The ironic thing about the chimp story is that probably chimps are immune to the problem and humans are the only species that would fall for it. It takes chimps a long time to learn to copy others. I doubt they could sustain a superstition like this for long even if you managed to induce it through great effort.
It's humans that copy each other without a second thought. It's a great heuristic on average. These kinds of fables are correctives against our first instinct to replicate other's behaviors, but if we actually tried to reason through everything from first principles we'd never get anything done.
Copying is the plain pieces in the lucky charms, thinking things through is the marshmallows.
It's humans that copy each other without a second thought. It's a great heuristic on average. These kinds of fables are correctives against our first instinct to replicate other's behaviors, but if we actually tried to reason through everything from first principles we'd never get anything done.
Copying is the plain pieces in the lucky charms, thinking things through is the marshmallows.