Bluepill me on behavioral sink / John B. Calhoun's Mouse Utopia

[DJ Grelle]

Got more on that? any links?

BTW I mean your thoughts on the U25 experiment in general not what particular quote.

It's a theory by Spandrell, I'll reach out to him on twitter and see if he can link it because his blog is horrendous to search.

Edit: NVM found it

https://spandrell.ch/2013/3/26/lee-kuan-yew-drains-your-brains-for-short-term-gain

 

[Otterly]

Happy to be corrected, but didn't Calhoun say this probably wouldn't happen to humans because we have creative expression that prevents that sort of breakdown of society?

Has it? I mean we have never been more able to create and yet we are going to hell in a handbasket.

NVM found it

Thanks.

Because humans in the west have significantly more privacy and personal space now than they did 100-200 years ago,

We do physically. I feel we have an awful lot less mental privacy.

They operate on base instinct.

So do an awful lot of people

If there's anything to take away from the experiments is that it's a starting point to learn more.

Yeah, I agree with this, and also with your take on u25

BTW I mean your thoughts on the U25 experiment in general not what particular quot

It’s interesting. It’s a given that you can’t extrapolate 1:1 to humans, you can’t with most animal stuff. It gives you a framework or an idea or things to test further, rather than being a set piece.
I think there are too many variables to make much of a conclusion about what causes the behaviours seen. You can say it’s ’a function of too many mice.’ It would interesting to isolate them. Is it physical proximity? So do mice in individual / 4 mouse cages stacked together exhibit this (you can test that easily in any mouse house) or is physical contact required? What’s the impact of environmental enrichment? Of places where they can isolate from the others? Is there a replicable critical density? Do certain behaviours like the beautiful ones or infanticide change when you change those factors?
You probably couldn’t do this easily now because of animal testing laws.
What you can take from it is an idea that there’s either a population size or density past which negative health and behavioural impacts occur in mice. You could then start musing about WHY and what actually causes it and the. You could think about what kind of observational studies you could do in humans. It is clearly possible for us to live in close quarters, but one thing that springs to mind is that only works when you have a very rigid structure in place, such as military barracks or submarines.
I find it very interesting. High density environments make me feel unpleasant. Some people love them. Perhaps there’s an inbuilt equilibrium in human behavioural ranges that keeps this the case, as there seems to be for other traits.

 

[⋖ cørdion ⋗]

Bro went from good albeit random, deep videos, to fucking vtuber goonerism. Shame.

 

[Hey Johnny Bravo]

Explain to me why this isn't a viable model for (some of) the social and behavioral changes in humans in the last 100-200 years.

Humans are not mice.