5 ms·

Universe 25, 1968–1973 (2022)

71 points by firstSpeaker 4y ago

nickdothutton 4y ago
There are 2 kinds of people. Those who have discovered universe 25 and those who have not. Once you do however, there’s no going back.
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  TIL why Carousel happens at 30 in the world of Logan's Run.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
firstSpeaker 4y ago
Are there any more recent, more deeply analysed studies like this?
- dmix 4y ago
  I checked Wikipedia and there doesn't seem to be any recent IRL studies on crowding. There was one study [1] in the 1970s that tried to see if over-crowding affected humans similarly. The study found that humans social ability allowed them to cope and organize, avoiding the negative effects. So people probably didn't really see a strong need to continue studying it since it didn't translate well to human social issues. I'd imagine if you wanted to study crowding and the effects of excessive unwanted social interaction (minus the moral issues of killing mice or recruiting humans), you could study some over crowded prisons. [1] https://nihrecord.nih.gov/sites/recordNIH/files/pdf/2008/NIH-Record-2008-07-25.pdf https://nihrecord.nih.gov/sites/recordNIH/files/pdf/2008/NIH...
  - Aperocky 4y ago
    > Others turned to the laboratory. The psychologist Jonathan Freedman recruited high school and university students to carry out a series of experiments that measured the effects of density on behavior. He measured their stress, discomfort, aggression, competitiveness and general unpleasantness. When he declared to have found no appreciative negative effects in 1975, the tide began to turn on Calhoun’s utopia. This is the only paragraph I was found in reference, and I find the reasoning extremely weak. Calhouns mice are a generational study, the human study obviously did not involve nearly as much time, and it's doubtful whether the space are as crowded as the mice study was. Submariners have well documented health issues and recuperation after spending long period of time on cramped spaces, and a submarine is arguably more spacious than what the mice have been subjected to. Not to mention the simple fact that nobody (hopefully) had to start a family on a submarine, or a prison per replied comment. Conducting similar study in humans is impossible given the obvious cruelty and ethic concerns, but if I have to guess the outcome are going to be no better than the mice study.
    - dmix 4y ago
      Here is the relevant text from the source: > Making the leap from mouse to man, however, was not so simple. “This is where it gets controversial,” Ramsden said, describing how other scientists tried to replicate Calhoun’s results in human populations. > “How do you map Calhoun’s pathologies onto human society? How do you measure sexual deviancy? [Researchers] chose venereal disease, illegitimacy and divorce. That stirred up some controversy. How do you measure breakdown in maternal behavior? They chose public welfare and child assistance rates.” Others turned to the laboratory. The psychologist Jonathan Freedman recruited high school and university students to carry out a series of experiments that measured the effects of density on behavior. He measured their stress, discomfort, aggression, competitiveness and general unpleasantness. When he declared to have found no appreciative negative effects in 1975, the tide began to turn on Calhoun’s utopia. > Freedman’s work, Ramsden noted, suggested that density was no longer a primary explanatory variable for society’s ruin. A distinction was drawn between animals and humans. > “Rats may suffer from crowding; human beings can cope...Calhoun’s research was seen not only as questionable, but also as dangerous.” > Freedman suggested a different conclusion, though. Moral decay resulted “not from density, but from excessive social interaction,” Ramsden explained. “Not all of Calhoun’s rats had gone berserk. Those who managed to control space led relatively normal lives.” Striking the right balance between privacy and community, Freedman argued, would reduce social pathol- ogy. It was the unwanted unavoidable social interaction that drove even fairly social crea- tures mad, he believed. Culture and upbringing also play key roles in adapting to environment, others suggested. > Further studies of space design seemed to prove this. One such study compared students living in two different styles of college dormitory—corridor versus a suite style. Those in the corridor perceived the environment as crowded and exhibited increased stress levels. Those in the suite style, where the dormitory was partitioned into a series of separate communal areas, fared better, even though the level of density was similar, Ramsden said. “By comparing the two, [researchers] were able to provide evidence both of pathology and its amelioration through more effective design. > “Calhoun’s studies remained influential in places,” Ramsden concluded, “but for the social sci- ences more generally, it seemed that simply associating Calhoun’s rodent universes with pathology instead of its amelioration was an opportunity considered too attractive or per- haps too convenient to miss.”
carapace 4y ago
I saw a documentary about Kowloon Walled City. It was nightmarish. > Kowloon Walled City was an ungoverned and densely populated de jure Imperial Chinese enclave within the boundaries of Kowloon City, British Hong Kong. Originally a Chinese military fort, the walled city became an enclave after the New Territories were leased to the United Kingdom by China in 1898. Its population increased dramatically following the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during World War II. By 1990, the walled city contained 50,000 residents[1] within its 2.6-hectare (6.4-acre) borders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City Fortunately, it was razed. There's a nice park there now. I sure am glad we're not mice! Between Kowloon and the Yukon there's a sweet spot of population density. (Yukon is one of the least populated but still nice places on Earth. Fewer than ~45,000 people in ~450,000km².) We have plenty of room on Earth. We could construct an artificial continent in the Pacific Ocean with a nice crinkly coastline and everyone could live at the beach.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  > We could construct an artificial continent in the Pacific Ocean with a nice crinkly coastline and everyone could live at the beach. I'm from that crappy little country that makes islands for other countries: outside of the continental shelves I highly doubt that you could reclaim land unless you feel like living at the bottom of a very, very deep hole in the ocean and somehow I don't think that's the proposition that will get people enthusiastic. Plenty of visitors already freak out when they learn that NL is in many places more than 10 meters below sea level, and that's with relatively mild coastal weather. If you were to create a dike 100's of meters high (and where would you get the material without making the hole even deeper?) it will end up as something that would qualify as the biggest man made structure without the slightest competition, including the Great Wall. This is engineering on a scale that is currently as far as I know impossible.
  - aliqot 4y ago
    Curious how large a floating structure must be to defeat wave motion that threatens to pull it apart.
optimalsolver 4y ago
*in mice.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
plibither8 4y ago
Fredrik Knudsen did an amazing video on the "Mouse Utopia Experiments": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgGLFozNM2o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgGLFozNM2o
dang 4y ago
Related. Others? 1960s Mouse Utopias Led to Grim Predictions for Future of Humanity (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28572253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28572253 - Sept 2021 (49 comments) What Was the Mouse Utopia? (2017) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21366270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21366270 - Oct 2019 (6 comments) The Doomed Mouse Utopia That Inspired the 'Rats of NIMH' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12504271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12504271 - Sept 2016 (103 comments)
machina_ex_deus 4y ago
Any modern replication? With all the replication crisis everywhere, and this research being extremely narrativistic, are there any modern experiments affirming these conclusions? It literally ran once and in the same environment, and only the last findings were taken? How do we know it's not just some specific genetic defect that propagated? Did they reintroduce new genes into the gene pool? Some other failure of the experiment? There wasn't even a control group in this entire thing, it's closer to a bedtime story than science. I'm extremely cautious about making broad assumptions with so little data.
- _dain_ 4y ago
  Nope, and the "Universe 25" label should make you immediately suspicious about what happened in Universes 1-24. Those never got published. Gwern did some investigation into it: https://www.gwern.net/Mouse-Utopia https://www.gwern.net/Mouse-Utopia As far as I'm concerned the whole thing amounts to fraud.
chris_st 4y ago
The interesting experiment to compare this to is the Rat Park[0]. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

71 points by firstSpeaker 4y ago

There are 2 kinds of people. Those who have discovered universe 25 and those who have not. Once you do however, there’s no going back.

082349872349872 4y ago
TIL why Carousel happens at 30 in the world of Logan's Run.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

firstSpeaker 4y ago

Are there any more recent, more deeply analysed studies like this?

dmix 4y ago
I checked Wikipedia and there doesn't seem to be any recent IRL studies on crowding. There was one study [1] in the 1970s that tried to see if over-crowding affected humans similarly. The study found that humans social ability allowed them to cope and organize, avoiding the negative effects. So people probably didn't really see a strong need to continue studying it since it didn't translate well to human social issues. I'd imagine if you wanted to study crowding and the effects of excessive unwanted social interaction (minus the moral issues of killing mice or recruiting humans), you could study some over crowded prisons. [1] https://nihrecord.nih.gov/sites/recordNIH/files/pdf/2008/NIH-Record-2008-07-25.pdf https://nihrecord.nih.gov/sites/recordNIH/files/pdf/2008/NIH...
- Aperocky 4y ago
  > Others turned to the laboratory. The psychologist Jonathan Freedman recruited high school and university students to carry out a series of experiments that measured the effects of density on behavior. He measured their stress, discomfort, aggression, competitiveness and general unpleasantness. When he declared to have found no appreciative negative effects in 1975, the tide began to turn on Calhoun’s utopia. This is the only paragraph I was found in reference, and I find the reasoning extremely weak. Calhouns mice are a generational study, the human study obviously did not involve nearly as much time, and it's doubtful whether the space are as crowded as the mice study was. Submariners have well documented health issues and recuperation after spending long period of time on cramped spaces, and a submarine is arguably more spacious than what the mice have been subjected to. Not to mention the simple fact that nobody (hopefully) had to start a family on a submarine, or a prison per replied comment. Conducting similar study in humans is impossible given the obvious cruelty and ethic concerns, but if I have to guess the outcome are going to be no better than the mice study.
  - dmix 4y ago
    Here is the relevant text from the source: > Making the leap from mouse to man, however, was not so simple. “This is where it gets controversial,” Ramsden said, describing how other scientists tried to replicate Calhoun’s results in human populations. > “How do you map Calhoun’s pathologies onto human society? How do you measure sexual deviancy? [Researchers] chose venereal disease, illegitimacy and divorce. That stirred up some controversy. How do you measure breakdown in maternal behavior? They chose public welfare and child assistance rates.” Others turned to the laboratory. The psychologist Jonathan Freedman recruited high school and university students to carry out a series of experiments that measured the effects of density on behavior. He measured their stress, discomfort, aggression, competitiveness and general unpleasantness. When he declared to have found no appreciative negative effects in 1975, the tide began to turn on Calhoun’s utopia. > Freedman’s work, Ramsden noted, suggested that density was no longer a primary explanatory variable for society’s ruin. A distinction was drawn between animals and humans. > “Rats may suffer from crowding; human beings can cope...Calhoun’s research was seen not only as questionable, but also as dangerous.” > Freedman suggested a different conclusion, though. Moral decay resulted “not from density, but from excessive social interaction,” Ramsden explained. “Not all of Calhoun’s rats had gone berserk. Those who managed to control space led relatively normal lives.” Striking the right balance between privacy and community, Freedman argued, would reduce social pathol- ogy. It was the unwanted unavoidable social interaction that drove even fairly social crea- tures mad, he believed. Culture and upbringing also play key roles in adapting to environment, others suggested. > Further studies of space design seemed to prove this. One such study compared students living in two different styles of college dormitory—corridor versus a suite style. Those in the corridor perceived the environment as crowded and exhibited increased stress levels. Those in the suite style, where the dormitory was partitioned into a series of separate communal areas, fared better, even though the level of density was similar, Ramsden said. “By comparing the two, [researchers] were able to provide evidence both of pathology and its amelioration through more effective design. > “Calhoun’s studies remained influential in places,” Ramsden concluded, “but for the social sci- ences more generally, it seemed that simply associating Calhoun’s rodent universes with pathology instead of its amelioration was an opportunity considered too attractive or per- haps too convenient to miss.”

carapace 4y ago

I saw a documentary about Kowloon Walled City. It was nightmarish. > Kowloon Walled City was an ungoverned and densely populated de jure Imperial Chinese enclave within the boundaries of Kowloon City, British Hong Kong. Originally a Chinese military fort, the walled city became an enclave after the New Territories were leased to the United Kingdom by China in 1898. Its population increased dramatically following the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during World War II. By 1990, the walled city contained 50,000 residents[1] within its 2.6-hectare (6.4-acre) borders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City Fortunately, it was razed. There's a nice park there now. I sure am glad we're not mice! Between Kowloon and the Yukon there's a sweet spot of population density. (Yukon is one of the least populated but still nice places on Earth. Fewer than ~45,000 people in ~450,000km².) We have plenty of room on Earth. We could construct an artificial continent in the Pacific Ocean with a nice crinkly coastline and everyone could live at the beach.

jacquesm 4y ago
> We could construct an artificial continent in the Pacific Ocean with a nice crinkly coastline and everyone could live at the beach. I'm from that crappy little country that makes islands for other countries: outside of the continental shelves I highly doubt that you could reclaim land unless you feel like living at the bottom of a very, very deep hole in the ocean and somehow I don't think that's the proposition that will get people enthusiastic. Plenty of visitors already freak out when they learn that NL is in many places more than 10 meters below sea level, and that's with relatively mild coastal weather. If you were to create a dike 100's of meters high (and where would you get the material without making the hole even deeper?) it will end up as something that would qualify as the biggest man made structure without the slightest competition, including the Great Wall. This is engineering on a scale that is currently as far as I know impossible.
- aliqot 4y ago
  Curious how large a floating structure must be to defeat wave motion that threatens to pull it apart.

optimalsolver 4y ago

*in mice.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

plibither8 4y ago

Fredrik Knudsen did an amazing video on the "Mouse Utopia Experiments": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgGLFozNM2o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgGLFozNM2o

dang 4y ago

Related. Others? 1960s Mouse Utopias Led to Grim Predictions for Future of Humanity (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28572253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28572253 - Sept 2021 (49 comments) What Was the Mouse Utopia? (2017) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21366270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21366270 - Oct 2019 (6 comments) The Doomed Mouse Utopia That Inspired the 'Rats of NIMH' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12504271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12504271 - Sept 2016 (103 comments)

machina_ex_deus 4y ago

Any modern replication? With all the replication crisis everywhere, and this research being extremely narrativistic, are there any modern experiments affirming these conclusions? It literally ran once and in the same environment, and only the last findings were taken? How do we know it's not just some specific genetic defect that propagated? Did they reintroduce new genes into the gene pool? Some other failure of the experiment? There wasn't even a control group in this entire thing, it's closer to a bedtime story than science. I'm extremely cautious about making broad assumptions with so little data.

_dain_ 4y ago
Nope, and the "Universe 25" label should make you immediately suspicious about what happened in Universes 1-24. Those never got published. Gwern did some investigation into it: https://www.gwern.net/Mouse-Utopia https://www.gwern.net/Mouse-Utopia As far as I'm concerned the whole thing amounts to fraud.

chris_st 4y ago

The interesting experiment to compare this to is the Rat Park[0]. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park