The Knowlege Economy: Grinding the Monkey

[Kenneth Warren]

“Keith Chen’s Monkey Research,â€Â￾ recently featured in the June 5, 2005 New York Times Magazine, suggests that Lakewood Grinders may be connected to primate societies with anterior sources in the capuchins, a New World monkey.

Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Litt note “But in a clean and spacious laboratory at Yale-New Haven Hospital, seven capuchin monkeys have been taught to use money, and a comparison of capuchin behavior and human behavior will either surprise you very much or not at all, depending on your view of humans.â€Â￾

The economy of grinding the monkey is all about incentives.

Thus Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Litt explain: “When most people think of economics, they probably conjure images of inflation charts or currency rates rather than monkeys and marshmallows. But economics is increasingly being recognized as a science whose statistical tools can be put to work on nearly any aspect of modern life. That's because economics is in essence the study of incentives, and how people – perhaps even monkeys -- respond to those incentives.â€Â￾

The knowledge of grinding the monkey is interdisciplinary and subtribal.

“Chen proudly calls himself a behavioral economist, a member of a growing subtribe whose research crosses over into psychology, neuroscience and evolutionary biology.â€Â￾

Lessons in altruism and cooperation can begin with marshmallows in a monkey’s cage.

Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Litt report: “Two monkeys faced each other in adjoining cages, each equipped with a lever that would release a marshmallow into the other monkey's cage. The only way for one monkey to get a marshmallow was for the other monkey to pull its lever. So pulling the lever was to some degree an act of altruism, or at
least of strategic cooperation.â€Â￾

It is not necessary to know how to grind the monkey to grind the monkey.

“It is sometimes unclear, even to Chen himself, exactly what he is working on. When he and Santos, his psychologist collaborator, began to teach the Yale capuchins to use money, he had no pressing research theme. The essential idea was to give a monkey a dollar and see what it did with it.â€Â￾

A silver backed Lakewood Grinder experiment might test whether or not the local cycle of grinding the monkey waxes or wanes with the paper substitution for the token’s alchemical connection between silver and the moon.

“The currency Chen settled on was a silver disc, one inch in diameter, with a hole in the middle -- ''kind of like Chinese money,'' he says. It took several months of rudimentary repetition to teach the monkeys that these tokens were valuable as a means of exchange for a treat and would be similarly valuable the next day. Having gained that understanding, a capuchin would then be presented with 12 tokens on a tray and have to decide how many to surrender for, say, Jell-O cubes versus grapes. This first step allowed each capuchin to reveal its preferences and to grasp the concept of budgeting.â€Â￾

Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt conclude: “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.

The complete article is available at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/magaz ... wanted=all

New York Times Magazine
Freakonomics
Monkey Business
By STEPHEN J. DUBNER and STEVEN D. LEVITT
Published: June 5, 2005

Sensing opportunity to instigate primate consciousness, community currency and LETS advocate Ernie Yacub was quick to raise the question: “If you can teach monkeys to use cc, will humans be far behind?â€Â￾

Yacub sent Dr. Chen, Assistant Professor of Economics at the Yale School of Management & Cowles Foundation, the following e-mail:

Hello Keith,

I read with interest of your experiments with monkeys and money.

How about using mutual credit money in your experiments - a different type of money where each monkey in the community is given an account that starts at 0 - when they buy goods or services from other monkeys their accounts go negative and the seller's accounts go positive.

We have observed convivial relationships developing within these systems and no need to steal, cheat, scam - there's no point when the money is created as needed.

It would be interesting to know how your monkeys would use such currencies.

Your research would be a great contribution to people's understanding of community currencies and help us spread the meme.

Here are some websites to check out...

...the most widely used mutual credit system in the world
http://www.gmlets.u-net.com

....money and community
http://www.openmoney.org/play/m&c-notes.html

....the money problem
http://www.gmlets.u-net.com/explore/problems.html

---demo of web software
http://om.neurd.net/tiki-index.php


Perhaps you could teach them LETSplay which is designed to show people the similarities and differences between a community currency and normal money.
http://www.openmoney.org/letsplay

best wishes
ernie yacub
http://lets.net


Dr. Chen responded the next day:

Dear Ernie,

Thank you four your interest in my and my co-authors work on capuchins
economic activity. I've looked quickly at some of the cites you sent me and will do so more when I have more time, much of what you point to
already exists in primate societies in the form of reputation and
reciprocal relationships.

Thanks again,
Keith.


Obviously the level of intelligence ramifying from the first inklings about Lakewood Grinders stems from a deep primate source.

Kenneth Warren

[Stephen Calhoun]

Very interesting and not surprising.

One thing: the connotations of money confuse the description of the Capuchin experiment in its publicized form. In technical terms the monkeys are manipulating *tokens*, since they don't know money from nothin'; (don't know tokens either, yet it's a bit clearer designate.)

There is an implication for human experiment in this because the language matters and is potentially plastic and could flow with new modes into new 'signs'.

[Jim O'Bryan]

“...Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Litt note “But in a clean and spacious laboratory at Yale-New Haven Hospital, seven capuchin monkeys have been taught to use money, and a comparison of capuchin behavior and human behavior will either surprise you very much or not at all, depending on your view of humans.â€Â￾

The economy of grinding the monkey is all about incentives.


Kenneth Warren

I find this article very troubling. As my wife pointed out the handlers were able to teach the mokeys about money, trading, and handling far faster than I.

Maybe instead of the Grinder note currently in design, we should stick to something like marshmallows? We might get a fraudlent marshmallow, but it could still be used in hot chocolate, or in a Waldorf Salad. (Chef Geoff please check thes facts)

Jim O'Bryan