Give Them A Fair Shake


Give them a fair shake is a concept that most of us would publicly claim to espouse. We are currently hearing “fairness” frequently at present in regard to tax rates and payment.

When we are not handed fair reward or portion we get ticked off. Non-human primates do also. They expect us to give them a fair shake. Our kids are sharp observers and we are in trouble if we present one sibling with a better deal than their fellow. The household may be in uproar for days.

When socializing our kids in playgroups when young we stress the concepts of sharing and fairness. Well most of us do. The received wisdom is that once they understand fairness, they can begin to wrestle with the more abstract and subtle concept of merit.

Reward relative to merit is one ideal that some in society would claim to be the goal. Very rarely do we truly see that ideal approached, let alone achieved. Why? Philosophers could still write tomes on the subject, but psychologists might be a better source for information.

So we come to an interesting question. How young are children when they can put the concept together? Kanngiesser and Warneken have started experimenting with groups of three and five-year olds (1). The children had to pair up with a large puppet and collect coins from a group of six coins by fishing for them with a rod and line. No difficult fly fishing techniques were required. The human participant had to award pretty stickers to themselves and their puppet friend.

Firstly the award was based on size of the catch. When they worked harder and caught more coins, both the three and five year olds awarded more stickers to themselves than when their puppet friend put in more effort and was more successful. But what about the division of the available stickers? Did they look at their puppet friend and give them a fair shake? Not really. They kept more than half the stickers when they got the bigger coin catch, which was fair, but when their p-friend did better, only a small proportion of the kids handed over more than half the prized stickers. Note that 3-year olds were more likely to give them a fair shake than 5-year olds.

So it seems that by 3-years old our kids are beginning to understand what a meritocracy should look like. But even at 3 and more so at 5-years old the green-eyed monster is playing a significant role. I guess our future supply of investment bankers and industrial oligarchs is assured and our tax policy of “to him that hath, shall be given…” will continue to hold sway.

  1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0043979

The Cambridge Declaration On Consciousness


The Cambridge declaration on consciousness is a document which declares that many animal species are conscious of what is going on and are as aware of their surroundings as we humans. This is a document that has been signed by many prominent cognitive and neuroscience experts (1).

We may point at a bonobo and nod wisely, but saying “Hi” to a cuttlefish may stretch most of us. So let’s get over these hang-ups and recognize that the separation between us and our dog is not as great as all that. Maybe our dog is a little more tolerant of our peccadillos than our spouse, and next time we decide to take off to the woods, we should invite him into the cab instead od of expecting him to sit outside in the back of the truck to get over-hyped by the other traffic pulling up beside you at the lights.

Birds don’t give us much of a problem unless they are crows and we have been less than polite to some of their clan; if so we will have problems down the future generations just like the old Appalachian feuds of Hatfield – McCoy levels. So take care to smile at your crow neighbors. I guess we might be safer being sarcastic to turkeys as long as it is prior to Thanksgiving when that squeezing of their thighs is a prelude to acts which we don’t wish to speak of aloud – certainly not within their hearing.

Dolphins, porpoises and whales are no slouches either, but because they choose to live in the water, which doesn’t suit us, we tend to lump them into the fish category who tend to be rather flighty. Octopus, squid or cuttlefish are also looked at as calamari rather than conscious fellow travellers in this world of tears.

Perhaps we can show a little kindness prior to our complete exploitation. If we can learn to do this to a poor squid, perhaps we can pass that lesson on to our bankers and politicians.

  1. http://news.discovery.com/animals/animals-consciousness-mammals-birds-octopus-120824.html



Olympian Robots Have Come To Town


Olympian robots have come to town this weekend in the West of England. The city of Bristol is host to lots of feisty little robots. They are around three feet tall. Some are purchased clones and some have been built with the events in mind and are unique.

The key feature for a winning robot is the training team who write the software and teach the robot the competitive tricks required for success, whether in football, weight lifting, basketball, sprinting, or marathon running. The news media have given a lot of coverage to the FIRA RoboWorld Cup (1, 2, 3). The BBC, for example, has interviews with several of the competing robots (3).

The events have their own idiosyncratic attraction. The marathon is not run over the 42 km of a human event. It is run over 42 m. To make the sprint difficult for a robot, it has to run 3 m forward then 3 m back. The current world record is 31 sec.

Weight lifting is a sort of snatch with CDs placed on the ends of the bar. The existing record of 89 CDs is within sight as 100 have been hoisted in training by some teams.

Sandwiched between the Olympics and the Para-Olympics held this year in London, the FIRA RoboWorld Cup in Bristol hasn’t gone un-noticed. It may only last a couple of days rather than a couple of weeks but the bid to get the event to the city had to be aggressively planned and competed for. The bid went in in 2010.

It was great to bring the event to the UK for the Queen’s Jubilee year, and although the opening ceremony wasn’t anything like as lavish as that of the London 2012 games and there was no Queen and James Bond helicopter leaps, the city can be justly proud.


  1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19359372
  2. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/25/roboworld-cup-pits-photos_n_1828334.html
  3. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19361217