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Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell? (2022)

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Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell? (2022)

#21

Post by Joel_Mckay »

floxy wrote: post #2

Anyone know if the Universe 25 results have been replicated?

The follow up with Rat Utopia addressed several of the issues with the mouse study.

More interesting was the final follow up selective-breeding study with "The Beautiful Ones". As Dr. Calhoun wanted to determine if the cognitive decline would persist in successive generations even when placed in a new unconstrained exploitation phase setting again.

The process was not reversible, and remained degenerative in offspring. Accordingly, I found this work greatly affected how I processed neuroscience material, and viewed violent behavior.

We must respect the little creatures that warned us of humanities possible future. So far, many communities seem to be following a familiar concerning trend:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEJ4hkpQW8E

Have a wonderful day, and stay curious about the world... =3

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell? (2022)

#22

Post by Joel_Mckay »

tomohelix wrote: post #18
generalizations wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like an incredibly easy experiment for a 'citizen scientist' to replicate - all you need is a backyard, 5+ years of mouse food, A/C, and water. And a burrow-proof structure. Someone should do this.

Even if they did, the result would never be accepted. People will nitpick everything they can, from comparability to methodology, to ignore whatever may come out of such a study. Heck, the original is still controversial to this day and there are many people rejecting the results because of "lack of scientific method". A sweet lie is preferable to the cruel truth, or so they said.

Some folks like to leave out the more disturbing parts of the follow-up work to try to justify antisocial impulses.

Have a great day, and remember to get out for a walk everyday to meet your neighbors. =3

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell? (2022)

#23

Post by ajaymenon0 »

I feel it's hard to find correlations between these studies and human psychology. It'd require a fair amount of extrapolations, sometimes far too generous to the point of it being a stretch. Yes, perhaps science does work that way to an extent. But considering how the readings so vastly change as per the group reading it, mostly reflects more on the person reading than the experiment itself.

I guess a controlled MMORP with certain constraints could also lead to some understanding of group dynamics in a similar vein.

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell? (2022)

#26

Post by osigurdson »

fifticon wrote: post #25
osigurdson wrote: post #24

They had everything they could ever want for - except space.

They also had an environment which was not at all what their evolution had shaped them for. 0 gallons of water will kill you, 10.000 gallons of water will also kill you.

Are they compulsive water drinkers? Maybe I missed it in the article but it seems strange - how do mice near by rivers and lakes survive?

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell? (2022)

#27

Post by ggm »

For my uni ecology course back in 1980 I read about a predator prey experiment consisting of hundreds of oranges connected by string bridges and a mite, with a predator. They really struggled to get multi generational scale.

What I read in this is that models for the natural environment with "a couple of simplifications" generally crash fast because real world systems are much more complex.

Maybe what he needed for rodent heaven 25 was a more complex situation to model? Add Cats? Fleas? Diseases? Maybe heaven demands adversity?

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell? (2022)

#28

Post by dredmorbius »

osigurdson wrote: post #26
fifticon wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also had an environment which was not at all what their evolution had shaped them for. 0 gallons of water will kill you, 10.000 gallons of water will also kill you.

Are they compulsive water drinkers? Maybe I missed it in the article but it seems strange - how do mice near by rivers and lakes survive?

I'm pretty certain that fifticon was using water as an example and metaphor, not a specific element of the mouse Universe experiments.

Mice's evolutionary history has evolved them as a small, vulnerable, prey species. In the absence of predation pressures, rather than evolve to a well-balanced and well-functioning society, the same adaptations which are beneficial where most juveniles (and many adults) are killed by predators --- high sex drive, high fecundity, extensive foraging, occasional conflict among mice --- become pathological of themselves.

Too little water kills. Too much water kills.

To much predation destroys mice communities. Too little predation destroys mice communities.

And by extension, similar lifting of long-established, evolutionarily-shaping constraints might affect other populations negatively. The implications for human populations, whether localised (e.g., urban crowding) or global (overpopulation, resource conflict) are pretty clearly indicated in Calhoun's work.

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell? (2022)

#29

Post by cobertos »

ggm wrote: post #27

For my uni ecology course back in 1980 I read about a predator prey experiment consisting of hundreds of oranges connected by string bridges and a mite, with a predator. They really struggled to get multi generational scale. What I read in this is that models for the natural environment with "a couple of simplifications" generally crash fast because real world systems are much more complex. Maybe what he needed for r…

I think removal of adversity was the point. Optimizing away adversity just as collective humanity tries to.

> Incidentally, after Universe 25’s collapse, Calhoun began building new utopias to encourage creative behavior by keeping mice physically _and_ mentally nourished.

I think I'd be more interested in the follow up work. Were they even able to identify and accomplish this? And how did the rats perform any better?

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell? (2022)

#30

Post by rsynnott »

> Given these wildly varying (even contradictory) readings, it’s hard to escape the suspicion that personal and political views, rather than objective inquiry, are driving these critics’ outlooks.

That happens with everything. You'll often see people on the internet blaming the collapse of the Roman Empire on... well, anything the writer doesn't like, really. I've seen both 'capitalism' and 'socialism' blamed, which would be a good trick, as neither would meaningfully exist for many centuries afterwards. We're often quite good at seeing something unfamiliar which we don't understand, seeing some echo of familiarity in it, and projecting all sorts of things onto it based on that familiarity.

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