

How scientists taught monkeys the concept of money - sidwyn
http://www.zmescience.com/research/how-scientists-tught-monkeys-the-concept-of-money-not-long-after-the-first-prostitute-monkey-appeared/

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sharkbot
The name Marc Hauser piqued my interest. He has been accused of scientific
misconduct [1], and his research has been tainted. Take this article with a
suitable grain of salt...

[1] [http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/08/harvard-
de...](http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/08/harvard-dean-
confirms-misconduct.html), via Wikipedia

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starwed
Ah, but he wasn't involved in this study -- one of the researchers had worked
with him on a previous study, and that's why his name came up.

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tome
I nearly misread this for "How scientists taught monkeys the concept of
monkey". That would have been an interesting self-awareness experience for the
monkeys!

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scott_s
The paper itself is quite readable:
[http://www.q-group.org/archives_folder/pdf/spring2008/ChenBe...](http://www.q-group.org/archives_folder/pdf/spring2008/ChenBehavioralBiases.pdf)

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libraryatnight
The writing is atrocious. "...are the two researchers who have had made the
study." or "It’s exactly this selfish desires that they tried to exploit and
experiment with great success..."

I barely made it through.

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scott_s
The experimental description also leaves out key information in understanding
what they did. I linked to the real paper in this thread which seems much more
readable.

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reuser
Token economies are as old as the hills. It's also called "secondary
reinforcement" - although cognitive psychologists will be bothered on
ideological grounds if you reference any psychology from before 1950 or so

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jonhendry
I think Santos gave a TED talk, which might be better than this article.

I saw her talk at Harvard Medical School when I was working there. She's a
good speaker and gives an entertaining talk.

<http://www.ted.com/talks/laurie_santos.html>

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brohee
Fascinating. I didn't read (yet) the paper linked in the article, but was the
prostitution case a male buying service from a female or something else?

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simcop2387
I took a look and couldn't find it anywhere in there. I think this may have
come from outside the paper.

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spacefungus
The description given is kind of weak in this particular article, but the
other papers linked in this comment thread are pretty good. Apparently they're
working on finding physiological mechanisms for this stuff, I was reading
about it recently. Like, literally what chemicals in brains cause this sort of
behavior. If I can find the link I'll post it...

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vorg
1\. Teach some monkeys about money.

2\. Let them loose in South America.

3\. Wait a while.

4\. Get some monkeys addicted to tobacco, let them loose, and wait longer.

5\. Install surveillance stations in the jungle and start taxing the
transactions.

Some countries could do very well out of having a sudden influx of Pan
citizens.

