Marcus, Once upon a time, chickens were bred and selected individually for growth rate and egg production. This, of course, produced chickens which, when put in individual cages, produced huge amounts of bird and egg. But industrial egg production requires that chickens live in cages of 9, and when these supper chickens with put in the cages, they immediately fell to pecking each other, so then, in the end, each cage had one chicken laying a lot of eggs, and a lot of half dead ones. This led to the costly practice of de-beaking laying hens. I call these your libertarian chickens.
Then some poultry husbandry professor got a bright idea. Instead of breeding chickens by the individual, he bred and selected them by the cage, so that it was the best CAGES that got to parent the next generation. In remarkably few generations the level of aggression went down, cage productivity went up, and de-beaking was no longer necessary. I call these your socialist chickens. It's my understanding that something like this was actually done ... in Indiana. N Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Marcus G. Daniels Sent: Friday, April 11, 2014 8:37 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality? On 4/11/14, 8:19 PM, Nick Thompson wrote: > And, it [Prozac] moves monkeys up the hierarchy. New monkeys are at least a novelty compared to the old monkeys. Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
