Talk:Hundredth Monkey Effect
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[edit] Article Clarification
so after reading the article I'm unclear on something. Did the yam washing meme spread to other islands or not? this sentence:
- There is no evidence at all of a critical number at which the idea suddenly spread to other islands, and none of the original researchers ever made such a claim.
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- makes it clear that there isn't a specific number (100) at which it spread, but it did spread right? or not? Would someone knowledgable in this topic please clarify the article and if you're feeling extra nice would you message me after you do so? thanks, TitaniumDreads 09:10, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
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- According to this site no, it did not spread across islands (or even across troupes of monkeys), and in fact the source of this meme had no contact with the original researchers. -Nakamura2828 03:04, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
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- It did not spread to other groups. The Koshima macaques were the only troop being provisioned with sweet potatoes. Kinji Imanishi was the researcher. He had nothing to do with this absurd theory, it was totally the invention of Lyle Watson, who evidently did not realize that the only monkeys that had the opportunity to eat sweet potatoes were in the Koshima island group. Even if the behavior telepathically spread to other groups, which is a ridiculous proposition, even then the other groups had no sweet potatoes to wash. Cmart (talk) 09:20, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
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This phenomenon is sometimes called by a percentage; one form is that "once 13 percent of society does behavior X, everyone will." For example, "once 13 percent of people are environmentalists, everyone will become environmentalists." The logical flaw herein is that if it takes only 13% to effect a change, then NO change can take place -- because before the 13% threshold is reached, the rest of the population is engaged in some OTHER behavior, which will kick in the "13% phenomenon" in the other direction! For example, if 90% of people are NOT environmentalists, then of course that exceeds the 13% requirement, and so EVERYONE will suddenly become a non-environmentalist. There could never be any new behaviors at all, because the majority behavior would always wipe out any emergent behaviors by virtue of this same mythological action!
[edit] where is absolute truth?
Discussion of the above: The oringinal idea, myth or not, is about learning something absolutely new and how this can spead, not about how common sets of beliefs influnce others. Have you ever experienced how difficult it is to talk about something uncommon? After the same issue has entered mainstream it moves fast, for many reasons, of course. Even though the hundredth monkey hypothesis has not been proven or published in the original case (wich scientist would dare to ruin his/her career this way?), the effect can still be exsisting. RO
- In human beings the rapid spread of knowledge is effected primarily via language (aided now by modern multimedia). In the absence of any known alternative physical means of transmission of information, (paranormal?) phenomena such as this must remain in the realm of pseudoscience. (The vague allusion to research without citation is rather telling, I should think.) RJCraig 04:48, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
- There can't be anything magical about the number 100, but if the learned behaviour spreads in an exponential fashion, then it would appear that the population would be saturated once a critical mass was reached. Peter Grey 06:15, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
- The article makes clear that the effect is almost telepathic. That if enough people sit and think peaceful thoughts, the world will suddenly change for the better. This is entirely different from any normal or known spread of knowledge. Indeed, without evidence of the effect, or the fogggiest idea of a possible mechanism, it would be apt to call this pseudoscience. It has nothing to do with exponential growth. Nor would ordinary exponential growth reproduce the effect. 68.239.176.150 19:26, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
- There can't be anything magical about the number 100, but if the learned behaviour spreads in an exponential fashion, then it would appear that the population would be saturated once a critical mass was reached. Peter Grey 06:15, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] "thought by many..."
The opening paragraph ends with a statement that even though the original story was discredited, the phenomenon is thought by many to exist. The cite is Myers 1985, but my perusal of that article does not indicate anything like many. This Wikipedia article explains further down that it's mostly New Agers that believe this, so unless we think New Agers qualifies as "many", I think the sentence should be changed to reflect that this is a widespread belief among certain groups, but certainly not in the general populace. --C S (Talk) 20:27, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] "Paranormal" ?
See how people interpret the word 'paranormal': http://blog.bizzflip.com/bizzflipcom/2008/03/the-hundredth-m.html#comment-108558116
The guy says: "Stupid article. It gives no evidence for this finding. Scientists have no problem in believing in "Paranormal" activities like mind telepathy to other monkeys on islands. But prayer to God is "foolish". Scientists are hypocrites."
The dictionary says paranormal means not scientifically explainable.
This word needs to change to something more accurate.
61.11.19.196 (talk) 07:25, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
