Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from How Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb. My name is Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: you have an announcement you want to make for everybody.
Speaker 1: It is so hot in Atlanta. It really, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: nine degrees today. It's brutal. It is brutal. That's yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not really what I was gonna say, though, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean everyone needs to be up on the weather
Speaker 1: that we are experiencing. I know it's a diversionary tactic
Speaker 1: for really, because this is my last episode on Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind, and I am leaving the podcast
Speaker 1: work on a couple of projects for How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: So I just wanted to let you guys know, not
Speaker 1: going very far, but in the meantime, I am leaving
Speaker 1: you guys in the very capable hands of Christian Seger
Speaker 1: and Joe McCormick, who have been filling in for me
Speaker 1: over the last month, and they have been turning in
Speaker 1: some really fine work. And I'm sure you guys have
Speaker 1: all had a chance to meet them by now. They
Speaker 1: are great guys. So yeah, indeed, for those who have
Speaker 1: been asking, you know, what's what's going on there? You
Speaker 1: have it and again, Julie's uh still very much part
Speaker 1: of the house stuff works team is gonna You're gonna
Speaker 1: see a lot of exciting stuff coming out. And uh
Speaker 1: and indeed, thank you for sharing the journey with me
Speaker 1: thus far and helping to to develop stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind as we know it today. Yeah. Thanks thanks
Speaker 1: for making it so much fun. I can't believe that
Speaker 1: it's been three years I think now three and a
Speaker 1: half years or so that we first sat down with
Speaker 1: a spreadsheet and we tried to figure out all these
Speaker 1: different topics that we wanted to cover. Um, so it's
Speaker 1: been an absolute pleasure. And um uh you know, I
Speaker 1: can't say we'll always have Paris, but we will always
Speaker 1: have Cloeca. I mean, if you want. I mean that
Speaker 1: sounds weird, We will always have Cloeka. You will, all right, Uh,
Speaker 1: enough of this stuff here, let's get to the topic
Speaker 1: at hand today. Yes, we're telling talking about Utopia. But
Speaker 1: as as as with any discussion of Utopia, we're gonna
Speaker 1: get into some pretty dark territory, right, I mean, because
Speaker 1: this is just the beauty of this You cannot have
Speaker 1: utopia without dystopia, right, you wouldn't even know what it
Speaker 1: was without the negative side of that coin. And we're
Speaker 1: just gonna take you bits into a time capsule here.
Speaker 1: So just imagine that it's the sixties. You're scientists with
Speaker 1: just cads, a very fine rodents at your disposal, yes,
Speaker 1: top shelf, the best you can kind of rodents, and
Speaker 1: you have this desire to play out the drama of overpopulation.
Speaker 1: In fact, in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of
Speaker 1: Medicine in nineteen seventy three, you describe the outset of
Speaker 1: your quest thusly quote, I shall largely speak of mice,
Speaker 1: but my thoughts are on man, on healing, on life
Speaker 1: and evolution. And then you go on to name check
Speaker 1: the four horsemen of the apocalypse before you get onto
Speaker 1: the details of your overpopulation experiment. You are John B. Calhoun, Yes,
Speaker 1: who's a very very interesting individual. Um born in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventeen died in the American Animal Behaviorist. And he was
Speaker 1: actually born in Tennessee, specifically Elkton, Tennessee, just the next
Speaker 1: county over uh from Lincoln County where I went to
Speaker 1: high school. Uh. He went to high school and Nashville.
Speaker 1: He went on to earn his undergraduate degree at the
Speaker 1: University of Virginia and earned a doctorate in zoology from
Speaker 1: Northwestern University in nineteen forty three, and from there he
Speaker 1: embarked on a forty year career mostly at the National
Speaker 1: Institute of Mental Health or NIM, where he organized the
Speaker 1: Unit for Research on Behavioral Systems at the Laboratory of Brain,
Speaker 1: Evolution and Behavior. Now he's best remembered for work that
Speaker 1: focused on the troubling effects of overpopulation on rats and mice,
Speaker 1: effects that miss might just paint a very bleak picture
Speaker 1: of humanity's future in an overcrowded world, right, and he
Speaker 1: goes on to create something called Universe twenty five, which
Speaker 1: we'll talk about, but at about the same time that
Speaker 1: his paper is published as a paper is called death squared,
Speaker 1: the explosive growth into mind of a mouse population. There's
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff going on in society. In fact,
Speaker 1: there's a kind of a zite iced about overpopulation playing out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the post war period where everything is just
Speaker 1: getting built up. The populations coming back, people are are
Speaker 1: are booming, technology is booming, the cities are growing, swelling
Speaker 1: even and there are some growing pains associated with that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you even have bits of media that are being
Speaker 1: consumed fictional that are reflecting this. For instance, something called
Speaker 1: Soilent Green, which was this movie that depicted a future
Speaker 1: of an overcrowded world where the pulation could only survive
Speaker 1: on soyland Green, a food handout from the government which
Speaker 1: turns out to be made from human corpses. Yes, or
Speaker 1: you know, pretty good supply. That was fueling people's imaginations
Speaker 1: and their fears. Yeah, and a lot of those fears
Speaker 1: were related to resources. Right, there are this many people
Speaker 1: and we keep reading how are we going to feed everybody?
Speaker 1: How are are we going to have enough to maintain?
Speaker 1: So in the meantime, you've got John Calhoun who has
Speaker 1: been working with rodents for a number of years and
Speaker 1: has been preoccupied with this question of overpopulation, and he
Speaker 1: does turn to these rats because they're easy to observe, right,
Speaker 1: They quickly have successive generations, and there are similarities to humans.
Speaker 1: They're they're clever little beings, and they're highly social. Yeah.
Speaker 1: As we discussed in our recent episode on on rats specifically,
Speaker 1: um rodents searches say a very handy reference point for
Speaker 1: any kind of scientific exploration of human psychology or human anatomy.
Speaker 1: So Calhoun, who first becomes obsessed with this idea, creates
Speaker 1: something called rat City on a quarter acre of land
Speaker 1: adjacent to his home in Tows in Maryland in ninety seven,
Speaker 1: and he sees that the population in this pen peaks
Speaker 1: at two hundred and he's kind of confused by it
Speaker 1: because he knows that they could far exceed that, and
Speaker 1: in fact he begins to see the delectarious effects of
Speaker 1: overpopulation at just eighty. So for three decades he at
Speaker 1: the National Institute of Mental Health, he creates iterations of this,
Speaker 1: and in fact, you could say these are twenty four
Speaker 1: iterations of what is now known as universe. Yes, so
Speaker 1: I will I'll describe Universe twenty five for you, and
Speaker 1: this will give you a good idea of the various
Speaker 1: iterations that came before as well. So essentially you're talking
Speaker 1: about a large, industrial looking square tank. Uh, imagine in
Speaker 1: a miniature building designed by hr Gear for some set designs.
Speaker 1: You know, it looks kind of like a medieval fortress too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't not Yeah, it doesn't look cozy at all.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's quite intimidating, especially in some of the
Speaker 1: pictures we're looking at that are a little little grainy,
Speaker 1: a little dark, right. Um, the square tank was a
Speaker 1: hundred and one inches square or two point six meter square,
Speaker 1: enclosed by fifty four inch high or one point four
Speaker 1: meter high walls. Now, the first thirty seven inches of
Speaker 1: that that wall, from from bottom towards the top, those
Speaker 1: are designed so that the mice can scale it willy nilly.
Speaker 1: But above this the remaining seventeen inches or bare wall
Speaker 1: that they can't scramble up. Um. So you can think
Speaker 1: of it as a walled city again, but with no
Speaker 1: access to the battlements. I mean, it's essentially more like
Speaker 1: a prison, I guess. Um. In addition, you have sixteen
Speaker 1: vertical mesh tunnels or stairwells that are soldered to each wall.
Speaker 1: Four horizontal corridors lead off of each stairwell, and each
Speaker 1: of these lead to four nesting boxes. And in total,
Speaker 1: we're looking at two hundred and fifty six boxes, each
Speaker 1: sizeable enough for about fifteen rodents to live inside. And
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that Calhoun found out quickly
Speaker 1: when he did this other iterations, is that that the
Speaker 1: mice would typically not go over twelve within each group.
Speaker 1: So he did create an apartment to house up to
Speaker 1: fifteen mice because he knew that was part of their behavior,
Speaker 1: so he did try to mirror some of the things
Speaker 1: that he saw in those uh, those different versions. Now this, uh,
Speaker 1: this universe does uh does have quite a few amenities.
Speaker 1: There is no infinity pool, um, but there's a lot
Speaker 1: of abundant clean food and water and nesting materials which
Speaker 1: would be really important. The universe was cleaned every four
Speaker 1: to eight weeks, and of course there were no predators,
Speaker 1: and the temperature was kept at a steady sixty eight
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit. So all in all, if you had to
Speaker 1: create a utopia for rodents, this might be what it
Speaker 1: looks like without really knowing intimately what rodents want. Yeah,
Speaker 1: seemingly it provides the necessary space, the necessary resources to
Speaker 1: both feed yourself and to carry out your basic genetic mission. Right, yes,
Speaker 1: sounds good, right Alright, So moving day arrives. Uh. He
Speaker 1: kicks off with just four breeding pairs of mice uh,
Speaker 1: and they are moved in on day one, and these
Speaker 1: again are disease free, top shelf just elegant mice. So
Speaker 1: eate mice total, and these are the individuals that are
Speaker 1: going to reproduce and populate this little city, this little
Speaker 1: universe with all their furry offspring. And this is ideal.
Speaker 1: As we mentioned, mice or small short generation time accelerated
Speaker 1: lifespan that we can study. One mouse year equals about
Speaker 1: thirty human years. Each mouse lives about two to five years.
Speaker 1: The gestation period and female mice is less than a month,
Speaker 1: and the female mouse has an average litter size of
Speaker 1: about six baby mice and breeding onset is about fifty days.
Speaker 1: So yeah, now imagine these four breeding pair um the
Speaker 1: top shelf, as you say, entering this enclosure, and what
Speaker 1: do they do. Well, if you've ever moved into a
Speaker 1: new house as a little kid, then you know probably
Speaker 1: what this looks like. They would go into that enclosure
Speaker 1: and go into the apartments and they were trying to
Speaker 1: find every single food source and really just get a
Speaker 1: feel for that environment, right, which would make sense. They
Speaker 1: didn't care about breeding or eating mainly at first because
Speaker 1: they just want to get the lay of the land.
Speaker 1: And individual mice were kept track of with color markings
Speaker 1: and therefore, which was true of successive generations as well. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this first phase is the strive phase. That's the
Speaker 1: term Calhoun used for it. Um first a hundred and
Speaker 1: four days, where the mice are just getting accustomed to
Speaker 1: the new environment. They're establishing their territories, they're creating their nests,
Speaker 1: just moving in business as usual, nothing out of the ordinary.
Speaker 1: It's it's kind of it's kind of like the utopia
Speaker 1: set up in any film, and like having a Utopia
Speaker 1: in your your fiction. It's kind of like bringing a
Speaker 1: cannon on the stage, Right, you bring a cannon on
Speaker 1: the stage, you have to fire it. You introduce Utopia
Speaker 1: into your fiction. That Utopia has to fall into chaos
Speaker 1: and madness. This is the period in which you just
Speaker 1: have Utopia business as usual, with no concerns about the
Speaker 1: resources or predators. Yeah, I'm just imagining the kind of whimsical,
Speaker 1: flowing music that usually accompanies these scenes of utopia. Really,
Speaker 1: any scene that's being set up is like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is wonderful, life is great. And then you hear the
Speaker 1: minor piano key like bearer, and that would be the
Speaker 1: exploit phase kicking in. Now. This phase lasted about two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty days in the population of the mice
Speaker 1: doubled every sixty days. And even though there was identical
Speaker 1: allotments of food and space throughout universe, twenty five, food
Speaker 1: was being consumed more in certain areas. That's because the
Speaker 1: mice began to associate eating and drinking with being with others,
Speaker 1: and the population started to gravitate towards certain compartments where
Speaker 1: all of the eating took place. And this made some
Speaker 1: apartments and compartments crowded well beyond their capacity, while other
Speaker 1: apartments remained completely empty. And now you can hear those
Speaker 1: other minor chords coming into play, right, Yeah, things are
Speaker 1: starting to seem a little bit, a little bit weird.
Speaker 1: But but then we enter a phase the Calhoun called
Speaker 1: the equilibrium phase, which sounds great, right, things are going
Speaker 1: to even out. Things are, But the equilibrium in question
Speaker 1: here is that the population number, which means that the
Speaker 1: the population is evening out. Uh. And he also referred
Speaker 1: to this as the stagnation phase. Um, why is population
Speaker 1: evening out? Because there's less reproduction going on. There's less
Speaker 1: successful reproduction going on, and there is a lot of
Speaker 1: violence that flares up. And we're gonna get into the
Speaker 1: details of that violence. Uh. Here in a bit but
Speaker 1: essentially you see a divide between the sexes and you
Speaker 1: see some rather graphic displays of violence on both sides. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty spectacular displays of it, particularly when you get into
Speaker 1: the next phase, which is the die phase, and the
Speaker 1: population begins to decline at hundred, even though universe could
Speaker 1: accommodate up to three thousand mice, and Calhoun notices that
Speaker 1: animals become a lot less aware of each other, even
Speaker 1: though they're enclosure contact than before, I mean their side
Speaker 1: by side, stacked in with each other. And by day
Speaker 1: five sixty, the population increase plunges next to nothing, and
Speaker 1: a few mice survived passed winning until day six hundred.
Speaker 1: After that, there's a few pregnancies that don't come to
Speaker 1: fruition and there are no surviving young, which seems odd
Speaker 1: because you would think that as the population decreases and
Speaker 1: territories are regained, that there would be some sort of
Speaker 1: stasis enacted, right, Like there would be some sort of
Speaker 1: return to normal activity. He's like mating, Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean you'd think that after this equilibrium period where all
Speaker 1: this bad stuff goes on, and you see the birthrate
Speaker 1: plummeting and infant mortality rates reaching in some areas that
Speaker 1: some reason would restore it. So if it's kind of
Speaker 1: like we you know, we see in the various ups
Speaker 1: and downs throughout history, things get bad but then things
Speaker 1: even out, but not so in the universe, right, and
Speaker 1: this becomes something known as the behavioral sink. All Right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we will define behavioral sink. We will talk about the
Speaker 1: details of the violent downfall of universe, and not to
Speaker 1: mention the beautiful ones. All right, we're back. So behavioral
Speaker 1: sink this is Calhoun's name for the point past which
Speaker 1: the slide into breakdown becomes irreversible. Uh referred to it
Speaker 1: as a para pathology of shared business. And I like
Speaker 1: to think of it in terms of of a black hole. Right,
Speaker 1: It's a black hole of pathological behavior. It forms out
Speaker 1: of the collapsing mass of an overpopulated society. It's the
Speaker 1: it's the event horizon. You know that once you you
Speaker 1: pass that event horizon, there's no escaping the mass of
Speaker 1: the black hole. And this is the point of no
Speaker 1: return for civilizational downfall, at least with the rodents, if
Speaker 1: not with humans. Yeah, and John Calhoun called it the
Speaker 1: first death. UM. He said, that's it's sort of akin
Speaker 1: to like the death of the mind in the soul
Speaker 1: of the creature, not really implying that they have a soul,
Speaker 1: but basically saying there are two types of death here.
Speaker 1: There's a body death which eventually happens, but the sort
Speaker 1: of like non striving, not not living for anything, not mating,
Speaker 1: not really caring about your environment. And so you can
Speaker 1: see how this behavioral sank and this um the second
Speaker 1: death and first death, all these terms are being thrown around,
Speaker 1: and you could see how they would have a really
Speaker 1: big impact with people who are cluing in on his paper. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we're talking about the existential apocalypse u A,
Speaker 1: theeleological apocalypse. So that kind of leads to this whole
Speaker 1: other aspect of Universe twenty five that really came to
Speaker 1: define what happened and why it happened, and that is
Speaker 1: this aggression that came out of it. And this was
Speaker 1: largely because of the overcrowding and certain areas, particularly the
Speaker 1: feeding areas. It meant that the newer generations born into universe,
Speaker 1: the chaotic version, they didn't have the kind of social
Speaker 1: conditioning that would allow them to form bonds. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: in addition, you have the constant stimulation, the screring for
Speaker 1: food and space, and this means that some of the
Speaker 1: rodents became exceedingly aggressive, and this spiraled off into different
Speaker 1: factions of behavior for other rodents. So the reaction to
Speaker 1: that sort of aggression is that you had some rats
Speaker 1: who are excuse me, mice who retreated, and then you
Speaker 1: had those who try to retreat, but then they were
Speaker 1: sought after to actually be attacked over and over again.
Speaker 1: And then those who were attacked a lot then became attackers,
Speaker 1: and then you had what I call the super bullies. Yes,
Speaker 1: the outcast, Yes, the the outcasts. Uh. This and this
Speaker 1: is very much in line with with any any kind
Speaker 1: of like Mad Max post apocalyptic scenario where you have
Speaker 1: these warlords that rise out of the disorder and they're
Speaker 1: they're just the most awful, heinous people possible that just
Speaker 1: ruled by sheer brutality. And that's what we see popping
Speaker 1: up in the universe five. After about day three fifteen,
Speaker 1: male mice without social roles stop trying to defend territory,
Speaker 1: or they stopped trying to breed. Instead, they just end
Speaker 1: up wandering congregating in the middle of the universe with
Speaker 1: other loaners. And it's here that you see particularly dominant,
Speaker 1: paricularly aggressive males rising to the top through just sheer
Speaker 1: brutality attacking their fellow mice. Uh, just roaming around, assaulting,
Speaker 1: raping other members of the universe and asserting their dominance. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I love this mad Max analogy that you make
Speaker 1: because it really helps you to understand why the breeding stopped,
Speaker 1: because within this environment, you don't have a couples saying, oh,
Speaker 1: let's mate, let's do this, let's let's um, let's really
Speaker 1: spend an ordent amount of time caring for young. You
Speaker 1: don't have those kind of resources available if you're worried
Speaker 1: that you can't survive. Right. So that's what you're seeing
Speaker 1: in terms of the kind of reaction or fallout from
Speaker 1: from the outcasts as Calhoun talks about them. But you're
Speaker 1: also seeing another subset emerged from this, and the die
Speaker 1: phase sees this new subset at a new generation of
Speaker 1: mice emerge that had never been subjected again to any
Speaker 1: sort of normal conditioning, and they showed absolutely no interest
Speaker 1: in fighting, courtship, mating, raising young, or really anything that
Speaker 1: had to do with one another. Um, they did all
Speaker 1: group together, and one of the things that they did
Speaker 1: the most was groom, So they were constantly preening themselves
Speaker 1: and eating. Just just imagine these sort of you know,
Speaker 1: fat mice with these beautiful coats, and as Kyle Hun describes,
Speaker 1: some alert eyes in their ivory towers, the chaos and
Speaker 1: apocalyptic warfare going on. Yes, that's that's beautifully described. That
Speaker 1: is what he termed the beautiful ones who occupied this
Speaker 1: ivory tower of space. And while they were together, none
Speaker 1: of them would actually interact with one another. And of
Speaker 1: course they had no interest in MA And so Calhoun
Speaker 1: and the researchers thought, well, what if we were removed
Speaker 1: them from universe and we put them in an enclosure
Speaker 1: that has all of the benefits of universe twenty five.
Speaker 1: In other words, um, you know, all the food that
Speaker 1: they wanted, Um, you know, cages that were cleaned, so
Speaker 1: on and so forth. They would probably return to normal, Right,
Speaker 1: that was the idea with these alert eyed mice. They
Speaker 1: did that, and of course the beautiful ones just continued
Speaker 1: to groom themselves and eat and had absolutely no interest.
Speaker 1: And that was very surprising for the researchers, and it
Speaker 1: further underscored that there was a kind of behavioral sink
Speaker 1: that happened. Is that that first death right. So they
Speaker 1: were already just existentially dead inside, right, It didn't matter
Speaker 1: that they had changed geography. They were who they were now.
Speaker 1: And so of course all of this taken together, you
Speaker 1: can see how the public would take the details of
Speaker 1: this is sort of like pan sexualism, this cannibal of
Speaker 1: him that it would occur, um this extreme violence, and
Speaker 1: then began to try to make these apples to apples
Speaker 1: comparisons with human populations. Yeah, I mean, well, we we
Speaker 1: couldn't help. Even as we were going over notes before
Speaker 1: the episode, I've mentioned that I couldn't help, but think
Speaker 1: of wells, the time machine and the more Locks, the
Speaker 1: horrible Morelocks had had lived underground and in the beautiful
Speaker 1: surface dwellers who just kind of wandered around and it
Speaker 1: drugged out haze on the surface. And then of course
Speaker 1: you brought up Kardashians. I did, I said, Unfortunately, when
Speaker 1: when I read about the beautiful ones, I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: there's the Kardashians. I get it, with their beautifully quaffed hair. Um,
Speaker 1: maybe you took them out of their environment and you
Speaker 1: put them on a desert island. What would happen? They
Speaker 1: would continue to groom themselves. I'm pretty sure of it.
Speaker 1: Perhaps that's an unfair assessment however, Um, But one of
Speaker 1: the things that I think is really striking about this experiment,
Speaker 1: and we kind of touched on it at the beginning,
Speaker 1: is the way that Calhoun paints the picture for his
Speaker 1: reading audience. Yeah. So often with scientific papers and studies,
Speaker 1: you uh, and anyone who's ever read through one of
Speaker 1: these can can certainly certainly know what I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: is that, you know, oftentimes everything is very clinical and straightforward,
Speaker 1: and it's not un till the the conclusions at the
Speaker 1: end and the or maybe the suggestions where they start
Speaker 1: making comparisons to humans and start looking into the future
Speaker 1: for for our own development and in our own progress.
Speaker 1: But with with Calhoun's work, it's there from from the
Speaker 1: get go. It's in the very fabric of the paper. Uh,
Speaker 1: He's just right off the bat. He's referring to the
Speaker 1: dwelling places as tower blocks and walk up apartments. Easy again,
Speaker 1: he's talking about the beautiful ones, the juvenile to link
Speaker 1: what's the dropout? So everything's very just heavily anthropomorphic. Um
Speaker 1: and uh. And it's in all this language meshes perfectly
Speaker 1: as we discussed with the cultural fears that are out
Speaker 1: there in the six season and the seventies to follow,
Speaker 1: you know, full of fictionalman propolises and degenerate societies, the
Speaker 1: world of solid green, of clockwork, orange, um taxi driver
Speaker 1: air in New York City, you know where we just
Speaker 1: see the modern city is just this. Ah, this is
Speaker 1: uh the sewer of of of the link win activity. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you have a lot of authors at that time
Speaker 1: who are specifically looking at New York City and looking down,
Speaker 1: you know, from the heights of their building from you know,
Speaker 1: the people below and um, and describing them like rats.
Speaker 1: Right Like there's that's not a coincidence. A lot of um,
Speaker 1: what Calhoun is looking at is starting to really steep
Speaker 1: out into popular culture. Now. Post Calhoun, of course, people
Speaker 1: kind of sort of straighten themselves up a little bit
Speaker 1: and look at it a little bit more dispassionately, and
Speaker 1: they began to say, Okay, this is not an apple
Speaker 1: to apple situation. Um, you can't say that the humans
Speaker 1: in New York City are rats in the enclosure of universe,
Speaker 1: because first of all, humans have agency, meaning that we don't,
Speaker 1: as far as we know, have this giant hand who
Speaker 1: is like picking us up and putting us into places
Speaker 1: and feeding us and giving this us an endless supply
Speaker 1: of resources, which is of course the second problem of
Speaker 1: this experiment. This is um about a utopia with everything
Speaker 1: that you would need, whereas in human life we do
Speaker 1: not have the resources always at our disposal. We have
Speaker 1: to strive for them. Uh. Moreover, you have psychologist Jonathan
Speaker 1: Friedman who tries to create as as well as he
Speaker 1: can universe humans, but within the limits of law, of course,
Speaker 1: and having some sort of integrity. He tries to recreate
Speaker 1: this among high school and university students, and he finds
Speaker 1: that the population density is not creating this sort of
Speaker 1: aggression that you would expect, and he does a series
Speaker 1: of these experiments. He measures their stress, their discomfort, aggression, competitiveness,
Speaker 1: and just their general unpleasantness, and he finds that individuals
Speaker 1: employed to carry out tasks under varying conditions of density,
Speaker 1: they display very few pathologies. So it's not this kind
Speaker 1: of situation that yields a clue that, oh, yes, humans,
Speaker 1: humans could uh. Befall the same sort of tragedies if
Speaker 1: overpopulation happens in earnest. Yeah. Freeman ends up suggesting that
Speaker 1: the moral decay that you see in the universe twenty
Speaker 1: five wasn't the result of population density itself, but more
Speaker 1: about excessive social interaction, because they hadn't all gone crazy,
Speaker 1: they didn't all turn into uh, you know, insane warlords.
Speaker 1: Are the ones who managed to control their own space
Speaker 1: actually led normal rodent lives, uh, you know, amid the madness.
Speaker 1: So it's all about the the balance, right though, the
Speaker 1: appropriate levels of privacy and community, um, but unwanted and
Speaker 1: unavoidable social interaction that's what Friedman believes lead to all
Speaker 1: the horror. Yeah. And there's also something called contra freeloading
Speaker 1: which we should consider within the whole context of this. Now,
Speaker 1: this is from Dan Ariali, who is a behavioral economist,
Speaker 1: and he said that it is a tendency for animals
Speaker 1: to prefer earned food rather than free food. So this
Speaker 1: is again part of that resources question. And for instance,
Speaker 1: a really's parrot was described as having a propensity to
Speaker 1: self mutilate if it was just kept in a cage
Speaker 1: and fed without keeping its mind engaged. So that's why
Speaker 1: when you go to a zoo and you see a
Speaker 1: polar bear eating fish, that polar bear actually had to
Speaker 1: make its way through a block of ice in order
Speaker 1: to get to the fish. There was some sort of
Speaker 1: challenge for obstacle there. Yeah. I mean the organism has
Speaker 1: evolved with a purpose and a design line, and if
Speaker 1: you just give it the resources that its whole system
Speaker 1: is game to achieve naturally and with a struggle, Uh,
Speaker 1: there's going to be a disconnect. Yeah, And now to
Speaker 1: go back to your point though about how um within
Speaker 1: the Universe twenty community there were some mice there were
Speaker 1: actually fearing. Okay, this is something that is underplayed, right
Speaker 1: because you hear about all the terrible things going on,
Speaker 1: but you don't hear a lot about the actual I
Speaker 1: guess you could call it creativity and innovation that was happening,
Speaker 1: which is kind of kind of crazy because you know,
Speaker 1: we love the idea of an apocalypse and clearly everyone
Speaker 1: absorbing this study like it's easy to just focus on
Speaker 1: the doom aspect of it. But you look at any
Speaker 1: bit of post apocalyptic media, be the you know, the
Speaker 1: Walking Dead or Mad Max, like the heroes are the
Speaker 1: individuals that more or less are able to thrive in
Speaker 1: this environment, you know. Yeah, and I think that speaks
Speaker 1: to us because we want to learn how to do
Speaker 1: this thing right, right, Like that's why it's so compelling,
Speaker 1: because like, how are you surviving? What sort of grit
Speaker 1: do you have? What sort of creativity? Yeah? So, of
Speaker 1: Calhoun found that animals that were better able to handle
Speaker 1: high numbers of social interactions, which is key because we
Speaker 1: just discussed like that it's about all that unwanted social interaction.
Speaker 1: He found that the rodents who could handle all of
Speaker 1: that unwanted social interaction UM, actually did pretty well. And
Speaker 1: he dubbed them high social velocity mice, which I like
Speaker 1: to think of as the you know, the real extroverts
Speaker 1: of the of the mouse population, you know, the kind
Speaker 1: of the kind of mouse who goes home in the
Speaker 1: evening and then really has to get back out there
Speaker 1: and socialize at the like the nearest pub or or
Speaker 1: hang out right in conversation. UM. And I think about
Speaker 1: this in the context of how stuff works, like, if
Speaker 1: we were all mice high velocity mice, UM, Holly Fry
Speaker 1: would be our leader. Yes, she is definitely a high
Speaker 1: velocity mouse that. Yeah, she would survive, right, Um, and
Speaker 1: and she would still manage to sew something or have
Speaker 1: some sort of project that she's working on the side. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, as long as she can stay away from
Speaker 1: the warlord Ben Bolan and his roving band. Well that
Speaker 1: is true today, Like, that's not hypothetical when you say that,
Speaker 1: we're actually talking about that right now. Yeah, he needs
Speaker 1: to stop wearing those skull shoulder pads around. Those are intimidating. Well.
Speaker 1: And also I think that eventually they're going to lose
Speaker 1: some of their impact, right, especially when he keeps putting
Speaker 1: his googly eyes on them. Um. Here's the thing about
Speaker 1: Calhoun and his paper Death Squared. He was really dismayed
Speaker 1: at the direction that all of this took, that his
Speaker 1: findings took, because he might have been a little bit
Speaker 1: immune to all of his findings and that three decades
Speaker 1: he'd been doing this right like that, the violence and
Speaker 1: this so one and so forth. He was more concerned
Speaker 1: with the actual creativity and innovation, and he thought he
Speaker 1: thought Universe was like this really good model or could
Speaker 1: potentially be a good model of how cities could actually
Speaker 1: become competent and creative and avoid this kind of violence
Speaker 1: and aggression, and he actually went on to make one
Speaker 1: hundred more versions of Universe twenty five to try to
Speaker 1: take all those negatives and turn them into positives and
Speaker 1: have the rodents work in a way that was creative
Speaker 1: and innovative. Yeah. I mean, he wasn't just saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: the apocalypse is coming, let's market on our calendars. He
Speaker 1: was he was ultimately all about, let's let's figure out
Speaker 1: how to reschedule the apocalypse or just postponent and definitely
Speaker 1: find ways to correct course and actually live effectively in
Speaker 1: these large, high population, high population density environments. Um. One
Speaker 1: of the other positive things that came out of Universe inadvertently,
Speaker 1: I guess you could say, is Mrs Frisbee in The
Speaker 1: Rats of NIM. Oh Yes, yeah, children's book that later
Speaker 1: became the Secret of NIM the nine two film, and NIM,
Speaker 1: of course, is the acronym for National Institute of Mental Health,
Speaker 1: and the plotline of the story, at least one of
Speaker 1: the plotlines, is that they're see super intelligent rats that
Speaker 1: escape from NIM. Yeah. I never read the book, but
Speaker 1: I fondly remember the film. Seen the film many times
Speaker 1: as a child. It's a beautifully darkly animated Don Blue
Speaker 1: film with a whole host of various voice actors that
Speaker 1: really bring it to life. I will say to you,
Speaker 1: the scariest and most intense part is, of course in
Speaker 1: the lab when you see the rodents being preyed upon.
Speaker 1: I say preyed upon because you know it's depicted in
Speaker 1: that way, and of course you've got these syringes that
Speaker 1: they're being injected with. Uh. And it is kind of dark,
Speaker 1: but it's a it's a lovely film, yeah, And in
Speaker 1: a way it really harkens back to the source study, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot of darkness in it, but
Speaker 1: ultimately his aim was to say, hey, how can we
Speaker 1: how can we grow around this? How can we how
Speaker 1: can we achieve where the where the rodents of universe failed? Right?
Speaker 1: Maybe we don't have to be super intelligent rats that
Speaker 1: have to escape them, but maybe we could approach the
Speaker 1: way that we design our environments in a way that
Speaker 1: actually helps us to interact better and to deal with
Speaker 1: what are actually some real consequences of overpopulation. Now we're
Speaker 1: not trying to discount out at all. Um. I did
Speaker 1: have to say, though, I think that this topic, like
Speaker 1: all others, all roads lead to singularity, to the singularity.
Speaker 1: Because we've talked about this before, there's this idea that
Speaker 1: the future will be so automated that well will maybe
Speaker 1: create our own sort of universe twenty five where it's
Speaker 1: always sixty eight degrees fahrenheit and there's always food available
Speaker 1: and you know, everything is being done for us well.
Speaker 1: And in that I think the hope is that our
Speaker 1: AI masters will will have to figure out ways to
Speaker 1: make sure everything remains arresting for us. And hey, maybe
Speaker 1: they already have. Maybe we're already living in a simulation right,
Speaker 1: all of the matrix. Yeah, and this is all just
Speaker 1: all the struggles in our life are just there because
Speaker 1: our computer overlord said they're not really handling this utopia
Speaker 1: thing all that. Well, make them think that this is
Speaker 1: uh five hundred a thousand years ago, and then they
Speaker 1: they they'll have a decent struggle. You know, the next
Speaker 1: time I miss a deadline, I'm going to use that.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say, you know, we're inside of the matrix
Speaker 1: right now, it's just one of the obstacles to keep
Speaker 1: it interesting. I think it should be a vout excuse, right,
Speaker 1: this is my ice block guys, thanks for let me
Speaker 1: hang out in your ear holes for the last couple
Speaker 1: of years. I've really enjoyed it and I've loved hearing
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Speaker 1: and just your thoughts on you know, an array of
Speaker 1: topics have really helped to define what Stuff to Plow
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