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Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

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Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#11

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #8
muzani wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overpopulation hits places like India and Bangladesh badly. China and Europe's population actually seems to be declining and they seem to be quite well off. If you tweak the variables just a little, things change massively, so I think the article gets it right in saying that it's dangerous to draw conclusions. Even drawing conclusions from my previous paragraph.

>and Europe's population Where are you getting this from? Loads of countries are still rising in population, mostly due to immigration (birthrates of natives are below replacement rates). >and they seem to be quite well off. I wouldn't call Europe 'well off', unless your definition solely relies on "well, at least it is a developed country". We're facing multiple crises in several countries, and the younger generatio…

> Europe's population

The growth rate has certainly slowed in the last 30 years or so. From 0.98% in 1960 to 0.37% in 1990 and 0.12% in 2020. But, yes, it's still growing overall.

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/europe-popula...

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#12

Post by ben_w »

onion2k wrote: post #2

The global population of Earth has pretty much doubled since July 1968 when the experiment was run. Evidently the fears of overpopulation they had were unfounded.

Only in the sense that people are bad with numbers and timescales, and that the fears themselves directly led to funding for research that happened to be successful at creating affordable solutions.

The fictional population of NYC in Soylent Green (released 1973, set in 2022) was 40 million, whereas the actual population today is 8.8 million, but even 40 million would give it about the population density of Manila today and wouldn’t look like it was portrayed in the film.

With sufficient industrial farming effort[0] and only existing technology, we could support something like 10 trillion on Earth, but if we did that then everything that wasn’t a farm would look like the top of the Wikipedia list of highest density city districts.

As for the correspondence between the rat experimental world and the human world, as the article itself says:

> 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. And indeed, a closer look at the interpretations severely undermines them.

Also, we aren’t mice, so while we are doing various — and in some cases, unhealthy — things in response to our world of high abundance and low child mortality, we are doing different things, more slowly, and with the ability to discover and respond to the big picture.

[0] the material requirements are on par with paraterraforming the Moon, because the first step is “make enough greenhouses for most of the land on the planet”, but it could be done.

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#13

Post by BlargMcLarg »

muzani wrote: post #10
BlargMcLarg wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and Europe's population Where are you getting this from? Loads of countries are still rising in population, mostly due to immigration (birthrates of natives are below replacement rates). >and they seem to be quite well off. I wouldn't call Europe 'well off', unless your definition solely relies on "well, at least it is a developed country". We're facing multiple crises in several countries, and the younger generatio…

A quick Google brings up this list: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/total-fer... I might have been mistaken in saying "Europe" as a whole but European countries are at the bottom of the list. It also seems that the bottom of the list has some economically struggling families, so this correlation could be mistaken. Fertility seems to be a lagging indicator - if someone can't afford a two bedroom apa…

Have a look at the graphs in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_Netherlands and notice how the growth percentage has only just reached 0%, despite fertility rate having plunged all the way to near 1.5 since the 1970s. What's more, many still predict population growths and the government is still stimulating it through subsidizing children and giving tax breaks to immigrants. The Netherlands is on the cusp of declining, but not declining yet.

If you look up the history of fertility rates, most of developed Europe plunged similarly, yet population kept growing well up to now.

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#14

Post by ben_w »

noduerme wrote: post #4

The (famous) experiment seems to prove that mice are happy with the benefits of relatively high levels of social organization until the burdens of close quarter living and constant company drain them of their will to live and their ability to thrive. It amounts to a pretty strong argument for American style independence and personal liberty. The implication, I think, was that it was supposed to also endorse the laiss…

As the article itself says, "Ultimately Calhoun’s work functions like a Rorschach blot—people see what they want to see."

Even if mice and humans really were the same, the article also demonstrates that there are many different hypotheses that fit most of the observations, but all of them seem to be falsified by some of the observations.

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#15

Post by muzani »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #13
muzani wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick Google brings up this list: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/total-fer... I might have been mistaken in saying "Europe" as a whole but European countries are at the bottom of the list. It also seems that the bottom of the list has some economically struggling families, so this correlation could be mistaken. Fertility seems to be a lagging indicator - if someone can't afford a two bedroom apa…

Have a look at the graphs in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_Netherlands and notice how the growth percentage has only just reached 0%, despite fertility rate having plunged all the way to near 1.5 since the 1970s . What's more, many still predict population growths and the government is still stimulating it through subsidizing children and giving tax breaks to immigrants. The Netherlands is on the cu…

That's helpful. I always assumed that fertility rates linked to population growth, but forgot things like immigration.

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#16

Post by BlargMcLarg »

adrianN wrote: post #9
noduerme wrote: post #4

The (famous) experiment seems to prove that mice are happy with the benefits of relatively high levels of social organization until the burdens of close quarter living and constant company drain them of their will to live and their ability to thrive. It amounts to a pretty strong argument for American style independence and personal liberty. The implication, I think, was that it was supposed to also endorse the laiss…

The famous experiment seems to prove that a large number young people are bad for social stability in a mice society. That amounts to a pretty strong argument against infant healthcare /s. I don't think we should generalize too much from mice to men. Deriving social policy from what works for mice seems like a very bold move to me.

You can't generalize too much, nor can you assume humans will just "fix it for everyone" like the author seems to imply we are some enlightened, higher species.

That assumption can also backfire. A highly adaptive species capable of grouping up gives leeway for some extreme solutions which will solve the problem for a subpopulation at the cost of another. Humans might solve the problem, but not in the way which is best for the entire population. Plenty of examples in both the past and the present.

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#17

Post by [deleted] »

noduerme wrote: post #4

The (famous) experiment seems to prove that mice are happy with the benefits of relatively high levels of social organization until the burdens of close quarter living and constant company drain them of their will to live and their ability to thrive. It amounts to a pretty strong argument for American style independence and personal liberty. The implication, I think, was that it was supposed to also endorse the laiss…

[deleted]

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#18

Post by dredmorbius »

noduerme wrote: post #5
onion2k wrote: post #2

The global population of Earth has pretty much doubled since July 1968 when the experiment was run. Evidently the fears of overpopulation they had were unfounded.

Unless you consider that episodes of individual psychosis seem to have risen exponentially every decade since then..

There are numerous cases of individual psychosis associated with much lower population densities as well.

Wisconsin Death Trip is one reasonably well-known collection of such instances:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Death_Trip

I'd be interested in knowing what the basis of your statement is, and how you're considering reporting / observation biases.

(Note that I'm actually concerned with overpopulation and various psychological / sociological impacts of same. I'm simply highlighting that psychosis and antisocial behaviour is not exclusive to this particular population pattern.)

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#19

Post by mschuster91 »

adrianN wrote: post #9
noduerme wrote: post #4

The (famous) experiment seems to prove that mice are happy with the benefits of relatively high levels of social organization until the burdens of close quarter living and constant company drain them of their will to live and their ability to thrive. It amounts to a pretty strong argument for American style independence and personal liberty. The implication, I think, was that it was supposed to also endorse the laiss…

The famous experiment seems to prove that a large number young people are bad for social stability in a mice society. That amounts to a pretty strong argument against infant healthcare /s. I don't think we should generalize too much from mice to men. Deriving social policy from what works for mice seems like a very bold move to me.

> The famous experiment seems to prove that a large number young people are bad for social stability in a mice society.

For what it's worth: there are strong indications suggesting a link between a large number of young, especially male, people and the emergence of social unrest [1][2][3].

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/26271410

[2] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/young-people-key-defu...

[3] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/an...

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#20

Post by RalfWausE »

mschuster91 wrote: post #19
adrianN wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The famous experiment seems to prove that a large number young people are bad for social stability in a mice society. That amounts to a pretty strong argument against infant healthcare /s. I don't think we should generalize too much from mice to men. Deriving social policy from what works for mice seems like a very bold move to me.

> The famous experiment seems to prove that a large number young people are bad for social stability in a mice society. For what it's worth: there are strong indications suggesting a link between a large number of young, especially male, people and the emergence of social unrest [1][2][3]. [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/26271410 [2] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/young-people-key-defu... [3] https://www.the…

... and because of this, mankind has developed an interesting game called "war"...
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