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Monkey Economics

Started by Captain Utopia, August 05, 2010, 05:30:15 AM

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Captain Utopia


This is an interesting video, but it's 20 minutes long and the presenter suffers from AQI?
  http://www.ted.com/talks/laurie_santos.html

So here's a summary of the bits I found interesting.


It's known that our brains don't work very well in certain circumstances.  A group of researchers wanted to tackle the question of whether this was something innate, or a result of the environments we've created for ourselves - nature vs. nurture, if you will.

The example they chose to study was loss aversion.  For example:

If I give you $1,000 - that'd be great right?  But now I give you a choice:

  A)  I can flip a coin.  If it lands heads then you get $1000 extra, else you get nothing extra.
OR
  B)  I'll just give you $500 extra, so you walk away with a guaranteed $1,500.



What do you do?  Once you have an answer, consider the alternative scenario:


I give you $2,000 this time, but give you a less appealing choice:

  A)  I can flip a coin.  If it lands heads then you get to keep all the money, else I take back $1,000.
OR
  B)  I just take back $500.



Take another moment for this one.


As it turns out, the problems are exactly the same - the safest option in all cases is the one which has no gambling or risk, yet consistently people who choose B for the first, choose A for the second.  The desire to keep all that we have makes us take more risk.  Now if you picked the rational option in both cases then you can pat yourself on the back, because you are statistically exceptional.  Then again, this isn't exactly wicca.com

:monkeydance:
The researchers created a monkey economy by creating a bunch of metal tokens, distributing them to the monkeys and creating a marketplace.  This was another cage in which a bunch of human merchants would hold out a dish containing 1-3 grapes, and would sell the contents of the dish for one token.   The merchants wore different colours and the monkeys could identify them easily as they remained consistent over time.

The monkeys picked this up really quickly - if Bob was selling 2 grapes per token, and Sue only one, then they'd trade with Bob.  The monkeys also stole tokens from other monkeys and had no concept of saving -- they'd just spend all their tokens and then go sleep off their grape binge.  So, as you can imagine, the similarities with human economies excited the researchers.

But then they implemented the loss-aversion test.  Now with new sets of merchants:

First scenario, both merchants hold out a dish showing one grape, but consistently change the deal if they are picked:

  A) Will always add one grape, for a total of two.
OR
  B) 50/50 chance of adding no extra grapes, or adding two grapes, for a total of three.



As with the humans, the monkeys quickly showed a preference for the safe bet.

Then with another set of merchants:

Both merchants hold out a dish showing three grapes, but consistently change the deal if they are picked:

  A) Will always take away one grape, for a total of two.
OR
  B) 50/50 chance of taking away no grapes, or two grapes.


As with the humans, the monkeys demonstrated loss aversion by taking the risk to keep more of what they already had.

So the conclusion is that if there are detrimental psychological traits which go back that far - we last shared a common ancestor with these monkeys about 35 million years ago - then we're really completely fucked.

Triple Zero

I like your conclusion :lulz:

is the TED talk worth watching still, or was this pretty much the gist of it?
Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

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Captain Utopia


I think it's pretty much the gist of the video - it's what stood out to me, anyway.  The presenter speculates a little bit more about how they think cognitive blind-spots might be affecting us - e.g. the housing bubble in the US - but that's more opinion than science.