From: Walter Watts (wlwatts@home.com)
Date: Sun Jan 27 2002 - 20:34:43 MST
L' Ermit wrote:
<snip>
> The expression "hundredth monkey" comes from an experiment on monkeys done
> in the 1950's. It was alleged by Lyall Watson in his book Lifetide that one
> monkey taught another to wash potatoes who taught another who taught another
> and soon all the monkeys on the island were washing potatoes where no monkey
> had ever washed potatoes before. When the hundredth monkey learned to wash
> potatoes, suddenly and spontaneously and mysteriously monkeys on other
> islands, with no physical contact with the potato-washing cult, started
> washing potatoes! Was this monkey telepathy at work or just monkey business
> on Watson's part?
>
<snip>
Sounds like a good healthy statistical distribution story with the embellishment
from HELL attached for marketing reasons.
Imagine Kauffman's light bulbs = monkeys.
K = number of inputs to each light bulb/monkey.
as K approaches 100, one of the bulbs burns out, forcing all the experimenters
to their knees trying to find the offending bulb, while in the meantime the 100
monkeys find the physics intern's pot stash and gets all the other monkeys
wasted, which in turn fucks up the distribution of monkeys who wash potatoes,
but generates an incidence of one lone monkey that spontaneously Julianne's the
remaining potatoes and deep fries them in olive oil.
Which brings me to my conclusion:
The idea that "suddenly and spontaneously and mysteriously monkeys on other
islands, with no physical contact with the potato-washing cult, started washing
potatoes!" was no more likely than the lightbulb in my bedroom closet turning on
as a result of Stuart Kauffman adjusting K from 0 all the way up to N in one of
his light bulb farms.
No spooky "monkey-lurnin" at a distance here, folks.
Or there.
Walter
-- Walter Watts Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc. "To err is human. To really screw things up requires a bare-naked command line and a wildcard operator."
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