You are currently browsing the daily archive for October 5th, 2007.
In a study done by the Max Planck Institute, chimps were tested with the ultimatum game. In the human case, a player called the proposer is given a sum of money N. He must then offer some amount between 0 and N to another player, the responder. If the responder accepts the offer, they both keep the amount of money in the trade. If the responder declines the offer, both walk away with nothing. Predictably, humans usually make offers around 50%.
In the case of chimps, raisins were used. They were presented with trays that the proposer can only pull out so far. The responder can then pull the tray out the rest of the way if he accepts. The results? Big surprise here folks — wait for it — the chimp always accepted unless the offer was zero. Why? The chimp wanted some raisins. So the conclusion the researchers drew was that chimps don’t have a concept of fair play. The conclusion I think we should draw from this is that chimps aren’t vindictive bastards like humans. Oh, also that chimps want raisins and don’t have a damn clue what this game was about. Of course the chimp always pulled out the tray when there was something in it. He wanted the raisins and had no concept of what was going on. No raisins to pull out? No reason to try to pull it out. I think this says more about the cause and effect inference capability of chimps relating to actions that benefit other individuals than it does about notions of fair play.
Now maybe if the chimp looked down at the zero offer, rejected, and then shot the other chimp the finger, that would be another matter. I’m hoping there is a better explanation for why we should infer the fair play conclusion, and if so, please post a comment. Otherwise, this represents who knows how much wasted money. (And yes, I know the “wasted money” argument doesn’t hold water. If the result had been different, this would have been on the front page of the NY Times.)
Another potential killer asteroid was rediscovered after being lost since the 60’s. Revolving around the sun once every 4.7 years, this asteroid isn’t a threat for the foreseeable future, but if the orbit shifts, that could change. It’s just one more to keep an eye on, joining a family of 886 objects larger than 500 feet across that pass within 4.6 million miles of Earth, according to Space.com. Good times.
Ever since Facebook added apps, there has been a gradual bloat on profiles. Some people are app minimalists, adding just a couple things that don’t clutter up their profile. From my quite informal perusal of Facebook, these people seem to be fairly inactive users. They log every once in a while, but don’t seem to be using it on a daily basis. Then you have your Facebook app junkies. I’m thinking of one friend in particular. Yeah, that’s right. I just outted you. My friend, you are a Facebook app junkie. But I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it. Some of my best friends are like that. It’s just not how I roll.
But I have noticed that as time progresses, there is a gradual app bloat in my profile. I’ve tried to keep it down as much as possible, but then Pandora comes out with their app, which is cool. Dogbook is an essential. The makers of Dogbook are coming out with Babybook, which I won’t be using since Dogbook and Babybook are synonymous for me. Another of my favorite apps was the Books app. I liked being able to display some of the things I’ve read and rate them and compare them to friends, there were just two problems.
- The books app is hard as hell to use.
- No one is using. Not my friends anyway.
So now I’ve tried out Visual Bookshelf and it seems we have a winner. The benefit of it is that it automatically presents you with Amazon results for your nationale (assuming you’re in one of the five non-US countries they support). So instead of having to enter ISBNs or names and then going through a lengthy addition process, you just click “read it” or “want to read it” or “reading it now” and the book is in your profile. Very handy and it recommends a book to you after you add one, which lets you add an entire series pretty quickly and easily, which is good for me since I read several fantasy series.
The only thing it seems to be missing is a “skip book” option. If you don’t want to read it, but you want the next recommendation, you’re out of luck. I’m hoping they’ll fix that soon, though.
