Capuchin monkey fairness experiment
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN uses it as shorthand for the innate human and primate sense of fairness in threads on pay, wealth and inequality.
What it is
A one-minute clip from Frans de Waal's TED talk showing two capuchin monkeys given unequal rewards (cucumber versus grape) for the same task. The monkey receiving the lesser reward reacts with protest.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2013 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Cites tokipin · 2013-03 · on “Brains of the Animal Kingdom: Research shows we've underestimated”
that reminds me of this video: [this video] in the full talk, the speaker goes on to mention that some monkeys who were receiving the good reward would refuse to accept it until their counterpart was also given the good reward
Cites DanBC · 2019-02 · on “Ike Jime, the Japanese Slaughter Method for Tastier Fish”
> you will realize that concepts like "fairness" or "caring" simply doesn't exist outside of human brains. Here's the well known capuchin fairness experiment. [LINK] [this video]
Cites Gibbon1 · 2019-06 · on “Cross-national CCTV footage shows intervention is the norm in public conflicts”
> "Philosophically True" because it's something repeated and believed in order to bolster a philosophical position, such that it has a truth value even if it's factually wrong because some people are just that resistant to changing their minds. I like that a lot. Also explains why people get extremely testy when you try to point out it's not factual. Because then they feel you're attacking their moral center. > If you believe that external cultural indoctrination is absolutely required for people to develop a moral sense, you have to believe that people are blank slates at birth. This is not true, in that even toddlers have a sense of fairness Reminds me of this. Capuchin monkey fairness exp
Cites chillacy · 2019-08 · on “Elizabeth Warren Came Up with a Plan to Break Up Big Tech”
I think that's the psychology of it: [this video] (video of monkey getting a grape and the other monkey getting a cucumber)
Cites rsj_hn · 2021-11 · on “Two Rich Men Decided to Fund a Failing City. Some People Say They Made It Worse”
In other words, envy that someone else has something you want. That's all that's going on. Envy is hardwired into our ape-brains. Tests show chimpazees get resentful and angry when a neighboring chimpanzee is given a better treat than what they were given (say a grape versus a cucumber). They will shriek and throw their treat away and start jumping up and down. This is modern journalism. [this video] But that type of ape-morality can't support civilization, which requires large complex organizations and hirearchies. In those hirearchies, you have enormous inequality. The bigger the hierarchy, the greater the inequality. Moreover the gains in any effort are primarily driven by a small productive c
Cites _tom_ · 2021-12 · on “Toddlers are harsh judges of moral character”
It's not just children. Non human primates have notions of fairness, as demonstrated in this hilarious video. [this video]
Cites maerF0x0 · 2022-02 · on “EU to mandate public salary information for all job postings [pdf]”
The only way I've seen this been well handled is to break out the value adding concepts to "bonuses" or add'l comp for details like: "we give people and extra $24k per year if they do oncall rotation" and we give "x% more to those who work more and contribute more" otherwise once it becomes public it turns into infighting of "we're both L3s, why do they get more?" (ignoring that one of them leaves early 2-3x a week to care for their child, or is a single worker with nothing better to do than contribute and thus does more than others) ... They're simple concepts, but hard to get people to be grown ups about. [this video] Also people psychologically overestimate their contributions and underestimat
Cites kelseyfrog · 2023-12 · on “Billionaires amass more through inheritance than wealth creation, says UBS”
I'm always reminded of the video where one monkey is rewarded with a cucumber and one with a grape[1]. Certainly getting a cucumber is infinitely better than not having a cucumber, and yet the monkey protests. Despite having higher cognitive functions, that impulse still exists and can only be suppressed for so long and so far. No one has infinite capacity to maintain what they see as unfairness indefinitely, especially when it seems that humans make their own rules. 1. Capuchin monkey fairness experiment, total duration: 57s, [this video]