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NancyLebovitz comments on Open thread for December 9 - 16, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: NancyLebovitz 09 December 2013 04:35PM

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Comment author: NancyLebovitz 12 December 2013 03:49:02PM 2 points [-]

The monkey was folding the man's fingers, not just handing him leaves.

If the monkey is giving a gift to incur a sense of obligation, it might be even more complex behavior than teaching.

Comment author: tut 13 December 2013 02:19:27PM *  1 point [-]

Yes. What I was thinking was that people had previously given the monkeys treats by putting something in the monkey's hand and closing its fingers, so that this is the monkey is more or less imitating something that it wants the human to do.

It is not that teaching is too complex for a monkey, it is that I don't see what exactly it's teaching, but I feel that I recognize what the monkey is doing as the "you keep this" gesture.