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Two Monkeys Were Paid Unequally: Excerpt from Frans de Waal's TED Talk

TED Blog Video

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  • Recommended by 2 people, in Hacker News, across 2 different months.
  • Presented by Frans de Waal, as the video describes them

For anyone, no background needed. Education, not medical advice.

25M views13 years ago2 recommendations

Brain and nervesNeuroscience

Frans de Waal demonstrates how capuchin monkeys react to unequal pay, showing that a sense of fairness is evolutionary.

What happens when you pay two monkeys unequally? Watch what happens. An excerpt from the TED Talk: "Frans de Waal: Moral behavior in animals." Watch the whole talk here: ted.com/talks/frans_de_waal_do_animals_have_morals.html

Why it's here

2 people recommend this

What people say. Highly recommended as a classic and clear demonstration of evolutionary fairness and resentment in primates.

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This is the video that explains the best how the "morality" is natural even in the capuchin monkeys: link to this video So, no to those that claim that, humans aren't special, and no, the good sides of morality don't come from religion, especially not from the modern ones with a "jealous" god (killing homosexuals, or punishing women when not wearsing something, however, if that is considered "morality", indeed provably does come from religion). The whole talk: link
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There's a nice video from a psychological experiment that illustrates it: link to this video I think evolution hardwired our primate brains against inequality. We go out of our way to punish those who don't play nice and share with the broader group. Otherwise complex societies would have never emerged, because assholes exploiting and taking advantage of peers would ruin and doom any group larger than a few individuals.
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…more pragmatic approach to proof (good enough but not absolute) Humans and some animals experience emotions. At the very least most Mammals. Probably not all animals. A trickier proposition would be whether all vertebrates do, that's a different level of debate entirely. If you can't take things like the Monkey fairness tests as a sign of emotions link to this video then you have a standard of proof that a lot of humans wouldn't meet.…
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Wouldn't be happy, I think you mean in your last sentence. You're almost certainly right. Resentment is built into our DNA: link to this video Of course, it doesn't mean we shouldn't try to be better people than shitty, jealous little monkeys.
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Happiness is relative. Humans (and animals) value "fairness" even if they are objectively better off. There is a famous experiment where two monkeys are given a cucumber every day. They are both happy. Then one of them starts getting grapes (sweeter than cucumber). The monkey that doesn't get the grapes rejects the cucumber in protest. link to this video
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This is not unique to humans. Check out: link to this video It takes a lot of effort to learn not to resent accomplishments of people you’re “competing” with even if they’re friends and you’re not directly competing with them. It’s a learned behavior to feel good for them instead. There’s probably a selected reason for this, but it’s possible to overcome it (or at least be aware of its affect). It’s better to frame life success on something else - like what you want to learn or the type of person you want to be.
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…. If there were any evidence that high corporate tax rates were the root cause of financial strain for the average family in the US, or corporations weren't putting so much effort into dodging taxes, I suspect the left would care a lot less about whether they received tax cuts or not. As it is, the situation has turned into monkeys and cucumbers ( link to this video -- skip to 1:23 if you're in a hurry), and the left keeps seeing gifts laid at the feet of corporations in the name of trickle-down economics while social programs keep struggling for funding and more people keep needing social programs.…
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Somewhat interesting: Bananas contain the ingredients necessary to produce dopamine. I can see how this all plays out as a way for some apes to get some bananas. Even social structures, fairness and other things (I love this video - two monkeys getting unequal pay link to this video ) can be explained by a dopamine system that just likes to give us bananas and sex. And it's incentivized to conserve energy because this is better for survival (also called lazy) - interesting is that humans have some tendency to do stuff that don't necessarily is conserving energy. Maybe this is what makes us successful: Sometimes we invest excessive energy to try new things which happens to let us survive better through…
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…me up with is that it is a hardball negotiating tactic to get more than you otherwise would through creating leverage by making others feeling uncomfortable and betting that they're not going to be able to tolerate the uncomfortable state. That comes from watching both Frans De Waal's Capuchin monkey experiment below and from observing my toddler. link to this video Then you consider all of the power Laws in the universe. Almost nothing is fair. Unfairness seems to be the default. Consider the animal kingdom is full of homicidal behavior. Life is very rough. Yet we expect "everything should be fair and everyone should be nice." At some level that just isn't commensurate with reality. I also find there…
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> you will realize that concepts like "fairness" or "caring" simply doesn't exist outside of human brains. Here's the well known capuchin fairness experiment. link to this video link
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> That sounds like a case against wealth inequality, since there’s no increase in happiness for the very rich. Not necessarily. Inequality seems to bring unhappiness independently of wealth. You may have more than others. But if you get way less for your work than others, most people will be unhappy. That is why millionaires want more when they see the billionaires. This video helps to illustrate my point: link to this video
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…suspect that a life lived solely to maximize one's own resources will be as comfortable as it feels meaningless. I image evolution has made it that way. At least so people will have children but also to work fairly with others. Otherwise we would have wandered completely alone in the jungles and been eaten out of existence by Pliocene tigers. 1 link to this video…
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HN comments remind me of how monkeys would rather have nothing than see another monkey get more than them. link to this video
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> First of all, there is no such thing as "morality". There is absolutely a solid sense of morality baked into (at the very least) primate brains. Give this a read. The science is solid: link Or this if you're impatient: link to this video > Nothing belongs to nobody. People take whatever they can get away with. What kind of unhinged philosophy are you smoking? Objectivism? Marxism? Freebasing Solipsism?
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> people don’t actually care about absolute inequality People care about fairness. Hell, even monkeys care about fairness: link to this video Extreme income inequality is unfair. Jeff Bezos is not 1,000,000,000% "more worthy" of wealth than Richard Feynman—and everyone knows it. Very little about financial capitalism is fair.
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