![]() The rest of us make a monster and then recoil from it the minute it wakes up, hating and fearing that which we just obsessively slaved to create, just like Mary Shelley knew we would. The only movie scientist yet to ever follow that holy suit, to lock himself in and force himself to be a good dad, was Gene Wilder in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. Who started the squabble and who deserves to win? That's up to a God still too merciful (or sadistic) to push the Old Testament flood button and destroy his monster. It's a war of buttons: can the AI hit the missile launch button before we can deactivate it? Can it zap us before we can pull its plug? It's a close race, one that braver films are less inclined to judge. ![]() In all three films, reactionary humanity rushes to destroy that which its visionary component has only just created, recognizing a genuine threat almost at the exact same moment the threat recognizes us. All three films structure themselves around a conflict between anti-technology extremists and the visionaries who shuffle along the edge between mad scientist and hero. This could provide, she says, a window into how rituals arise and change in other primates, including humans.Science fiction cinema's always had an unhealthy obsession with artificial intelligence but never more so than in the last few years: three major films: AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON TERMINATOR: GENYSIS and TRANSCENDENCE -all deal in some way with the instant revulsion that erupts in human consciousness once it realizes it has just outmoded itself. Perry plans to study how these ritualized interactions evolve throughout the course of the monkeys’ relationships with each other. While humans and capuchins have very different rituals and attachments to objects, these exchanges could affect how we think about primate evolution and where rituals came from-are they biologically hardwired or are they learned through culture? “The stick that the kids probably isn't important,” she says, “but the fact that they're passing it back and forth, the fact that you have to tap on the slide in a specific pattern to get into the secret clubhouse, seems like a reasonable, if rough, parallel to what it might be that these capuchins are doing.” It can also be more playful, with the monkeys simply handing an object from one to another.īrosnan compares these object-based interactions to a childhood playground game. The exchange can be risky because it may include reaching into the other monkey’s mouth to fish out the object. ![]() The continuous exchange of a sacred object, such as a piece of bark or tuft of hair, is another way a capuchin may test the strength of a bond with a companion. To answer that question, Perry’s work builds on a hypothesis about testing social bonds first described by evolutionary biologist Amotz Zahavi in the 1970s. That suggests that to them it's important -otherwise, why would they do it?” “It was remarkable to me…that the one who is having it done to them was perfectly happy to just sit there. ![]() “There's almost a visceral reaction when you see one monkey shove their fingers up another monkey's nose,” Brosnan says. That’s why Perry knew there had to be some good reason why this group would spend time and energy on uncomfortable rituals, which are defined as a set of actions that are usually repetitive and lack an obvious purpose. White-faced capuchin monkeys, which live in Central and South America, have a brain-to-body size ratio comparable to that of chimpanzees, which typically signals advanced cognitive abilities and social systems, says Sarah Brosnan, a primatologist at Georgia State University who wasn’t involved in the study. And because these behaviors have only ever been documented to this extent in this one group, it’s one more piece of evidence that capuchins can have distinctive and evolving cultures. In a paper published in June, Perry and colleague Marco Smolla explain their theory as to why this group of monkeys developed a repertoire of unique, seemingly non-useful behaviors: They say these acts amount to ritualized behaviors that are designed to test social bonds.
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