Monkeys~
Monkeys~
For the sake of this dicussion, I’ll speak in metaphor. We’re going to perform an experiment.
Take four monkeys and place them in a cage. give them a ladder and at the top of this cage, suspend a banana. eventually, they will discover that they can use the ladder to climb up and retrieve the banana.
Once one starts up the ladder to get the banana, turn on a fire hose on the remaining three. Repeat the process. eventually, they will learn that if one of them climbs the ladder, the remainder get hosed. this of course pisses them off considerably, and so if any one of them try to climb the ladder, they pummel and punish the offender until he stops. this continues until no monkey is willing to climb the ladder.
This is where it gets interesting.
Take one of these conditioned monkeys out of the cage and replace it with another monkey from the wild that has not been conditioned. Repeat the scenario. What do you think will happen when that monkey sees the banana?
Well, the result is obvious. But here’s what you do: You keep replacing monkeys. Eventually they don’t know just why it is they beat up the monkey that tries to climb the ladder, they just know that if one goes up the ladder, they beat him up.