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June 09, 2005
Freakonomics
A friend sent me a link to Freakonomics and the associated column in The New York Times. The column revolves around what happens when you teach monkeys about money and the results may not quite match your expectations:
But these facts remain: When taught to use money, a group of capuchin monkeys responded quite rationally to simple incentives; responded irrationally to risky gambles; failed to save; stole when they could; used money for food and, on occasion, sex. In other words, they behaved a good bit like the creature that most of Chen's more traditional colleagues study: Homo sapiens.
Posted by Ozguru at June 9, 2005 08:30 PM
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Comments
"...stole when they could..." Surely homo sapiens wouldn't STEAL!!?? Nah. That's what separates us from monkeys. Or maybe it was the part about paying for sex? Or for food? There has to be SOMETHING that separates us from monkeys, isn't there? There isn't?
Posted by: Old Horsetail Snake at June 10, 2005 05:19 AM
I guess you could look at it one of two ways - either it is a sad comment on us humans OR it is a really sad comment on economic theories....
I seem to remember a joke told to me by an economics/mathemeatics teacher. He reckoned that Economics was the only subject in the HSC (the end-of-school, last-exam-before-university) where they could reuse previous exam papers. This was completely safe, because the answers were different every year...
Posted by: Ozguru at June 10, 2005 09:06 AM
