5 ms·

When I read things like this, I can't help but feel like we're approaching The Behavioral Sink. When I first read about John B. Calhoun's work, I thought it was

When I read things like this, I can't help but feel like we're approaching The Behavioral Sink. When I first read about John B. Calhoun's work, I thought it was interesting but sort of moved on. For some reason, it stuck in my mind though, and it rises to the surface often when I read news about the world. For those who don't know, Calhoun's research was around the impact of population growth. He found that mice in a closed environment, among other behaviors, became anti-social, violent, strangely obsessed with grooming and stopped breeding once the population reached a certain size, even disregarding the wellbeing of the young that are born. Obviously we're not in a situation as bad as all that, but it's an interesting light to view today's world in.

Derpdiherp 10y ago
The mice utopia experiment.. There are a surprising amount of small parallels between it and some of our recent cultural phenomenon. Interesting thought.
- thechao 10y ago
  Would you mind elaborating? My great grandmother used to laugh at the moral majority's antics---she said that people have been complaining about the moral degeneration of society since she was a small child---in the 1890s.
  - Derpdiherp 10y ago
    "Newer generations born in the now dysfunctional mouse utopia became withdrawn, spending their days grooming obsessively and dedicating their time solely to eating , drinking and sleeping. This generation, for all the emphasis they placed on grooming, would not reproduce. Moreover, these mice were noted to be unintelligent compared to previous generations." Intelligence has surely risen in our population, obesity is becoming a real problem in successful populations. The "selfie" self absorbed cultural shift we're seeing at the moment is another parallel. Whilst we're not cannibalising each other or becoming any more aggressive than we have been in the past (although we are still plenty aggressive), I think we are starting to see some of symptoms for lack of a better term that are highlighted above to some degree or another. Edit - perhaps there are also similarities between the hikikomori NEET lifestyle that's arisen in Japan as well. This is purely an opinion without any statistics to back it up though, I'd be interested to hear counter arguments.
    - projektir 10y ago
      Getting obese seems like the opposite of excessive grooming. Most of the tendencies you're talking about are not happening in the overpopulated areas. The selfie thing is hugely overblown, a lot of people may be self-absorbed, but what says that's new, and a lot of people are also depressed. The mice thing is not a utopia, it's an extremely artificial situation that only fits a very banal and shallow definition of "utopia". And that is not and probably never will be a situation humans will find themselves in since it requires a third party to engineer. None of us right now are in a closed environment, and we're definitely not in a no scarcity situation, since people are still worried about holding a job. The NEET thing is, too, related to the whole job thing. In what way are these situations at all related?
      - Derpdiherp 10y ago
        I think you're reading into the term "utopia" too much. The experiment was a utopia of the body perhaps where there are no biological needs that aren't satisfied with no external forces of nature acting to reduce population aside from the size of the habitat that the rats lived in - as you mention we do not live in a utopia as people do grow hungry and are lacking jobs. It also was not a utopia because the rats clearly where not happy. I'd disagree and say that in overpopulated areas there is a higher rate of depression, obesity and psychological problems than in places with lower populations - but I haven't provided numbers there and neither have you - so both of our arguments are anecdotal. As an aside I was more referencing the hikikomori phenomenon when I mentioned NEET's - whilst they are NEET, they are extreme cases of social withdrawl and other mental problems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori
        projektir 10y ago
        But do words not matter? The word "utopia" has a specific connotation in the minds of many people, and such experiments continue to drive the narrative that humans cannot be happy unless the conditions are bad. > I'd disagree and say that in overpopulated areas there is a higher rate of depression, obesity and psychological problems than in places with lower populations - but I haven't provided numbers there and neither have you - so both of our arguments are anecdotal. I'm honestly not sure what you are referring to. Obesity is much higher in the US, by a wide margin, than, say, India, and India is definitely much more populated. I don't know if I really need to provide numbers for that. The NEET issue could easily have been caused by bleak job prospects. My point is, the rat experiment and the current situation don't seem to be even remotely related. Our population growth is not the same, and our population growth is very uneven. We have external forces acting to limit how people live still. There are just so many variables not accounted for that trying to find any connections is more dangerous than it is helpful.
- projektir 10y ago
  I think calling that a utopia is quite a stretch. We humans still have some definitions to work out if we think that a utopia out of ignorance and lack of power is valid.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
jonathanhefner 10y ago
I also found his research intriguing! Here is a nice write-up for anyone unfamiliar: http://www.mostlyodd.com/death-by-utopia/ http://www.mostlyodd.com/death-by-utopia/
snowwrestler 10y ago
We can level the human population off--and ultimately shrink it--long before that point, simply by growing the percentage of women with access to education, contraceptives, and equal legal rights. We don't know what the "natural" human population is. By that, I mean the human population that would exist if every human had free choice of whether or not to have kids. What we have now (globally) is still largely the "accidental" human population--the population we got because the pleasure of sex leads unexpectedly to reproduction.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  I know this is an unpopular opinion, and I wouldn't trust most countries to enact it properly but... I wish we had a "reverse-able sterilization at birth" method. It would be reversed at no cost to the individual, but if we could somehow set the default to "no kids", and give individuals the choice to turn it on, I think we would see a lot less of a population issue.
  - hx87 10y ago
    I'm not sure why "contraception by default from birth with free reversibility" would be an unpopular opinion. People who don't want kids would be happy, people who want kids but want control over timing would be happy, even people who want kids to be an unexpected gift would be happy...
    - CaptSpify 10y ago
      I've spent a lot of time with religious people. Many of them think that our current birth-control methods are immoral. Many states in the US still have abstinence-only education.
    - mc32 10y ago
      Mostly because it has echoes of eugenics. I agree this would not only control growth but pause our use of natural resources and would allow people in poor countries to do better economically as resources would not have to be shared among a growing pop. Alternatives to contraception, form a pop growth perspective are delayed reproduction (say at 35) or more same sex pairing.
DominikR 10y ago
> He found that mice in a closed environment, among other behaviors, became anti-social, violent, strangely obsessed with grooming ... You haven't mentioned the very important fact that the experiment was designed to be a mice "utopia" with everything mice could desire provided to them for free. (meaning: no effort needed) In an environment where no effort is needed to survive and procreate it makes sense to me that the offspring will be less intelligent and less social over time as they do not need any of these social traits to survive. We haven't reached human utopia yet but I believe the welfare state goes into that direction and will eventually produce similar results. (it already does in some respects - see birth rates in Western countries) The next decades will be very interesting times (and possibly frightening) as we might see our civilisation first being dominated economically by others and likely also militarily after that. (and this wont be pretty for us, because hatred towards our culture is mainstream in most other cultures - and sadly also internally) Or alternatively we will see chaotic internal revolutions that will undo this development. But I doubt that we will see these changes happen in an ordered democratic way as the establishment will fight changes by all means imaginable. (it is obvious when seeing the medias bias)

Derpdiherp 10y ago

The mice utopia experiment.. There are a surprising amount of small parallels between it and some of our recent cultural phenomenon. Interesting thought.

thechao 10y ago
Would you mind elaborating? My great grandmother used to laugh at the moral majority's antics---she said that people have been complaining about the moral degeneration of society since she was a small child---in the 1890s.
- Derpdiherp 10y ago
  "Newer generations born in the now dysfunctional mouse utopia became withdrawn, spending their days grooming obsessively and dedicating their time solely to eating , drinking and sleeping. This generation, for all the emphasis they placed on grooming, would not reproduce. Moreover, these mice were noted to be unintelligent compared to previous generations." Intelligence has surely risen in our population, obesity is becoming a real problem in successful populations. The "selfie" self absorbed cultural shift we're seeing at the moment is another parallel. Whilst we're not cannibalising each other or becoming any more aggressive than we have been in the past (although we are still plenty aggressive), I think we are starting to see some of symptoms for lack of a better term that are highlighted above to some degree or another. Edit - perhaps there are also similarities between the hikikomori NEET lifestyle that's arisen in Japan as well. This is purely an opinion without any statistics to back it up though, I'd be interested to hear counter arguments.
  - projektir 10y ago
    Getting obese seems like the opposite of excessive grooming. Most of the tendencies you're talking about are not happening in the overpopulated areas. The selfie thing is hugely overblown, a lot of people may be self-absorbed, but what says that's new, and a lot of people are also depressed. The mice thing is not a utopia, it's an extremely artificial situation that only fits a very banal and shallow definition of "utopia". And that is not and probably never will be a situation humans will find themselves in since it requires a third party to engineer. None of us right now are in a closed environment, and we're definitely not in a no scarcity situation, since people are still worried about holding a job. The NEET thing is, too, related to the whole job thing. In what way are these situations at all related?
    - Derpdiherp 10y ago
      I think you're reading into the term "utopia" too much. The experiment was a utopia of the body perhaps where there are no biological needs that aren't satisfied with no external forces of nature acting to reduce population aside from the size of the habitat that the rats lived in - as you mention we do not live in a utopia as people do grow hungry and are lacking jobs. It also was not a utopia because the rats clearly where not happy. I'd disagree and say that in overpopulated areas there is a higher rate of depression, obesity and psychological problems than in places with lower populations - but I haven't provided numbers there and neither have you - so both of our arguments are anecdotal. As an aside I was more referencing the hikikomori phenomenon when I mentioned NEET's - whilst they are NEET, they are extreme cases of social withdrawl and other mental problems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori
      - projektir 10y ago
        But do words not matter? The word "utopia" has a specific connotation in the minds of many people, and such experiments continue to drive the narrative that humans cannot be happy unless the conditions are bad. > I'd disagree and say that in overpopulated areas there is a higher rate of depression, obesity and psychological problems than in places with lower populations - but I haven't provided numbers there and neither have you - so both of our arguments are anecdotal. I'm honestly not sure what you are referring to. Obesity is much higher in the US, by a wide margin, than, say, India, and India is definitely much more populated. I don't know if I really need to provide numbers for that. The NEET issue could easily have been caused by bleak job prospects. My point is, the rat experiment and the current situation don't seem to be even remotely related. Our population growth is not the same, and our population growth is very uneven. We have external forces acting to limit how people live still. There are just so many variables not accounted for that trying to find any connections is more dangerous than it is helpful.
projektir 10y ago
I think calling that a utopia is quite a stretch. We humans still have some definitions to work out if we think that a utopia out of ignorance and lack of power is valid.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

jonathanhefner 10y ago

I also found his research intriguing! Here is a nice write-up for anyone unfamiliar: http://www.mostlyodd.com/death-by-utopia/ http://www.mostlyodd.com/death-by-utopia/

snowwrestler 10y ago

We can level the human population off--and ultimately shrink it--long before that point, simply by growing the percentage of women with access to education, contraceptives, and equal legal rights. We don't know what the "natural" human population is. By that, I mean the human population that would exist if every human had free choice of whether or not to have kids. What we have now (globally) is still largely the "accidental" human population--the population we got because the pleasure of sex leads unexpectedly to reproduction.

CaptSpify 10y ago
I know this is an unpopular opinion, and I wouldn't trust most countries to enact it properly but... I wish we had a "reverse-able sterilization at birth" method. It would be reversed at no cost to the individual, but if we could somehow set the default to "no kids", and give individuals the choice to turn it on, I think we would see a lot less of a population issue.
- hx87 10y ago
  I'm not sure why "contraception by default from birth with free reversibility" would be an unpopular opinion. People who don't want kids would be happy, people who want kids but want control over timing would be happy, even people who want kids to be an unexpected gift would be happy...
  - CaptSpify 10y ago
    I've spent a lot of time with religious people. Many of them think that our current birth-control methods are immoral. Many states in the US still have abstinence-only education.
  - mc32 10y ago
    Mostly because it has echoes of eugenics. I agree this would not only control growth but pause our use of natural resources and would allow people in poor countries to do better economically as resources would not have to be shared among a growing pop. Alternatives to contraception, form a pop growth perspective are delayed reproduction (say at 35) or more same sex pairing.

DominikR 10y ago

> He found that mice in a closed environment, among other behaviors, became anti-social, violent, strangely obsessed with grooming ... You haven't mentioned the very important fact that the experiment was designed to be a mice "utopia" with everything mice could desire provided to them for free. (meaning: no effort needed) In an environment where no effort is needed to survive and procreate it makes sense to me that the offspring will be less intelligent and less social over time as they do not need any of these social traits to survive. We haven't reached human utopia yet but I believe the welfare state goes into that direction and will eventually produce similar results. (it already does in some respects - see birth rates in Western countries) The next decades will be very interesting times (and possibly frightening) as we might see our civilisation first being dominated economically by others and likely also militarily after that. (and this wont be pretty for us, because hatred towards our culture is mainstream in most other cultures - and sadly also internally) Or alternatively we will see chaotic internal revolutions that will undo this development. But I doubt that we will see these changes happen in an ordered democratic way as the establishment will fight changes by all means imaginable. (it is obvious when seeing the medias bias)