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THE UTOPIA CURSE

Sometimes there can be too many presents under the tree.

THE UTOPIA CURSE

Sometimes there can be too many presents under the tree.

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25 replies on “THE UTOPIA CURSE”

Ur maybe they just dismissed the material built on the sand? I wasn’t aware about it and just read up — from now on will actively dismiss anyone referring to it with word “utopia”, except in the context of debunking. Do you care much about conclusions drawn from fake news?

In short that an overpopulation experiment that created a mouse hell is being sold in the media as “utopia” and then others just read those fancy titles and draw even further conclusions.

Bill, I am about your age (I think you are one year older than me) and yes, I played the Star Trek game on the school teletype when i was a student.
Anyways, I specify as a student because I became a math teacher. We had another math teacher at out school that grew up in Jamaica. The students treated this poor man like total s**t, and it drove him crazy. Yes, he was black, but understand this was the Detroit public schools, so most of the students were also black, so there was no racism involved. In fact they treated me, a white teacher, much better than him. The thing is, he couldn’t understand why the students just wanted to play around and act up. Where he came from school was a privilege, not just something everyone had, and indeed was “forced” into doing, like in the U.S. When you described how the mice behaved, it reminded me of what I told him at the time. In the U.S. education is just something kids do to kill time during the day, so many don’t care, or even see the need (okay, yes, how much they really need, and how good it is is another discussion.) As opposed to where he came from where if they played and acted up, they would be removed so someone that would actually do what they were supposed to do could have the seat.

Military service in the 1960’s and then returning to American civilian society, provided me with a much better view of our nation’s culture and society as a whole. The selfishness and self focus was apparent and it led me to coin a mantra I’ve used to view most Americans by since; “too many have had it too good for too long”.

My take away after two years of service in the Army (shortly after your time serving; but not in any actual combat) was “you can put up with a lot more than you think you can”.

Utopia is a man made construct by which intellect can fix all problems. This presumes that men are super smart, for there are many problems. And yet, each attempt at utopia ends in dystopia (consider all the communist societies, the cults, Nazism, the communes). If they really worked, that’s how we’d all live. This is all about men. This is all about pride.
Christians know there will never be utopia on earth, for man is flawed, sinful, and utterly predictable. Utopia, for Christians, is in the afterlife, and doesn’t rely on man. It relies on God. And utopia for Christians is only obtainable for the individual, not the collective. I can’t live a good enough, or faithful enough life for anyone but me. My utopia (heaven), is utterly dependent on my will to believe that by God’s mercy and grace alone, am I good enough for heaven. As good as a Christian as I might be, I am inadequate for utopia. I am completely dependent on God, not man, not myself, for utopia. Atheists must therefore rely on man for utopia and today’s Democrats are, by in large, atheists (Let’s call them “God Deniers”).
This nation didn’t become so prosperous by hubris, rather it became great because people knew we were blessed and we weren’t the end all. We relied on God. A nation of “men believers” will get the sort of dysfunctional, irrational, and self destructive mice behavior Bill talked about.
John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” This is neither a moral or religious nation anymore. That’s why they are writing God out of the Democratic platform.
Merry Christmas!

If I am shot at, you can bet everything you have that I’ll shoot back! Not run and hide and expect someone to protect me. People need goals to strive for and ambition to go get them. Without hardship the society will stagnate and die, as it’s beginning to do now. Who knows, maybe this experiment in socialism will be the kickstarter America needs to get it back on track. One thing I’d like to say to the people who think they can run away and hide in the woods. What are you going to do when your ammunition or gasoline runs out? Do you have the skills to get your own food and survive without modern things?

The one photo that astounded me was “The Blue Marble.” Never before had any living person seen the Earth like that! It was awesome in the biggest sense of the word.

If it is possible it would be nice if the volume could be a little higher since another person is listening with me and she is across the room. Thank you for sharing so much with us.

Having said all that, certainly just because it does not follow from the mice experiment, does not mean that urban overpopulation, abundance of resources, lack of hard physical work, artificial challenges, etc would not lead to many ill effects on a population. It obviously does.

https://youtu.be/s2JncjKQG4o?t=129

There is a YT channel Valuetainment with a smart guy explaining all kind of things. In one piece he was drawing this cycle:

-> hard times -> strong people -> good times -> weak people ->

Wow, I was editing this in when I got to the very part Bill was stating this same… well, we’re not so out of sync after all…

I read into this Colhoun experiment https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1644264/pdf/procrsmed00338-0007.pdf it is very interesting, but it has significant number of flaws, so I would not be too hasty to draw even the conclusions in the article itself. (Without additional experiments at least.)

I tried to find repeats and follow-ups and failed miserably. That is even more odd. Google and other engines show lots and lots of writings about the results and project their thoughts — but it seems the scientists left this topic alone, or well hidden from the public.

The experiment started with just 4 pairs of mice. The author says nothing about the bloodlines, so chances are even those could be close relatives — for mice used in most medicinal experiments it is a benefit. That alone is enough to introduce doubt, I would have arranged to swap a small number of fresh mice every month just to contain inbreeding — or run a parallel experiment with that change to see if it makes a difference.

Also it says cleaning of the shit and the underlying corncob happened every 4-8 weeks, but not much else. The population control of mice is based on pheromones. Potentially those can linger on and keep signaling “it’s 10000 of us here” even after the actual numbers start to go down and reach almost nothing. (speculation, but a point that needs addressing in some way).

I find it also strange that the experiment was not allowed to run its course, just projected it will hit doom (even with a comment of surprise, as it was more expected to re-ignite going down to small numbers). The population did not in fact die out, it was terminated. In a phase where pregnant females were around, even if with just small number of embrios.

I’m not an expert on mouse ethology and reproduction, only know some basic stuff, but even with that can come up with many plausible explanations and different conclusions. And the few samples of derivative articles seem to be written by people who lack even the basics of population dynamics and the other stuff.

For the scope of this thread, one very important point is that the setup is not by any means a mice utopia. Actually it’s almost the opposite at the end of phase A. The experiment was set to study overpopulation and its effects, that is exactly what it created, a small space that triggers the mechanisms in mice that detect and act on it. Yeah, such things are there set by evolution in any species on the fast reproduction strategy. The dynamics called “gradation” is common there and can be seen as big spikes ending with significant portion of the population going exile, suicide or something and the rest starts again. To work, space is required. Putting the population in confinement does not serve an essential need, that is the opposite what utopia should do. From here all the conclusions become moot.

Seriously, suppose you’re put in a 2x2m cubicle and is served abundant food and drink every day, cleaned, but that is it. Would you call it utopia? Or a method of torture? And even adding some multimedia set to address the solitary part, where would it lead?

On the other side even without problems the observations can not be used to explain behaivior of other animals that run drastically different reproductive strategy and social behavior. At least before someone come up with a convincing explanation on why we can overlook those.
What you fing in mice you might find similar in rats. Then no, switching to chimps you’re off the rails.

As soon as you said Calhoun and experiment I knew where you were going with this. Wish I’d made the connection myself.

This is making me reconsider my opposition to mandatory military service for all citizens. I haven’t changed my mind yet, maybe there’s another way to accomplish “toughening up” the coming generations, but maybe the military is the way to do it. I shall ruminate…

Military is way too late. The main problem is the omnipresent spoiling of all the children. When I was young at least the schools did some relevant work using the stick-equivalent. By now even that is forbidden and loathed on.

Plus all the task/work removed, and taking a breath counts as accomplishment.

Invoking military on top of that would only create even more crippled or dead people without a measurable toughening up.

Are you (and Pal) saying that we might need some American Eaton’s?
Now, didn’t that military academy that Trump was sent to toughen him up, or what? Not sure if it also straightened him out, though.

Rhode Island is a great example of this psychosis. From the beginning Rhode Island was limited in space. Primogenity meant that anyone but the first born needed land and dear old dad did not have it to give. The inhabitants moved west to expand beyond RI. That kept them in means and mind.
today, over a million human being are crowded into a space smaller than China Lake Naval Weapons Research Area. Sanity? None to be found. Opiods, violence, suicide, and leftist ideology abounds.

Right you are, Bill. Right you are.

So, it basically comes down to the level-headed, reasonable people who remember “hard times” and “prices paid” versus the virtue signaling, drama queen “victims” who are fighting the oppressive offenders who constantly “trigger” them. (?) Do we need to start with the institutions that peddle such pish? (Public schools, universities, day care, media, etc.?)

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