For this post, I’ll need the following reference:

Stephenson, G. R. (1967). Cultural acquisition of a specific learned response among rhesus monkeys. In: Starek, D., Schneider, R., and Kuhn, H. J. (eds.), Progress in Primatology, Stuttgart: Fischer, pp. 279-288.

Maybe you can find it on JStor or something, but it shouldn’t matter because I’m going to tell you the story. And then I’m going to extract a lesson from it. But don’t worry, because the story actually took place, and the lesson is a valid one.

We start our scene with a large cage. In this cage reside five rhesus monkeys. Among them is a coveted banana tied to a ceiling, and a ladder allowing easy access to it. Of course, it’s not hard to imagine what comes next: one of the more daring of the monkeys makes a move for the banana.

But then here comes the plot twist: the researchers respond by preventing the monkey from getting the banana and by spraying the monkey with cold water. Then the researchers spray all the other monkeys with cold water for good measure. Probably because they’re douches.

Eventually after an unknown amount of trials, the monkeys finally wizened up and no one made a move for the banana ever again.

Garden hose: a monkey's worst nightmare.

More than Five Monkeys

The researchers then enacted their even more cunning plan. From the pool of five monkeys in the cage, they removed one and replaced him with a sixth monkey who was completely unaware of the spraying water (for a new total of still five monkeys in the cage). As expected, this monkey identified the banana and made a run for it.

Except, as the new inexperienced monkey made it to the ladder, the other four monkeys stopped him from climbing the ladder by grabbing him and beating him up. This new monkey had no idea what was going on, and never experienced the cold water.

The researches then went to replace another of the four remaining experienced monkeys with an additional inexperienced one. Again, this new starry-eyed monkey made a move for the banana, only to get beaten up by all the other monkeys. Yes, all the other monkeys… the previous inexperienced monkey from the last session joined in on the beating, despite not knowing what the beating was for.

There were now three monkeys that have experienced the water, and two that haven’t.

Apparently rhesus monkeys can be cute.

The Monkeys’ Revenge

Then another monkey who experienced the water was taken out, and another fresh monkey was placed in the cage as a replacement. Again, the new monkey went for the banana only to get beaten up by everyone — both monkeys that had experienced the water and both monkeys that had not.

We can now safely fast forward to the punchline, once the cage was entirely full of monkeys that had never experienced the water, all replaced one at a time, and all having received a beating from previous monkeys. Again, that’s five monkeys having not experienced the water, but having experienced a beating. One of those monkeys is switched out, and then a new monkey (no water, no beating) is added.

This new one very predictably goes for the banana and… is beaten up by every other monkey.

Now, if there was some sort of monkey reflection or monkey introspection, maybe these monkeys would ask themselves why they are beating up this new monkey. They honestly have no idea, it’s just that’s how it’s always been done, and by golly they were beaten up back when they made a move for the banana by the people who have been around longer.

And of course the people who have been around longer also have no idea why we beat people up for going after the banana, but by golly they know of people who have been around yet longer than even the oldest member of the cage, and by golly, they must have known the answer.

Meanwhile, the researchers now have a foolproof way to safeguard the banana from many more one-for-one monkey replacements, even if they no longer had access to the cold water sprayer.

Rhesus monkey fights are the worst!

Goal-Oriented Value

So what does this research demonstrate? Contrary to how I opened this essay, I wouldn’t actually advocate drawing a sweeping conclusion from a single study, even if the study did actually happen. And even if I were to draw a sweeping conclusion, it wouldn’t be something obvious like make sure to trust introspection and reason over tradition and superstition.

Why do we not open umbrellas indoors? It’s just… um… bad luck, you see. I’m sure the people before us had very good reasons for not opening umbrellas indoors and scolding me whenever I would do so. We in no way react similarly to monkeys, right?

But consider for a moment what it means to have goal-oriented behavior.

Here you start with an objective to be accomplished, like wanting to meet your friend at the mall. Unfortunately, you can’t just suddenly poof and you’re with your friend at the mall — instead, you must initiate a wide variety of sub-tasks that have instrumental value to meeting your friend at the mall.

For instance, you may decide that you need to call your friend to arrange a time to meet her, and then drive to the mall. In order to call your friend, you must get out your phone and dial her number. In order to get to drive to the mall, you must get in your car…

This idea of instrumental value is key, because it means the sub-tasks only have value to you in how they satisfy the overall goal of meeting your friend at the mall. (Whether meeting your friend at the mall itself has instrumental value to some other goal is something I consider a good question, but outside the scope of this essay.)

If you called your friend and found out that she wasn’t available to meet, you presumably now have no reason to drive to the mall, and thus have no reason to get in your car. It’s not like you will get in your car and then immediately get out of your car, as if that had some sort of justification independent of whether you could meet your friend at the mall.

Perhaps humans aren't the only ones scheduling a time to meet at the mall...

Detached Value

But this is exactly how values can become detached, something can lose its connection to its purpose and end up just being a free-floating and unconnected objective; a thing people do; long lost from its instrumental value.

Consider something a bit more silly. Here, we have a society where the goal was to have a good harvest. And of course, the way to have a good harvest is to do dances to the nature gods. Except, people don’t always want to do these dances, because not everyone does what is best for them. Thus, we engage in condemnation of everyone who fails to dance to these gods, perhaps sneering at them or imprisoning them for failing to do so. We wouldn’t want to jeopardize the harvest!

Eventually, we get these dances just ingrained as a part of our culture, and everyone just accepts that the dance is something that our culture does. Even when scientists conclusively disprove the link between good harvests and dances to the nature gods, the dances still go on, because it’s just something the culture does, not something that is meant to please the obviously nonexistent nature gods.

And now you know why we have people afraid to open umbrellas indoors, people afraid to walk under ladders, people who watch baseball, people who throw salt over their shoulder, people who wear ties, people who publish any research that meets p<0.05, and people who take self-perpetuating positions as philosophy professors.

Still think the dance civilization is the weird one?

It seems like there’s plenty more directions and implications to take this discussion, but oddly enough none come to mind right now. Why is it that I’m writing essays again?

I’ll just close by saying that this phenomemna of detached value has implications against the notion that we always act for some sort of goal. There is a serious sense that, in actuality, we don’t act for the sake of goals as much as one would expect; just as there is the same sense that we’re not all perfectly rational.

But it still doesn’t suggest against the idea that we ought to act against some sort of goal, or against the idea that we would act for goals if we could. Though this has the same force as admitting that it is rational to be rational.

Might explain why some Republicans seem to want the government to be smaller as a good in of itself, without really explaining why.

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