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Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

sciencehistory.org

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Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#21

Post by poulpy123 »

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…

I'm fascinated that you can get to this conclusion from the result of some kind of mice prison experiment

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#22

Post by marginalia_nu »

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.

If we were half as many as we are today, we would need half as many resources as well. You can cut a cake in however many pieces you want, but eventually there won't be much to go around.

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#23

Post by barry-cotter »

Has this ever been replicated? Were detailed enough records kept that we be sure this happened more or less as described or is it one of the famous experiments that were at best described in a completely misleading way, like the Zimnbardo Stanford prison experiment, or wildly and willfully misinterpreted, like the murder of Kitty Genovese?

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#24

Post by peoplefromibiza »

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.

But the consequences of too many young males and not enough females, are quite similar.

The consequences of having too many men, now coming of age, are far-reaching: Beyond an epidemic of loneliness, the imbalance distorts labor markets, drives up savings rates in China and drives down consumption, artificially inflates certain property values, and parallels increases in violent crime, trafficking or prostitution in a growing number of locations.

Those consequences are not confined to China and India, but reach deep into their Asian neighbors and distort the economies of Europe and the Americas, as well. Barely recognized, the ramifications of too many men are only starting to come into sight.

“In the future, there will be millions of men who can’t marry, and that could pose a very big risk to society,” warns Li Shuzhuo, a leading demographer at Xi’an Jiaotong University.

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#25

Post by sgt101 »

poulpy123 wrote: post #21
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…

I'm fascinated that you can get to this conclusion from the result of some kind of mice prison experiment

Even more fascinating is that the OP and several commenters don't seem to have read the article...

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#26

Post by doctor_eval »

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…

(In mice)

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#27

Post by NeoTar »

ben_w wrote: post #12
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 to…

> 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.

Another example is Isaac Asimov's Trantor, a world-wide city enclosed with globes which requires the resources of multiple agricultural worlds to sustain it. It has a population of 45 billion, and a surface area of approx. 40% that of Earth.

Do the calculations, and the population density is, as Wikipedia says: "similar to the current population density of Germany or Connecticut. " I can't speak for Connecticut, but Germany certainly doesn't feel crowded. Even in central Berlin we have a huge amount of green space.

Even Coruscant in Star Wars, with a population of 1 trillion people (1 000 000 000 000) has a population density less than New York City.

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#28

Post by mlatu »

i think this shows only that social species' behaviours are fine tuned to the environment they have evolved in and drastically changing said environment requires the species to adapt in order to survive.

i feel like there should be a pen size above which such an experiment might run indefinetly. but my gut tells me: no matter the size, it will always eventually crash and burn because mice can't "talk it out"

i think the only possible lesson here is: if you send a generation ship to alpha centauri, you better make sure they all have at least one common language.

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#30

Post by JoeAltmaier »

mlatu wrote: post #28

i think this shows only that social species' behaviours are fine tuned to the environment they have evolved in and drastically changing said environment requires the species to adapt in order to survive. i feel like there should be a pen size above which such an experiment might run indefinetly. but my gut tells me: no matter the size, it will always eventually crash and burn because mice can't "talk it out" i think…

I was following that until the language thing. How does talking, make more room?
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