God and The 5 Monkeys
The "5 Monkey Experiment" is a very common story told as a way to try to understand human behavior... but it is usually presented as a way to say that humans are "flawed". If you do a Google search, you'll find many tellings of the story... here's one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr0cb96C6yU The story talks about understanding behavior by explaining how a group of monkeys behaves in an experiment... but there is one critical thing missing from it... the experiment does not account for the presence of the experimenter and the impact this has on the outcome. In the experiment, a group of monkeys is treated with some negative experience (ie. sprayed with cold water when they try to get some bananas). This negative experience is just accepted as the foundation of the experiment and there is no attempt to see THAT part of it as critical to the entire story. The monkeys behavior BEGINS with a negative experience... and their natural behavior is what simpl...