Bryan Goldstein's Website

I was talking to a friend about how technology advances and people stay the same. I told him that you need to fight people in order to show them that they are doing things wrong, but if you succeed the rewards make it worth your while.

He brought up the following experiment:

Researchers put a group of monkeys in a room and hung bananas over a staircase in the middle. Whenever a monkey went for the bananas all the other monkeys were punished for it. 

Eventually the monkeys began to defend the staircase beating up any individual who went for the bananas. The punishment was taken away, and the behavior remained.

Then, a new monkey was swapped with one of the old monkeys, and of course he got beat up for his greed. One by one the monkeys were swapped out until none of the monkeys remaining had any knowledge of the punishment given for an attempt at the bananas.

What do you think these monkeys did when a new monkey tried to go for the bananas? As you may or may not have guessed, they still beat up the new monkey for his careless actions.

I like to think that it is best to live your life as the monkey who isn't afraid to take risks and fight the status quo for the off chance that the reason things are the way they are have been buried beneath the sands of time.