Sci 1: The Dead Rat Hope Experiment - Voodoo Death

[Trump's Chosen]

You fuckers will argue over anything.

So why not discuss some noteworthy experiments?
The first in what may become a series if I'm not too lazy to post another.

The study pdf and link are included at the bottom.


The Dead Rat Hope Experiment

In 1957, Curt Richter a professor at John Hopkins, published his psychology experiment.

The experiment was simple. Take swimming jar (a cylindrical glass tank filled with water that prevents floating and escape). Throw a rat in. Record how long it takes for the rat to drown.
Which would fare better? Domesticated rats or recently captured white rats? Think about it.

Wild rats were much better swimmers and fitter. But also used to different circumstances.
How long did they last?

The domesticated rats first swam and explored the bucket. After that they kept swimming and eventually drowned.
3 rats drowned after 2 minutes.
9 rats drowned after days of swimming.

The wild rats fared differently.
34 rats all drowned after 2 minutes.

Curt wondered what role hope might play. So for the next part of the experiment he watched the rats until they seemed to give up and started to drown. Took them out. Held them. Immerse them in water and free them a couple of times. And then, as a proper scientist, he threw them back into the bucket of water and recorded how long it took until they drowned.

Both domesticated and wild rats afterward lasted for days the second time. Presumably because they now had the hope that they might be saved. Wild rats now typically lasted longer in accordance with initial expectation.

What can one learn from this experiment?
How can the knowledge gained be applied?


PS. What's not to love about a study that opens with the words "voodoo death"? Well besides all the horror deaths.

On the Phenomenon of Sudden Death in Animals and Man : Psychosomatic Medicine

a new area of interesting, exciting research. Copyright © 1957 by American Psychosomatic Society...

journals.lww.com

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

You're hoping for a slapfight but I'm betting this thread is DOA.

 

[Trump's Chosen]

You're hoping for a slapfight but I'm betting this thread is DOA.

What I am hoping for is engagement, and I string together whatever string of words that I feel might poke or titillate people to do engage. Discussing studies is pretty dry material, so a bit of jazz can help spark the imagination. I know I've mostly just shitposted on the kiwifarms, but I had the inspiration of engaging in some thunkful material to broaden our minds and share our insights.

My own experience on finding out about this experiment is that I wonder if we are the rat in another man's waterjar. That the glimpses of hope we're given are only there to make sure we keep trying as long as possible to delay the inevitable. But also how competing groups of people are rats in other people's waterjars. How completely destructive it is if you can demoralize those in other people's waterjars. A difference between 2 minutes and 40 hours is a factor 1200x in how much longer those with hope persevered to those that don't.

I also relate it to businesses and "market confidence", where the confidence that the work will be worth it completely separates the effort that one or another is willing to put in.

 

[Jewthulhu]

It just proves my hypothesis that most researches get pleasure out of torturing and killing mice.
Papers written before standardization have shitty formatting so it's kind of hard to gleam a lot of information from it. I really have two main complaints from skimming it: First, the experiment can't differentiate between "voodoo death," learned helplessness, or simple exhaustion. Or even disorientation, given that they clipped the whiskers before testing. Second, there is no measure of adrenal function to show heightened physiological stress as a key factor behind the death.

What I am hoping for is engagement, and I string together whatever string of words that I feel might poke or titillate people to do engage. Discussing studies is pretty dry material, so a bit of jazz can help spark the imagination. I know I've mostly just shitposted on the kiwifarms, but I had the inspiration of engaging in some thunkful material to broaden our minds and share our insights.

My own experience on finding out about this experiment is that I wonder if we are the rat in another man's waterjar. That the glimpses of hope we're given are only there to make sure we keep trying as long as possible to delay the inevitable. But also how competing groups of people are rats in other people's waterjars. How completely destructive it is if you can demoralize those in other people's waterjars. A difference between 2 minutes and 40 hours is a factor 1200x in how much longer those with hope persevered to those that don't.

I also relate it to businesses and "market confidence", where the confidence that the work will be worth it completely separates the effort that one or another is willing to put in.

I'd love to discuss something more serious in someplace that isn't just an arrogant karma-farming circlejerk like reddit, but you're not likely to get much traction or serious answers to such a topic here (unless it has to do with trannies or vaccines or *political issue of the week*). It is what it is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[libRT]

This is a good reminder that scientists are cheap whores when it comes to ethics.

 

[SomeBirds]

Interesting thread idea. Made me spend a few moments thinking about what differentiates 'hope' from a simple expectation that the human might show up and return you safely to your cage.

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

What I am hoping for is engagement, and I string together whatever string of words that I feel might poke or titillate people to do engage. Discussing studies is pretty dry material, so a bit of jazz can help spark the imagination. I know I've mostly just shitposted on the kiwifarms, but I had the inspiration of engaging in some thunkful material to broaden our minds and share our insights.

My own experience on finding out about this experiment is that I wonder if we are the rat in another man's waterjar. That the glimpses of hope we're given are only there to make sure we keep trying as long as possible to delay the inevitable. But also how competing groups of people are rats in other people's waterjars. How completely destructive it is if you can demoralize those in other people's waterjars. A difference between 2 minutes and 40 hours is a factor 1200x in how much longer those with hope persevered to those that don't.

I also relate it to businesses and "market confidence", where the confidence that the work will be worth it completely separates the effort that one or another is willing to put in.

Well talking about science is probably the best use Deep Thoughts will ever get, so by all means go for it and elevate the relative IQ of this board.

 

[Trump's Chosen]

Interesting thread idea. Made me spend a few moments thinking about what differentiates 'hope' from a simple expectation that the human might show up and return you safely to your cage.

Care to share your thought process?

This is a good reminder that scientists are cheap whores when it comes to ethics.

• The Academician's private residences shall remain off-limits to the Genetic Inspectors. We possess no retroviral capability, we are not researching retroviral engineering, and we shall not allow this Council to violate faction privileges in the name of this ridiculous witch hunt!"
  • Fedor Petrov, Vice Provost for University Affairs
  • Accompanies the Retroviral Engineering technology

I'd love to discuss something more serious in someplace that isn't just an arrogant karma-farming circlejerk like reddit, but you're not likely to get much traction or serious answers to such a topic here

David Foster Wallace once made an astute point about watching television. How entertainment was watched in far greater amounts than programs which had genuine educational content. And that the people who could most benefit from the educational content were precisely the same people that chose to watch entertainment instead.

One solution at first seems to be to wrap the educational content in an entertaining format, as he suggested, but then that the educational program becomes exactly that which it seeks to battle; entertainment. I think there's some of that inherent depressedness in that thought process that also led him to kill himself. Most of my engagement with this site has been entertainment, as I said. If I wanted mass replies, I'd keep posting inflammatory articles. And maybe I'll do that too.

But a couple of replies here could hold value that I'll remember in years to come. My life was once changed dramatically by a reddit post I made and I received only a single reply with 10 words. It's not all about the reply number, but the impact that any reply might have. Anyways, that's enough blogging for a month.

I'll keep posting threads about experiments for some period of time, and I'll keep engaging with replies and we'll see if it catches sufficient interest or not.

 

[Stabmaster Arson II]

Scientists are evil. I read a book once about animal experimentation called Blood Of The Innocents, and it had the most depraved shit I've ever heard of in it. I'm not going to repeat any here, because it's knowledge I wish I never knew, and I don't even want to poke at the part of my brain that remembers it.

Never heard of this experiment before, and it chilled me. There are a lot of people out there swimming in that bucket and I might be one of them.

Ever heard of the Mouse Universe 25 experiment? Also called mouse utopia. They were given everything for infinite population growth, and apathy killed them all.

 

[JustTheFaxcts]

Actually this is really relevant to more practical concerns for pharmaceuticals. Many of the early results for anti-depressants are predicated on the forced swim test. In short, how much will a mouse struggle is taken as an indicator of improved mood. This short youtube video gives a good overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_7qqOhr8QM

This is obviously completely stupid since there is a clear lack of validity, and other studies have pointed this out as well: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29128579/

What can be learned is that 'science' is only as good as the practitioners and peer-review ecosystem. It's absolutely obvious that how much something struggles is not an indicator of depressive qualities. Give a mouse a bunch of stimulants it's going to freak out but will score positively on the float test. Give it benzodiazepines and it will contently float without worry, but receiver a score corresponding with decreased mood.

As @Jewthulhu mentioned this study is missing quite a few key controls that would allow meaningful inference and establishing construct validity. Things have progressed in *some* aspects while devolving in others. Unfortunately money and politics are some of the biggest drivers since researchers need to get grants to fund themselves.

 

[SomeBirds]

Care to share your thought process?

I'm afraid it will be greatly disappointing. Hope implies a certain expectation of a specific (usually good) outcome, and hoping the human will come and return you to your cage would appear to meet that criteria. I'd say in a strictly literal sense the rats are in fact experiencing hope of a sort.

Using the word hope as opposed to saying it's simply a learned expectation does feel like anthropomorphizing it to me, though. I'm struggling to shake some mental associations with hope as being a human thing since humans can hope for something without evidence that they might actually get it.

 

[Jewthulhu]

Interesting thread idea. Made me spend a few moments thinking about what differentiates 'hope' from a simple expectation that the human might show up and return you safely to your cage.

You're probably reading too much into it. Mice don't exactly process shit like we do. That's (part) of the problem with animal studies, especially psych studies. People anthropomorphize them and assume that what they do is directly translatable to humans, ignoring how radically different we think than other animals.

 

[Ultrapenguin]

Alright, I'll type.

Like if the wild rats were thrown in with the domesticated rats, they'd probably be pretty dominant, they'd be stronger and more assertive and probably selected for reproductively. They'd be laughing at all the soft pansy rats. At least in the short term.

However if you take and put them into a situation where they're entirely out of control, it's the sort of cucked rats that have the survival advantage. They don't actually do what they do because of anything as ephemeral as "hope", they simply move forward autonomously. That's their existence, the idea of the value or purpose of continuing on doesn't factor in.

They're adaptationally much more resistant to hopelessness and self doubt, via the breeding out of what I'd refer to as the spirit. They are bugrats.

---

What you can learn I guess depends on your viewpoint as it stands. That's already always been my belief, is that autonomy and emotion are directly linked and without the former the latter is a hindrance.
It's never necessarily selectively recognized as a hindrance on an interpersonal level (even if the neurotic symptoms that arise from feeling out of control tend to be), but a restrictive environment very much selects against it.
Creatures adapted and bred for an environment where their actions have a strong impact on their surroundings will fail to thrive/propagate their line in one of suppression, due to their sensitized negative response to the sensation of lacking control or purpose: The "why" of their ongoing actions.

They need to be in a position of control over their environment, as a fact of their survival.

Problem is, what's the purpose of having independent will if nobody needs you to lead or think, and doing so just slows things down or creates chaos and conflict? In a well established system there only needs to be leaders and followers, humans and lab rats.
Nobody needs leader rats in a domestic setting, bugrats who'll keep paddling away in their proverbial jar even though there's ostensibly no purpose will fare much better.


The one saving grace is that we do not live in a water jar, the individuals at the top aren't so entrenched nor is the environment so oppressive as a human scientist with captive rats.

That's kind of delving more into society and social power dynamics, so I'll leave it there rather than writing an essay.

You're probably reading too much into it. Mice don't exactly process shit like we do. That's (part) of the problem with animal studies, especially psych studies. People anthropomorphize them and assume that what they do is directly translatable to humans, ignoring how radically different we think than other animals.

We both have the need to eat, sleep, reproduce, which still overrides every other aspect of being at the end of the day, and as social mammals we accomplish those needs in at least similar-ish ways; our psychology derives from that, meaning we will also have similar-ish psychological function. In the grand scheme of living things rats and humans are extremely similar.

I guess how "different' we are is very much a matter of perspective.

 

[Sugriva]

post

Oh c'mon. You can't just write about a reddit post that changed your life and then not share it with the class.

 

[Trump's Chosen]

Oh c'mon. You can't just write about a reddit post that changed your life and then not share it with the class.

I made a post about my relationship with my mother, with questions. It was very hard to even just write. The response was that I should look into "emotional incest". I started reading about it and everything fit, and it explained the things I wasn't able to make sense of. Basically after my parent's divorce, my mother treated me as her romantic partner, someone to confide in, someone to lift her up, etcetera. The intimacy you have with a partner (with none of the sexuality). Emotional incest at its more benign levels is where someone might be called a "momma's boy" or "daddy's girl". Though of course those could be emotional incest too depending on the exact details.

I asked my mother what she thought about this discovery and she said she agreed that she knew it was wrong, but that she did it anyways. She was able to point to the precise date that it had begun, which is also exactly when I started a decline academically.

Delusionally I thought it was fixable, but skipping some parts of the story, this eventually ended with me calling the police because she wouldn't stop throwing rocks through my brother's windows, his wife crying inside; and the entire family blaming us two for having the gall to call the police on our own mother, which showed me that everyone who enabled her was also at fault.

Whenever someone blamed me the only question I asked was, would you accept her behavior from anyone else in the family? And nobody would give me an answer. But at least they'd shut up.

It might have taken me years more to realize what had happened was wrong if not for that one reddit post.

 

[TFT-A9]

You're probably reading too much into it. Mice don't exactly process shit like we do. That's (part) of the problem with animal studies, especially psych studies. People anthropomorphize them and assume that what they do is directly translatable to humans, ignoring how radically different we think than other animals.

What if this is backwards (the "anthropomorphization" part)? Perhaps a lot of the thought processes we attribute to our human brains aren't really something peculiar to us as a species and we just put extra frills-and-bows on something that is already present in animal psyches? There are likely some things we do/experience that seem very peculiarly human and arguably stupid/contrived as part of socialization in human circles or a weird hiccup of evolving large, complicated brains, but I wonder if a lot of the things we write off as uniquely human are not so and the reason we see them as such is due to, well, not really being able to read animal minds (not to mention having a surprisingly limited understanding of our own psyches).

It may or may not be relevant that rodents like rats and mice are closer to us on the evolutionary "tree" than a great many other members of the animal kingdom (barring primates), and as animals go they're pretty damn smart.

 

[Trump's Chosen]

Papers written before standardization have shitty formatting so it's kind of hard to gleam a lot of information from it.

Standardization only started in 2011/2012 right? Will be hard to only look at such recent studies, but I'll make sure to include some of those in the future.

I'm afraid it will be greatly disappointing. Hope implies a certain expectation of a specific (usually good) outcome, and hoping the human will come and return you to your cage would appear to meet that criteria. I'd say in a strictly literal sense the rats are in fact experiencing hope of a sort.

Using the word hope as opposed to saying it's simply a learned expectation does feel like anthropomorphizing it to me, though. I'm struggling to shake some mental associations with hope as being a human thing since humans can hope for something without evidence that they might actually get it.

That's an interesting thought process. But perhaps we can look through the looking glass from the other end. Isn't human hope very comparable to a simple learned expectation? Just because it's common for humans to start engaging in behavior as a result of communication (books/religious teaching/youtube jpeterson or atate video) which allows us to conceptualize and have experiences simply by imagining them, rather than actually having them, is the result any different? We just have a more advanced version of how to be programmed in addition to the monkey and reptile brain (which is an oversimplification of course, but I think you follow what I'm saying).

If our expectation of a chance of a good result comes from a religion or from hollywood movie programming, is that really so different if it comes from a direct experience? Isn't hope a kind of idealised word for a simple learned expectation of something good might be happening?

 

[Jewthulhu]

We both have the need to eat, sleep, reproduce, which still overrides every other aspect of being at the end of the day, and as social mammals we accomplish those needs in at least similar-ish ways; our psychology derives from that, meaning we will also have similar-ish psychological function. In the grand scheme of living things rats and humans are extremely similar.

I guess how "different' we are is very much a matter of perspective.

What if this is backwards (the "anthropomorphization" part)? Perhaps a lot of the thought processes we attribute to our human brains aren't really something peculiar to us as a species and we just put extra frills-and-bows on something that is already present in animal psyches? There are likely some things we do/experience that seem very peculiarly human and arguably stupid/contrived as part of socialization in human circles or a weird hiccup of evolving large, complicated brains, but I wonder if a lot of the things we write off as uniquely human are not so and the reason we see them as such is due to, well, not really being able to read animal minds (not to mention having a surprisingly limited understanding of our own psyches).

It may or may not be relevant that rodents like rats and mice are closer to us on the evolutionary "tree" than a great many other members of the animal kingdom (barring primates), and as animals go they're pretty damn smart.

I mean, the overplayed, dismissive answer is that we're sitting on the internet debating this subject while mice are getting themselves killed by a piece of cheese on a spring.

My actual thoughts on it are more complicated, and I could probably fill a few pages on it. They're also mostly philosophical and speculative, since there really is no way of knowing. So to save everyone the autism, I'll just sum it up:

Animals think primarily through stimulus-reaction, while people think primarily through abstraction. That's not to say there isn't a stimulus-response aspect to humans; after all, if you burn your hand on accident you'll pull it away before you even perceive the pain consciously. However, not only can abstract concepts modulate our reactions (which is why we can abstain from eating while hungry, stay awake when tired, keep "decent" when aroused, or even choose to keep our hand on a hot stove while getting burned), but we also abstract stimuli into ideas, which is why we can imagine, anticipate, and even assign the concept of "heat" to something without experiencing it.

 

[Trump's Chosen]

They're also mostly philosophical and speculative, since there really is no way of knowing. So to save everyone the autism

If ever you feel so inclined, I would be interested in reading it. I don't think there is any better place for such autism than here.

 

[Moja Zemlja]

One solution at first seems to be to wrap the educational content in an entertaining format, as he suggested, but then that the educational program becomes exactly that which it seeks to battle; entertainment. I think there's some of that inherent depressedness in that thought process that also led him to kill himself

Is it a problem that educational programming (or any type of product) can be considered entertainment? Obviously there are plenty of pseudo-documentaries around these days where really the goal is to entertain first with little meaningful information, but there is still plenty being made that are enjoyable entertainment while also enlightening the viewer on a subject. Edutainment while mainly aimmed at kids does a great job of this.