Monkey business
2005-01-29 21:01:41.368833+00 by
Dan Lyke
1 comments
/. had a link to Monkeys Pay to See Female Monkey Bottoms, and, apparently images of monkeys with high standing in their pack, while the monkeys would only look at other monkeys with lower standing if they were rewarded. This was partially funded by the Cure Autism Now organization:
"One of the main problems in people with autism is that they don't
find it very motivating to look at other individuals," Platt said.
"And even when they do, they can't seem to assess information about
that individual's importance, intentions or expressions."
Having spent a little time playing some pack dominance games at work yesterday, and as I watch the spread of "podcasting", seeing what ends up popular and what doesn't, I'm thinking "hey, that's me!".
[ related topics:
Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Sociology
]
comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment Re: made: 2005-01-30 23:36:54.221438+00 by:
ebradway
Maybe introversion is really a mild form of autism?
It's interesting to watch the Flutterby crowd as time goes on. We've all been through alow together and seen many memes come and go. A pattern I do see repeat itself is:
- Flutterby readers tend to be in on the earliest stages of a meme
- Flutterby readers don't like big crowds, so they don't bother thinking about the meme scaling up
- When the meme scales up through other avenues, we still sit around ruminating in the same circles.
But I guess it comes from the fact that Flutterby was created to facilitate communication among a certain group of people, or at least, people of certain social characteristics. It definitely was not created as a means to make money.
This is exactly the kind of thinking that I find undervalued in Laissez-Faire Capitalism (or even Republicanism). There IS value to things created for reasons other than to make money. And no matter what it is that you are trying to create, if it has to turn a profit it will eventually be optimized solely for making a profit at the expense of any other values.
This is my argument AGAINST privatization. Bush wants to privatize the national park system. Sure, it's a grand idea and I've seen some of the "benefit" at parks with substantial private operations. But the purpose of the NPS was specifically NOT to make money. It was to preserve - i.e., expend money to save resources that do not exist elsewhere. An acknowledgement that there are things that cannot be codified by a dollar value.
But I digress...