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Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

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Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#91

Post by gwern »

barry-cotter wrote: post #23

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?

As it happens, there were some (now very obscure) attempts to replicate it. They failed. I cover (and jailbreak) them in my criticism of Mouse Utopia: https://www.gwern.net/Mouse-Utopia

OP is a bad writeup. He should be ashamed to write such an uncritical piece which says nothing you wouldn't find in either the Down The Rabbithole YouTube video (which seems to be patient zero for the resurrection of the Mouse Utopia myth) or the Wikipedia entry. The problem with Mouse Utopia is not that it has been interpreted in different ways by later pundits, but that it's probably bullshit to begin with. (How thoughtless do you have to be to note that it was the 25th experiment in a very long series of them before/after the behavioral sink experiment, and then not immediately wonder WTF happened in the >24 other experiments and then wonder why you can't find any information about any of them?)

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#93

Post by [deleted] »

h2odragon wrote: post #49

One of the worst jobs i ever had, occasionally required us to drown some mice. Excess population / euthanized "feeders" for pet snakes. The method was to put several mice into a small wire cage, and then submerge the cage in water. Usually I filled a bucket with hot water, beforehand, and made this operation fast as possible. Dunk and done. One day I came across a cow orker attempting to do this job (I had been busy…

[deleted]

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#94

Post by kipchak »

RalfWausE wrote: post #20
mschuster91 wrote: post #19

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. 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"...

Though this creates a bit of a problem if you're no longer having wars.

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#95

Post by verisimi »

taylodl wrote: post #85
albrewer wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not suffocate them with nitrogen or co2 or something?

My daughter got an internship at a research lab this summer - where they have thousands and thousands of research mice and they kill several mice every day. She said CO2 works on adults and therefore that's what they use. But CO2 doesn't work on baby mice and is considered inhumane. Instead they use scissors and cut off the baby mice's heads. It's to be done swiftly so it's like a guillotine. The labs are continually…

> they use scissors and cut off the baby mice's heads. It's to be done swiftly so it's like a guillotine.

Yes, that sounds fine. Much more humane. Carry on.

As long as the ethics committee OKs it.

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#96

Post by jhardy54 »

badRNG wrote: post #87
jklinger410 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not vegan but I think about it all the time.

Same boat. I'm not a vegan, and I try my absolute best to avoid thinking about what we put animals through. It certainly sits in a specific category of intrusive thoughts. The only real analog to this in my mind is being aware of my own mortality; I just avoid that thought and shove it out of my mind. Occasionally my comparatively relaxed life is harshly interrupted by an awareness of these facts and I'm ripped back…

Disclaimer: I’m “vegan”, for some definition of the word.

Candidly, I think that reduction in animal suffering is worthwhile, but you get diminishing returns quite quickly. I’d suggest only doing things that are easy.

For example:

- While grocery shopping you’re choosing between two types of burgers with similar cost and enjoyment: pick the one that causes less suffering.

- Your tires need to be replaced for a camping trip this weekend: don’t stress about trying to find vegan tires.

- You like cow milk and non-dairy milk the same amount: snag the one that you feel better about.

- Your favorite crackers have some trace amount of milk powder in them and all of the alternatives suck. Buy them.

Over time, the number of things that are “easy” will increase, and in my experience it’s way more practical than trying to engage in vegan perfectionism and googling things like “which cars are vegan” every time you need to buy something.

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#98

Post by BitwiseFool »

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 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."

I suspect that if a generation ship wasn't launched with a monolinguistic population a Creole would rapidly develop and the end result would be a new common language.

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#99

Post by bombcar »

goda90 wrote: post #74
h2odragon wrote: post #49

One of the worst jobs i ever had, occasionally required us to drown some mice. Excess population / euthanized "feeders" for pet snakes. The method was to put several mice into a small wire cage, and then submerge the cage in water. Usually I filled a bucket with hot water, beforehand, and made this operation fast as possible. Dunk and done. One day I came across a cow orker attempting to do this job (I had been busy…

If this is such a common need, I can't help but think they should've invested in a controlled atmosphere killing setup to reduce the panic.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inert_gas_asphyxiation#Animal_...

Someone I knew caught a raccoon and tried to euthanize it in a freezer which I quickly put a stop to and instead opened a CO2 bottle in the freezer which quietly put an end to the issue.

Re: Mouse Heaven or Mouse Hell?

#100

Post by shanusmagnus »

h2odragon wrote: post #49

One of the worst jobs i ever had, occasionally required us to drown some mice. Excess population / euthanized "feeders" for pet snakes. The method was to put several mice into a small wire cage, and then submerge the cage in water. Usually I filled a bucket with hot water, beforehand, and made this operation fast as possible. Dunk and done. One day I came across a cow orker attempting to do this job (I had been busy…

Once in grad school I went to a talk where another grad student was presenting on his fear research with mice. Many powerpoint details unfold of the hell he and his advisor had contrived to make the mice chronically afraid, and to be able to quantify the fear induced and its effects. I learned that when mice get scared enough they shit excessively. In the presentation of results he lingers on a graph, and says, for effect: "That's right, they were scared shitless."

Hilarity. The room bubbles with laughter. Just enough transgression.

I remember in that moment bubbling with rage. A famous and well-regarded paragon of the field [1] who had recently come to the university to give a talk spent his career characterizing animal emotions, especially of mice and rats. He revealed their rich emotional worlds in glorious detail. The presentor, his advisor, many of us in the department knew -- or should have -- how un-funny the joke was. We were perfectly positioned to know it.

Despite knowing what I knew, I didn't say anything. That silence is still among the top few of my regrets. I guess I learned the weight of doing the right thing in a packed room full of people with contrary opinions, and learned that I was way less strong / bold / principled than I had believed myself to be; which was remarkable, as that bar was already low.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaak_Panksepp

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