Re: Why Not Planet of the Apes?

From: Nick Nicholas (raven@nanosite.com)
Date: Mon Jun 09 1997 - 07:47:37 MDT


Robin Hanson wrote:
<snip>
So why is it exactly that we haven't trained such monkeys to do real

> jobs around in our society?

<snip>Its our society and the scarcity and cost of chimps, virtually all
of the great apes are at some point between endangered and extinct. I
do know that a couple decades back orangutangs were commonly trained to
do household chores (like laundry) by the aborigionals who shared their
range (mostly Malaysia). I suspect that this is no longer common
practice.

Nick Nicholas

> Couldn't they be trained to be security
> guards, to sweep streets, to wash cars, or to run machines in
> factories? Yes language is important for many jobs, but for all jobs?
>
> Sure they like to be with each other, but couldn't teams of monkeys
> work together?
>
> I'm honestly puzzled here.
>
> Robin D. Hanson hanson@hss.caltech.edu
> http://hss.caltech.edu/~hanson/





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