Baboon Achievers, Poems, Science

Similar Simians Self-Select

44 Comments

Here’s how influential baboons can be – they have digital natives questioning the value of social media.

A recent study of baboon behavior found that baboons like to hang out with their own personality types.  Those identified as bold tended to hang out with like-minded baboons, while the meek ones prefer the company of their own sort.

As a result,  groups remain socially isolated and new information tends to stay within the group that discovered it.

Sound familiar?

No, not to me either.  No one in my circle cares much for animal studies.  Even if the creatures aren’t harmed, we tend to agree that they have a right to privacy.

But Trail Baboon poet laureate Schuyler Tyler Wyler, who, frankly, is not one of us, found the report inspiring.  So he penned the following few lines of deathless verse:

Those bold baboons are reckless beasts
They’re wild and fast and free.
So when I want to socialize,
they’re not my cup of tea.

I much prefer the timid ones.
Baboons who are demure.
If thoughtful and considerate,
I’ll hang with them for sure.

And when we convene a confab
to trade news and give reports,
we will screen for type and temperament
to weed out the wrong sorts.

So that when we all are gathered
we’ll stay focused, we’ll be tame.
All our thoughts and inspirations
will be pretty much the same.

Where do you get new ideas?

44 thoughts on “Similar Simians Self-Select”

    3. I was up four times during the night: first pain, then observation and worry, then pain, then pain and worry. Went back to bed after a few polychromatic, polysyllabic, polymorphic, mutterings, all the others spoken only to God.

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      1. and me i fell asleep before dave letterman came on and when i replayed the recording in the morning this morning i found he had gone over the time liit for the only only only time in his existence and i didnt get that on tape because i was not awake to catch the fact that he was going over and hit the continuing to record button. i dont mean to rub it in but i slept like a rock until 5 this morning. then off to meet a bunch of new people at grand jury duty and i get to be an alternate. good news because the regular deal ( for most of the others there) is to block out thurdays for 4 months and maybe they will take your friday toward the end if it looks like they may not get it all done. interesting but…. a day a week for 4 months…. i was prepared to do my duty with an interesting task and meet other good citizens but i am happy to let them solve the courts issues as they have without me up until now.
        they let me go after 3 hours, didnt pay my parking or give me a kiss on the cheek and told me theyd call if they need to. ta ta

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  2. meetup.co has given me a whole new way to plugito things i am interested in. mushrooms, woorworking, poetry, art, theater, writing, ap development , marketing, social gatherings after work or on weekends over beer wine coffee are all listed. there are some i try and bail quickly on but many are interesting and lead to additional follow up sessions.
    edx and the like with online courses and discussions on topics of interest are wonderful to keep your brain going and then there is the collection of books out there. i dont have to look to far to figure out how to spend the free time that pos up on occasion. it gets spoken for pretty quickly.

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  3. Good morning. My failure to pick up on new technology, such as many of the details for making use of my cell phone and my computer, indicate that I am not great at “acquisition of original mental constructs” as Clyde has also indicated above. Our new car has some high tech features, including Blue Tooth, which I will probably never learn to use.

    I am in favor of people learning from each other and becoming well informed about what is going on in the world by using various media. Also, I like to be as self sufficient as possible and learn to do many kinds of gardening and many kinds of home repair. I learn about this stuff by reading and from other people.

    I wouldn’t say I am especially good at learning about what is going on in the world and how to do things. The stuff I learn about doesn’t necessarily involve the picking up on a lot of “original mental constructs”. I would like to do some artistic things that involve coming up with some more advanced new ideas. I haven’t had much luck doing that. I can learn to appreciate some of the artist efforts of others if I make an effort to do this.

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    1. have zak set u up with the bluetooth thing where you can download ted talks to the phone and play them back over the cars radio or set your own playlist.
      its ok to be a curmudgeon when it works to your advantage but dont let it be an excuse to miss out on the good stuff

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    1. unfortunately those groups exit in every political meeting int he country and they wont talk with each other there either.
      i was listening to someone critisizing the other side for not reaching out acroos political lines like they did back in the dy…. well back in the day thei other side was not so one sided and unavailable for conversation. back in the day is what we are trying to get to . when discussion was not polar, it was different shades of trying to get the good result the whold world agreed we should get to.

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  5. I get new ideas from other people. I also am a trial and error learner who pushes buttons on new technology until i can get it to work. Sometimes i am successful, sometimes not. I have to get 40 hours of continuing education every two years to maintain my license, so I have opportunities for new ideas all the time.

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        1. “I also am a trial and error learner who pushes buttons on new technology until i can get it to work.”
          Renee is more a global thinker/big picture think, like men tend to be.
          She acts quickly, like men tend to do.
          She is very mechanical.

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        3. As you know, Clyde, not all men think and act like that. I know at least one male who is the total opposite of your description. Couldn’t be more opposite.

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        4. If my mother were able to comment, she would say that I am like most of the members of my father’s family, male or female, who are impatient, impulsive, pushy, mechanical, and ill tempered.

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        5. My daughter is much like Renee and I appreciate that aspect of her. Her sermons have a mix of points of view. Like Renee she is always trying things, right now brewing home cider among 5-6 other things going on.

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  7. Acquiring (1)new information (learning) and (2) original ideas/solving problems, both of which the question implies, are two different mental processes for me, and not everyone.(1) can be done in so many ways, about the poorest of which is lecture. So obviously (2) is the difficult part.

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      1. Your number one, Clyde, is about acquiring information, but could that not include acquiring awareness of new ideas?

        I’m not sure I “acquire” facts because the world is filled with notions that some folks accept as facts, often with no attempt to verify them. So, acquiring is not a simple process. I become aware of many ideas or beliefs that I reject after considering them.

        For me, the two mental processes are initial discovery and then a process of skeptical testing to see if the new fact or thought fits with what I already know or believe.

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        1. Years ago I read an historian who successfully argued that America’s great downfall was the failure to recognize change and problems. The genius was to solve the problems quickly and effectively. Today’s genius seems to be to miss the real problem by inventing non-problems and then blaming.

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        2. americas genis s to solve stuff. other places dont. why is that? politics is a sick version of god syndrome gone wild. its too bad to see the power being used like a boy scout badge on your shirt pocket. all about me and how much me i can tick off the list

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    2. You get your new ideas from France? Be careful! I like some things from France (the bikini was an idea I like) but not all (the Renault Dauphine was so bad they are still talking about it as one of the worst cars ever built).

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  9. Reading. Other folks. Google.

    I’m OK at technology (in fact, I’m the go-to person in my area for technology questions), however that doesn’t mean I am crazy about it. I have a cell, but don’t use it much. Have a pc, but don’t do much except check the Trail. No pad, no Kindle, no fitbit. Not afraid of them, just not that interested!

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  11. I want to give a shout to my Mom.
    She just turned 89 on Tuesday and got a new toy yesterday. One of those ‘Optelec’ camera readers. (she has trouble seeing).
    And she was commenting now she has the computer and the cell phone and figured out how to find the ‘free movies’ on her TV and now this machine. Plus Facebook I pointed out… she just giggles and shrugs like she can’t believe it herself.
    More power too her! Says the rest of my siblings.
    I want to be just like her; not afraid to try new things and have fun doing it.

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      1. That should read “a lot of the same toys/tools” not “not same.” I’ll blame that on the phone.

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  12. I’m not sure how to answer a question about where I get ideas. Ideas come from other people, but I rarely talk to other people. I “encounter” people by reading, by listening to the radio, by watching TV and by surfing the internet. (This is not really my preference, but that’s another story.) I have almost no contact with other folks. All the ideas pinging around in my head ultimately come from people, just not people I talk to directly.

    I knew a man who was proud of never having read a book all the way through, although he had peeked at a few books once or twice. He didn’t have a TV or radio. He was an intelligent and educated man, or mostly so, but everything he learned came to him in conversation. Like some ancient cave dweller, John lived exclusively by oral culture.

    Another friend, a rancher in northern Montana, also got all his ideas from oral culture. In his case, the only facts or ideas he considered were those things he heard from other ranchers. He had no time for facts or ideas that he hadn’t heard from other ranchers. And now that I reflect on Larry a bit, I realize he wouldn’t credit any information or views he’d only heard from a woman. He valued women for certain things, but he didn’t waste his time actually listening to them!

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    1. My ex-partner probably still brags that he has only read five books, two of which were children’s books. But he of course knew everything. He did have a knack for intuiting the contents of books by a brief scan. Or getting the idea of a book exactly backwards.

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  13. “I hope some animal never bores a hole in my head and lays its eggs
    in my brain, because later I might think I’m having a good idea
    but it’s just eggs hatching.”
    Jack Handy

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  14. I pretty much wait for ideas to come to me on some random breeze. It used to happen with some frequency, but I must not be standing in the right breeze anymore, because there’s not many new ideas coming to me.

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  16. people ask me how i come up with all this stuff and i ask how do you stop. life is an amazing teacher and a marvelous experience. but what if ya….. or maybe tried…. why do people do it that way…. why not this way…. i love failing its the only way i know of going forward. i find millions of ways not to do it. if i come out with one thats worth keeping i win , if not i keep thinking and its an ongoing song and dance.

    remember mary tyler moore show at chuckles funeral?

    a little son a little dance a little seltzer down your pants

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