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  • Can you please audio swap this chick's voice out and replace it with a broken record, with the sound of fingernails scraping across a chalkboard. Thank you.

  • designed badly? BADLY? how about designed poorly.

  • 4:50

  • * * The bad and good terrestrial governments "Political Leaders" on human nations over this planet... They are directly proportional to Terrestrial human nations level of education and Level of Conscience evolution of man on Earth. That simple it is! So, we have to wait a while... at least on next 840 years to can appreciate some good, creative and rational governments and human leaders over this world. Javier, = Laurie Santos: How monkeys mirror human irrationality * * *
  • Wow. Nice calves. 

  • Your channel is awesome!

  • The error thing is true I knew for all my life that I spell alcohol wrong and now I finally acknowledge it as a mistake

  • lol monkeys

  • "sort of scholar of human nature" ?

  • WHAT A BITCH

  • It would be better if she talked with spaces and commas.

  • Perfect woman!

  • lets test religion on monkeys do they become radicals does this have something to do with the god gene vmat2?

  • Lets use them to test religion on the monkey or another animal do they end up displaying radical behaviour or normal behaviour do they already have religion in them some how how does this link to vmat2 god gene?

  • intelligent, and she has nice calves...

  • I am rationally risky

  • i think i love her

  • Her voice is fabulous.

  • Here is a very good example on how some crippling sing song speaking accents are so annoying that it impinges on the material. She seems so impatient to impart the info that she overpowers the info with her impatience. But it's subtle... it's as if her little girl voice never grew up. This is so typical of modern educational deemphasis. Teach people to speak !

  • @euripideesshreds Wow.... You my friend, are a voice bigot.

  • @daobagua Whatever ... Presentation is everything, my comment stands.

  • @euripideesshreds Presentation is not everything. Content matters too. So does footing to speak. Like it or not she displayed the latter two quite well.

    Also, presentation does not mean that one is not allowed to have a different voice than what a single audience member prefers. I was able to understand, follow, and not be annoyed with this presentation what so ever. Perhaps the problem lies with you.

  • @daobagua Thank you so much for your valuable expertise, you must be the most qualified Canadian on Psychology in the world to have such a highly overvalued sense of quality. Congratulations for your humanitarian uniqueness and great empathy and tolerance. Yes I have an impossibly high standard thats why spend my whole life trolling for people with hormone imbalances to get them to choose me out. You deserve the Noble prize ! Feel good that you are so alert.

  • @euripideesshreds No need to thank me, just doing my duty. Perhaps you should appologize to her though. I would say that if you spend excessive time trolling, perhaps you are the one with an imbalance. I think the fact that you were angry enough at my rebuttle to be bothered to look at my profile and point out that I am canadian (which I did not mention in our conversation) that you indeed are imbalanced. I do not deserve a "Noble" price, or for that matter a "Nobel" one. Peace my friend.

  • "if polarity comes from protons, does morality come from morons?"

  • I don't agree that the human choice presented are irrational. There can be numerous ways of explaining why playing it safe in profit situations is consistent with playing it risky in loss situations.

  • I'm confused as to how the decisions are different. Mathematically the two choices are the same on a large scale. It's 1000 + 0.5(1000) or 1000 + 500 either way, and 2000 - 0.5(1000) or 2000 - 500. Can anyone clarify?

  • @ADSwank If you look at the video again, both choices was a two part thing. First choice was to maybe get a 1,000 usd or maybe nothing but you were not certain of the out come and the other part was that you were certain that you would get 500 usd every time. The other set of choices was that you got the 2,000 usd and ran the risk of loosing notihng or a 1,000 usd. Or the certainty of always loosing the 500 usd. in the instance both people and monkeys take the risk of loosing the 1,000 usd.

  • @FreakazoidDK33 it's still the same in aggregate.

  • She is so beautiful guys!!!

  • well, ironically, at 7:28 the camera guy doesn't look so 'sapiens' :))

  • this woman has the best  job in the world

  • I wonder whether evidence tends to imply the monkeys who steal tokens from their mates feel any guilt or have any sense of moral consequence of their actions? An argument for Intelligent Deisgn is that we are designed so well there must be an active agent doing the designing. Another argument for ID is the existance of moral a moral code. If the design is fundamentally flowed, this would be argument against ID; so would be an evolutionary explanation for morality.

  • One point that she is missing (or ignoring) is that our systems are not co-operative. They are competitive. They are complex by design to trap the dumber people and profit off of them. There is no WE to design BETTER systems.

    Money doesn`t just go away. Someone ends up with it.

    I would love to see more experiments with monkey money. It could be fascinating.

  • @ORCA4312 How would competition between monkey-markets alter the outcome that monkeys will take risks in a loss scenario?

  • @ORCA4312 Our systems is hierarchically built but requires cooperation schemes anyway.

    Besides, introducing money with monkeys is not new at all. I read it 20 years ago (Boris Cyrulnik, ethology specialist) ... I remember that the author said that a low status monkey + money => High status + Females were better at understanding how the monetary system worked :-).

  • @Newtoon Makes a lot of sense to me. Females humans are the same.

    Men want money to get women. Women want a man to get money.

  • @ORCA4312 I think it's important to mention that aspect, but not all economic games are zero sum.

  • GREAT video. Most people don`t realize how LITTLE we have actually advanced from other primates. There is much to learn about human behaviour from apes and monkeys.

  • I loved this whole presentation, but im not sure I get the conclusion..

  • Excellent presentation. The message concerning the relationship between having a loss mindset and risk is very insightful - pure gold. Well done Laurie.

  • Dr Laurie Santos is not 16 even though she might look and she has been publishing many papers at Yale University

    In my opinion she has done a good job of presenting something in a diplomatic way. This however may appear contradictory to people who do not get that. If you look this from behavior perspective you will know that criminal behavior (risk taking) is high among in humans to prevent a loss and similar risk taking is seen in monkeys

  • 6:41 creeeeeper.

  • i think she's 16

  • @Atheissst I`d say mid-30s.

  • 1:50 - 1:53 lol she mention failblog

  • Comment removed

  • Monkey Business... Wall Street Business; and we gave them billions of new coins to play with. Who is the idiot, the monkeys or us?

  • very easy way out... Money need to go... NO MORE MONEY ! problem solved

  • SHE'S HAWT!!!!

  • monkeys couldnt care less about the dumb tokens... they just want to maximize their food intake, they are just adapting to the fact that tokens help wit that

    her HUGE point was basically we make irrational decisions based on a perspective our primitive brain provides instinctively.. in this case the LOSS scenario... this shows our FIRST INSTINCTIVE STAND on a scenario.. we DONT make the FINAL/REALITY decision based on that.. its just our starting point... aka monkeys are dumb

  • She keeps revealing herself to you...

    She is the one...

    A mystery woman...

    A vague picture in your head...

    A fragment of memory...

    Of moments of joy & dreams....

    ....Aronne

  • Humans are smart? I'm going to need some evidence for that statement ^_^

  • @PinkProgram You are typing on a keyboard that a human made

  • @henryk8675309 and I should be impressed?

  • @PinkProgram yah most animals don't know how to make a keyboard...true story...or a computer for that matter...

  • @henryk8675309 most human animals don't either. That's 99% of a species taking credit for what 1% knows how to do. Thats like chimps who have never seen a termite taking credit for chimps that use sticks to harvest termites ^_^

  • @PinkProgram the list goes on and on for human achievement...that 1% to 99% ratio you mentioned would flip flop if you looked at all of them. its sorta obvious dude

  • @henryk8675309 you have a much higher regard for human achievement than I do. Humans barely qualify as sophont. ^_^

  • @PinkProgram I guess I don't see what point you're trying to make here...your own attempts in trying to prove me wrong in a game of philosophical matters only proves your own intelligence superior to all other species that we know of. As far as sophont? Achievement and intelligence aren't the same thing at all.

  • She's hot. Monkeys FTW!!!

  • @spotandedgar Homo sapiens is an ape, not a monkey.

  • @pohjalo LOL 

  • I wonder how many hundreds of thousands of dollars in govt grant she wasted coming up with this useless seminar? I think the monkeys are smarter than her!

  • Did she really need to conduct an experiment to confirm that humans are not born with good sense, and that it must be learned through our failures? Haha, come on. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I could have told you that.

  • To me, a 1 or 3 grape gain is a lot more manageable than a 1 or ZERO grape gain.

    Because hunger is relative.

    You will be significantly more hungry with ZERO grapes than you will with one grape. As comparison to 1 grape vs 3 grapes.

    At least you'll have SOMETHING to sedate your hunger.

    You can think of 1 grape as the standard needed to keep you alive, and all subsequent grapes as disposable income - to do with as you will.

  • One of the standard mistakes human beings make is eating too much. You know, much like Santos appears to do.

  • @MomoTheBellyDancer I guess another mistake we make is to try and make ourselves feel good at the expense of others, You know, much like you appear to do.

  • Awesomer :D

  • ...and in subsequent experiments, monkeys were prompted to pull a lever inside their cage. at which point, a small window would open, and they would be presented with two options, of which they could only choose one: a banana, or a high-yield trust fund. 99 per cent chose the less reasonable fruit option, and the one per cent who chose the smarter trust fund option tried to eat it anyway. stupid monkeys.

  • Also there is an optimum quantity that we prefer. You can only eat so much food, anything after that is waste. This also explains why poor people can sometimes be happier than rich. When you work hard for your dollar then that dollar means more and is more fulfilling. When you easily make millions of dollars, then those dollars don't have much value and become unfulfilling.

  • Loss Aversion may have some logic when considering the law of diminishing returns. When you have to choose between no food and 1 piece of food, then 1 piece is priceless. But choosing between 10 pieces and 11 pieces, there is little difference. Thus the value of the first grape is greater than the value of the 11 grape. The makes sense when considering supply and demand.

  • thumbs down for not mentioning that the monkeys started engaging in prositution once they fully realized the values of the token.

  • @balasuar HAHAHA YES Superfreakonomics. That was the best part of the whole experiment.

  • Excellent content as usual, however, having watching somewhere between 50 and 100 TED Talks videos (a big fan and advocate), I have to say this one was hard to watch for me due to the presentation style.

  • I don´t think the bad/wrong is the main issue in this experiment, as the presentator says the possibility of overcoming self-limits is the real human nature. What is not a variable of her experiment is the pleasure, that is the reason behind every bad choice (in economical terms). However, for me it has been inspirational to see how to achieve science... great great presentation.

  • I'm a tad skeptical here. If she is right that this is a general trait, then my family is already three generations into the next evolutionary step, since saving and investing surplus money is a main character trait in both me, my father and grandfather; not to mention that neither me nor my father hesitated for a second in those scenarios - play it safe. And y'know, somehow I find it a little difficult thinking about myself in such flattering terms.

  • her hair is fucking gross

  • Well, the monkeys and humans made the same mistakes because they have been living in scarcity for millions of years. Scarcity in the environment has simply transitioned from actual resources (crops, food) to money which in turn is used for the acquisition of the resources. Our environment is very much the same. Eliminate the scarcity through machine technology and automation.

  • A man's got to know his limitations

  • I thought this was going to be about religion...

  • @mot5600 It could be related easily to pascal's wager.

  • So many problems here, blah, took 13 minutes just to get to the so called mistakes we make.

  • nice talk on "cut your losses"

  • MONKEY AT 14.50 LOL NEGROS PRIME APES NOT HUMAN

  • apparently this limitation only kicks in when we're the ones facing the loss, so I guess we can always try asking for a second opinion hehe

  • Speed-talkers are often speed-talking because they are a little nervous that their message will not come through, or eager to prove a point. But it does not work. You (Laurie) should take the time to breath slowly once in a while, say a sentence or two in another rhythm.

  • Good God... did this woman just run up on stage, or something? I'm seven minutes in, and she still sounds short of breath.

  • @JSB741 she's probably nervous, that can be part of the reason for sounding like that during a speech. not all of us are as good as you

  • 14:41 that's racist!!!!

  • @tel8675309RB MONKEY IS THINKING WTF IS HE NOT HERE WITH ME !

  • @tel8675309RB how??

  • Learned this in social Psychology

  • may be this explains, why i waste all my spare time, when i have less spare time.

  • Re money experiment at 10:55:

    Can anyone explain to me why "playing it safe" is the "right" option in both scenarios?

    I understand why it's counterintuitive to change strategy, but since the 50/50 chance makes both options become of equal value, I'm having trouble calling one option "bad", "wrong", or "irrational".

  • @Yaalah

    I'm not so sure that 'right' is right or good/bad. I think the gist of it is, that humans tend to chose the 'safe' one at winning ($500); but the 'risky' one at losing ($1000 or nothing). And the monkeys did likewise.

  • @Yalaah

    The point is that if you play it safe in the negative and positive scenarios, you will end up with exactly the same net gain. The asymmetry is that in a positive scenario you will play it safe and in a negative one you will take a gamble and risk losing more because your inner optimist hopes for no loss at all

  • @Yaalah It's not that "safe" is "wrong" or "irrational;" it's that changing strategy in circumstances which, though different, amount to the same thing, is irrational.

    "Safe" is no more right (or wrong) in the adding condition than the subtracting; "taking a risk" is no more right (or wrong) in the subtracting condition than the adding -- if the odds are even.

    "Safe" is wiser if, over time, the odds are stacked in one direction; "risk" wiser if they're stacked in the other, regardless..

  • @Yaalah She was just using the example to illustrate the 2 biases she perceived as common to both capuchins and humans.

    Also, I suspect she may have meant that the tendency for many humans to change their decisions (because of the bias toward loss aversion) was irrational.

  • @Yaalah To a large extent because of what she said - you're thinking in relativist terms, comparing the scenarios. While it's true that a larger buffer of available money allows for greater risk taking without being irresponsible, you should always judge each situation on its own terms. Not a big issue in this hypothetical case, but when big financial institutions get it "wrong" you end up where it's extremely difficult to see what's going on and plan ahead.

  • @Yaalah It's irrational to think one option is better than the other in either scenario and even more irrational to think a different option is better in the two scenarios.

  • @Yaalah Both are equal good/bad choices (in the long run), so it is the irrational thing to favour one strategy over the other depending on whether there is an initial gain or loss.

  • @Yaalah it's not "right" or "wrong." It's "safe" vs "risky." In the first scenario, it's obvious that the "safe" option will always get you an extra $500, while you have a 50% chance of getting nothing with the coin flip. In the second scenario, people would rather take their chances loosing everything, than immediately giving up $500. This is called "loss aversion." Since your preferences change despite the same outcome, the decision difference is marked as "irrational."

  • @Yaalah If you want to look at in terms of numbers, playing it safe is always right. Say you could play this game 1,000 times. If you chose option 1 every time, you would end up with 1M dollars (lets assume an even 50/50). If you choose option 2 everytime, you would have 1.5M dollars. Assuming a perfect 50/50 distribution, you will always be better off taking $1500 instead of taking $2000 every other try.

  • i thought the opposite of the "norm" every time. Could be stupid, could be smart, idk.

  • Uuh that was painful to listen to, tried to hear and understand, ended up just gritting teeth and drumming the table

  • Skip the first 5 minutes!

  • A complex question. What with hormones, instinct processes, vast information available - much of it wrong - unconscious learning, social pressure, etc....

    Do apes and monkeys suffer from information overload too - other than in studies like this?

  • she repeats spontaneous and exactly like 6 times in one sentence... and upwards inflection much?

  • The Blanks.

  • hmmm. i wonder how monkeys deal with patience. example, having to wait longer but getting more food.

  • @Notsorandomnumbers Yeah, that might be a good expansion to their project.

  • was this work mentioned in Freakonomics?

  • This talk was way. too.  long. Why do so many people feel like they have to take up the entire 20 minutes when they really have 5 minutes of information?

  • Her voice is really annoying.

    She ended almost every sentence on a high note, literally. So it sounded sing-songy.

    What she had to say was interesting but I had to turn it off.

  • @claraescher I agree that it's annoying but you really should go back and watch it. It's a facinating speech! =)

  • The system was introduced to the capuchin monkeys by humans but who introduced the system to humans? Nature? Evolution?

  • So she closes her speech with the dubiously legitimate word "unovercomable"

  • I enjoyed this talk, it was very interesting and a nice woman, I would give her a hug

  • @kimwlias That's a good point and one that built Las Vegas. 

  • I LOVE LAURIE SANTOS. A PERFECT WOMAN ! LOTS OF BABIES WITH HER, I'D HAVE !

  • lol where its the slow down btn

  • Comment removed

  • @thebmcc Hehe, trust me, she's not the worst. :) There are far far worse ways to present.

  • I don't think it's an irrational decision to go with the option of taking a risk when you're guaranteed something. We also have a mentality of "better something than nothing," and I think this is too a factor that need be considered. That was my logic behind taking a risk in the second scenario; I'm guaranteed some money. In the other, I played it safe because I am guaranteed some money.

  • @ieatglue44

    But the point of the experiment is that the results are *exactly* the same: 50/50 of $1000 or $2000 vs. 100% for $1500. There is no difference in the outcomes, so there can be no rational basis for preferring one in 1 setup and the other in the other setup.

  • @jursamaj But the set-ups are different. In one set-up, I am guaranteed to earn $1,000 minimum. In the other, I am not guaranteed to earn any money. Unless I misunderstood it, I would definitely risk more money when I knew I wasn't risking all my money. I wouldn't risk it if I knew I was risking it all.

  • @ieatglue44

    Yes, you misunderstood.

    In one setup, you're given 1000 definitely. Then you chose between (risking gaining 0 or 1000) and (gain 500).

    In the other setup, you're given 2000. Then you chose between (risking losing 0 or 1000) and (lose 500).

    In both, in absolute terms, you chose between (1000 or 2000) and (1500). since the average of 1000 and 2000 is 1500, the average result of the choice is always the same. and you we chose differently when it's phrased as winning or losing.

  • @ieatglue44 The irrationality is not related to whether risk should or should not have been taken. The irrationality comes from changing your mind when the same options are presented differently.

  • U know i thought this Whole thing was ingenious when i watched it last night.. then i noticed one HUGE Flaw... when i woke up this morning.... the concept of working for your money.. as in... the concept of a currency's value comes from the work it takes to get a currency.. not just its buying power... without that aspect... they are only describing the irrationality of people on unemployment and welfare.... what about people that earn and know the value of money???? what do u all think?????

  • @Emptybottleofgin

    There's no difference. People know the value of money however they got the money: the value is what it will get you. The only people who don't know the value are the ones who have so much that they don't *have* to know.

  • Uh-oh... I think I have another new favorite scientist! (Right behind Robert Sapolsky...) (She's cute too... :) ) Ok, I'm going to go look up more of Dr. Santos's work...

  • Why if you HAVE 4 nuts, you don't willingly give 1 away to save 3? If someone can TAKE 1, then they can also take all 4, and it makes sense to RESIST giving even 1. In a world of contracts the "put" and "call" scenarios have equal value (3 nuts always versus gamble all to achieve 4). But our behavior here has evolved through food gathering in the presence of "bullies." "Saving" is stupid too since the best way to store your wealth is in the fatty tissues of your body.

  • amazing

  • What she describes here is similar to the famous runaway train scenario, if there's a runaway train and you can throw a switch which will divert it between 1 of 2 tunnel the 1st has 5 monkeys working there the other 1, you instinct is to go with the 1, if you change the wording of it say there's a runaway train heading towards 5 monkeys but if you push 1 monkey onto the track you'll stop the train people won't chose the "push" option even though the situation is objectively identical.

  • @seanankerr Good point, that's also irrational, although it's usually couched as a moral dilemma.

    If you want to see more on that, check out the latest research here: /watch?v=jnXmDaI8IEo

  • i really didnt think, from the title of the video, that this would offer any solid extrapolations to humans............but i was really impressed with this.......

  • A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush

  • Shes says actually too much.

  • it never ceases to amaze me that there are intelligent people out there who still believe in evolution......!!

  • @Hippocrocaronarat Being continually amazed throughout the day sounds like a very peaceful way to live.

  • @Hippocrocaronarat haha, explain

  • @Hippocrocaronarat because evolution is fact. Ever get a virus, cold? Cause the virus mutates, evolves.

  • She did not answer (or avoided to answer) her own question – how far irrationality, risky behavior goes back in evolution. Perhaps taken a risk to loose (money or other energy) is the quality of all live forms. By doing mistakes live forms spend more energy then none alive ones. Humans are kings of all losers, nothing more.

  • @DimitriRytsk

    She gave the answer that it goes back *at least* 35 million years.

  • amazing

  • I liked that a lot, thanks for posting it up

  • This is why I love SCIENCE!!!!

  • I find it beautiful when a TEDtalks has about 30,00 views.

  • I read about another psychological experiment like this on chimps, where grapes were used as an actual currency.

    One of the chimps hoarded all his grapes and traded them with females for sexual favors.

  • How many monkeys were they? and for how long did this experiment go on?

  • Why did I choose the option "to play it safe" both times?

  • @lashkaretoiba Obviously because you're not a dumbass.

  • @lashkaretoiba:: Smart guy! I did the same :-)

  • @lashkaretoiba Yeah me too. Have you been through hard times and come out the other end? I think thats what did it for me. Im risk averse at all times now. Just gimme that $500 or just take the 500 and leave me with the 500 guaranteed! Screw the gambling. I think its actually easier to solve than she paints it. Once youve used your homosapien brain to figure out its the same scenario you can override your 35 million yr old habit everytime. The trick is taking the time to do the math.

  • @nijaexhile3

    Yes, I've had my fair share of hard times. It's always best to stick with the sure bet.

    One shouldn't allow their R-complex and/or Mammalian brain to rule their conceptual thought process. There's no need to try to bet the house, stay with the safe bet, because the odds are almost always in the houses favor.

  • @lashkaretoiba Sometimes when things are worded differently they appear to be better options. Which option looks better: Option A: Save 33.3% of the population, or Option B: Lose 2/3 of the population.

  • @Nogard229

    You're posing the trolly question to me in a different form. No matter which one I choose it will make me a utilitarian. That's a different question than one about granteed money as opposed to gambling on a chance.

  • @lashkaretoiba Actually, no, it isn't related to the trolley question at all. It was from a psychology experiment done a long time ago. The experiment dealt with the wording of the options given. If you haven't realized already, both options save 33.3% of the population, but one seems better than the other.

  • @Nogard229

    I got it. But like I said It doesn't matter.

  • @lashkaretoiba If you say so.

  • @lashkaretoiba

    because you saw how both senarios were similar

  • @stickybelvedere

    Yeah. ie. analogous

  • @lashkaretoiba

    The same reason I choose to be risky each time. Our brains must be wired wrong.

  • @GetDrunkAndWatch

    I didn't choose to be risky period. Speak for yourself.

  • Comment removed

  • she's smart. that was really interesting. 

  • Monkey!  That was truly fascinating.

  • I'm pretty sure some or all of her grammatical "mistakes" were all said as tongue-in-cheek. They were intentional.

    Cool talk. She can spank my monkey any day.

  • This was an amazing talk. Great!!