Bananas on a Ladder

New Recording 202

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I heard this story many years ago in SE Portland, in a dark bar in an old industrial space near the river, drinking expensive IPAs in the middle of the afternoon with a hypnotist/computer programmer.

"Imagine you've got 5 monkeys in a room," he said.

"And in that room, is a ladder. And on top of that ladder are some bananas."

He paused.

"Now imagine some researchers, who douse the monkeys with cold water every time they try to climb the ladder. They stop pretty quick right?"

I nod.

"Now the researchers stop dousing the monkeys with water, but the monkeys don't know they could climb up and get the bananas because they've already associated the bananas with a negative outcome."

My friend swigged his beer and leaned in close.

"But here's where it gets really interesting. The researchers start replacing the monkeys, one by one. And of course the first thing that the new monkey does is go for the bananas... but the other monkeys pull the new monkey off the ladder so they don't get soaked.

"You can cycle out all the monkeys one by one, and the prohibition on climbing the ladder will remain, even though none of the new monkeys have ever experienced the negative stimulus."

This story made a big impact on me.

Even though no research study like this was ever conducted, it feels true. We see obvious examples of this, like with QWERTY or Christmas, but often it's less clear-cut.

We just respond to the world because that's how we were taught to respond, but we actually do have choice in our decisions.

Situations change. The rules that used to apply sometimes no longer do. So it's a good idea to send somebody up the ladder for the bananas every once in a while just to check.

And at the very least, us monkeys ought not to enforce stupid penalties just because.