
The Doomed Mouse Utopia That Inspired the 'Rats of NIMH' - tosh
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-doomed-mouse-utopia-that-inspired-the-rats-of-nimh
======
rglovejoy
"Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world?
Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one
would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the
programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a
species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The
perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up
from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your
civilization." \- Agent Smith

~~~
logfromblammo
Did you know that in the original version of the Matrix motion picture, humans
were grown and plugged into the Matrix so that the AIs could use their brains
for complex computation? I'm not sure why they changed the script to turn the
people into rechargeable batteries instead of CPUs, but it was a really bad
idea to do so.

So now I am imagining row after row of mice in little mouse chairs, wearing
tiny VR helmets, organizing for a raid on the MegaMechaCat boss in the
Mousecraft MMORPG.

It would be interesting to see if escapist recreation is necessary for a
healthy high-density society. Purely for self-rationalization of my own gaming
activity, you understand. Any scientific benefits would be purely accidental.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Did you know that in the original version of the Matrix motion picture,
> humans were grown and plugged into the Matrix so that the AIs could use
> their brains for complex computation? I'm not sure why they changed the
> script to turn the people into rechargeable batteries instead of CPUs, but
> it was a really bad idea to do so.

They probably did it because test audiences (or maybe studio execs) didn't get
the computation thing. If you watch the films, they really only changed it
superficially to account for that, and lots of it only makes sense with the
computation explanation, which even before I knew it was the original concept
I assumed was the _real_ thing going on, and that "batteries" was a faulty
conclusion reached by the free humans.

~~~
Dylan16807
> a faulty conclusion reached by the free humans

I dislike that interpretation because it's really insulting to the
intelligence of those humans. (Specifically the idea that they would conclude
that as a group, with years of consideration. I'm not disparaging any
individual that would find it plausible.)

~~~
dragonwriter
Well, it was clear as far back as the first movie that the free humans were
getting information from some sources that were, at least, idiosyncratic; by
the end it was clear that much of their information was manipulated by the
machines as a means of establishing control. So, while perhaps in some ways
progressively more depressing, the "'coppertop idea' as free humans getting
the fundamental nature of the situation wrong" explanation, I feel, isn't
insulting, and is progressively more plausible as the series progresses.

------
throwanem
> But the public held on hard to his earlier work—as Ramsden and Adams put it,
> "everyone want[ed] to hear the diagnosis, no one want[ed] to hear the cure."

 _Was_ there a "cure"? The article speaks of the fashion in which his later
efforts attempted to alleviate the catastrophic social problems he'd observed
in his earlier utopian designs. It is craftily silent on the subject of those
efforts' results.

~~~
zerocrates
The paper they're citing mostly handwaves around the so-called "cure" as well,
but that might really be for the best. It does have some more detail, though:

> In his early experiments in the outdoor pens, Calhoun had witnessed a
> creative act by his rats that he likened to the discovery of the wheel by
> man: when building a new burrow they did not simply dig out the dirt as they
> went, as any normal rat would do, instead they packed it into a large ball
> which they then rolled out. This innovation had not come from the socially
> dominant animals but from a highly disorganized and predominantly homosexual
> group of subordinates, partially withdrawn from the larger social
> organization. As Calhoun saw it, the repression they had suffered at the
> hands of their superiors had resulted in deviant, _creative_ , and thus
> _adaptive_ behaviour. Inspired by this example, in his laboratory at NIMH,
> Calhoun attempted to design rodent universes that would both _stimulate_ ,
> resulting in “creative deviants,” and _ameliorate_ : removing the worst
> excesses of crowding pathology.

Probably the most direct section is this:

> Through a variety of methods, such as operant conditioning and determining
> which of the mice and rats could eat, sleep, live, with whom, he sought to
> design ever more intelligent and collaborative rodent communities, capable
> of withstanding ever greater degrees of density. Here, then, was the hopeful
> agenda: if the wrong environment would drive us to destruction, perhaps the
> correct environment would be our remedy.

> Calhoun suggested organizing scientists into a global, intercommunicating
> network composed of independent but interconnected groups and sub-groups.
> Only then could the necessary conceptual growth to avoid a catastrophic sink
> be achieved. He claimed it was “toward a concern with science as a world
> system which must be understood if the human race is to survive.” He saw
> these attempts to defer social pathology as the centerpiece and real import
> of his work. Here was the profit, the positive signal from the noise of the
> behavioral sink.

> It was in through this growth in conceptual space – enabled by the design of
> new buildings, new technologies, new social and intellectual networks – that
> humanity was presented with a more desirable future: what Calhoun called
> “Dawnsday” in opposition to von Foerster’s “Doomsday.” All of mankind might
> become part of a single “world brain,” consisting of numerous and diverse
> subsystems, each interlinked to, aware of, and dependent upon, the other.

[http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/22514/1/2308Ramadams.pdf](http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/22514/1/2308Ramadams.pdf)

~~~
projektir
> As Calhoun saw it, the repression they had suffered at the hands of their
> superiors had resulted in deviant, creative, and thus adaptive behaviour.

Could it also be that the group was simply different, and suffered because it
was different/non-dominant, but it was not the suffering that made them
different to begin with? And getting away from the main group allowed them to
do those things?

I would posit a utopia where there is such a thing as "dominant group" is not
a utopia, after all.

Remember these guys? [http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/science/no-time-for-
bullie...](http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/science/no-time-for-bullies-
baboons-retool-their-culture.html?_r=0)

Groups of people interested in esoteric things who just want to be left
alone... sounds familiar.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I think there always will be "dominant groups", as long as being in group is
more beneficial than not being in one - simply because even an uniform random
distribution is not perfectly uniform when you build it point by point.

~~~
projektir
A dominant group is not one that is merely more beneficial. If there's a rat
park somewhere that has happiness level 5, and the other rat park has
happiness level 6, that doesn't mean one is dominant over the other. It just
means one has more happiness than the other. And in an effort to not cause too
many paperclip maximizers, let's define some acceptable margin of difference
at which it doesn't really matter who's happier, I don't think the world will
explode and the philosophical arguments are seriously not worth it.

Dominance is something else entirely and I staunchly disagree that this
strictly evolutionary construct needs to persist forever.

------
blfr
_Most of the adolescent mice retreated even further from societal
expectations, spending all their time eating, drinking, sleeping and grooming,
and refusing to fight or to even attempt to mate._

Every time I read about these experiments, this is the stirring part.
Individuals that appear to be the most fit just fail to mate for no apparent
reason, yet they live as if they were always preparing for it.

~~~
ispolin
Did anybody test the mice for physiological changes, and specifically reduced
testosterone levels? In Matt Ridley's "The Red Queen", he mentions research
about how low testosterone levels in both males and females cause this type of
behavior.

Maybe there's an evolutionary adaptation that lowers testosterone production
during times of high population, and in the artificial conditions of the
experiment that adaptation exhibited itself too strongly?

That would also explain why mice taken out of the experimental environment
didn't rehabilitate. There are other studies cited in "The Red Queen" that
suggest that levels of testosterone are largely determined by the mother's
environment and stress levels during gestation.

------
zyxley
Calling it a "utopia" when there's limited space and nothing to do seems a bit
inaccurate.

~~~
AstralStorm
Rats and mice don't really do much except eating, breeding, hunting and
socialising.

~~~
Mendenhall
Interesting point but In its natural environment they do so much more. Search
for the food, avoid weather, avoid predators etc. I think perhaps when those
stresses are taken away it goes counter to their instincts and "wiring"
causing problems.

~~~
jds375
I wonder what that could mean for us as humans. Is some degree of "strife"
necessary in society for people to be happier?

Perhaps our work to eliminate many of the more primal issues that affect us
(the need to hunt, survive in the wild, etc) are only making us worse off?

It would be interesting to hear more about this, as well as what the potential
"cures" may be, as alluded to at the end of the article.

~~~
johnfjacobi
You'd probably be interested in the Unabomber manifesto. Most people think he
was crazy, but he talked a lot about this stuff, especially his sections on
"the power process," which is basically what you just described.

[http://wildism.org/rca/items/show/13](http://wildism.org/rca/items/show/13)

James Q Wilson, the guy who came up with "broken windows theory," said the
manifesto was "a carefully reasoned, artfully written paper… If it is the work
of a madman, then the writings of many political philosophers — Jean Jacques
Rousseau, Tom Paine, Karl Marx — are scarcely more sane."

I wrote an article about the man a while back, so I'm always interested when
ideas like this pop up. Here's the article: [http://dark-
mountain.net/blog/ted-kaczynski-and-why-he-matte...](http://dark-
mountain.net/blog/ted-kaczynski-and-why-he-matters/)

~~~
projektir
Reminds me of Dark Enlightenment. Unfortunately, in both cases, the promoters
seem to need to antagonize rather large swaths of people, making it hard to
sympathize with them in general, even if some of the arguments are interesting
or reasonable.

~~~
johnfjacobi
There's some overlap with "dark enlightenment" stuff. Unfortunately that
always tends to take on racial connotations because of the groups it
originated in. Whereas the anti-modern conservatism I and others who generally
agree with those kinds of arguments believe in rejects race as a modern
concept made to suit modern purposes, not a basis to reject modernity.

And yeah, I used to write TK and he's hard to get along with. But I think a
lot of his "antagonism" isn't personal so much as it is an attempt to stir up
popular antagonisms, a propaganda of sorts. I can't ever be sure though. Guy's
a mystery to me in a lot of ways. Super interesting though.

------
sandworm101
These studies are naive in that they treat a species, mice, as a self-
regulating unit. They aren't. No species exists absent other species. Mice
have evolved alongside predators. Without predators, the external stimuli that
has defined mice evolution, mice culture isn't sustainable.

This has direct application not only in dense populations but in our
relationship with other species. Our bodies and our culture has evolved in the
presence of rats, insects, dogs, cats and billions of bacterial and viruses.
Isolation from these other species will doom us as it did these mice.

~~~
jhou2
Of course. If in the experiment, they had simulated the effect of predators on
the population and routinely culled the population to stay within some range,
then probably the mice would have lived happily ever after generation after
generation without any overcrowding and stressful effects. That entirely
misses the point of the experiment.

Human beings in some societies are reaching the point where disease, fatal
accidents, and similar stressful or population-reducing effects are minimized.
For example, Silicon Valley. I'm not so sure though whether it is a utopia
though. Physical living space, aka real estate, in SV is certainly at a
premium.

And I've seen similar cases mirroring the study's "beautiful ones", the
drinkers, and rowdy youths. There are parallels and insights to be drawn from
these studies of mice and men.

~~~
sandworm101
I think it goes beyond population control. Simply removing the mice might not
be enough. They have to see and fear the cat. Some have to be successful in
avoiding the cat. They may develop behaviors and social order specifically to
address the cat threat. Disappearing individuals randomly might have a
radically unnatural impact.

With humans, it's also not as simple as population control. The presence of
other species, even predators, is a cornerstone of our evolution and culture.
We are afraid of the dark for a reason. We protect our kids from the unknown
for a reason. We keep dogs as guards for a reason. A world truly without
predators might result in very different culture. I'm often taken aback by how
people who live in regions without large predators (UK, Japan) differ in their
views on nature from those who walk beside predators every day
(Canada/Australia).

Talk to a tourist on a beach about shark attacks. Then talk to a surfer. The
former has strong opinions but isn't under any real threat. The later is often
much more tolerant of sharks despite the increased risk (see Australia's shark
cull debates). Even a slight but real risk of dangerous predators, imho, gives
one a much greater respect for nature.

------
ransom1538
This seems more like a "prison". The effects mirror incarceration perfectly.

------
saulrh
Malthusian catastrophes are one of the things that happen to communities that
aren't smart and coordinated enough to banish Moloch. Whoop-de-doo.

([http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-
moloch/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/))

~~~
jeffdavis
Does this count as a Malthusian catastrophe even though the food was ample?

~~~
dredmorbius
Limiting factors are the things you don't have enough of.

If food isn't constraining, it's not your limiting factor, something else is.

The general idea is expressed in Leibig's Law of the Minimum, from Justiz
Leibig, a 19th century botanist.

This is why counterarguments to Malthusian philosophy based on showing that
_some arbitrarily selected_ factor isn't constraining are moot. The question
is, what _is_ limiting in the environment. And if growth has stopped,
_something_ is constraining it.

------
Eric_WVGG
was just thinking about how much I despise the movie based on this book.

Possibly the best piece of children’s literature that is explicitly about
evolution, neuroscience and society, and they turn it into a woo-woo adventure
about a MAGIC AMULET

ugh. Read the book. Buy your kids the book. Terrific book.

~~~
taeric
I have the audio book, but haven't listened to it yet. This just bumped it up
to the top of my queue.

I felt the same way with Never Ending Story. And, as a kid, I loved that
movie. Book was so much more, though.

Howl's Moving Castle was one where I actually had a hard time liking more than
one or two scenes of the movie, because of how much I liked the book.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
Oddly, DWJ really liked the Howl's Moving Castle film, apparently.

As a Miyazaki/Ghibli fan, I got into the film more than the book.

I still need to read The Never Ending Story. But yeah, the movie of Rats of
NIMH was super disappointing to me.

~~~
taeric
I still overall liked Howl's. I just have a hard time rewatching it due to
some odd choices. In particular, the odd "true love's kiss" for turnip head.
Just, what?

~~~
qwertyuiop924
If that's the only thing you thought was odd about it, you must not have been
watching very closely :-).

I'm much more of fan of his other works, like Castle In The Sky, and Kiki's
Delivery Service. And The Wind Rises. And the Cat Returns.

Okay, let's just pencil in that I like all of Miyazaki's work.

~~~
taeric
Ha! Fair, there are plenty of divergences. That one just struck me as
particularly odd.

And I am generally a fan of Studio Ghibli. I specifically am not saying it is
a bad movie.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
Indeed. Although it's not as good as some of his other stuff.

------
ChrisNorstrom
I'm actually working for a group that's talking about this problem right now.
Their site's not up yet (i'm working on it) but here's a sneak peak.

They've narrowed it down to Daniel Kristoff's theory of "Genetic Rot",
according to the behaviors observed.

● evolution is not perfect, each generation has good genetic mutations and bad
genetic mutations

● the bad genetic mututations normally die off and are weeded out of the gene
pool

● fighting for resources causes natural eugenics and the betterment of a
population by only the best get food and the weak dying off

● the mouse experiment basically shows how communism caused ALL mutations to
continue to the next generation both good and bad.

● untill eventually an uncontrolled pattern of defective genes plagued the
mice and could no longer be weeded out. This is why mice taken out of the
experiment did not recover.

● resource abundance caused individual mice who never should have reproduced
to reproduce introducing their defect genes into the gene pool. (most animals
get a huge decrease in population after a huge increase due to over-abundance
of resources)

● the mice reproduced to a point until every single mouse had bad genes and
could no longer save the population

● The mouse experiment mirrors what's happening in our society right now

Also, keep in mind this is a very sanitized version of the experiment.
Somewhere out there is a complete list of behaviors observed, I can't find it
but altasobscura doesn't talk about the controversial findings like "gender
roles broke down" and "there was an increase of homosexuality" of the mice.
Basically hinting that homosexuality, gender roles, and instinct are all
heavily genetic based. And bad genes can often invert or flip instinct.

------
c0achmcguirk
It wasn't spelled out in the article, but in the movie NIMH is an acronym for
National Institute of Mental Health.

------
ceautery
The bleakest and most compelling statement I have ever read comes from the
"Death Squared" paper mentioned in the article:

"For an animal so complex as man, there is no logical reason why a comparable
sequence of events should not also lead to species extinction. If
opportunities for role fulfillment fall far short of the demand by those
capable of filling roles, and having expectancies to do so, only violence and
disruption of social organization can follow. Individuals born under these
circumstances will be so out of touch with reality as to be incapable even of
alienation."

Scary insightful, but hopefully not prophetic.

~~~
henriquemaia
Interesting quote. Makes you think about phenomenons like young people from
the developed world, highly educated, joining violent groups like ISIS.

------
agumonkey
No matter how grim the results are, I am amazed at the information. One tends
to interact with other mammals in superficial ways. We see how sophisticated
and not far from our own patterns they live.

------
throwaway2016b
This paints a dark picture, not only for urban life, but for basic income.
What wondrous creativity will be unlocked when we no longer need to work to
survive? A negative amount, if you judge by the NEETs of today. Give a man
food, shelter, and internet, and he'll kill himself for you.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Only because we don't take social currency as seriously as monetary currency.
In a world where financial incentives don't matter, you'll have other
incentives. We can see this in video games where people half-kill themselves
to get some status or armor or whatever. Or how wealthy people take up charity
work or compete on social status points like who holds the better parties or
decorates the home better.

>if you judge by the NEETs of today.

I think its pretty obvious that NEETs are very much in denial, or have no
access to, the mental healthcare they need. We also need to accept that a lot
of people on the autism spectrum will end up as NEET-like and there's probably
nothing to be done about it.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I would probably be a NEET (or barely E-human) if it wasn't for SSRIs, despite
being a (I think) competent programmer who wrote code since being 13 years
old. Medication lets me manage my disdain for what a typical human like me has
to do to earn their bread - mostly pointless, mostly useless (or even socially
harmful, hello ad world) stuff. I'm in tech, but I know some people who are
close to being NEET and are on the more "artsy" side. I suspect some of that
comes from lack of mental strength to handle the reality that you need to suck
it up and waste 1/2 of your day, every day, doing stuff of dubious value, in
order to stay a respectable (and fed) human being.

(In case you think this is just laziness, it's not - look at the hobby craft
world. People can do a lot of hard, difficult work, as long as they have any
say in what they do. It seems that a lot of people crave more _autonomy_ now.)

That's why I'm hopeful about basic income idea - it seems like a way to give
more autonomy to people who do not have the grit to fight for it on the job
market. A way to channel this untapped productivity.

~~~
projektir
Indeed, but I think also the mental strength tends to get sapped when the
thing you're doing is pointless and/or socially harmful. Some people may
delude themselves into thinking that their work is worthwhile even when it
isn't. It's generally easier to live life when you think you're doing the
right thing and everything makes sense.

------
happycube
. o O (Buzzfeed version of "The Secret of NIMH" \- learn about this one new
battery Energizer and Duracell don't want you to know!)

And more seriously, it's sad that people weren't interested in his attempts to
_fix_ it... which sound interesting even if they didn't work either.

