject unequal pay. Brosnan SF, De Waal FB. During the evolution of cooperation it may have become critical for individuals to compare their own efforts and pay-offs with those of others. Negative reactions may occur when expectations are violated. One theory proposes that aversion to inequity can explain human cooperation within the bounds of the rational choice model, and may in fact be more inclusive than previous explanations. Although there exists substantial cultural variation in its particulars, this 'sense of fairness' is probably a human universal that has been shown to prevail in a wide variety of circumstances. However, we are not the only cooperative animals, hence inequity aversion may not be uniquely human. Many highly cooperative nonhuman species seem guided by a set of expectations about the outcome of cooperation and the division of resources. Here we demonstrate that a nonhuman primate, the brown capuchin monkey (Cebus apella), responds negatively to unequal reward distribution in exchanges with a human experimenter. Monkeys refused to participate if they witnessed a conspecific obtain a more attractive reward for equal effort, an effect amplified if the partner received such a reward without any effort at all. These reactions support an early evolutionary origin of inequity aversion. PMID: 13679918 Anim Behav. 2000 Oct;60(4):523-529. Capuchins do cooperate: the advantage of an intuitive task. Mendres KA, de Waal FB We used a cooperative pulling task to examine proximate aspects of cooperation in captive brown capuchin monkeys, Cebus apella. Specifically, our goal was to determine whether capuchins can learn the contingency between their partner's participation in a task and its successful completion. We examined whether the monkeys visually monitored their partners and adjusted pulling behaviour according to their partner's presence. Results on five same-sex pairs of adults indicate that (1) elimination of visual contact between partners significantly decreased success, (2) subjects glanced at their partners significantly more in cooperative tests than in control tests in which no partner-assistance was needed, and (3) they pulled at significantly higher rates when their partner was present rather than absent. Therefore, in contrast to a previous report by Chalmeau et al. (1997, Animal Behaviour, 54, 1215-1225), cooperating capuchins do seem able to take the role of their partner into account. However, the type of task used may be an important factor affecting the level of coordination achieved. Copyright 2000 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. PMID: 11032655 Anim Behav. 2000 Aug;60(2):253-261. Attitudinal reciprocity in food sharing among brown capuchin monkeys. de Waal FB. Capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) share food even if separated by a mesh restraint. Pairs of capuchins were moved into a test chamber in which one of them received apple pieces for 20 min, and the other received carrot pieces for the next 20 min. Previous research had shown a correlation between the rate of food transfer in both directions across female-female dyads. The present study confirmed this result. Reciprocity across dyads can be explained, however, by symmetry in affiliative and tolerant tendencies between two individuals, provided these tendencies determine food sharing. The present study was designed to exclude this symmetry-based explanation by testing each pair (N=16) of adult females on six separate occasions. There existed a significant covariation across tests of sharing in both dyadic directions, a result unexplained by relationship symmetry. Moreover, control procedures (i.e. testing of a food possessor without a partner, or testing of two individuals with the same food or two different foods at the same time) indicated that behaviour during food trials is not fully explained by mutual attraction or aversion. The monkeys take the quality of their own and the partner's food into account, and possessors limit transfers of high-quality foods. Instead of a symmetry-based reciprocity explanation, a mediating role of memory is suggested, and a mirroring of social attitude between partners. Copyright 2000 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. PMID: 10973728 This is real research, and not fubsy "look at what my monkey can do" tricks...
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custard Inactive Member |
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.
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ohnhai Member (Idle past 5418 days) Posts: 649 From: Melbourne, Australia Joined: |
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 it I wait with baited breath
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