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LJ Idol
Season 9, Week 8
Topic: “Yes, and”
It has become fashionable to look at failure as delayed success, but sometimes failure is just failure. Arnold Schwarzenegger said that “Failure is not an option. Everyone has to succeed.” The Terminator, however, never met Lawrence Edwin.
When he was five years old, little Larry thought that Superman could fly because he was wearing a cape. Fashioning a cape out of an old red towel, Larry flew off his top bunk and broke his arm. At the age of ten, Larry built a jetpack using aluminum tubing from a lawn chair and a lot of model rocket engines. He reached an altitude of fifteen feet before the engine quit and he realized that he did not have a landing strategy. Larry broke his other arm.
These were mere childhood embarrassments. Larry Edwin saved the best for last. By age fifty, he had become Prof. Lawrence Edwin, Ph.D., a tenured faculty member in the Stanford University Department of Advanced Simian Studies and a noted simianologist. By then, he was certain he had left failure far behind.
In 2001, Prof. Edwin proposed the controversial idea that monkeys possessed real human intelligence. He was going to prove this by teaching a monkey to type English and communicate with him. Prof. Edwin was the star of his department and very ambitious. You did not say “no” to Lawrence Edwin.
The professor needed a proper test subject. No one knows where Coco the Monkey originally came from, but Lawrence spotted him at a visiting Bulgarian circus. Coco was dressed as a tiny ringmaster and rode an elephant while juggling; he also performed as an aerialist. The crowd loved him, and so did Lawrence.
Prof. Edwin was so impressed with Coco that he examined him after the show, and concluded that the monkey was highly intelligent and extremely expressive. This was exactly the specimen he needed for his experiment. He bought Coco from the circus and hired the trainer, Marija Stoyanov. The three returned to Stanford and certain glory.
The professor had long been critical of the Infinite Monkey Theorem, which posited that a monkey hitting random keys on a typewriter for an infinite amount of time will eventually type a Shakespeare play. Instead, because Lawrence theorized that monkeys possessed human intelligence, just one monkey using one typewriter should reproduce simple human speech, probably in less than a year. Prof. Edwin didn’t need Shakespeare to win the Nobel Prize, only a very clever Bulgarian circus monkey.
The professor planned to use a modified Turing Test for his theory. Coco and a human would be placed in separate rooms with a judge in a third room. The judge would not know that one of the subjects was a monkey. Using a microphone, the judge would attempt simple simultaneous conversations with both subjects, who would type their responses.
If the judge could not tell Coco’s answers from his human counterpart, then, according to the Edwin Theory, Coco would therefore have to possess human intelligence.
Marija Stoyanov diligently trained Coco to use a typewriter, including safety issues, such as not throwing the typewriter at Lawrence or spitting at him.
Early indications were not promising. Coco produced random jumbles of letters, with an occasional “to,” “but,” or “cat.” After six months, the whispers started: Coco was a failure. Bowing to the pressure, Lawrence conducted an early test, complete with a judge and a human in separate rooms.
When the judge said, “How are you?” the human typed “fine” but Coco typed “sjsjf eoncty iforlll3l” and tore the paper in half. “What is your name?” “Lisa.” “sovE;pd o0wsljsd.” “Are you hungry?” “no.” “ljkaewopiuvnlvohieoio54i78towiehpoleskhy-0y.” And so it went, until Prof. Edwin, humiliated, gave up.
Lawrence knew that only the test could be wrong, not his theory, so he improved the test. The monkey was much calmer when Marija was with him, but during the test, Coco had been alone and agitated. Prof. Edwin decided to eliminate this obvious source of error by allowing the trainer to be in Coco’s room. Marija could not contaminate the process because she did not speak any English.
The effect was immediate. Now calm, Coco began producing real words with less gibberish. The most frequent were “food,” “water,” and “sleep.” Progress was rapid. Within two months, the monkey could form simple sentences: “want more food,” “cage is small,” and “Coco alone.” In another five months, Coco could engage in simple conversations.
Lawrence had been hinting at his extraordinary results for weeks. It was time for a public Turing Test and the Nobel Prize.
Interest was high, the viewing room was full, and Prof. Edwin was confident. It was a completely blind test, not even the professor knew Coco’s room. The rooms had video monitors for later study. “How are you feeling?” said the judge. “ok.” “good.” “Do you want some water?” “no.” “no.” “How is your typewriter working?” “just fine.” “keys are stiff.” For 45 minutes, the judge asked simple questions and read the responses.
Finally, it was over. Taking a deep breath, Prof. Edwin asked the most important question of his life: “Who have you been talking with?” “I don’t know,” responded the judge, adding “it could have been anyone.” A volunteer opened the doors to the rooms. When Coco and Marija stepped out of Room #1, the crowd went wild.
For weeks, the scientific journals and popular media covered little else: monkeys had human intelligence! How could we trap them, keep them in zoos, or perform tests on them? Clearly, they should be taught to type!
There were also some skeptics. The experiment’s video tech, Jennifer Wallace, was one of them. After the experiment, Jennifer had collected her equipment and kept it for Prof. Edwin. Jennifer now pored over the video files, looking for other explanations for the results. She used slow speeds, high speeds, and ultra-slow speeds; she zoomed in, zoomed out, and searched all around. Nothing.
She was about to give up when she finally saw something. The trainer’s fingers moved ever so slightly while Coco was typing. There was a pattern -- Marija Stoyanov was signaling the monkey by typing with her fingers, with one hand on Coco’s back and the other on the desk! It was nearly imperceptible, but clearly visible once Jennifer knew what to look for. Coco was simply pushing keys in response to Marija’s hand signals.
Jennifer turned the videos over to Sharon Saller, Dean of the School of Sciences, who launched a private investigation. The public eagerly awaited the results.
Surprisingly, Dean Saller cleared Marija Stoyanov and Prof. Edwin of any deliberate wrongdoing. She determined that Coco had been inadvertently trained by Ms. Stoyanov to type according to her hand cues. Since Marija was Bulgarian, in order to train the monkey to type in English she had to learn this herself. Ms. Stoyanov’s typing movements were only a subconscious part of her learning process. She was not even aware she was doing it.
Lawrence was never able to reproduce his Turing Test results. His ideas were rejected as the rankest form of nonsense and he ultimately died in obscurity, a failure. Marija returned to Bulgaria and the circus. Coco was sent to an animal sanctuary, where he lived a very happy life.
Lawrence Edwin did not need a flying cape, a jetpack, or a circus monkey; he needed someone to look over his shoulder and tell him when to stop. Wanting success is not the same as achieving it. In hindsight, the signs were obvious. Lawrence Edwin wanted to soar, but he would never fly.
Acknowledgments: I am deeply indebted to Jinx the Cat for providing Coco’s nonsense typing by walking on my keyboard. Her creativity was inspiring. Ldhteopq2ha, Jinx’s new novel, will be published by Penguin Books USA in Fall 2014.
Season 9, Week 8
Topic: “Yes, and”
MONKEYS CAN TYPE!
The Rise and Fall of Lawrence Edwin
The Rise and Fall of Lawrence Edwin
It has become fashionable to look at failure as delayed success, but sometimes failure is just failure. Arnold Schwarzenegger said that “Failure is not an option. Everyone has to succeed.” The Terminator, however, never met Lawrence Edwin.
When he was five years old, little Larry thought that Superman could fly because he was wearing a cape. Fashioning a cape out of an old red towel, Larry flew off his top bunk and broke his arm. At the age of ten, Larry built a jetpack using aluminum tubing from a lawn chair and a lot of model rocket engines. He reached an altitude of fifteen feet before the engine quit and he realized that he did not have a landing strategy. Larry broke his other arm.
These were mere childhood embarrassments. Larry Edwin saved the best for last. By age fifty, he had become Prof. Lawrence Edwin, Ph.D., a tenured faculty member in the Stanford University Department of Advanced Simian Studies and a noted simianologist. By then, he was certain he had left failure far behind.
In 2001, Prof. Edwin proposed the controversial idea that monkeys possessed real human intelligence. He was going to prove this by teaching a monkey to type English and communicate with him. Prof. Edwin was the star of his department and very ambitious. You did not say “no” to Lawrence Edwin.
The professor needed a proper test subject. No one knows where Coco the Monkey originally came from, but Lawrence spotted him at a visiting Bulgarian circus. Coco was dressed as a tiny ringmaster and rode an elephant while juggling; he also performed as an aerialist. The crowd loved him, and so did Lawrence.
Prof. Edwin was so impressed with Coco that he examined him after the show, and concluded that the monkey was highly intelligent and extremely expressive. This was exactly the specimen he needed for his experiment. He bought Coco from the circus and hired the trainer, Marija Stoyanov. The three returned to Stanford and certain glory.
The professor had long been critical of the Infinite Monkey Theorem, which posited that a monkey hitting random keys on a typewriter for an infinite amount of time will eventually type a Shakespeare play. Instead, because Lawrence theorized that monkeys possessed human intelligence, just one monkey using one typewriter should reproduce simple human speech, probably in less than a year. Prof. Edwin didn’t need Shakespeare to win the Nobel Prize, only a very clever Bulgarian circus monkey.
The professor planned to use a modified Turing Test for his theory. Coco and a human would be placed in separate rooms with a judge in a third room. The judge would not know that one of the subjects was a monkey. Using a microphone, the judge would attempt simple simultaneous conversations with both subjects, who would type their responses.
If the judge could not tell Coco’s answers from his human counterpart, then, according to the Edwin Theory, Coco would therefore have to possess human intelligence.
Marija Stoyanov diligently trained Coco to use a typewriter, including safety issues, such as not throwing the typewriter at Lawrence or spitting at him.
Early indications were not promising. Coco produced random jumbles of letters, with an occasional “to,” “but,” or “cat.” After six months, the whispers started: Coco was a failure. Bowing to the pressure, Lawrence conducted an early test, complete with a judge and a human in separate rooms.
When the judge said, “How are you?” the human typed “fine” but Coco typed “sjsjf eoncty iforlll3l” and tore the paper in half. “What is your name?” “Lisa.” “sovE;pd o0wsljsd.” “Are you hungry?” “no.” “ljkaewopiuvnlvohieoio54i78towiehpoleskhy-0y.” And so it went, until Prof. Edwin, humiliated, gave up.
Lawrence knew that only the test could be wrong, not his theory, so he improved the test. The monkey was much calmer when Marija was with him, but during the test, Coco had been alone and agitated. Prof. Edwin decided to eliminate this obvious source of error by allowing the trainer to be in Coco’s room. Marija could not contaminate the process because she did not speak any English.
The effect was immediate. Now calm, Coco began producing real words with less gibberish. The most frequent were “food,” “water,” and “sleep.” Progress was rapid. Within two months, the monkey could form simple sentences: “want more food,” “cage is small,” and “Coco alone.” In another five months, Coco could engage in simple conversations.
Lawrence had been hinting at his extraordinary results for weeks. It was time for a public Turing Test and the Nobel Prize.
Interest was high, the viewing room was full, and Prof. Edwin was confident. It was a completely blind test, not even the professor knew Coco’s room. The rooms had video monitors for later study. “How are you feeling?” said the judge. “ok.” “good.” “Do you want some water?” “no.” “no.” “How is your typewriter working?” “just fine.” “keys are stiff.” For 45 minutes, the judge asked simple questions and read the responses.
Finally, it was over. Taking a deep breath, Prof. Edwin asked the most important question of his life: “Who have you been talking with?” “I don’t know,” responded the judge, adding “it could have been anyone.” A volunteer opened the doors to the rooms. When Coco and Marija stepped out of Room #1, the crowd went wild.
For weeks, the scientific journals and popular media covered little else: monkeys had human intelligence! How could we trap them, keep them in zoos, or perform tests on them? Clearly, they should be taught to type!
There were also some skeptics. The experiment’s video tech, Jennifer Wallace, was one of them. After the experiment, Jennifer had collected her equipment and kept it for Prof. Edwin. Jennifer now pored over the video files, looking for other explanations for the results. She used slow speeds, high speeds, and ultra-slow speeds; she zoomed in, zoomed out, and searched all around. Nothing.
She was about to give up when she finally saw something. The trainer’s fingers moved ever so slightly while Coco was typing. There was a pattern -- Marija Stoyanov was signaling the monkey by typing with her fingers, with one hand on Coco’s back and the other on the desk! It was nearly imperceptible, but clearly visible once Jennifer knew what to look for. Coco was simply pushing keys in response to Marija’s hand signals.
Jennifer turned the videos over to Sharon Saller, Dean of the School of Sciences, who launched a private investigation. The public eagerly awaited the results.
Surprisingly, Dean Saller cleared Marija Stoyanov and Prof. Edwin of any deliberate wrongdoing. She determined that Coco had been inadvertently trained by Ms. Stoyanov to type according to her hand cues. Since Marija was Bulgarian, in order to train the monkey to type in English she had to learn this herself. Ms. Stoyanov’s typing movements were only a subconscious part of her learning process. She was not even aware she was doing it.
Lawrence was never able to reproduce his Turing Test results. His ideas were rejected as the rankest form of nonsense and he ultimately died in obscurity, a failure. Marija returned to Bulgaria and the circus. Coco was sent to an animal sanctuary, where he lived a very happy life.
Lawrence Edwin did not need a flying cape, a jetpack, or a circus monkey; he needed someone to look over his shoulder and tell him when to stop. Wanting success is not the same as achieving it. In hindsight, the signs were obvious. Lawrence Edwin wanted to soar, but he would never fly.
Acknowledgments: I am deeply indebted to Jinx the Cat for providing Coco’s nonsense typing by walking on my keyboard. Her creativity was inspiring. Ldhteopq2ha, Jinx’s new novel, will be published by Penguin Books USA in Fall 2014.
