Although it is never mentioned, there is a factor in the original experiment that I think was overlooked. I think a key factor in the experiment, is the lack of recreational activity for the mice.
He published numerous papers that Mice shouldn't be seen as a parallel to humans. Their evolutionary advantage (over populating) is not a good indicator for most mammals. Zoo animals like Gorillas and Pandas have very similar sheltered lifestyles but they never devolve like this.
@@sandvich3943 that's irrelevant tbh. Look online and look at how many wild animals participate in homosexual activities, you'd be surprised at the statistics.
Calhoun's later findings were quickly glossed over (which is more than most reviews of his work do). His later research, in fact, showed that if, in addition to their physical needs, the rats/mice are also freely given mental stimulation, most of the ill effects go away.
One small issue: What is society doing, right now, that is going to ensure its destruction? It shames those who 'quiet quit', who are in reality trying to get their minimum recreational needs.
A big problem with any experiments and on animals, is "assuming" anthing, such as developing narcissism... Forcing animals into overpopulation in a confined space, *of course that will cause the traumas that occurred* it should not take even one experiment torturing animals to death to figure that out. If the parameters, the enclosures were widedened, then there would most likely have been no extra stress but did they keep the rodents penned in one specific place, no broadening of pastures, so to speak, not allowed past physical barriers... The lack of ethics to this fake science is astounding.
@@TarsonTalon Imo, religious pairing imposed on those indoctrinated to "go forth and multiply", as in stay in your predetermined path that others have determined for you, causing resentment to be passed down, not taking other factors into consideration, known and unknown, such as those assuming elite-ships taking it upon themselves to "cure" the world of imagined ailments or what they actually do/did release to cause ailments "for the greater good"... Something I think the mice did not do, force peasant mice to work in tiny laboratories concocting Spanish flu for mice... surely that would have been mentioned. But blood sacrifices and scapegoating cannot be used without religion/spirituality, so the few assuming elitists make "peasants" fearful to leave cities of their own accord while even more factors are ushered in, almost stampeding through, there's a term I can't recall at the moment. This terrible non experiment to show people they should be fearing something that would be non existent if they could just throw off those shackles that demand they follow prescribed conformities. All living matter needs periodic solitude. And there's so much space on and in the Earth. Fake leaders turn mushroom ideas into kool-aid.
@@andythomas4998 It simulates a similar problem *WE* have. We do not have unlimited space to populate. We can not just "Expand the Earth." Sure, they could have expanded the enclosures, but it would take away from a deeper meaning in having limited space.
The main issue was the lack of mental stimulie, the mice had no toys, no change in food and no change in enviorment. (like sticks to climb and gnaw on) Something thats crucial for such an smart and social animal.
Actually in later experiments they were given other thing we would have (such as toys as you stated) and all experiments ended the same way. The only thing they didn't get was extra land which technically we don't have either anymore.
@@-eurosplitsofficalclanchan6057 Not only is that one of the most idioc responses to the "running out of land" problem, it also does not pertain to what I said at all. What I described was that have no extra space to move to. We have seen all the land that we have to see. There are no more environments for us to move to because we have lived in every environment.
@@AAxolotl1 "There are no more environments for us to move to because we have lived in every environment." you said a whole bunch of nothing. there are millions of acres of land that can be used to create new towns/cities/homes, all across the world.
It can be argued all day as to whether this experiment was more of a utopia or a prison. The important takeaway is the phenomenon that Calhoun describes triggering the collapse, the ‘Spiritual Death’. And when you compare where the US is to how the mice acted before total collapse, its easy to see that peoples spirits are dying left and right. People feel less like important members of their communities and more like faceless cogs in a machine.
Another underrated scientist. This man spent years repeating a tedious experiment to get foolproof results. Then proceeded to stay optimistic, offer possible solutions and built even more rat utopias to hit the bullseye. We need to talk more about such scientists, their research and findings.
Nah, dude's overrated and tried to link mouse behaviour with human behaviour. Humans don't react to their environment like mice do, but somehow he didn't seem to get that.
So a scientist can repeatedly inflict harm on animals to keep proving a point and he is considered underrated? I do agree that we should speak more about scientist like him because they do inhumane things under the guise of research. I could see a few times repeating his social experiment but 25?!
One detail missed in Universe 25, the reason infant mortality was so total was that mother rodents stopped bothering to care for their young. Initially, food was so plentiful and life so peaceful that mothers could just abandon their offspring with the expectation that they'd just survive without any supervision. This was true up to a point but when the population started crashing the practice was so ingrained into the mice that they simply lacked the skills or desire to care for their young who were dying.
the problem wasn't overcrowding, it was lack of purpose. Any population rises to their maximal extend over time, but normally they still have to work for their food. It is getting something for nothing that destroyed the mice
This is something that worries me. With the emergence of AI. We may be headed to our own universe 25. With AI providing most of our needs. And there has to be some sort of universal basic income. Most of the population will have nothing to do. And as I am having confirmed. At least this person can't expect hobbies to give one a sense of purpose and value. That is the reason I believe that heaven wouldn't be a good fate. What's your purpose, other than praising God?
Universe 25 was no "utopia". It was an almost perfect definition of a "refugee camp". For someonte who's not human, a refugee camp could be seen as an "utopia": there's food, water and shelter for everybody. Some camps also have gyms, libraries, schools, religious temples, among other features.
@@theknight1702 i think a non-wild environment (so the artificial ones humans create) for a wild animal could only be a utopia if it perfectly mimics the animal's wild environment but without the dangers of predators, disease, harsh elements, etc. this is because a wild environment will give the animal enrichment and promote it's natural behaviors. basically the animal will be in an environment that its biology is designed for, and it won't get board. unless the scientist was able to do that then i don't think he created a real utopia for the rats. interestingly, this is the reason why keeping certain animals as pets or in zoos is frowned upon. it's really hard to give something like a whale or even an aquatic turtle a perfect man-made environment/enclosure. so they're better off in the wild. it's true that they'll die faster in the wild, but better to have a short life that is enriching and not boring and that contributes to your society (the ecological system that they are a part of) than to live a long, miserable, boring life in a fancy box and not even do the bare minimum of giving back to your society in your death (feeding an animal that's part of your ecological system*). *not saying that animals consciously care about giving back to their environment, but from and ecological standpoint leaving a native animal in its native environment is good for that environment, and removing that animal could be bad for that environment. so just by existing in their environment and doing their animal things (or by dying and feeding something else) they are "giving back to their society." sorry that was long, i like to overexplain and it's 4am so i have no one to talk to😅
@@theknight1702 I think you're missing the point. Nobody is saying human society is a utopia, the point of this statement is that a refugee camp is serviceable but hardly the peak of the human condition, and that's what the rats were living in. A better environment than the one they would have had in the wild, but hardly a "perfect society" as it's claimed to be.
@@theknight1702 All animals need enrichment and space. Being stuck in a box these mice had neither, developing social dysfunctions was inevitable. They had the most bare bones basics needed (food, water, temperature) but no higher needs met (enrichment, personal space, privacy). Even 'simple' animals need more than just the bare essentials, they're not plants you can just feed, water, leave in the sun and call it done.
I personally think population growth is a huge factor on why human misery is growing. I know for me personally, ive often thought on how theres "more people than meaningful social roles," and how society nowadays really makes you just feel like an insignificant number. It really does make you want to just give up sometimes. Our grandparents had it better Tbh.
That, my friends, is why pretty much every 4X game forces you to build structures, research techs, create wonders, and garrison troops as soon as your cities grow beyond a pitiful bare minimum, or else they'll succumb to total anarchy. Thanks a lot, Calhoun...
It's rhe build-up process and the struggle to grab good lands, chokepoints, strategic resources, have a strategy to rush certain techs, capabilities or unique Secret Projects / World Wonders that make this genre of games so delicious.
@@Shyhalu In small, healthy communities, law enforcement is rarely needed. It is when community connections break down that crime becomes a problem. Look at Mayberry. The town in the Andy Griffith Show may seem unrealistic now, but is existed and still exists all over the world. People who grow up together with a common purpose and connection can create a haven of peace and cooperation. Everyone is a friend and they leave their doors unlocked until an outside force or an imbalance in the community changes things.
The "Mouse Utopia experiment" as far as anyone who knows anything about mice or animals was too small for the animals to roam and establish separate homes and territories, like if your bedroom had a door so the neighbours could watch you sleeping. They couldn't move far enough away from those they disliked and suffered alot in those conditions, the experiment would fall under animal cruelty in this day and age as it would be closer to an unregulated prison than any "utopia". The mice were most likely in a permeant state of fear and paranoia from always being too close, close enough to get the scent of everyone. That would be like living, eating, sleeping and everything else for you entire life at a school with everyone who went to that school bullys included and no rules or laws. That would be a dystopia.
@@randomdude8202 Let's say you lived in a gigantic castle. Everyone was there. Your family, your friend's family, murderers,kidnappers,creeps, etc. There is no police. You all dine at the same table and at the same time, each day, everyday. Eventually you'll get sick and want to get away from these people, even your friend. You'll want privacy.
@@abcdefg-hv2ks this contradicts with what I was replying. Read the comment again, he says they were traumatized by being too close to each other. If that is the case, they would get away form each other. And again, there WAS space available for that. What you say has no impact on this.
@@randomdude8202 They were forced to bunch up. Food was placed in specific containers at a specific time, so crowding was unavoidable for the mice. There was competition for food, which stressed the mice. Adult mice scared away the small ones, and sometimes even killed them. Hence the cannibalism, which the video falsely defined as a "behavioral sink" The mice were living in a slum since day one. A sewer would have kept them much happier than this "paradise"
Not only that, but this was the effort of an independent "scientist" and I highly doubt the conditions were similar to millions of dollars funded labs. They were most likely fed less and had insufficient bedding, nesting materials, etc. This isn't a social experiment and does not relate to humans in the slightest. This is plain animal abuse.
I'm a beautiful one. What's interesting is I first learned about the mouse utopia experiment over two decades ago in college but the fact that the beautiful ones are MALE wasn't mentioned. I guess they like to educate without actually teaching anything.
Firstly, I want to say the animation is fantastic! Really nice quality, I'm amazed. That being said: This video takes a lot of liberties with Calhoun's research. I've read Calhoun's studies first hand and I don't remember anything about there "not being enough roles in society". The alphas were stressed into early deaths, but the betas had various stages of Behavioral Sink. Calhoun's reasoning was actually closer to privacy issues and social overload than "societal roles". There are only so many "roles" in mouse society. There aren't mice engineers, mice doctors, mice construction workers, etc. You have boy mice and girl mice (because they're old school like that) and then the jobs they share between them. Also, Behavioral Sink has nothing at all to do with seeking out others to be near. Absolute incorrect representation of Behavioral Sink. This needs to be driven home because it's the most important part of the experiment, especially if you want to liken it to any human societal collapse. The scariest part of Behavioral Sink is that it seems to be irreversible once it sets in. One way to explain the concept of Behavioral Sink is that it if you are what you do, or in this case if a mouse is as a mouse does, then if you slowly sink towards completely different behavior you become something else. By that I mean a girl mouse, by it's behavior, eats and drinks and forages and socializes and mates with males and gets pregnant and rears children, protects children, and so on and so forth. Through Behavioral Sink, the female mice still eat, drink, and socialize but they no longer (willingly) mate with males, they abandon their children (or eat them), refuse to rear or feed infants, vie for territory with males in the absence of the over-stressed alphas and no longer protect their nests from cannibals and pedophiles. So in this case, what is the girl mouse? It cannot or will not function as the girl mouse it once was and therefore has experienced the first death. The girl mouse within has died. Now there is just the body of a mouse sustaining itself through food, drink, and revelry until the second death when the body physically dies. For males it led to some truly strange behaviors like all the betas standing perfectly still in the middle like a bunch of those daylight-fearing rage zombies from I Am Legend. If any other mouse so much as touched them, they would freak out and start fighting anyone nearby. Massive amounts of free-floating anxiety among the males, dereliction of duty, dishonor of nest manners (like chasing females into their nests for forced mating, which usually doesn't happen), and preying on the young. The lack of "manly" boy mice led the girl mice to take on more and more male jobs like establishing territory and defending passage ways, leaving no one to guard the nests. Also, people keep trying to show female beautiful ones. In this video, there were females who retreated to nesting boxes way up above (that's actually what the beautiful ones did). There was no female version of the beautiful ones which is what made them particularly interesting. And honestly, as someone experienced with populated mouse colonies, I can tell you right now if a mouse female wants to be alone, that's up to the male. Girl mice don't just go up to a high spot and get left alone. That may be a contributing factor as to why there were never any female beautiful ones. Also, the colony death isn't marked by the death of the last mouse, it is marked by the death of the last male. There are ethics and expenses involved in subjecting the final generation of females to simply fade away. Fantastic video animation, really beautiful.
Thanks for this. I was also skeptical of the presentation, but it's been years since I went through this in class, and really haven't the time to go back through it just to critique the presentation in the video. So, sincerely, thanks!
It's not an animation, friend.. idk why they're saying it is, but the characters do not move at all, thus this is more of a collection of speedpaint compilations
The real scary thing about this study is that there are those, with power, that want to create that universe with humanity. You will live in centralised cities, own nothing, and be happy(?). With the entire planet available, and even possibly other planets, we are no where near maxed out. But with restricted living like the rodents, we will quickly become artificially maxed.
I agree. I remember in 2008 when I first read about the Overpopulation issue in an article from El Comercio which is when I was in Peru . The German scientists explain that the earth is capable of having 100 Billion people but the only issue they found was transporting the goods such as food from one place to another.
thats a....completely different discussion? The problem you describe has nothing to do with the problems the study encountered but is merely some antisocialist mimimi. Not that i support socialism. Simply pointing out the error with your argument
Do you remember, just before Covid hit, there was a lot of talk about the wasted money people are spending by living a rural life? They said it would be better use of resources for everyone to move to cities where it is easier to maintain infrastructure such as hospitals, sewer, water, police, etc. Once the pandemic hit, that talk quickly got deleted. Some people want civilization breakdown to occur. They think/hope/know they will be put in a position of power. Not because they are good people.. Just they happen to have the most money right now
Oh, I see how it is When he runs psychological experiments on mice, it's 'groundbreaking' and 'deep.' But when I do it, it's 'sociopathic' and 'inhumane.'
@@therealgaben5527 "But this didn’t very we’ll take into account the mental needs" I wonder why? All you need is look in the DSM under the chapter "Mental Needs of Mice".
Maybe the gene pool was too small, leading to insanity over generations? Or maybe it would have had a different ending if they had more external stimulation or tasks to focus on?
There is definitely a lot going on with the experiment. The small gene pool could really be an issue. the big take away most people have is how do humans react in a similar place. Ultimately, we have to make sure that we spend time out of our house with other humans. Join a club, go hiking with friends, just experience life first hand rather than through social media. Find a purpose, even if that purpose is to just learn.
Pretty sure they used a genetically "pure" mouse strain. The mouse scientists take mice with the desired characteristics, and inbreed them for up to 29 generations, so that they are as close to genetically identical as possible. They do this so that when they test something on mice, they don't have to worry about genetic differences in the test subjects introducing an extraneous variable. The more inbred and uniform the mice, the more effective the research. Regarding outside stimulation, yes, I'd agree. I used to raise mice. It wasn't really like this Universe 25 in that the mice were in small nuclear family units. But I did pull the juveniles from the family units and put them in the larger playground cages with toys and levels and fun. Boy groups and girl groups. Then they would flourish. One of the issues I had was that there were local house mice that discovered my "mouse house" and the near unlimited food available. One day I cleaned out the juvenile bins, and set all the mouse wheels and other toys out on a shelf while the disinfected juvenile bins dried. When I returned to the mouse house, the door was ajar, and I was amazed .... What must have been the entire local wild mouse population were out in force. They weren't in the open food bin, they were on the shelf, playing with all the mouse toys.
The problem wasn't the gene pool or anything else. The problem was that they kept calling it a 'utopia' but what they actually designed was a prison. The mice all got depression because they weren't being enriched. Any mouse owner can tell you they need enrichment and stimulation, you can't just freakin' lock them in a big box and give them food. AND STOP EQUATING MOUSE PATHOLOGY WITH HUMAN PATHOLOGY, DAMN IT. God I hate this 'experiment'.
I think this experiment should be recreated but on a much larger scale, like 200m x 200m or something with lots of vertical space and maybe even a bunch of different species of mice. Maybe also some physical barrires with water and also lots of enrichment opportunities. I feel like this would yield more interesting results than the limited one he did, plus I feel this would be more accurate to our lives than what he had made.
Everybody's missing the whole damn point. Experiment isn't about overcrowding this experiment isn't about more activities or less activities. The experiment simply proves when you take natural creatures (mice and men lol) out of their natural environments, and impose systems and structures upon them, which are so far removed from their natural habitat, the natural order and hierarchy established by nature and evolution itself..... it is always a failure, always. It doesn't matter if the artificial environment does not provide enough or provides an excess it will always fail....... Because after all a little mouse is just a natural creature, on the planet minding its own damn business try not to get eaten by predators....... it's not meant to be spending all day in cages being analyzed by scientists under blinding light, living the life that a human man thinks would be ideal for a mini mouse man. Everybody talks about finding their purpose. I tell you what, mouse purpose is to be running through a field not sitting in a lab cage, just like it isn't any man or woman's purpose in life, to go stand on a factory line and put a piece on a product that gets shipped to somebody somewhere. A person they are never going to meet, who pays for the product more than the factory worker is going to make in an entire year. And all for what? pieces of paper? debits on a card? People talk about how socialism has been a complete failure look around! Every government every structure has been a complete failure, because it only takes into account what a male wants in an unnatural system. Sex food shelter status....... Don't argue with me and go argue with all the men who say that's exactly what they want! Bass primitive needs......... But absolutely no purpose whatsoever! Man and woman have been so far removed from nature and their own humanity....... We're all the rats in the cage now. Go check the birth rates, where in the final end stages of experiment 25 eutopia. The lesson is, manual war till the very death in order to stand at the top of a dead pile of bodies and say I'm the one who got this has sex with the last female...... I win, I'm top G...... Look how cool I am
I'd like to see someone do this experiment again, in a much larger area, note results. Then do it again but with the addition of a cat that gets dropped into the mix. Will the mice then stay 'sane' with a strong attacker that intermittantly visits? Will it be basically the same? Will an earlier or later introduction of the cat have different effects?
What people forget about this experiment is that these mice didn't have enough stimulation. They were using reproduction as a substitute for stimulation and this never would have happened if there had been a more adventurous environment to play in or things to chew on, etc.
yesterday my friend who lives in Tokyo told me about his experience with his strange neighborhood:his neighborhood thought its to noisy when he is ONLY walking in his renting apartment.The strange man(or woman)didn't talk with my friend.but called the police,and leaved from the apartment.My friend says he NEVER meet so strange person until he living in Tokyo. For these years something we can't believed before happened,what cause them?I feel this well change human's culture,completely.
@@seren7173 Kind of like with economics, the more there are, the less value it has. When you have so many people in one spot, their individual value decreases in each other's eyes on a subconscious level. Most won't catch it before it affects their behavior, and it shows.
Hey, turns out that when you live in a place with lots of people, your chances of meeting one who is 'weird' increases. Wow! Shocker! You might even be more likely to meet one of those 'gay' or 'trans' folk, too! Oh my god!
It is not necessary population the culprit of extinction. Observe that mice didn't have any natural challenges to survive as everything they needed was given. Overpopulation was a consequence of that life style which eventually will turn around as a means to protect their survival. Interesting video, Thanks!
@@FruityHachi People in general at this time are slaves of their own minds, thus will experience diseases related with the mind; something animals don't have to deal with.
I was waiting for this video ever since you made that poll. I can finally recommend it to my friends as most documentaries about this subject are pretty long.
I live in the western part of US and we have a ton of empty land that could be used for homes, businesses, and farms. We are far from overpopulation. Everyone afraid of overpopulation usually live in densely packed cities.
I think the video lacks information such as 1. Does food increase with the increase in population to consider it as paradise 2.Later not enough space, made the paradise hell. Did they try to increase the space? 3. What more Behaviour was developed if all of their needs were met?
It's stupid to do it just now the same thing happens over and over again but at some point the current generation notice the old problem and the next generation do that again just complaining about it
@@pedrotom3015 So it's probably not an issue. If it happens to each generation, it's probably just an annoying cycle that comes and goes, and we just have to live with it.
@@AdonanSit cant be a cycle, we just reached the point to provide necessary setup. Neither tech nor population was at this point at any point of history, maybe except some very few examples. But still, it is unlikely be as fatal as this for us.
And here I thought 'grooming' was just code for 'masturbating'. The choices were: 1. Go outside and fight lunatics for sex. OR 2. Be sane and not fight for no good reason.
He didn’t mention that the mouse population was never crowded in terms of the space in their mouse utopias. They never came close to max capacity. They would just crowd into certain areas and leave other parts of the environment vacant to the beautiful ones.
I remember watching this on that rabbit hole channel. It went into more detail. The universe was designed to accomodate a certain number of mice but at a certain point, the mice stopped reproducing way before the universe capacity was met. They're behavioral sink had nothing to do with over populalation at all.
There was no cannibalism in this experiment, it was in another experiment. There was no air conditioner and temperature varied drastically (there was an open window and heated place to the temperature of an oven for mices). It was literal shit hole. Excrements and corpses were removed only once every 4 weeks (in regular conditions it must be done at least once per week). And also original 8 mices were born in same day and most likely were from same litter(in was cheaper to buy) meaning they were siblings. And beautiful males that were removed and transferred to females were simply too old to reproduce. If you want to see how animals behave when they are truly given boundless supply of food and safety look at the rabbits in Australia.
Having just watched this video, I would have thought that Calhoun would have looked at examples of human societies and shown how the mouse-model utopian society was or was not consistent with those real life human societies. Considering some of the most densely populated cities in the world: Manila (46,178 persons per sq. km), Pateros (36,447 persons per sq. km), Mandaluyong (4,925 persons per sq. km), Baghdad (32,874 persons per sq. km), Mumbai (32,303 persons per sq. km), Dhaka (29,069 persons per sq. km), Caloocan (27,989 persons per sq. km) and Port-au-Prince (27,395 persons per sq. km), does the mouse result reflect the human situation?
I believe it does in a way. I believe we're heading towards a population reset of some kind here in America. There are other reasons I believe so, but the ones I'd like to talk about are in relation to the video. Despite the high numbers of population we see today the forecast for the human population growth is a plateau and decline within the next 30 years. As that time comes closer and closer we can see the sexual patterns that the mice exhibited begin to take shape. First was the initial population boom shown a bit after the mice were added to the utopia. The important thing here is that they all had access to food, water, and shelter. The real world equivalent started back in the industrial revolution, and picked up speed as working conditions became more and more automated. In the same way that the mice didn't need to "work" for their food, the amount of danger we would face as humans to get our share was other people and the economy. This ecosystem parallels the mouse utopia. We didn't have to worry about intense sickness, natural disasters, surviving the elements, natural predators, etc. We are the apex creature, same as the mice are in that safety box. When the conditions became similar enough in the world (despite the war) the baby boomers inflated the population. Second thing that happened was a slow rise in population to the point that it is now. You can find more and more people that are antiwork. They don't think it's worth competing against other "males" in this case. Not literally, but in a metaphoric sense on how the workforce has a history of tough competing masculine behavior where the best at their job gets the promotion and raise. This has recently fallen off in the name of hiring people based on gender, race, and social ties rather than the qualifications of a job. You see more and more people retreating from work and real world problems into the internet, social media, video games, etc. rather than trying to increase their living standards through getting an edge up on the next guy in any way they can. Third we're seeing some of the strange sexual behavior that was seen in the later phases. To many people nowadays they don't see it as strange, but in history most current sexual behavior was rare or unheard of. I'm not saying it's good or bad, just different from the historical norm. There are a lot more asexuals, homosexuals (I know that historically there were homosexuals, but less of them), transgender, and promiscuous people than ever before in recorded history. Like I said, not good or bad, just different compared to history. We're also seeing a rise in single women. It tends to be (but not always) that the more successful a woman is, the more likely it is that she'll look for a partner at her status level or higher. Women aren't fools. This would be fine, but masculinity is being demonized to the point where most young men don't apply themselves as well as they can or should. They have become more enticed by simple pleasures like pornography and video games. These are easier than grinding out the knowledge, skills, and hard work needed to compete with other entities out on the market. Here's the mirror to the male mice that gave up, and the female mice living in good conditions alone. On the other side of the spectrum we're seeing a rise in a certain smaller group of men that are trying to get back to work and make a name for themselves. These men tend to fall into more conservative beliefs, but not always. These are a parallel to the alphas in the experiment that weren't described in the video. We also see the part where the break down of social discourse in the experiment by our increasingly polarized views on life and how to live it. Ideologies are crawling out of the woodwork as more and more people find their "flock" to align their thinking with. Now you can't even mutter a word that goes against certain ideologies without being shouted down, reported, and silenced for having dared disagree with them. As for unrelated reasons to this video why I believe that we're heading towards a reset are a few fold. This part gets a bit messy, but bear with me. Throughout history mankind lives in cycles. The cycle of a civilization tend to go as follows according to historian Ibn Khaldun, and the scholar C S Lewis. Stage 1 is when the civilization is first founded. This is when harsh, strong, battle hardened individuals conquer a land or territory. You can see this in early pioneer days in the Americas as they spread out eastward. These individuals tended not to care too much about the finer parts of civilization and were primarily interested in adventure, survival, and strength. Stage 2 is when the descendants of the first civilization take the lead and the conquered land becomes more stable. Cities spring up, and society begins to take deeper root. These individuals still look at the heroes of the past with reverence and respect, but enjoy the niceties of city life. Stage 3 is where we're at. The people in stage 3 eventually lose sight of the values that originally created their society, and look back at physical strength with disdain. They see beauty is undesirable. Look at the successful with disdain. The people here tend to be physically and morally weaker than those who came before, and cling to their leaders for safety and comfort. Challenge is disliked, staying in the comfort zone becomes paramount, and the people become emotionally and physically weaker. Then, a hardy outside force sees the weakened state of the country, and swoops in, conquering the land and repeating the cycle. Sometimes the stronger force comes from within. More reasons are here too. I recently began to follow economics, and learned that due to a lending of debt bubble that has been rising and rising, we're going to hit one of two options unless someone comes up with an actionable plan to stop this. I only understand surface level knowledge on this so bear with me. What I understand is that we have a massive debt bubble right now. Each time we print off money to pay for it inflation goes up. However, the bubble exponentially increases each time we try to push it off into the future. If we can't find a way to unravel that bubble slowly either we'll erode our money to the point where it costs 100$ to buy a hot dog, or the banks will just crumble, and everyone's money they have stored up there will just disappear. You already see the first warning signs as the SVB and five other banks already went bust. Like I said, I only have surface level knowledge, so that's all I can tell you on that. Last reason I feel is just the general lack of unity. Whenever America had run into the problems of the past like the great depression, the world wars, and to a lesser extent the 2008 financial crisis, we were united against the issues we faced. Now you see both sides of the isle doing the largest pissing match you can find on TV. Many people online don't give a care about the country, and would be ecstatic at the prospect of a ruined USA. I think the best we can do is prepare for the worst and expect the best. We'll see however.
I think that many aspects of this can be very much compared to long-term prison inmate society. There is a reason that recidivism is a thing, and that most post-incarcerated individuals are eventually released with complex post-traumatic stress disorder.
This has less to do with "Social roles" and more with limited space. It's stated that within less than a year, the mice were so crowded that they had to squeeze past each other. Stopping breeding and cannibalism are both tactics to reduce the population in a crowded space. They also lacked any mental stimulation.
Humans evolved to live in small social groups, a tribal community of roughly 160 people you would live and work with every day. Which would be part of an intertribal community of as many as 10 tribes, totaling around 1600 people. 90% of whom you only really interact with on special occasions. Festivals in which interactions can be highly scripted by the customs and traditions of the holiday being observed. And emergency response actions, which are rigidly dictated by the tasks at hand. This is how it was for us for roughly 90 - 95% of our roughly 200,000 year history as a species. Then farming picked up, and our intertribal communities united into farming towns of 1600 people who now were living and working together every day. Daily tribal customs and traditions not included in the common special occasions or wouldn't be observed in emergency situations had to be trimmed as we all now had to live the same community life together every day. But it wasn't that hard because we already knew these 1600 people. We were somewhat used to having this many people around. Just not necessarily every one every day. Then cities grew as more business ventures were pursued, and more jobs were added to the economy, farming towns that took up mining grew from 1600 to 3200 or as many as 3500 people to support both farming and mining, same for farming towns near water, as they expanded to be both a farming and marina town. Cities that are all three Agricultural Mariner and Miner could be as many as 4800 - 5400 people. But we get used to it because the added business provides meaningful social places for the people. Now we have such megaopulous cities like Tokyo Japan population 15,000,000 people. Tokyo Japan population 12,000,000 people. New York city population 12,000,000 people. We have urban population densities as high as 300,000 - 400,000 people per square mile. Hundreds more than our brains can handle socially, we use business as our main coping mechanism, using professional relationships built entirely on economic contribution and transaction to build social connection on business dealings. 90% or more of what you are to more than 90% of the people you interact with is your profession. With people likely not bothering to have any interest in even learning your name, simply addressing you by job title, in highly scripted transactions that may not even invite the use of personal names in the whole conversation, condemning the idea of addressing someone by personal name as unprofessional. So what happens to our society if we cut back on the businesses that provide so many professional places for so many people? Minimalist philosophy encourages people to cut so many physical things from their life. Each of which can represent a whole company worth of jobs. If we stopped playing erace all things football from all of society for example, that would mean no more NFL, no more NFL teams. No more football stadiums. No more football equipment manufacturing and distribution industries. No more football equiment manufacturing and distribution infrastructure. Hundreds of professions representing thousands, even tens of thousands of people, would disappear almost overnight. Same for if we stopped playing hockey and LaCrosse. Stop playing Jai Alai. (Or dare I say it) If we stopped playing the American National Pass time and International Goodwill Game of American World Series Baseball. And that is just sports and games. Minimalist philosophy encourages people to eliminate all sorts of things from our lives. Imagine we stop collecting collectibles, that would mean no more precious moments, no more display cabinets or shelves, we stop keeping visual art like paintings or sculpture, that would mean no more art galleries. Imagine we stop driving cars, stop riding bicycles, or using mass transit. Instead, simply walk everywhere on our own two feet. That would mean no more Ford, GM, or Chrysler. No more Harley and Davidson. No more Toyota, Suzuki, Mazda, or Mitsubishi. No more Volvo or Volkswagen. This would eliminate tens even hundreds of thousands of professions, representing tens even hundreds of millions of people worldwide. On top of that, we now have multiple models of Level 3 Adaptive Learning AGI capable of automating almost every job in our economy. Basicaly any and every job that doesn't require self-awareness, full autonomy or Intuitive or Feeling personalty traits, can now be fully automated. Eliminating that many more meaningful job spaces for people. This means we no longer have meaningful places for as many as 70% of all people in the world. With our most secure placement for people going to the maybe 10% of all humans who are Diplomat Class personalities, with both the Intuitive and Feeling traits, and maybe particularly the 7% of all humans who have Intuitive Feeling and Prospective Traits, as we maybe prefer to program AGI with the Judging trait, rather then the Prospective trait, we have little to no place for people in society, we are now living in Universe 25.
When you suddenly deprive a creature of its natural circumstances, you're messing with its instincts. Thus, they will find a way to quell those instinctual drives even if they find themselves in paradise. Nature, nurture
I bumped in the incredible experiment while reading Visionary thinking (Ashish Jaiswal). The author concludes that the main reason for extinsion was the lack of life challenge (look for food, safe shelters, defending from predators and other dangers)
I see two main problems with this hypothetical situation: one, our world will never live in a stagnant stasis, where everything is handed to us. There will always be times of drought, famine, natural disasters, earthquakes, blizzards, volcano eruptions, etc. We have no control over that. The other issue is that human beings are more accountable for the damage they do, and each one is raised and born different, some people love living in crowded places like cities, whereas some are more inclined to lived a solitary lifestyle, which is why people move and travel. The only way for such mass destruction to happen is if all morality is thrown out the window and no one is able to move to a different place (yes, people have been traveling for years).
I think you're arguing against your own conclusion here. Like the mice, some of us seek seclusion while others crave city life. Morality is breaking down, in as much as promiscuity, in all it's forms, has become acceptable; marriage and the breakdown of the family unit is common; violence against the person is rising; mental illness is increasing. Need I go on? All societies are born, reach a peak, decline and eventually die. It is a continuing cycle and I believe that ours is inevitably declining. But! Fear not! Another civilization will arise from the ashes to a height that will make ours seem barbaric. 😎👍
@@farrier2708 Mental illness is rising, to be sure, but I can't find any stats for promiscuity. As for violent crime, that's actually falling. In so far as morality, that's not really possible to measure, but whilst on some levels there's elements like CEO's denying water to thousands of people and massive amounts of human rights abuses even within highly developed countries, it's also noticeable that there's also genuine, meaningful, and less violent pushback. Not successful, granted, but it's still more than our ancestors were able to achieve. You are right in that civilisations do rise and fall, but it isn't really a guarentee that they must fall violently or destructively, and even then the 'Fall' doesn't mean complete annihilation. I mean, I just used a Latin derivitave just there, so Roman Civilisation might have fallen but it's also still impacting our modern culture quite significantly.
"our world will never live in a stagnant stasis, where everything is handed to us" There is no OUR world. As to everything being handed to you; that already happens in "blue cities". Generations of women who live on welfare, their children live on welfare, their children's children live on welfare and in some places it can be lucrative. The only purpose of males, in that kind of scenario, is briefly as a sperm donor. So they fight. Instinct says to fight, decide who gets to be the sperm donor.
I'd love to read and learn more about Calhoun's works. Personally, I would think that the variety of activities we have as humans, such as hobbies, allow us to have much deeper and more extensive bonds with out environment. I've lived in New York and Tokyo, and despite being full of people, most of my needs were easily met. Sure I had to work, but in my time off, I'd go to a park, go to bars, restaurants, walks, arcades... I think that there are some really interesting insights, but I speculate that the demise of Universe 25 might have also been a result of the limited social repertoire of the species. Perhaps we could look at similar events in the past, such as the fall of the Roman Empire, and compare how reliable last can these activities be. If there is something we humans seem to have always been keen on is killing each other...
I have heard about the Mouse Utopia experiment before, but I like how this presentation draws subtle parallels between Universe 25 and our current human condition.
The comparable decline in society certainly hits very close to home. It may have been happening before the early 90s, but that's when I first noticed it.
Overcrowding was merely a consequence. If we were squarely to put the blame on it, that would be like putting the cart before the horse. It was brought about by an environment that was so conducive to reproduction and good living. Calhoun's mouse utopia did its job. . . a little too well in fact. The mice faced no meaningful challenges and enjoyed very favorable conditions that made them *congregate* (i.e. - sink) into these areas because life was so good. We need in our existence a certain level of struggle to give our lives some of *meaningful accomplishment* to aspire to, or at the very least, the satisfaction of acquiring the bare necessities of survival. If everything was easy and we all concentrate our population there, that would be the start of the inevitable spiritual/psychical collapse to the latter actual physical collapse.
@@FruityHachi What is the level of struggle/chaos of said given society? There is a point of NO RETURN. During that point, individual reactions will now be revealed (i.e. - the "beautiful ones" just worked on themselves knowing that the decline is happening and they can't do anything about it)
@@JuandelaCruz001 economic struggle, where do you live that you're not affected financially? "the beautiful ones" are like the big corporations and politicians, only caring about their own pockets and screw the rest
@@FruityHachi Eeeeeeh? Hmmmm... oh man! I don't think I can go on discussing with you if you just compared a large, sophisticated macro-system like a corporation to the "beautiful ones" (i.e. - individuals).
Not another misrepresentation of this experiment for social commentary. The experiment was no utopia, and extrapolating the results to humans without better models is a mistake that only reinforces confirmation bias. It's a great study that led to further studies that are probably more useful and interesting. Overinterpreting this study without taking in account its limitations and further studies is the same as spreading pseudoscience.
This is a scary experiment, let alone it's happening to humanity right now, it may not be the same pace as the rats/mice but we are walking in the same path.
I heard that mice aren't social creatures in the same way we are and male mice have a desire to move out of their area to find new females and such. I admit I'm a bit fuzzy on the details but we shouldn't be too fast to use these mice experiments as solid evidence for human society
I had the same thought. Experimenting on animals just because they're mammals and use it a basis for human psychology is misinformation, or pseudoscience. Mice are heavily different from us. If the scientist had used rats instead, this experiment would have slightly more credibility. Fun fact: mice don't have a bladder, rats do! The renal system impacts our psychology a lot more than we think.
I think another aspect is that the mice didn’t have a higher purpose. Everything was provided for them. This is the characteristic that most resembles industrialized western countries. I live in Japan and almost every aspect that was portrayed in this video is effecting us here now.
I recall seeing information about a repeat experiment where the population recovered when the "beautiful ones" were removed. The claim was that they were releasing pheromones that put the rest of the population into a panicked state (perhaps akin to the moral panic fostered by social and main-stream media?).
Sick quote wow. I have this feeling I live in Europe Netherlands. After WW2 we have the EU and too long peace Europe is dying migrants will inherit my land so I won’t make children. We have too long peace Europe is dying and old.
You missed a key point mentioned elsewhere, in that the environment of Universe 25 could have supported 6000 mice, three times more than the eventual peak population. It wasn't population dentsity or physical overcrowding as such that led to the changes of behaviour and eventual demise.
Overcrowding is only a problem in cities. The whole world's population would fit in the state of Texas. If you think that would be crowded with people shoulder to shoulder, think again. Everyone would have about 900 square feet of space. The world is not overcrowded. It's resources are just unevenly distributed. Why would people choose to live in an area that is as crowded as that. If the utopian facility for mice had been expanded with the population this study would have had a much different outcome.
There's a lot more housing and less oversight as well. So, they're at a greater risk of spikes in Crime/Bullying. I personally believe in Right to Housing. But people should be able to live in safe communities too. Not having to worry about being antagonized by people who are supposed to be their neighbors.
Overpopulation certainly played a part in it, but, this Utopia also had nothing to work for. Generations of mice grew up with food, water and shelter a a given. There was never any motivation to hunt for food, or find a home. Never any kind of purpose. I don't think it requires a sentient mind or self awareness to lose any sense of reason to be in a setting where none of the drives a lifeform has ever require any effort.
Idk man maybe having infinite recourses at your finger tips but limited space along with extreme population growth with inbreeding is kinda setting up the mice to fail
have some psychology, fore me it seems like lack of purpose( somthing to strive for, like the struggle for getting food) was the reason there was the behavior sink.
(sorry for the long comment but you should read it all) Actually... I think a better explanation is that they were in an unnatural habitat, a habitat they are not meant to be in. Mice are designed to operate in their natural environment (as is with all life), even if that is much tougher than the 'utopia' of Universe 25. In their natural habitat, they forage for food, water, and nesting material. The environment is not as clean and their bodies fight pathogens, and even die from it. They were wary of predators and would flee/hide from them. The temperature was varying on times of day, season, underground or surface, and place. They have breeding cycles which are based on the cycles of time in the natural world. so basically, their natural environment is... natural. They have been conditioned through hundreds of millions of years of evolution for this existence. In Universe 25, they don't forage. They *probably* only get only one type of food source whereas in the environment they get a diversity of food sources (they aren't picky eaters). The environment is sterile and their body has nearly no pathogens to fight. They don't flee/hide from predators, even though they are meant to. The temperature is constantly the same, always. Sense of time is dimished as there is no natural time cycles. Also, yes, the population density is much much higher than what is in their natural environment. So in short the lab is unnatural. So I think it's more accurate to say that the mice society collapsed simply because their environment was too alien And these effects we can even see in human society. In the modern era, people aren't going outdoors and touching grass. Kids are less likely to go play some soccer because they got fortnite battle royale. I don't care if you believe in creation or evolution... people are not meant to live like this. More people eat only big macs and junk food instead of genuine actual nutritious food. Genuine social relationships are being replaced by social media and people are more isolated. And what's happening? People are becoming unhealthier and so many people have depression and mental health issues to the point people think its normal. Nowadays people don't see life as a great thing, but more as even a curse or burden. So go touch grass plz.
But it's easier to blame those struggling the most from these ill effects, and not the powers that be who create the unnatural environment for profit. So people blindly follow that rhetoric.
the problem is overcrowding, not being able to escape other mice, it's why we humans started to migrate and establishing small colonies instead of having a huge one where we can't escape each other and the problem is lack of activities to do, whether some games or learning opportunities people do much better when they're in small groups with like-minded people who support each other as opposed to being trapped in a huge crowd, people who don't like each other and who have nothing to do to pass the time but bicker, fight each other or becoming withdrawn not wanting to participate in fights
Det är en intressant och skrämmande fråga. Kommer verkligen de som är "smarta nog" att hjälpa oss andra ut, eller kommer de att titta på medan boxen sjunker? Har vi några exempel på smarta som hjälper andra? I could write in English, but it's so easy to get translated these days
@@moggadah Je pense que très peu d'entre nous sont assez intelligents pour construire des voitures, ou de belles maisons, ou des ampoules électriques, ou des ordinateurs, ou des bombes nucléaires. Peu de gens pouvaient comprendre comment aller dans l'espace, mais neil armstrong, qui ne pouvait sans doute pas sans aide, l'a fait. Ce sont tous des exemples de quelques personnes intelligentes qui pensent pour le bien de l'humanité. If it is so easy to get translated, why didn't you translate it yourself?
I think humans could have similar problems, but unlike mice we have the capacity to solve the problems too. Humans like solving problems. Hell we spend a lot of time inventing new problems just so we can solve them. I mean, we're a species that figured out that the best way to stop us from destroying ourselves with nuclear weapons was to have a lot of nuclear weapons. So we can solve our way out of any population problems. Sure there'll be problems along the way, but unlike mice we'll resolve it before the "everyone is dead" part.
So is it really overpopulation that's the issue or is it our incapability as a society to come up with adequate meaningful roles for our people to fulfill? By stressing overpopulation as an issue I think we're failing to see the real one - and that choice of ours is full of meaning in itself...
The problem is, the resource of the authentic concrete meaning such as a long-time partnership or an impactful respective job to validate ourselves in a community is too scarce. That's why, for the last couple of decades, we, as humanity, have been making up arbitrary meanings/values. Some of these arbitrary meanings that come to my mind are NFTs, blockchain, anything that is not directly tied to our genetic desires. So, we, in a sense, cannot make an authentic meaning. With so many people as a result of overpopulation and the same or less amount of authentic meaning, the competition skyrockets. I don't have any problems with competition but comparing the amount of effort that a meaningful end takes and the pettiness of the reward (if succeeded) and the astronomicity of punishment (if failed), one reasonably arrives at the conclusion that the juice is not worth the squeeze at all. We hear the complaints from the younger generations about the difficulty of owning a house (whether it be a small apartment) so much (and, here in the middle east, you can't even own a car, not kidding). Again, competition is good and all but an apple on top of the mountain is as terrible as an apple handed over to me. An apple handed over to me would make me, as this experiment calls it, "a beautiful one". On the other hand, the path towards the top of the mountain has predators or any other adversities. The apple on the tree, however, not as far as to be considered unworthy or not as close as to have me lose the meaning of having it.
This has nothing to do with overpopulation since the population never reached full capacity. The utopia was built to handle 3,000 mice but never reached more than 2,200. The real problem was that the mice started to forget the old skills and thinking powers of the first 8 mice. Animals are not meant to have everything on a silver plate. Struggle is part of learning. Without the struggle, they had no need to depend on each other. They never learned to depend on each other. Human society will follow the same course but not because of overpopulation. We make things to easy for future generations by making them dependent on handouts like welfare which breakup families. We ship goods in instead of making things ourselves. We rely on big farms instead of growing our own foods. Self sufficiency is forgotten.
I don’t believe over population is necessarily the problem but our inability to work together and colonize further on other planets and mitigate the effects of overpopulation The universe is far big enough to have human inhabit it without any populational constraints
1. No personal space. 2. They did nothing about the mice that engaged in malicious behavior (Bullying). 3. Nothing was managed besides Food and Water. Of course their spirit died. What was the point, if their whole life was going to be constant stress? Without getting a single break.
I think it goes 2 fold , lack of challenge will make us apathetic and depressed, and yes maybe having 3+ kids in a modern world is not such a good idea when the average person used to need extra hands around the farm, and high child mortality rates was a concern;
People have creativity, if all the social roles are filled they will create new social roles to be filled and some social roles disappear and become irrelevant as new industries and technologies emerge.
the mice didn't die due to overpopulation, they died because they lost their reason to live. if they don't have to worry about securing food and shelter and mating is the easiest thing there is, they start to wonder what is the purpose o it all? what is the meaning of reproducing and spreading my genes if no matter if they are good or bad i'd still be able to reproduce?
The key factor that Isn’t being taken into account is the fact that unlike the mice humans can increase or access more available space that would otherwise be inaccessible for other species. From moon colonies to basic skyscrapers we have more than enough space to house another billion or two people just on earth alone.
The mice family unit seemed to break down as well. The parents no longer felt the need to teach or protect their young. Almost as if through the generations they forgot threats existed at all.
Universe 26 needs to toy with the idea of periodic culling of the behaviorally and physically undesirable mice, to test how well eugenics and social husbandry works.
There's some info that these mice were actually kept in bad conditions: dirt, lack of temperature regulation in their artificial habitat, inconvenient placing of their nests... There are even rumors that the mice died out because living in hot and stinky prison is really difficult. Also, they could have suffered from inbreeding (if the 1st mice-settlers were brothers and sisters) Also, how come that lots of vivariums for mice live happily without dying out? Conclusion: maybe the scientist's incompetence was the problem?
Even if we don't consider the conditions the rats are living in, comparing the social structure of rats to humans is already a very huge leap. They failed to consider that humans have a more complex social structure than that of rats. From what I know there's research that have already challenged Calhoun's idea.
Although it is never mentioned, there is a factor in the original experiment that I think was overlooked. I think a key factor in the experiment, is the lack of recreational activity for the mice.
He published numerous papers that Mice shouldn't be seen as a parallel to humans. Their evolutionary advantage (over populating) is not a good indicator for most mammals. Zoo animals like Gorillas and Pandas have very similar sheltered lifestyles but they never devolve like this.
He actually did later experiments where the mice also had access to mental stimulation, and most of the problems disappeared
Another thing that was glossed over in the video was not the asexuality among the mice, but the homosexuality that was rampant
@@sandvich3943 that's irrelevant tbh. Look online and look at how many wild animals participate in homosexual activities, you'd be surprised at the statistics.
Inmates in prisons often attack each other for recreation.
Calhoun's later findings were quickly glossed over (which is more than most reviews of his work do). His later research, in fact, showed that if, in addition to their physical needs, the rats/mice are also freely given mental stimulation, most of the ill effects go away.
One small issue: What is society doing, right now, that is going to ensure its destruction? It shames those who 'quiet quit', who are in reality trying to get their minimum recreational needs.
Hostility, more importantly random hostility fulled by those who seek to have a defined political ideology.
A big problem with any experiments and on animals, is "assuming" anthing, such as developing narcissism... Forcing animals into overpopulation in a confined space, *of course that will cause the traumas that occurred* it should not take even one experiment torturing animals to death to figure that out.
If the parameters, the enclosures were widedened, then there would most likely have been no extra stress but did they keep the rodents penned in one specific place, no broadening of pastures, so to speak, not allowed past physical barriers...
The lack of ethics to this fake science is astounding.
@@TarsonTalon Imo, religious pairing imposed on those indoctrinated to "go forth and multiply", as in stay in your predetermined path that others have determined for you, causing resentment to be passed down, not taking other factors into consideration, known and unknown, such as those assuming elite-ships taking it upon themselves to "cure" the world of imagined ailments or what they actually do/did release to cause ailments "for the greater good"... Something I think the mice did not do, force peasant mice to work in tiny laboratories concocting Spanish flu for mice... surely that would have been mentioned.
But blood sacrifices and scapegoating cannot be used without religion/spirituality, so the few assuming elitists make "peasants" fearful to leave cities of their own accord while even more factors are ushered in, almost stampeding through, there's a term I can't recall at the moment. This terrible non experiment to show people they should be fearing something that would be non existent if they could just throw off those shackles that demand they follow prescribed conformities.
All living matter needs periodic solitude. And there's so much space on and in the Earth. Fake leaders turn mushroom ideas into kool-aid.
@@andythomas4998 It simulates a similar problem *WE* have. We do not have unlimited space to populate. We can not just "Expand the Earth." Sure, they could have expanded the enclosures, but it would take away from a deeper meaning in having limited space.
The main issue was the lack of mental stimulie, the mice had no toys, no change in food and no change in enviorment. (like sticks to climb and gnaw on)
Something thats crucial for such an smart and social animal.
Actually in later experiments they were given other thing we would have (such as toys as you stated) and all experiments ended the same way. The only thing they didn't get was extra land which technically we don't have either anymore.
I have read the experiment. Structure was changed and toys are provided.
@@AAxolotl1 but the whole world can fit in texas, so your last point means nothing
@@-eurosplitsofficalclanchan6057 Not only is that one of the most idioc responses to the "running out of land" problem, it also does not pertain to what I said at all. What I described was that have no extra space to move to. We have seen all the land that we have to see. There are no more environments for us to move to because we have lived in every environment.
@@AAxolotl1 "There are no more environments for us to move to because we have lived in every environment."
you said a whole bunch of nothing. there are millions of acres of land that can be used to create new towns/cities/homes, all across the world.
It can be argued all day as to whether this experiment was more of a utopia or a prison. The important takeaway is the phenomenon that Calhoun describes triggering the collapse, the ‘Spiritual Death’. And when you compare where the US is to how the mice acted before total collapse, its easy to see that peoples spirits are dying left and right. People feel less like important members of their communities and more like faceless cogs in a machine.
Bingo
Another underrated scientist. This man spent years repeating a tedious experiment to get foolproof results. Then proceeded to stay optimistic, offer possible solutions and built even more rat utopias to hit the bullseye.
We need to talk more about such scientists, their research and findings.
Gigachad Scientist.
@@Dark_Slayer3000 What do you mean? Are you saying that about Calhoun, or about the commenter? Is it an insult or a compliment?
Nah, dude's overrated and tried to link mouse behaviour with human behaviour. Humans don't react to their environment like mice do, but somehow he didn't seem to get that.
@@bluedragonfly8139 see now i know you capping
So a scientist can repeatedly inflict harm on animals to keep proving a point and he is considered underrated? I do agree that we should speak more about scientist like him because they do inhumane things under the guise of research. I could see a few times repeating his social experiment but 25?!
One detail missed in Universe 25, the reason infant mortality was so total was that mother rodents stopped bothering to care for their young. Initially, food was so plentiful and life so peaceful that mothers could just abandon their offspring with the expectation that they'd just survive without any supervision. This was true up to a point but when the population started crashing the practice was so ingrained into the mice that they simply lacked the skills or desire to care for their young who were dying.
This has little to do with the mice and everything to do with the idiots trying to control them. Sound familiar?
@@Emilyjacksonmidwestthey are not idiots,it was an experiment about how different things changes behaviors
"This sounds pretty misogynistic. Females don't owe you children."
🤡🤡🤡
the problem wasn't overcrowding, it was lack of purpose.
Any population rises to their maximal extend over time, but normally they still have to work for their food.
It is getting something for nothing that destroyed the mice
if that would be the case then the initial population shouldnt have been content and started breeding.
Existential crisis in a nutshell.
Agreed
This is something that worries me. With the emergence of AI. We may be headed to our own universe 25. With AI providing most of our needs. And there has to be some sort of universal basic income. Most of the population will have nothing to do. And as I am having confirmed. At least this person can't expect hobbies to give one a sense of purpose and value. That is the reason I believe that heaven wouldn't be a good fate. What's your purpose, other than praising God?
Good thing people aren't mice. Like every other experiment they do on mice it fails when transferred to human population.
Universe 25 was no "utopia". It was an almost perfect definition of a "refugee camp".
For someonte who's not human, a refugee camp could be seen as an "utopia": there's food, water and shelter for everybody. Some camps also have gyms, libraries, schools, religious temples, among other features.
Compared to what wild rats experience it certainly is a utopia. And keep in mind that human society is not a utopia either.
@@theknight1702 i think a non-wild environment (so the artificial ones humans create) for a wild animal could only be a utopia if it perfectly mimics the animal's wild environment but without the dangers of predators, disease, harsh elements, etc. this is because a wild environment will give the animal enrichment and promote it's natural behaviors. basically the animal will be in an environment that its biology is designed for, and it won't get board. unless the scientist was able to do that then i don't think he created a real utopia for the rats.
interestingly, this is the reason why keeping certain animals as pets or in zoos is frowned upon. it's really hard to give something like a whale or even an aquatic turtle a perfect man-made environment/enclosure. so they're better off in the wild. it's true that they'll die faster in the wild, but better to have a short life that is enriching and not boring and that contributes to your society (the ecological system that they are a part of) than to live a long, miserable, boring life in a fancy box and not even do the bare minimum of giving back to your society in your death (feeding an animal that's part of your ecological system*).
*not saying that animals consciously care about giving back to their environment, but from and ecological standpoint leaving a native animal in its native environment is good for that environment, and removing that animal could be bad for that environment. so just by existing in their environment and doing their animal things (or by dying and feeding something else) they are "giving back to their society."
sorry that was long, i like to overexplain and it's 4am so i have no one to talk to😅
@@theknight1702 I think you're missing the point. Nobody is saying human society is a utopia, the point of this statement is that a refugee camp is serviceable but hardly the peak of the human condition, and that's what the rats were living in. A better environment than the one they would have had in the wild, but hardly a "perfect society" as it's claimed to be.
@@BlazeMakesGames I wouldn’t say hardly, their estimated lifespans in there are several times longer than in the wild
@@theknight1702 All animals need enrichment and space. Being stuck in a box these mice had neither, developing social dysfunctions was inevitable. They had the most bare bones basics needed (food, water, temperature) but no higher needs met (enrichment, personal space, privacy). Even 'simple' animals need more than just the bare essentials, they're not plants you can just feed, water, leave in the sun and call it done.
I personally think population growth is a huge factor on why human misery is growing. I know for me personally, ive often thought on how theres "more people than meaningful social roles," and how society nowadays really makes you just feel like an insignificant number. It really does make you want to just give up sometimes. Our grandparents had it better Tbh.
u can move to a rural area
That, my friends, is why pretty much every 4X game forces you to build structures, research techs, create wonders, and garrison troops as soon as your cities grow beyond a pitiful bare minimum, or else they'll succumb to total anarchy. Thanks a lot, Calhoun...
It's rhe build-up process and the struggle to grab good lands, chokepoints, strategic resources, have a strategy to rush certain techs, capabilities or unique Secret Projects / World Wonders that make this genre of games so delicious.
Sid Meier's Civilization?
That has nothing to do with over population, but human behavior in general. Without law enforcement, society collapses.
@@Shyhalu In small, healthy communities, law enforcement is rarely needed. It is when community connections break down that crime becomes a problem. Look at Mayberry. The town in the Andy Griffith Show may seem unrealistic now, but is existed and still exists all over the world. People who grow up together with a common purpose and connection can create a haven of peace and cooperation. Everyone is a friend and they leave their doors unlocked until an outside force or an imbalance in the community changes things.
@@tabaxikhajit4541 The world isn't made of small communities.
The "Mouse Utopia experiment" as far as anyone who knows anything about mice or animals was too small for the animals to roam and establish separate homes and territories, like if your bedroom had a door so the neighbours could watch you sleeping.
They couldn't move far enough away from those they disliked and suffered alot in those conditions, the experiment would fall under animal cruelty in this day and age as it would be closer to an unregulated prison than any "utopia".
The mice were most likely in a permeant state of fear and paranoia from always being too close, close enough to get the scent of everyone. That would be like living, eating, sleeping and everything else for you entire life at a school with everyone who went to that school bullys included and no rules or laws.
That would be a dystopia.
You realize they bunched up despite the fact that there was enough space in environment, right?
@@randomdude8202 Let's say you lived in a gigantic castle. Everyone was there. Your family, your friend's family, murderers,kidnappers,creeps, etc. There is no police. You all dine at the same table and at the same time, each day, everyday. Eventually you'll get sick and want to get away from these people, even your friend. You'll want privacy.
@@abcdefg-hv2ks this contradicts with what I was replying. Read the comment again, he says they were traumatized by being too close to each other. If that is the case, they would get away form each other. And again, there WAS space available for that. What you say has no impact on this.
@@randomdude8202 They were forced to bunch up. Food was placed in specific containers at a specific time, so crowding was unavoidable for the mice. There was competition for food, which stressed the mice. Adult mice scared away the small ones, and sometimes even killed them. Hence the cannibalism, which the video falsely defined as a "behavioral sink"
The mice were living in a slum since day one. A sewer would have kept them much happier than this "paradise"
Not only that, but this was the effort of an independent "scientist" and I highly doubt the conditions were similar to millions of dollars funded labs.
They were most likely fed less and had insufficient bedding, nesting materials, etc.
This isn't a social experiment and does not relate to humans in the slightest. This is plain animal abuse.
The 'beautiful mice' sound like the type of folks I'd fit right in with.
👀
Welcome to the redpilled son, enjoy your existencial dread!
@@ghoulbuster1as opposed to the brown pill, which gives you diarrhea
count me in
I'm a beautiful one. What's interesting is I first learned about the mouse utopia experiment over two decades ago in college but the fact that the beautiful ones are MALE wasn't mentioned. I guess they like to educate without actually teaching anything.
Firstly, I want to say the animation is fantastic! Really nice quality, I'm amazed. That being said:
This video takes a lot of liberties with Calhoun's research. I've read Calhoun's studies first hand and I don't remember anything about there "not being enough roles in society". The alphas were stressed into early deaths, but the betas had various stages of Behavioral Sink. Calhoun's reasoning was actually closer to privacy issues and social overload than "societal roles". There are only so many "roles" in mouse society. There aren't mice engineers, mice doctors, mice construction workers, etc. You have boy mice and girl mice (because they're old school like that) and then the jobs they share between them. Also, Behavioral Sink has nothing at all to do with seeking out others to be near. Absolute incorrect representation of Behavioral Sink. This needs to be driven home because it's the most important part of the experiment, especially if you want to liken it to any human societal collapse. The scariest part of Behavioral Sink is that it seems to be irreversible once it sets in.
One way to explain the concept of Behavioral Sink is that it if you are what you do, or in this case if a mouse is as a mouse does, then if you slowly sink towards completely different behavior you become something else. By that I mean a girl mouse, by it's behavior, eats and drinks and forages and socializes and mates with males and gets pregnant and rears children, protects children, and so on and so forth. Through Behavioral Sink, the female mice still eat, drink, and socialize but they no longer (willingly) mate with males, they abandon their children (or eat them), refuse to rear or feed infants, vie for territory with males in the absence of the over-stressed alphas and no longer protect their nests from cannibals and pedophiles. So in this case, what is the girl mouse? It cannot or will not function as the girl mouse it once was and therefore has experienced the first death. The girl mouse within has died. Now there is just the body of a mouse sustaining itself through food, drink, and revelry until the second death when the body physically dies. For males it led to some truly strange behaviors like all the betas standing perfectly still in the middle like a bunch of those daylight-fearing rage zombies from I Am Legend. If any other mouse so much as touched them, they would freak out and start fighting anyone nearby. Massive amounts of free-floating anxiety among the males, dereliction of duty, dishonor of nest manners (like chasing females into their nests for forced mating, which usually doesn't happen), and preying on the young. The lack of "manly" boy mice led the girl mice to take on more and more male jobs like establishing territory and defending passage ways, leaving no one to guard the nests.
Also, people keep trying to show female beautiful ones. In this video, there were females who retreated to nesting boxes way up above (that's actually what the beautiful ones did). There was no female version of the beautiful ones which is what made them particularly interesting. And honestly, as someone experienced with populated mouse colonies, I can tell you right now if a mouse female wants to be alone, that's up to the male. Girl mice don't just go up to a high spot and get left alone. That may be a contributing factor as to why there were never any female beautiful ones. Also, the colony death isn't marked by the death of the last mouse, it is marked by the death of the last male. There are ethics and expenses involved in subjecting the final generation of females to simply fade away.
Fantastic video animation, really beautiful.
Mice have pedophiles too?
Brilliant post! Thank you!
I am very happy to see someone else keeping the BSC alive! You are not alone!
Thanks for this. I was also skeptical of the presentation, but it's been years since I went through this in class, and really haven't the time to go back through it just to critique the presentation in the video.
So, sincerely, thanks!
It's not an animation, friend.. idk why they're saying it is, but the characters do not move at all, thus this is more of a collection of speedpaint compilations
In the girl part.. pedophiles?
In male parts… forced mating?
Why though? There shouldn’t be a reason for that… when all is… “happy” right?
The real scary thing about this study is that there are those, with power, that want to create that universe with humanity. You will live in centralised cities, own nothing, and be happy(?). With the entire planet available, and even possibly other planets, we are no where near maxed out. But with restricted living like the rodents, we will quickly become artificially maxed.
15 minute cities are sounding more like the Calhoun experiment
I agree. I remember in 2008 when I first read about the Overpopulation issue in an article from El Comercio which is when I was in Peru . The German scientists explain that the earth is capable of having 100 Billion people but the only issue they found was transporting the goods such as food from one place to another.
@@kennymichaelalanya7134 yeah a technical logistical issue to be solved by the next "self made" billionaire/trillionaire
thats a....completely different discussion? The problem you describe has nothing to do with the problems the study encountered but is merely some antisocialist mimimi.
Not that i support socialism. Simply pointing out the error with your argument
Do you remember, just before Covid hit, there was a lot of talk about the wasted money people are spending by living a rural life? They said it would be better use of resources for everyone to move to cities where it is easier to maintain infrastructure such as hospitals, sewer, water, police, etc.
Once the pandemic hit, that talk quickly got deleted. Some people want civilization breakdown to occur. They think/hope/know they will be put in a position of power. Not because they are good people.. Just they happen to have the most money right now
The test was never overpopulation. They didn't even use half the place.
Oh, I see how it is When he runs psychological experiments on mice, it's 'groundbreaking' and 'deep.' But when I do it, it's 'sociopathic' and 'inhumane.'
The first thing that comes to mind is how did he know what is utopia for mice?
Same.
"how did he know what is utopia for mice?"
Looked it up in Encyclopedia Brittanica.
Probably because it satisfied all of the physical needs that the mice would need. But this didn’t very we’ll take into account the mental needs
@@therealgaben5527 "But this didn’t very we’ll take into account the mental needs"
I wonder why? All you need is look in the DSM under the chapter "Mental Needs of Mice".
@@thomasmaughan4798 It did satisfy mental needs too, or so I heard. Problem is, they just lost motivation for those needs.
Maybe the gene pool was too small, leading to insanity over generations? Or maybe it would have had a different ending if they had more external stimulation or tasks to focus on?
loss of purpose in life. not threats, no challenges, no obstacles. everything handed to them.
There is definitely a lot going on with the experiment. The small gene pool could really be an issue. the big take away most people have is how do humans react in a similar place. Ultimately, we have to make sure that we spend time out of our house with other humans. Join a club, go hiking with friends, just experience life first hand rather than through social media. Find a purpose, even if that purpose is to just learn.
Pretty sure they used a genetically "pure" mouse strain. The mouse scientists take mice with the desired characteristics, and inbreed them for up to 29 generations, so that they are as close to genetically identical as possible. They do this so that when they test something on mice, they don't have to worry about genetic differences in the test subjects introducing an extraneous variable. The more inbred and uniform the mice, the more effective the research.
Regarding outside stimulation, yes, I'd agree. I used to raise mice. It wasn't really like this Universe 25 in that the mice were in small nuclear family units. But I did pull the juveniles from the family units and put them in the larger playground cages with toys and levels and fun. Boy groups and girl groups. Then they would flourish.
One of the issues I had was that there were local house mice that discovered my "mouse house" and the near unlimited food available. One day I cleaned out the juvenile bins, and set all the mouse wheels and other toys out on a shelf while the disinfected juvenile bins dried. When I returned to the mouse house, the door was ajar, and I was amazed .... What must have been the entire local wild mouse population were out in force. They weren't in the open food bin, they were on the shelf, playing with all the mouse toys.
The problem wasn't the gene pool or anything else. The problem was that they kept calling it a 'utopia' but what they actually designed was a prison. The mice all got depression because they weren't being enriched. Any mouse owner can tell you they need enrichment and stimulation, you can't just freakin' lock them in a big box and give them food.
AND STOP EQUATING MOUSE PATHOLOGY WITH HUMAN PATHOLOGY, DAMN IT.
God I hate this 'experiment'.
Oi vey the mice need more diversity!
Bring in the immigrants!
good mice create good times, good times create bad mice, bad mice create bad times, bad times create good mice
And FJB
As a mouse born in Singapore, I've to agree with the findings of John B. 🐭
So we are in a spiral of Behavioral Sink, it was nice to meet you all, see you at the Extinction Party
Lacking a struggle to survive caused the collapse more than the overpopulation.
I think this experiment should be recreated but on a much larger scale, like 200m x 200m or something with lots of vertical space and maybe even a bunch of different species of mice. Maybe also some physical barrires with water and also lots of enrichment opportunities.
I feel like this would yield more interesting results than the limited one he did, plus I feel this would be more accurate to our lives than what he had made.
Its pretty accurate already i would say. Look at whats happening around us
This has little to do with the mice and everything to do with the idiots trying to control them. Sound familiar?
Everybody's missing the whole damn point. Experiment isn't about overcrowding this experiment isn't about more activities or less activities.
The experiment simply proves when you take natural creatures (mice and men lol) out of their natural environments, and impose systems and structures upon them, which are so far removed from their natural habitat, the natural order and hierarchy established by nature and evolution itself..... it is always a failure, always.
It doesn't matter if the artificial environment does not provide enough or provides an excess it will always fail....... Because after all a little mouse is just a natural creature, on the planet minding its own damn business try not to get eaten by predators....... it's not meant to be spending all day in cages being analyzed by scientists under blinding light, living the life that a human man thinks would be ideal for a mini mouse man.
Everybody talks about finding their purpose. I tell you what, mouse purpose is to be running through a field not sitting in a lab cage, just like it isn't any man or woman's purpose in life, to go stand on a factory line and put a piece on a product that gets shipped to somebody somewhere. A person they are never going to meet, who pays for the product more than the factory worker is going to make in an entire year.
And all for what? pieces of paper? debits on a card?
People talk about how socialism has been a complete failure look around! Every government every structure has been a complete failure, because it only takes into account what a male wants in an unnatural system.
Sex food shelter status....... Don't argue with me and go argue with all the men who say that's exactly what they want! Bass primitive needs......... But absolutely no purpose whatsoever!
Man and woman have been so far removed from nature and their own humanity....... We're all the rats in the cage now.
Go check the birth rates, where in the final end stages of experiment 25 eutopia.
The lesson is, manual war till the very death in order to stand at the top of a dead pile of bodies and say I'm the one who got this has sex with the last female...... I win, I'm top G...... Look how cool I am
I'd like to see someone do this experiment again, in a much larger area, note results. Then do it again but with the addition of a cat that gets dropped into the mix. Will the mice then stay 'sane' with a strong attacker that intermittantly visits? Will it be basically the same? Will an earlier or later introduction of the cat have different effects?
What people forget about this experiment is that these mice didn't have enough stimulation. They were using reproduction as a substitute for stimulation and this never would have happened if there had been a more adventurous environment to play in or things to chew on, etc.
We are inside Universe 25 right now.
No
yesterday my friend who lives in Tokyo told me about his experience with his strange neighborhood:his neighborhood thought its to noisy when he is ONLY walking in his renting apartment.The strange man(or woman)didn't talk with my friend.but called the police,and leaved from the apartment.My friend says he NEVER meet so strange person until he living in Tokyo.
For these years something we can't believed before happened,what cause them?I feel this well change human's culture,completely.
Interesting
@@iLoveBigKnockers when I living in other overpopulation cities I faced same situation.those people seemed like...made me feeling ill.
@@seren7173 Kind of like with economics, the more there are, the less value it has. When you have so many people in one spot, their individual value decreases in each other's eyes on a subconscious level. Most won't catch it before it affects their behavior, and it shows.
@@iLoveBigKnockers I never think about this point.thank you.
Hey, turns out that when you live in a place with lots of people, your chances of meeting one who is 'weird' increases.
Wow! Shocker! You might even be more likely to meet one of those 'gay' or 'trans' folk, too! Oh my god!
It is not necessary population the culprit of extinction. Observe that mice didn't have any natural challenges to survive as everything they needed was given. Overpopulation was a consequence of that life style which eventually will turn around as a means to protect their survival. Interesting video, Thanks!
Right! Thanks for enjoying it.
then how come people are depressed and unalive themselves when they DO have challenges to survive?
@@FruityHachi People in general at this time are slaves of their own minds, thus will experience diseases related with the mind; something animals don't have to deal with.
@@escuelasestelares citation needed
I was waiting for this video ever since you made that poll. I can finally recommend it to my friends as most documentaries about this subject are pretty long.
I live in the western part of US and we have a ton of empty land that could be used for homes, businesses, and farms. We are far from overpopulation. Everyone afraid of overpopulation usually live in densely packed cities.
Seeing similar thing going on in the western society right now is honestly terrifying.
Don't think that eastern or southern society any better.
@@ЕгорПещерский They are just perpetually bad, not degrading themselves into being degenerates.
@@KuroNoTenno
Hmmm...
Africa... Asia... Middle East...
Nah, same shit under different sauce.
@@ЕгорПещерский Are there insane people transing kids in Africa? Not that I know of.
@@ЕгорПещерский no
I think the video lacks information such as
1. Does food increase with the increase in population to consider it as paradise
2.Later not enough space, made the paradise hell. Did they try to increase the space?
3. What more Behaviour was developed if all of their needs were met?
This is happening to humans... RIP...
Isn't it clear what the problem is? It's no population, it's utopia, laziness, lack of danger and competition. Overpopulation is the result of that.
A lot of people have started making videos about the mouse utopia. I assume it's because a lot of people are seeing the signs in our own society.
It's stupid to do it just now the same thing happens over and over again but at some point the current generation notice the old problem and the next generation do that again just complaining about it
@@pedrotom3015 So it's probably not an issue. If it happens to each generation, it's probably just an annoying cycle that comes and goes, and we just have to live with it.
@@AdonanSit cant be a cycle, we just reached the point to provide necessary setup. Neither tech nor population was at this point at any point of history, maybe except some very few examples. But still, it is unlikely be as fatal as this for us.
Mouse: *minding his own business*
Experimenter: “narcissist”
And here I thought 'grooming' was just code for 'masturbating'. The choices were: 1. Go outside and fight lunatics for sex. OR 2. Be sane and not fight for no good reason.
He didn’t mention that the mouse population was never crowded in terms of the space in their mouse utopias. They never came close to max capacity. They would just crowd into certain areas and leave other parts of the environment vacant to the beautiful ones.
I remember watching this on that rabbit hole channel. It went into more detail. The universe was designed to accomodate a certain number of mice but at a certain point, the mice stopped reproducing way before the universe capacity was met. They're behavioral sink had nothing to do with over populalation at all.
But why?
@@criminyworldriseedify8962 They stopped reproducing because the male mice turned gay and the female mice started taking up male roles.
This has little to do with the mice and everything to do with the idiots trying to control them. Sound familiar?
@@ixiahj any similarities whit the real world are just coincidences!!!
@@ixiahj you are right...this video is deeply misleading..I wonder why..hmmm...some political agenda probably
There was no cannibalism in this experiment, it was in another experiment. There was no air conditioner and temperature varied drastically (there was an open window and heated place to the temperature of an oven for mices). It was literal shit hole. Excrements and corpses were removed only once every 4 weeks (in regular conditions it must be done at least once per week).
And also original 8 mices were born in same day and most likely were from same litter(in was cheaper to buy) meaning they were siblings. And beautiful males that were removed and transferred to females were simply too old to reproduce.
If you want to see how animals behave when they are truly given boundless supply of food and safety look at the rabbits in Australia.
Having just watched this video, I would have thought that Calhoun would have looked at examples of human societies and shown how the mouse-model utopian society was or was not consistent with those real life human societies. Considering some of the most densely populated cities in the world: Manila (46,178 persons per sq. km), Pateros (36,447 persons per sq. km), Mandaluyong (4,925 persons per sq. km), Baghdad (32,874 persons per sq. km), Mumbai (32,303 persons per sq. km), Dhaka (29,069 persons per sq. km), Caloocan (27,989 persons per sq. km) and Port-au-Prince (27,395 persons per sq. km), does the mouse result reflect the human situation?
It's only a matter of time
I believe it does in a way. I believe we're heading towards a population reset of some kind here in America. There are other reasons I believe so, but the ones I'd like to talk about are in relation to the video. Despite the high numbers of population we see today the forecast for the human population growth is a plateau and decline within the next 30 years. As that time comes closer and closer we can see the sexual patterns that the mice exhibited begin to take shape.
First was the initial population boom shown a bit after the mice were added to the utopia. The important thing here is that they all had access to food, water, and shelter. The real world equivalent started back in the industrial revolution, and picked up speed as working conditions became more and more automated. In the same way that the mice didn't need to "work" for their food, the amount of danger we would face as humans to get our share was other people and the economy. This ecosystem parallels the mouse utopia. We didn't have to worry about intense sickness, natural disasters, surviving the elements, natural predators, etc. We are the apex creature, same as the mice are in that safety box. When the conditions became similar enough in the world (despite the war) the baby boomers inflated the population.
Second thing that happened was a slow rise in population to the point that it is now. You can find more and more people that are antiwork. They don't think it's worth competing against other "males" in this case. Not literally, but in a metaphoric sense on how the workforce has a history of tough competing masculine behavior where the best at their job gets the promotion and raise. This has recently fallen off in the name of hiring people based on gender, race, and social ties rather than the qualifications of a job. You see more and more people retreating from work and real world problems into the internet, social media, video games, etc. rather than trying to increase their living standards through getting an edge up on the next guy in any way they can.
Third we're seeing some of the strange sexual behavior that was seen in the later phases. To many people nowadays they don't see it as strange, but in history most current sexual behavior was rare or unheard of. I'm not saying it's good or bad, just different from the historical norm. There are a lot more asexuals, homosexuals (I know that historically there were homosexuals, but less of them), transgender, and promiscuous people than ever before in recorded history. Like I said, not good or bad, just different compared to history.
We're also seeing a rise in single women. It tends to be (but not always) that the more successful a woman is, the more likely it is that she'll look for a partner at her status level or higher. Women aren't fools. This would be fine, but masculinity is being demonized to the point where most young men don't apply themselves as well as they can or should. They have become more enticed by simple pleasures like pornography and video games. These are easier than grinding out the knowledge, skills, and hard work needed to compete with other entities out on the market. Here's the mirror to the male mice that gave up, and the female mice living in good conditions alone.
On the other side of the spectrum we're seeing a rise in a certain smaller group of men that are trying to get back to work and make a name for themselves. These men tend to fall into more conservative beliefs, but not always. These are a parallel to the alphas in the experiment that weren't described in the video.
We also see the part where the break down of social discourse in the experiment by our increasingly polarized views on life and how to live it. Ideologies are crawling out of the woodwork as more and more people find their "flock" to align their thinking with. Now you can't even mutter a word that goes against certain ideologies without being shouted down, reported, and silenced for having dared disagree with them.
As for unrelated reasons to this video why I believe that we're heading towards a reset are a few fold. This part gets a bit messy, but bear with me.
Throughout history mankind lives in cycles. The cycle of a civilization tend to go as follows according to historian Ibn Khaldun, and the scholar C S Lewis.
Stage 1 is when the civilization is first founded. This is when harsh, strong, battle hardened individuals conquer a land or territory. You can see this in early pioneer days in the Americas as they spread out eastward. These individuals tended not to care too much about the finer parts of civilization and were primarily interested in adventure, survival, and strength.
Stage 2 is when the descendants of the first civilization take the lead and the conquered land becomes more stable. Cities spring up, and society begins to take deeper root. These individuals still look at the heroes of the past with reverence and respect, but enjoy the niceties of city life.
Stage 3 is where we're at. The people in stage 3 eventually lose sight of the values that originally created their society, and look back at physical strength with disdain. They see beauty is undesirable. Look at the successful with disdain. The people here tend to be physically and morally weaker than those who came before, and cling to their leaders for safety and comfort. Challenge is disliked, staying in the comfort zone becomes paramount, and the people become emotionally and physically weaker. Then, a hardy outside force sees the weakened state of the country, and swoops in, conquering the land and repeating the cycle. Sometimes the stronger force comes from within.
More reasons are here too.
I recently began to follow economics, and learned that due to a lending of debt bubble that has been rising and rising, we're going to hit one of two options unless someone comes up with an actionable plan to stop this. I only understand surface level knowledge on this so bear with me.
What I understand is that we have a massive debt bubble right now. Each time we print off money to pay for it inflation goes up. However, the bubble exponentially increases each time we try to push it off into the future. If we can't find a way to unravel that bubble slowly either we'll erode our money to the point where it costs 100$ to buy a hot dog, or the banks will just crumble, and everyone's money they have stored up there will just disappear. You already see the first warning signs as the SVB and five other banks already went bust.
Like I said, I only have surface level knowledge, so that's all I can tell you on that.
Last reason I feel is just the general lack of unity. Whenever America had run into the problems of the past like the great depression, the world wars, and to a lesser extent the 2008 financial crisis, we were united against the issues we faced. Now you see both sides of the isle doing the largest pissing match you can find on TV. Many people online don't give a care about the country, and would be ecstatic at the prospect of a ruined USA. I think the best we can do is prepare for the worst and expect the best. We'll see however.
@@ImJustTryingToSurvive Didn't expect to get to read an opinion article on this issue here, but it's a pleasant surprise nonetheless. Thank you.
@@ImJustTryingToSurviveInteresting and very well put
@@ImJustTryingToSurvive Wow I read the great thing and it is really good.
This channel is very underrated.
I think that many aspects of this can be very much compared to long-term prison inmate society. There is a reason that recidivism is a thing, and that most post-incarcerated individuals are eventually released with complex post-traumatic stress disorder.
This has little to do with the mice and everything to do with the idiots trying to control them. Sound familiar?
This has less to do with "Social roles" and more with limited space. It's stated that within less than a year, the mice were so crowded that they had to squeeze past each other.
Stopping breeding and cannibalism are both tactics to reduce the population in a crowded space.
They also lacked any mental stimulation.
TLDR:
Scientist makes jail for mice, calls it Utopia.
Mice collectively lose their minds.
Humans evolved to live in small social groups, a tribal community of roughly 160 people you would live and work with every day. Which would be part of an intertribal community of as many as 10 tribes, totaling around 1600 people. 90% of whom you only really interact with on special occasions. Festivals in which interactions can be highly scripted by the customs and traditions of the holiday being observed. And emergency response actions, which are rigidly dictated by the tasks at hand. This is how it was for us for roughly 90 - 95% of our roughly 200,000 year history as a species. Then farming picked up, and our intertribal communities united into farming towns of 1600 people who now were living and working together every day. Daily tribal customs and traditions not included in the common special occasions or wouldn't be observed in emergency situations had to be trimmed as we all now had to live the same community life together every day. But it wasn't that hard because we already knew these 1600 people. We were somewhat used to having this many people around. Just not necessarily every one every day. Then cities grew as more business ventures were pursued, and more jobs were added to the economy, farming towns that took up mining grew from 1600 to 3200 or as many as 3500 people to support both farming and mining, same for farming towns near water, as they expanded to be both a farming and marina town. Cities that are all three Agricultural Mariner and Miner could be as many as 4800 - 5400 people. But we get used to it because the added business provides meaningful social places for the people. Now we have such megaopulous cities like Tokyo Japan population 15,000,000 people. Tokyo Japan population 12,000,000 people. New York city population 12,000,000 people. We have urban population densities as high as 300,000 - 400,000 people per square mile. Hundreds more than our brains can handle socially, we use business as our main coping mechanism, using professional relationships built entirely on economic contribution and transaction to build social connection on business dealings. 90% or more of what you are to more than 90% of the people you interact with is your profession. With people likely not bothering to have any interest in even learning your name, simply addressing you by job title, in highly scripted transactions that may not even invite the use of personal names in the whole conversation, condemning the idea of addressing someone by personal name as unprofessional. So what happens to our society if we cut back on the businesses that provide so many professional places for so many people? Minimalist philosophy encourages people to cut so many physical things from their life. Each of which can represent a whole company worth of jobs. If we stopped playing erace all things football from all of society for example, that would mean no more NFL, no more NFL teams. No more football stadiums. No more football equipment manufacturing and distribution industries. No more football equiment manufacturing and distribution infrastructure. Hundreds of professions representing thousands, even tens of thousands of people, would disappear almost overnight. Same for if we stopped playing hockey and LaCrosse. Stop playing Jai Alai. (Or dare I say it) If we stopped playing the American National Pass time and International Goodwill Game of American World Series Baseball. And that is just sports and games. Minimalist philosophy encourages people to eliminate all sorts of things from our lives. Imagine we stop collecting collectibles, that would mean no more precious moments, no more display cabinets or shelves, we stop keeping visual art like paintings or sculpture, that would mean no more art galleries. Imagine we stop driving cars, stop riding bicycles, or using mass transit. Instead, simply walk everywhere on our own two feet. That would mean no more Ford, GM, or Chrysler. No more Harley and Davidson. No more Toyota, Suzuki, Mazda, or Mitsubishi. No more Volvo or Volkswagen. This would eliminate tens even hundreds of thousands of professions, representing tens even hundreds of millions of people worldwide. On top of that, we now have multiple models of Level 3 Adaptive Learning AGI capable of automating almost every job in our economy. Basicaly any and every job that doesn't require self-awareness, full autonomy or Intuitive or Feeling personalty traits, can now be fully automated. Eliminating that many more meaningful job spaces for people. This means we no longer have meaningful places for as many as 70% of all people in the world. With our most secure placement for people going to the maybe 10% of all humans who are Diplomat Class personalities, with both the Intuitive and Feeling traits, and maybe particularly the 7% of all humans who have Intuitive Feeling and Prospective Traits, as we maybe prefer to program AGI with the Judging trait, rather then the Prospective trait, we have little to no place for people in society, we are now living in Universe 25.
When you suddenly deprive a creature of its natural circumstances, you're messing with its instincts. Thus, they will find a way to quell those instinctual drives even if they find themselves in paradise.
Nature, nurture
Sums up the Western world today.
No
Give your artist a raise. Great work
I bumped in the incredible experiment while reading Visionary thinking (Ashish Jaiswal). The author concludes that the main reason for extinsion was the lack of life challenge (look for food, safe shelters, defending from predators and other dangers)
I see two main problems with this hypothetical situation: one, our world will never live in a stagnant stasis, where everything is handed to us. There will always be times of drought, famine, natural disasters, earthquakes, blizzards, volcano eruptions, etc. We have no control over that.
The other issue is that human beings are more accountable for the damage they do, and each one is raised and born different, some people love living in crowded places like cities, whereas some are more inclined to lived a solitary lifestyle, which is why people move and travel. The only way for such mass destruction to happen is if all morality is thrown out the window and no one is able to move to a different place (yes, people have been traveling for years).
I think you're arguing against your own conclusion here. Like the mice, some of us seek seclusion while others crave city life. Morality is breaking down, in as much as promiscuity, in all it's forms, has become acceptable; marriage and the breakdown of the family unit is common; violence against the person is rising; mental illness is increasing. Need I go on?
All societies are born, reach a peak, decline and eventually die. It is a continuing cycle and I believe that ours is inevitably declining. But! Fear not! Another civilization will arise from the ashes to a height that will make ours seem barbaric. 😎👍
@@farrier2708 Mental illness is rising, to be sure, but I can't find any stats for promiscuity. As for violent crime, that's actually falling. In so far as morality, that's not really possible to measure, but whilst on some levels there's elements like CEO's denying water to thousands of people and massive amounts of human rights abuses even within highly developed countries, it's also noticeable that there's also genuine, meaningful, and less violent pushback. Not successful, granted, but it's still more than our ancestors were able to achieve.
You are right in that civilisations do rise and fall, but it isn't really a guarentee that they must fall violently or destructively, and even then the 'Fall' doesn't mean complete annihilation. I mean, I just used a Latin derivitave just there, so Roman Civilisation might have fallen but it's also still impacting our modern culture quite significantly.
"our world will never live in a stagnant stasis, where everything is handed to us"
There is no OUR world. As to everything being handed to you; that already happens in "blue cities". Generations of women who live on welfare, their children live on welfare, their children's children live on welfare and in some places it can be lucrative. The only purpose of males, in that kind of scenario, is briefly as a sperm donor. So they fight. Instinct says to fight, decide who gets to be the sperm donor.
@@farrier2708 The world is a much darker place without the united states. It's already partially dismantled.
I'd love to read and learn more about Calhoun's works. Personally, I would think that the variety of activities we have as humans, such as hobbies, allow us to have much deeper and more extensive bonds with out environment. I've lived in New York and Tokyo, and despite being full of people, most of my needs were easily met. Sure I had to work, but in my time off, I'd go to a park, go to bars, restaurants, walks, arcades...
I think that there are some really interesting insights, but I speculate that the demise of Universe 25 might have also been a result of the limited social repertoire of the species. Perhaps we could look at similar events in the past, such as the fall of the Roman Empire, and compare how reliable last can these activities be. If there is something we humans seem to have always been keen on is killing each other...
This has little to do with the mice and everything to do with the idiots trying to control them. Sound familiar?
I have heard about the Mouse Utopia experiment before, but I like how this presentation draws subtle parallels between Universe 25 and our current human condition.
This has little to do with the mice and everything to do with the idiots trying to control them. Sound familiar?
Its scary how this research reflects our current society in some way right now
The comparable decline in society certainly hits very close to home. It may have been happening before the early 90s, but that's when I first noticed it.
Overcrowding was merely a consequence. If we were squarely to put the blame on it, that would be like putting the cart before the horse.
It was brought about by an environment that was so conducive to reproduction and good living. Calhoun's mouse utopia did its job. . . a little too well in fact. The mice faced no meaningful challenges and enjoyed very favorable conditions that made them *congregate* (i.e. - sink) into these areas because life was so good.
We need in our existence a certain level of struggle to give our lives some of *meaningful accomplishment* to aspire to, or at the very least, the satisfaction of acquiring the bare necessities of survival. If everything was easy and we all concentrate our population there, that would be the start of the inevitable spiritual/psychical collapse to the latter actual physical collapse.
then how come people who struggle still become highly individualistic, and aggressive or withdrawn?
@@FruityHachi
What is the level of struggle/chaos of said given society?
There is a point of NO RETURN.
During that point, individual reactions will now be revealed (i.e. - the "beautiful ones" just worked on themselves knowing that the decline is happening and they can't do anything about it)
@@JuandelaCruz001 economic struggle, where do you live that you're not affected financially?
"the beautiful ones" are like the big corporations and politicians, only caring about their own pockets and screw the rest
@@FruityHachi
Eeeeeeh? Hmmmm... oh man!
I don't think I can go on discussing with you if you just compared a large, sophisticated macro-system like a corporation to the "beautiful ones" (i.e. - individuals).
@@JuandelaCruz001 no worries, you did me a favor by showing you cannot discuss things like an adult
have a nice weekend
Not another misrepresentation of this experiment for social commentary. The experiment was no utopia, and extrapolating the results to humans without better models is a mistake that only reinforces confirmation bias. It's a great study that led to further studies that are probably more useful and interesting. Overinterpreting this study without taking in account its limitations and further studies is the same as spreading pseudoscience.
"asexuality" grab your popcorns and prepare your finger to click the recent comments, because this is gonna be wild 💀💀🍿
This is a scary experiment, let alone it's happening to humanity right now, it may not be the same pace as the rats/mice but we are walking in the same path.
I heard that mice aren't social creatures in the same way we are and male mice have a desire to move out of their area to find new females and such. I admit I'm a bit fuzzy on the details but we shouldn't be too fast to use these mice experiments as solid evidence for human society
I had the same thought. Experimenting on animals just because they're mammals and use it a basis for human psychology is misinformation, or pseudoscience.
Mice are heavily different from us. If the scientist had used rats instead, this experiment would have slightly more credibility.
Fun fact: mice don't have a bladder, rats do! The renal system impacts our psychology a lot more than we think.
This wasn't the result of overpopulation. In all of his experiments the utopias never got anywhere near maximum capacity.
I think another aspect is that the mice didn’t have a higher purpose. Everything was provided for them. This is the characteristic that most resembles industrialized western countries. I live in Japan and almost every aspect that was portrayed in this video is effecting us here now.
so Japanese are provided money and apartments by the goverment? didn't know, I guess karoshi is fake news
This has little to do with the mice and everything to do with the idiots trying to control them. Sound familiar?
overcrowding is a problem for earth
It's not overcrowding. It's a lack of societal pressures.
I recall seeing information about a repeat experiment where the population recovered when the "beautiful ones" were removed. The claim was that they were releasing pheromones that put the rest of the population into a panicked state (perhaps akin to the moral panic fostered by social and main-stream media?).
I doubt it was pheromones.
How does removing the beautiful ones make the population recover? The beautiful ones don't interact with anyone. Sounds dumb.
Calhoun "We'll built a mouse utopia!"
WEF "We'll build a human utopia!"
"Mankind has grown strong in eternal struggles and it will only perish through eternal peace."
Wow man!!
But only if we don't adapt to it ourselves.
Sick quote wow. I have this feeling I live in Europe Netherlands. After WW2 we have the EU and too long peace Europe is dying migrants will inherit my land so I won’t make children. We have too long peace Europe is dying and old.
You missed a key point mentioned elsewhere, in that the environment of Universe 25 could have supported 6000 mice, three times more than the eventual peak population. It wasn't population dentsity or physical overcrowding as such that led to the changes of behaviour and eventual demise.
Overcrowding is only a problem in cities. The whole world's population would fit in the state of Texas. If you think that would be crowded with people shoulder to shoulder, think again. Everyone would have about 900 square feet of space. The world is not overcrowded. It's resources are just unevenly distributed. Why would people choose to live in an area that is as crowded as that. If the utopian facility for mice had been expanded with the population this study would have had a much different outcome.
There's a lot more housing and less oversight as well.
So, they're at a greater risk of spikes in Crime/Bullying.
I personally believe in Right to Housing. But people should be able to live in safe communities too.
Not having to worry about being antagonized by people who are supposed to be their neighbors.
Overpopulation certainly played a part in it, but, this Utopia also had nothing to work for. Generations of mice grew up with food, water and shelter a a given. There was never any motivation to hunt for food, or find a home. Never any kind of purpose. I don't think it requires a sentient mind or self awareness to lose any sense of reason to be in a setting where none of the drives a lifeform has ever require any effort.
Take home message: Don’t live in big cities.
But as far as I’m aware universe 25 was designed to hold 6000 mice. I don’t know if overpopulation is really the issue this study highlights
Move out of population density where your value as a person is most magnified 😊
Idk man maybe having infinite recourses at your finger tips but limited space along with extreme population growth with inbreeding is kinda setting up the mice to fail
The beautiful ones are the philosophers 😂
have some psychology, fore me it seems like lack of purpose( somthing to strive for, like the struggle for getting food) was the reason there was the behavior sink.
Not even a mention given toward the "pansexual" rats that would just mate with anything
(sorry for the long comment but you should read it all)
Actually... I think a better explanation is that they were in an unnatural habitat, a habitat they are not meant to be in. Mice are designed to operate in their natural environment (as is with all life), even if that is much tougher than the 'utopia' of Universe 25.
In their natural habitat, they forage for food, water, and nesting material. The environment is not as clean and their bodies fight pathogens, and even die from it. They were wary of predators and would flee/hide from them. The temperature was varying on times of day, season, underground or surface, and place. They have breeding cycles which are based on the cycles of time in the natural world. so basically, their natural environment is... natural. They have been conditioned through hundreds of millions of years of evolution for this existence.
In Universe 25, they don't forage. They *probably* only get only one type of food source whereas in the environment they get a diversity of food sources (they aren't picky eaters). The environment is sterile and their body has nearly no pathogens to fight. They don't flee/hide from predators, even though they are meant to. The temperature is constantly the same, always. Sense of time is dimished as there is no natural time cycles. Also, yes, the population density is much much higher than what is in their natural environment. So in short the lab is unnatural.
So I think it's more accurate to say that the mice society collapsed simply because their environment was too alien
And these effects we can even see in human society. In the modern era, people aren't going outdoors and touching grass. Kids are less likely to go play some soccer because they got fortnite battle royale. I don't care if you believe in creation or evolution... people are not meant to live like this. More people eat only big macs and junk food instead of genuine actual nutritious food. Genuine social relationships are being replaced by social media and people are more isolated.
And what's happening? People are becoming unhealthier and so many people have depression and mental health issues to the point people think its normal. Nowadays people don't see life as a great thing, but more as even a curse or burden.
So go touch grass plz.
This is by far the best comment in the bunch, thank you!
Severely underrated comment. It's sad the kinds of conclusions people are coming to rather than having this insight.
But it's easier to blame those struggling the most from these ill effects, and not the powers that be who create the unnatural environment for profit. So people blindly follow that rhetoric.
from what i have read, the colony population peaked at 2200, when there was enough space and resources for 5000. so overcrowding was not an issue.
the problem is overcrowding, not being able to escape other mice, it's why we humans started to migrate and establishing small colonies instead of having a huge one where we can't escape each other
and the problem is lack of activities to do, whether some games or learning opportunities
people do much better when they're in small groups with like-minded people who support each other as opposed to being trapped in a huge crowd, people who don't like each other and who have nothing to do to pass the time but bicker, fight each other or becoming withdrawn not wanting to participate in fights
Unlike the mice, we are not trapped in a box.
A few of us are smart enough to get out of the box, and they will help others leave when the time comes.
Det är en intressant och skrämmande fråga. Kommer verkligen de som är "smarta nog" att hjälpa oss andra ut, eller kommer de att titta på medan boxen sjunker? Har vi några exempel på smarta som hjälper andra? I could write in English, but it's so easy to get translated these days
@@moggadah Je pense que très peu d'entre nous sont assez intelligents pour construire des voitures, ou de belles maisons, ou des ampoules électriques, ou des ordinateurs, ou des bombes nucléaires. Peu de gens pouvaient comprendre comment aller dans l'espace, mais neil armstrong, qui ne pouvait sans doute pas sans aide, l'a fait. Ce sont tous des exemples de quelques personnes intelligentes qui pensent pour le bien de l'humanité.
If it is so easy to get translated, why didn't you translate it yourself?
@@kerz5383 peut-être parceque je comprends un petit peu de français. Maintenant je pense que c'est ta langue 😛
@@kerz5383 l'espace est plus froid, mais sur terre la température augments
I think humans could have similar problems, but unlike mice we have the capacity to solve the problems too. Humans like solving problems. Hell we spend a lot of time inventing new problems just so we can solve them. I mean, we're a species that figured out that the best way to stop us from destroying ourselves with nuclear weapons was to have a lot of nuclear weapons. So we can solve our way out of any population problems. Sure there'll be problems along the way, but unlike mice we'll resolve it before the "everyone is dead" part.
I'm glad I found this channel , I love the knowledge you guy brought to anyone with creation video , great work guy
So is it really overpopulation that's the issue or is it our incapability as a society to come up with adequate meaningful roles for our people to fulfill? By stressing overpopulation as an issue I think we're failing to see the real one - and that choice of ours is full of meaning in itself...
The population limit was 5000 mice but the mouse population only reached 2500. The mice refused to spread out causing areas of overpopulation.
The problem is, the resource of the authentic concrete meaning such as a long-time partnership or an impactful respective job to validate ourselves in a community is too scarce. That's why, for the last couple of decades, we, as humanity, have been making up arbitrary meanings/values. Some of these arbitrary meanings that come to my mind are NFTs, blockchain, anything that is not directly tied to our genetic desires. So, we, in a sense, cannot make an authentic meaning.
With so many people as a result of overpopulation and the same or less amount of authentic meaning, the competition skyrockets. I don't have any problems with competition but comparing the amount of effort that a meaningful end takes and the pettiness of the reward (if succeeded) and the astronomicity of punishment (if failed), one reasonably arrives at the conclusion that the juice is not worth the squeeze at all. We hear the complaints from the younger generations about the difficulty of owning a house (whether it be a small apartment) so much (and, here in the middle east, you can't even own a car, not kidding).
Again, competition is good and all but an apple on top of the mountain is as terrible as an apple handed over to me. An apple handed over to me would make me, as this experiment calls it, "a beautiful one". On the other hand, the path towards the top of the mountain has predators or any other adversities. The apple on the tree, however, not as far as to be considered unworthy or not as close as to have me lose the meaning of having it.
This has nothing to do with overpopulation since the population never reached full capacity. The utopia was built to handle 3,000 mice but never reached more than 2,200. The real problem was that the mice started to forget the old skills and thinking powers of the first 8 mice. Animals are not meant to have everything on a silver plate. Struggle is part of learning. Without the struggle, they had no need to depend on each other. They never learned to depend on each other. Human society will follow the same course but not because of overpopulation. We make things to easy for future generations by making them dependent on handouts like welfare which breakup families. We ship goods in instead of making things ourselves. We rely on big farms instead of growing our own foods. Self sufficiency is forgotten.
I don’t believe over population is necessarily the problem but our inability to work together and colonize further on other planets and mitigate the effects of overpopulation
The universe is far big enough to have human inhabit it without any populational constraints
1. No personal space.
2. They did nothing about the mice that engaged in malicious behavior (Bullying).
3. Nothing was managed besides Food and Water.
Of course their spirit died. What was the point, if their whole life was going to be constant stress? Without getting a single break.
I read about this in 5th grade. i think 2006/7. and now that im seeing it again, it's starting to seem like the future of the western world.
Yeah, see also the experiments where baby monkeys had milk but could only cling to a wire mesh frame.
I think it goes 2 fold , lack of challenge will make us apathetic and depressed, and yes maybe having 3+ kids in a modern world is not such a good idea when the average person used to need extra hands around the farm, and high child mortality rates was a concern;
The people I know with more kids (3+) are way happier than those with fewer or, especially, no kids.
And then there's guys like Rollo Tomassi who says men should have a vasectomy in their 20s . Lol
@@dawnfire82 Real
@@kennymichaelalanya7134 seriously?
@@dawnfire82me when I lie
People have creativity, if all the social roles are filled they will create new social roles to be filled and some social roles disappear and become irrelevant as new industries and technologies emerge.
cOMING Soon to a CITY near you!!
the mice didn't die due to overpopulation, they died because they lost their reason to live. if they don't have to worry about securing food and shelter and mating is the easiest thing there is, they start to wonder what is the purpose o it all? what is the meaning of reproducing and spreading my genes if no matter if they are good or bad i'd still be able to reproduce?
The key factor that Isn’t being taken into account is the fact that unlike the mice humans can increase or access more available space that would otherwise be inaccessible for other species. From moon colonies to basic skyscrapers we have more than enough space to house another billion or two people just on earth alone.
The reason this happened, is the mice stopped being mice. Its happening to us, in real time.
The mice family unit seemed to break down as well. The parents no longer felt the need to teach or protect their young. Almost as if through the generations they forgot threats existed at all.
Apparently Calhoun failed to control for inbreeding depression, the loss of a fitness over generations due to lack of genetic variation.
Animals cannot take up hobbies😉
Universe 26 needs to toy with the idea of periodic culling of the behaviorally and physically undesirable mice, to test how well eugenics and social husbandry works.
There's some info that these mice were actually kept in bad conditions: dirt, lack of temperature regulation in their artificial habitat, inconvenient placing of their nests...
There are even rumors that the mice died out because living in hot and stinky prison is really difficult. Also, they could have suffered from inbreeding (if the 1st mice-settlers were brothers and sisters)
Also, how come that lots of vivariums for mice live happily without dying out?
Conclusion: maybe the scientist's incompetence was the problem?
Link to your source?
Sources?
Even if we don't consider the conditions the rats are living in, comparing the social structure of rats to humans is already a very huge leap. They failed to consider that humans have a more complex social structure than that of rats. From what I know there's research that have already challenged Calhoun's idea.
Wrong, Calhoun regularly cleaned the areas of the rats. Try again
It's not about over population, it's lack of predators, play and challenges.
Me an asexual looking at this hoping the end is nigh
What's stopping you
its homosexuality, not Asexuality...the OP change for a purpose