April 21, 2005

• For the most part, reality TV is carrion feeder sucking the remaining marrow out of an already dead corpse. There are one or two reality shows worth anything, and those flat out admit that their circumstances are contrived, or they focus on process with some personality, rather than trying to inflate personalities.. Carpocalypse, for one. Monster Garage, for another. The other's are pretty much below bottom feeders.
• This really creepy, and cruel. Can't we just keep the social engineering shit to humans?
• Er...did you read the article, drivingmenuts? Sounds interesting. Certainly doesn't sound like the animals will be mistreated (beyond being taken out of their environments of course), and this could certainly knock us humans down a few pegs if the apes adapt well.
• cynnbad: cruel, i gotta disagree - that requires mistreatment. I would say, maybe, misguided. creepy - i'm just not seeing it as creepy. stray: see above. just because it's apes doesn't make it any less contrived. they are putting apes into a situation that they would never in a million years (literally) find themselves otherwise. with humans, it is possible that (for example) a goth, a nudist, a wiccan, etc., would find themselves living in the same house. Well, more possible than apes spontaneously inventing stoves and vending machines. I stand by my original statement, with one modification: sometimes contrivance can go way too far.
• I still don't understand why you're comparing it to reality TV when this is obviously not for pointless entertainment. From what I understand, the experiment is hoping to draw links between us, and the apes. I personally think it's fascinating. Certainly, it's contrived. We've been putting primates and other animals into contrived situations for ages, and while that's no reason to justify torturing animals, it seems to me that in this situation many attempts have been made to create a safe, happy environment for these animals. It is also important to point out that these animals were residents of the Language Research Center at Georgia State University--they were not simply plucked out of the wild. They were already in a "contrived" environment. In fact, from the Language Research Website's info, it would seem that nearly all of their apes were in fact born into captivity at the center. In any case, the experiment will have to be watched, and hopefully it will end should it become detrimental to the apes mental and physical well being. In the mean time, this is an interesting project, run by a group of scientists who have been working with primates and language for nearly 50 years. This is not another attempt by Hollywood to shock more advertising dollars out of an already saturated reatlity TV market.
• Nevertheless, we are artificially advancing these creatures' intellect. What's not to say that they will undergo a freakish evolutionary advance within the next 50 or so years? You can screw with existing humans all you want; don't mess with the followers.
• Although, that might not be so bad. I'm referring to the messing part not the screwing part. Because i have a kickass cold and i don't want it to spread.
• Ha, let's see who has the last laught when, after those monkeys develop social and technical skills, they begin breeding higher intelligence offspring... /Heston Damn them, damn them all to hell!
• This isn't going to be televised, or at least it doesn't explicitly say it will be. I was comparing them to Reality TV because bonobos are so highly sexual and Des Moines is such an exotic locale that my first thought was Real World. Besides, I just know that sooner or later pretty much all the ape/monkey news gets posted here and I wanted to beat the rush. As far as mistreatment, I wish someone would mistreat me by forcing me to live in a $10M, 13k sqr ft house. As long as I didn't haver to cover the bills, I'd figure out a way to adapt. It couldn't get any worse than the house I shared with 5 roomies in college. Of course, as a non bi-curious hetro male, I'd be opposed to the gender ratio, but if I were a bonobo, maybe I'd just find a way to kink it up a bit. Or maybe I'd start cruising Des Moines for dates outside the living quarters...
• I wish someone would mistreat me by forcing me to live in a $10M, 13k sqr ft house But... in this case, the analogy would be to force a human to live in alien surroundings.

• Besides, I just know that sooner or later pretty much all the ape/monkey news gets posted here and I wanted to beat the rush.

  sorry, seven minutes late (though it is posted as a comment). Great apes to learn human behaviors posted by homunculus at 12:35AM UTC on April 21, 2005
• It'll be cool to watch those apes learn language, music and art. Maybe afterwards they can teach it to some of us humans.