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I recently went down a rabbit hole on how researchers make mice depressed so they can test antidepressants on them. The short answer is they disrupt the mouse's

I recently went down a rabbit hole on how researchers make mice depressed so they can test antidepressants on them. The short answer is they disrupt the mouse's environment in ways that are unpredictable and uncontrollable. It's a standard protocol. We know that this causes depression. The culture of products not under the control of the customer does the same thing. A culture that sees this as normal is a depressed culture. To test whether the mice are depressed, researchers give them something rewarding that requires a little effort to get (e.g., sugary water vs. plain water). The depressed mice give up. They are apathetic. I imagine the mice believe that there is no way to change things. That might be true for the mice but it's not true for us.

woah 1y ago
I imagine the mice would be far more depressed if they had to get trackpad drivers to work and give a good response on Linux
- dishsoap 1y ago
  Seems to be an insurmountable task for anyone apart from engineers at apple, let alone mice
- yogorenapan 1y ago
  There are laptops that work with Linux and ones that don't. Nobody is forcing you to use it on a device that isn't supported
  - righthand 1y ago
    This is that depression the comment author is talking about. Apple fans will make it a point to lash out at Linux for not being a trillion dollar company supported product. Only depressed people lash out at the parts of the world where communities are trying their best.
    - lwhi 1y ago
      macOS support for anything that isn't a new Apple product is appalling.
      - sjw987 1y ago
        Yeah. I had a laptop which is only 4 years old causing issues, took it to an Apple Store and they couldn't give a toss. Everything was pushing me in the direction of buying a new laptop (with a small discount relative to the new price) and transferring everything across.
- lwhi 1y ago
  I think they'd find that to be an engaging task, and they'd get a great deal of satisfaction once they had sorted it out themselves. If the mice had to deal with an intermittently disappearing cursor, and erratic hover behaviour on a 2 year old M2 Mac with the latest version of Sequoia .. that would probably illicit a very different response. Are mice known to spill blood?
giraffe_lady 1y ago
> The short answer is they disrupt the mouse's environment in ways that are unpredictable and uncontrollable. For example like will my wifi work today. Will my laptop still have any battery when I open it. Is today the day I surprise boot to tty and have to figure out what changed before I can start working. I'll stick with the year-to-year unpredictability of apple over the day-to-day unpredictability of linux.
- StopDisinfo910 1y ago
  Linux doesn't magically update itself. If it works today, it's going to work tomorrow unless you break it.
  - giraffe_lady 1y ago
    Alas the cross of a dumbass programmer is a heavy one. I need an OS that is harder to break I reckon.
    - b_e_n_t_o_n 1y ago
      I too am especially prone to breaking my OS, as well as the software that runs on it. You aren't alone lol.
  - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
    I dunno about that. Bleeding edge distros like Arch are infamous for breaking in random ways for those updating without paying attention and even distros that are considered more stable like Fedora and Ubuntu can from time to time break drivers or random smaller things. Definitely a YMMV sort of thing.
  - kergonath 1y ago
    What are we going to do, then? Stop updating the OS and accumulate security issues? Stop doing anything that might possible touch an obscure config file somewhere in the bowels of the OS? It’s just unrealistic. "Do not update" cannot be a solution, it’s worse than the problem it is supposed to solve.
fpsvogel 1y ago
Agreed. If I weren't a computer nerd I probably wouldn't feel this way, but on Linux I feel more empowered. Even if there are more things to tweak/fix (which is not necessarily true these days), there IS probably a way to do it. On MacOS, I more often have to give up and live with the annoyances. Hardware is the the big exception. None of my PCs have had nearly as good build quality or battery life (on Linux, at least) as a Macbook. Maybe I should try a Framework.
- kergonath 1y ago
  > If I weren't a computer nerd I probably wouldn't feel this way, but on Linux I feel more empowered There are also more footguns and rabbit holes. Overall, I am about as happy with Linux than with macOS (I use both daily), but I would not say that one is really more empowering than the other. I like tinkering with KDE but it’s full of inconsistencies and instability in a way than even the worst Finder I’ve used was not (e.g. the whole desktop freezing when adding a widget to the desktop with a brand new install). Never mind the Russian roulette that is updating nVidia’s drivers. On the other hand on macOS it’s easier to get to things that are actually productive.

woah 1y ago

I imagine the mice would be far more depressed if they had to get trackpad drivers to work and give a good response on Linux

dishsoap 1y ago
Seems to be an insurmountable task for anyone apart from engineers at apple, let alone mice
yogorenapan 1y ago
There are laptops that work with Linux and ones that don't. Nobody is forcing you to use it on a device that isn't supported
- righthand 1y ago
  This is that depression the comment author is talking about. Apple fans will make it a point to lash out at Linux for not being a trillion dollar company supported product. Only depressed people lash out at the parts of the world where communities are trying their best.
  - lwhi 1y ago
    macOS support for anything that isn't a new Apple product is appalling.
    - sjw987 1y ago
      Yeah. I had a laptop which is only 4 years old causing issues, took it to an Apple Store and they couldn't give a toss. Everything was pushing me in the direction of buying a new laptop (with a small discount relative to the new price) and transferring everything across.
lwhi 1y ago
I think they'd find that to be an engaging task, and they'd get a great deal of satisfaction once they had sorted it out themselves. If the mice had to deal with an intermittently disappearing cursor, and erratic hover behaviour on a 2 year old M2 Mac with the latest version of Sequoia .. that would probably illicit a very different response. Are mice known to spill blood?

giraffe_lady 1y ago

> The short answer is they disrupt the mouse's environment in ways that are unpredictable and uncontrollable. For example like will my wifi work today. Will my laptop still have any battery when I open it. Is today the day I surprise boot to tty and have to figure out what changed before I can start working. I'll stick with the year-to-year unpredictability of apple over the day-to-day unpredictability of linux.

StopDisinfo910 1y ago
Linux doesn't magically update itself. If it works today, it's going to work tomorrow unless you break it.
- giraffe_lady 1y ago
  Alas the cross of a dumbass programmer is a heavy one. I need an OS that is harder to break I reckon.
  - b_e_n_t_o_n 1y ago
    I too am especially prone to breaking my OS, as well as the software that runs on it. You aren't alone lol.
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  I dunno about that. Bleeding edge distros like Arch are infamous for breaking in random ways for those updating without paying attention and even distros that are considered more stable like Fedora and Ubuntu can from time to time break drivers or random smaller things. Definitely a YMMV sort of thing.
- kergonath 1y ago
  What are we going to do, then? Stop updating the OS and accumulate security issues? Stop doing anything that might possible touch an obscure config file somewhere in the bowels of the OS? It’s just unrealistic. "Do not update" cannot be a solution, it’s worse than the problem it is supposed to solve.

fpsvogel 1y ago

Agreed. If I weren't a computer nerd I probably wouldn't feel this way, but on Linux I feel more empowered. Even if there are more things to tweak/fix (which is not necessarily true these days), there IS probably a way to do it. On MacOS, I more often have to give up and live with the annoyances. Hardware is the the big exception. None of my PCs have had nearly as good build quality or battery life (on Linux, at least) as a Macbook. Maybe I should try a Framework.

kergonath 1y ago
> If I weren't a computer nerd I probably wouldn't feel this way, but on Linux I feel more empowered There are also more footguns and rabbit holes. Overall, I am about as happy with Linux than with macOS (I use both daily), but I would not say that one is really more empowering than the other. I like tinkering with KDE but it’s full of inconsistencies and instability in a way than even the worst Finder I’ve used was not (e.g. the whole desktop freezing when adding a widget to the desktop with a brand new install). Never mind the Russian roulette that is updating nVidia’s drivers. On the other hand on macOS it’s easier to get to things that are actually productive.