60 years to rights restoration

[R. A. Hettinga]

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At 2:08 PM -0800 on 12/10/02, Major Variola (ret) wrote:


> None have yet commented that in 60 years, there will be no one left
> that remembers
> what things were like.

One of my favorite cypherpunk gedankenexperiments from the old days
had to do with what could be called tradition. I hope I remember it
right. I also hope there's an original source out there for this, it
would be nice to know. Can't find it in google, much less the
cypherpunk archives, and, generally, it's kind of hard to get the
gist of a whole story like this out of google anyway...


1. Put a bunch of gorillas in a cage.

2. Put a nice stack of boxes in the cage.

3. Then, string a big bunch of bananas from the top of the cage
hanging within arm's reach from the top of the stack of boxes.

(3a. Okay, put the gorillas in last, or you'll never get to steps 1
and 2 :-).)


4. When the first gorilla climbs to the top of the boxes to grab the
bananas, do something extremely unpleasant to all the gorillas, like,
say, deluging them with icy water from sprinklers at the top of the
cage, or something.

Pretty soon, they stop climbing the boxes completely.

5. Then, replace the one gorilla. Watch the others physically
restrain him if he tries to go for the bananas.

Repeat 5 until all the gorillas have been replaced.

6. The gorillas will physically assault anyone who climbs the
pyramid, and they won't know why.

:-).

Now, I bet this "experiment" won't yield to actual empirical testing,
all mammals, including us, are either not that stupid, or, I suppose,
not that smart, but you get the point....

Cheers,
RAH




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-- 
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'