Laurie Santos: A monkey economy as irrational as ours

Laurie Santos looks for the roots of human irrationality by watching the way our primate relatives make decisions. A clever series of experiments in "monkeynomics" shows that some of the silly choices we make, monkeys make too.

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They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and it appears
Many human languages achieve great diversity by combining basic words into compound ones - German is a classic example of this. We're not the only species that does this.

Fascinating talk. Laurie Santos is also a very good speaker.
Yikes, the monkey in me comes out way more often than I like to think!!

I don't think the monkeys ever actually lost anything. They always gained something in every trial. Even if it's just one grape.

I don't think that's the case with the humans in all the economic environments mentioned in the piece (home mortgages, etc).

By Charles Sullivan (not verified) on 06 Aug 2010 #permalink