House of Eratosthenes

Everybody’s heard this story before, and the situations just keep popping up under which it bears repeating. But it’s hard to find a source for the story. Wouldn’t it be great to source it; even better, to find a link. Well, this one seems to be the best out of all of them, right here (PDF).

A preamble about monkeys

Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the bananas. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all the monkeys with cold water.

After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result � again all the monkeys are sprayed with cold water. This continues until pretty soon whenever another monkey tries to climb the stairs all the other monkeys will try to prevent it. Now put away the cold water. Remove one of the monkeys from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey will see the banana will attempt to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror all the of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt, and attack, he knows that if he climbs the stairs he will be assaulted.

Next remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with new one. The newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm! Like wise replace third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth and a fifth. Every time a new monkey takes to the stairs it is attacked. The monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing all the original monkeys none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the bananas. Why not? Because as far as they know that�s the way we�ve always done it around here.

We call this TTWWADI.

[…] I’ve come to be highly suspicious of the word “diversity” and no, it isn’t because I’m a six-foot-tall sandy-haired white guy who’s straight and right-handed and possessing all ten fingers. All of which I am. No, the D-word should be promising me something, I figure. Where it is celebrated as something positive, I perceive it to represent a busting-out from the good-ol’-boy network. I have been seduced into believing that…perhaps…since it’s been quite a while, looking back, since anyone has strung together the words that would out-and-out promise such a thing. But I think most of us would agree, that’s supposed to be the implication. Diversity is a condition, or a goal, and where it is either one of those the status quo just isn’t going to fly. People will think outside of the box — or else they will be forced to. Diversity is, or should be, or is expected to be, antithetical to TTWWADI which means “That’s The Way We’ve Always Done It.” The diversification of a clientel, or any kind of audience, is an event by which it will become necessary and unavoidable that a different way will be found to do those things. That should have enormous appeal to people like me. White or not, I notice my contributions to any group endeavor decline steeply where TTWWADI is worshipped like the false god that it is. I’m one of those free-thinkers that isn’t so good at the TTWWADI thing. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 11/23/2006 @ 08:31
[…] There is a name for this. It is called TTWWADI. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 08/26/2007 @ 10:56

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TTWWADISaturday, September 16th, 2006

TTWWADI
Saturday, September 16th, 2006