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Monkeys are Heading to Mars

posted by cmn32480 on Thursday October 29 2015, @01:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the in-soviet-russia-mars-monkey's-you dept.

fliptop writes:

Russian scientists are currently training macaques to solve puzzles and use a joystick for a planned 2017 trip to Mars:

Each day a team, led by Inessa Kozlovskaya, trains the monkeys to control a joystick and hit a target highlighted by a cursor.

When they complete the task successfully they are rewarded with a sip of juice.

Once they have mastered this task the macaques will be trained to solve simple mathematical tasks and puzzles.

At the end of their training the creatures should be capable of completing a daily schedule of tasks on their own.

[...] Macaques typically have a lifespan of around 25 years, so it is hoped there is enough time to train them properly and for them to survive the six-month trip to Mars, added the team.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Thursday October 29 2015, @02:01PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 29 2015, @02:01PM (#256015) Journal

    They are sending congress to Mars? Good idea, we wouldn't want to waste human lives if the first few missions fail.

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  • (Score: 4, TouchĂ©) by Thexalon on Thursday October 29 2015, @02:16PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Thursday October 29 2015, @02:16PM (#256028)

    Beat me to it: I was going to suggest Olympus Mons for the next round of presidential debates.

    However, I was delayed by realizing that it wasn't cynical enough - we like to think that politicians are some strange creatures that are in no way representative of the population as a whole, but when you really ask around you find out that the politicians are in fact some of our best and brightest. Which is far more depressing!

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.

  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday October 29 2015, @07:30PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday October 29 2015, @07:30PM (#256191) Journal

    Hmm, I have the nub of an idea. There have been many complaints of late about social science posts. Well, the problem with social science is that it's unethical to experiment on humans in such a way as to achieve reproducibility. But your post suggests a way out: politicians, and I would add, Wall Street bankers. They're not really humans, more akin to monkeys or lizard people, really, so all the ethical constraints go out the window. Yet, because of their successful infiltration of human institutions, their use as simulacra of humans can still have bearing on human outcomes.

    Let's load them into rockets bound for Mars, parachutes optional, and see how they do.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 29 2015, @09:02PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 29 2015, @09:02PM (#256237)

      "Well, the problem with social science is that it's unethical to experiment on humans in such a way as to achieve reproducibility"

      Sorry, astronomy is just fine. Social sciences before about 1940 (when p values became popular) were also largely fine. You can find papers by psychologists saying "wtf are you all doing? you are deviating from the scientific method" dating to the 1950s. I've been thinking all of this may just be due to a lowering of standards. If it is true that over 50% of undergrad psych students believe they see by shooting beams out of their eyes... even after taking a class teaching explicitly the opposite, what do you expect:

      Perhaps even more disturbing to us was the strong likelihood that this misconception existed despite our participants’ having received formal education on the topics of sensation and perception. For example, we typically found extramission beliefs among college students who were tested after they had received instruction on sensation and perception in introductory psychology classes, thus suggesting not only that adults were affirming extramission beliefs but that such beliefs were resistant to education. We were confronted, then, with the likelihood that students were emerging from basic-level psychology courses without an understanding of one of the most important psychological processes, namely, visual perception.

      http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12094435?dopt=Abstract [nih.gov]

  • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday October 30 2015, @01:24AM

    by isostatic (365) on Friday October 30 2015, @01:24AM (#256305) Journal

    Look, I have no problem with sacrificing monkey, or even people, on the altair of progress. However comparing poor innocent marsupials to those creatures that infest the capitol is beyond the pale.