Why is it that right-wingers think the NIMH Rat Utopia experiments are some sort of mark against communism?
To my knowledge, Rat Utopia was two experiments with different cage setups, but the same premise. Let rats breed inside a cage with all the food and water they could want and see what happens. This conflicts somewhat with rat behavior as male rats who cannot find a social niche in their colonies usually leave it for greener pastures. Despite getting everything they could ever need, the rats continued to set up the old picking orders with dominant males setting up big territories while the other males were crowded into what could be described as rat slums. As more rats were pushed into these rat slums, including the young of the dominant males, the rat colony began to degenerate until it went into a full-on death spiral.
I have no clue why right-wingers think this supports their politics and destroys communism. Can anyone explain this to me?
The Rat Utopia experiments were more about the effects of constant population growth in a Limited space
Levi James
Rat communism doesn't work, it's simply rodent nature.
Hunter Nguyen
Here is your problem.
Austin Cooper
Because right-wingers are misanthropes and they see the rat experiment as proof that conflict, need and suffering are necessary for society to function.
Sebastian Kelly
this is how it ends if its not by plague or fire. stare into your future humans. stare into oblivion obliviously.
because it's proof that post scarcity in so much as it is actually even possible does not lead to a utopia
search your feelings you know it to be true
Brandon Rivera
If anything, it showed that the inability to change social organization to meet new material circumstances can lead to catastrophic consequences that don't even need to be.
Anthony Cruz
basically this, theres enough space for our collective autism anyway.
Lincoln Sullivan
Its an example of the dangers of over crowding. A microcosm of what happens to humans in urban areas
Colton Torres
This, actually.
The main fault in using this experiment as an allegory for socialism or a hypothetical post-scarcity economy is that it relies on an understanding of human society as an essentially static and at the same time "natural" structure, which can therefore be connoted to the "society" of a rat. But that understanding is entirely unscientific. Human political-economies, or "societies" do change, often and in radical fashion. The most fundamental economic structure, that of an extractor who reaps surplus and the laborer who has his surplus taken away, is morphed by changing material conditions (such as the ascendance of a "bourgeois" middle class over the aristocracy and the liberation of serf peasants who were made fluid expendable labor in the bourgeois factories) and sometimes ceases to exist entirely (as is the case in many hunter-gatherer or agrarian tribal communities and in historical independent peasant communes, or, based on what we know, the bulk of human social groups for tens of thousands of years prior to the emergence of civilization). The historical idealist refuses to acknowledge that the economic and political modes of these societies are entirely different. The materialist recognizes that "human nature", whatever it is comprised of, has no special baring on the development of civilization, in comparison to material conditions.
Wyatt Evans
Ostensibly, but in reality the Rat Utopia didn’t function at all like a human society of any kind.
It happened the exact same except our cities haven't collapsed yet
Benjamin Lopez
Literally nothing is the same, but I’ll be happy for you to tell me how humans refuse to eat by themselves and murder babies to fuck their mom.
Matthew Phillips
It's an argument against Neo-liberal capitalist welfare-states, which they think is communism/socialism.
Charles Parker
its exactly the same the more densly populated our cities become the more disgusting and vile the people in them are.
Anthony King
right wingers are a rat plague as usual, projection
Alexander Hughes
urbanites are the rat plague
James Nelson
well said
Logan Russell
This. It's more useful as an argument for population control than against communism. Repeat the same experiment while using birth control to limit the rat population and it would work just fine.
Cooper Walker
>this case study of a different species in a weirdly specific scenario foretells the future of our civilization quasi-schizophrenic soothsaying tbhfam
Jaxson Myers
I’ll repeat this request, show me where humans refuse to eat alone and murder do/or eat babies to fuck their mother.
Michael Mitchell
It wouldn’t. The inherent problem was the way rat colonies function or more precisely don’t function in a cage.
Asher Nelson
I really don't understand why is it called "utopia" The mice were forced to live into an enclosed space, with no stimulation of any kind. Unless your definition of utopia is living in prison, it was not a utopia.
It is excusable for the guy that made the experiment, since at the time animal intelligence was still an undeveloped field, but not for thos coming after them.
Elijah Taylor
So if you find yourself discussing Dr Calhoun's study here's a few good points:
The study is old and very flawed: -It did not have a control group -The genetic diversity of the mice population was not considered and so might have influenced the results (inbreeding issues) -There was a complete lack of recreational tools. The study was made 50 years ago and animal intelligence was still a pretty young concept. Today we know that mammalians (and avians and others) need entertainment to be healthy, on top of food and shelter -We also know now that animals are negatively impacted by prolongued containment. Another psychological trait that was not taken care of in the study. In fact we can see similar behaviours in animal industrial farms. Nothing to do with "overpopulation" in terms of absolute population numbers, but rather restricted living conditions.
Also while there are similarities with how human societies behave, there are no studies that could prove overpopulation is actually detrimental to human psychology.
Jonathan Freedman also studied the phenomenon of overpopulation and he came to the conclusion that what really impacts humans is not overpopulation per se but the quality of human interactions. In essence lack of privacy and uncontrolled social interactions in a competitive enviroment. In other words little space for personal growth and constant, forced interactions with society, in particular segments with which the individual is in competition.
Somewhat similarly, the actual conclusion of Calhoun is that "mouse utopia" like phenomena would appear in a society that fails to properly handle generational changes. For example in societies where the older generations live longer than usual and the population growth is still within normal limit. In this case the issue of overpopulation is not so much in terms of "too many humans" or "too many/too few resources" or even "too little physical space", but rather in terms of social space for personal advancement and satisfaction. In other words, the younger generation is unable to apply itself in a way that finds satisfactory and the older generation is unable/unwilling to give space.
Calhoun's idea is that society would fall into a sort of catch 22: newer generations do not have the occasion to properly develop their emotional intelligence because of the restricted possibilities no longer offered by society; Consequence of this is they struggle to comprehend and replicate complex social interactions that further restricts their possibilities to find proper social roles and so fulfilling lives. At the same time society needs to become more complex to handle the population increase, both in economical and social terms, putting further strain on the social development of the youth.
From this perspective, it does have some value for us.
And the evidence for that happening in the walled city is?
Josiah Mitchell
There's none. There are many densely populated urban centers now and it turns out it doesn't drive people insane like it does the rats. A lot of people want to salvage something from the rat experiment because empirically humans don't act like the rats. Frankly I don't think there is anything to save. Turns out people just don't socialize like rats. That's an absurd thing to think from the beginning! There are serious limitations to using model animals in simple medical studies. How can the use of model animals be possibly justified in human psychology studies? Humans barely even socialize like our nearest animal cousins.
Anthony Flores
The "rat" part of this study is more important than the cage or cageless part. The study can tell us something about the way many rats can live together (as they do so in an interesting way, are they a "herd"?). It doesn't tell us about humans.
Nathan Rogers
The conclusion of the experiment was that population density/crowding had a negative effect on behaviour/socialisation, even when all other needs were met (food, water, etc), not "humans will act exactly like rats when there's 2,000 of them in a small space".
>heh, dumb right-wingers don't even know that humans and rats aren't even in the same genus, fucking morans
See and The experiment was so flawed in the first place that it doesn't even have anything to teach us about rats
Hudson Barnes
The experiment wasn't even finished.
Calhoun wanted to design a mouse utopia that could sustain itself through central planning, but the NIMH project was shut down.
Joshua Gutierrez
RAT UTOPIA IS A RED PILLED EPIC DEBUNKING OF THE BENEFITS OF WORKERS OWNING THEIR OWN MEANS OF PRODUCTION TO STOP THE DECLINING NEOLIBERAL HELL WORLD WE LIVE IN!!!
GET TOLD BY LOGICS, FACTS, AND REASON YOU IDIOT WHO UNDERSTANDS ITS IMPORTANT FOR PEOPLE TO NOT STARVE TO DEATH AND LIVE IN SQUALER AS CAPITALISM CONTRADICTS ITSELF AND DECAYS. RAT UTOPIA. 1984. VENEZUALA. ANIMAL FARM!
Yes you have to be a complete brainlet to think that the conclusion of the Rat Utopia experiment was "communism will make us literally cannibalise our children" - but this thread is the first time I've ever actually seen this argument being made, since most other places that mention it point out the social role argument made in
Henry Murphy
But the circumstances of the behavioral sink were due to very specific rat behaviors.
Because the rat utopia shows how a post-scarcity society leads to collapse. Without any need for struggle the rats became vain, violent, and stopped reproducing. Considering how Communism promises a post-scarcity environment there is a concern that it would lead to this in humanity.
Adam Cook
read the thread before posting next time
Levi Myers
I just tried that it didn't help. One or two people made the same point I did while the rest couched non-observations in smart sounding word salad. I'm sorry that I disagreed with you, but reading stupid shit doesn't make me agree with it.
Easton Morales
...
Henry Lopez
Big words that don't lead anywhere do. I don't mind reading, I just don't like reading boring horseshit that has nothing to do with reality. The Fate of Empires by Sir John Glubb really explains the innate need for conflict for growth and how comfort leads to decline. I'll give you a Rated PG Parental Guidance because it doesn't use dialectical analysis, but only historical.
Conjecture and confirmation bias =/= "comparative history"
Ryan Cox
see
Aaron Rivera
You can keep saying you're smart over and over but it doesn't change the fact that you haven't addressed any of these issues despite any one of them by itself making your argument moot. All of this was spelled out succinctly in the thread, if you think a couple paragraphs of 4th grade level reading are too hard to understand I suggest you just leave now.
The Rat Utopia doesn't debunk Communism with its effects. Anyone who thinks that is a brainlet. The Rat Utopia debunks Communism with its cause. Sure it shows that abundance is harmful, but even more important is that it shows abundance can only exist in artificial situations. This is a much more serious theoretical problem for Marxian theoreticians than anything downstream. By creating a Rat Utopia in a laboratory that collapsed he proved that the Utopia could only exist in a laboratory.
The only way to truly eliminate suffering is through transhumanism. Suffering is a mechanism created by evolution to increase the chance of you passing on your genes, but evolution is imperfect, and often creates bad designs. The reason why suffering exists is the same reason why we evolved to have backwards retinas. Suffering is ultimately caused by chemical reactions in the brain, and it might one day be possible to re-engineer the brain to eliminate all forms of suffering.
The problem with transhumanism is that it devalues understudied aspects of the human body, there is so much we don't know or can't know in a spiritual sense and Gnostic (which is what your belief sounds similar to) and Christians would agree on this.
Regardless be aware how transhumanism will be used as yet another manufactured civil/political identity to further divide humanity.
This isn't a normal right-wing talking point, people use it to criticize large cities and cosmopolitanism
How is that a counter argument to anything?
Jaxon Hernandez
Wrong. The rat-utopia wasnt a post-scarecity society, since physical space was very limited. While there was enought food and water, there wasnt enought space.
Jaxon Russell
...
Julian Rivera
In part it has to do with their deeply seated scientific illiteracy and affinity for naturalist fallacies.
Aaron Morales
This isn't a common rebuttal against communism outside of certain incel/MGTOW circles who perceive the neoliberal status quo to be "communism". MGTOWs have a fascination with this experiment because of the emergence of the "beautiful ones" who they see themselves as. That said, as interesting as the experiment is, the experimental methods and assumptions regarding animal intelligence are outdated and thus can't really be applied to human society. It is similar in this sense to old "race realist" science that continues to be cited by fashies to this day.
I wouldn't bother arguing with Travis Bickle here. He seems like he's fresh off the boat from Zig Forums
Adam Moore
You can kill yourself to eliminate all suffering, but it would also eliminate all happiness.
Dominic King
this is a retarded argument by metaphor. in what way is rat society even remotely comparable to human society?
Brayden Cox
barely
Isaiah Jones
The popular conception of communism has nothing to do with political theory of any kind, even right wing theory. It's just vaguely associated with imagery of dystopia and suffering.
Eli Gomez
It doesn't destroy communism. It's a mark against Capitalism, with its riches, excesses, abundance, and pleasures in leisure. "Where there is no vision the people perish." Communism never runs such a risk, as you sagely point out.
Josiah James
I was referring to the video.
Ryan Jenkins
Yeah as a fascist I don't view the NIMH experiment as something to do with ideology It is an interesting view into the effects of overpopulation and automation something cosmopolitan shitholes of the world are currently experiencing or phasing towards I also find it interesting that the deviant sexual behaviors and autistic behaviors that developed in the rodents are mirrored in our society Without some catastrophe of magnanimous proportions I see the NIMH experiment as the end goal of cosmopolitan culture
Hudson Edwards
Search your feelings? Rad.
However, people just have like 1-3 kids when they reach post scarcity. Read some fucking demographics, this is why we need to fix material conditions of women in the third world, so they don't need to have 42 kids to survive when they get older.
Marx and fucking Malthus was beefing about this kind of shit, it has already been settled. Marx got it as usual, and Malthus is basically just some random cuck they mention once in sociology 101.
Extrapolating the results of the experiment to humans is stupid because of two reasons
a) Humans can regulate themselves. Rats in their situation had no choice but to feed and breed indefinitely, but if humans were faced with similar conditions of material abundance in a limited space we could easily enforce an one-child policy and regulate consumption, invent some technological solutions etc. Right-wingers ignore this because communism = liberal hedonist anarchy where nothing can get done strawman.
b) Humans have intellectual and spiritual needs and activities. As was pointed out above, even rats need toys to stimulate their brains, which weren't provided in the experiment and if they were, the results would probably be very different. Meanwhile humans can pretty much indefinitely occupy themselves with acts of thinking and creation. Under post-scarcity we'd just engage in arts and work-play for its own sake.
Ye this is about as dumb as when they gave monkeys mdma and put them in cages in the 90s and the concluded that yeah the molly fucked the brain of the monkey. It sure as hell wasn't molly + isolation. where as the other monkey who didn't get shit was just a little bit depressed.
Aiden Evans
It's actually pro-communism in a way because the solution was to integrate the rodents with technology. Everyone seems to conveniently forget this crucial detail.
Zachary Hughes
All I know for sure, is that no matter the governing system.
There will always be those who claim something else works better.
Humanity is retarded.
Hazelnut is good. Coffee is great. Pineapple on pizza is only good in small pieces with good balance. Guns are fun. Memes are enjoyable. Elon Musk sent a fucking car to Mars. Chillins are starving. Crisp paper is always nice. Peeling plastic off new electronics is orgasmic. Carl Sagan was pretty neat.
How do scientists defend the jump from animal behavior to human behavior?
Isaiah Ramirez
scientists don't, only boomers on the internet who want to own the libs do
Nathan Ross
And that's why we should play EDM for the monkeys so they can rave and fuck while they're rolling
Justin Ward
You're right, let's all not believe in anything (except the satus quo) and die homeless needing insulin. But at least you got hazenut coffee and think Elon Musk sent something to Mars.
Christopher Stewart
The rat utopia is like right-wing marxism, a horoscope.
The most glaring problem with the pol/r9k line of reasoning on the rat utopia is that there isn't even a correlation with humans living in high density urban environments. If high-density living changes men into effeminate faggots that don't reproduce, then this effect should be the strongest in the worlds highest density cities: Cairo, Lagos, Mumbai, Karachi.. all places were people still breed like rats, in contrast to many low density, rural areas where birth rates are below replacement.
Henry Long
Rural areas are below replacement because people migrate to urban areas. Very little is retained.
Anthony Bailey
That doesn't account for birth rates.
Jordan Lee
I'd call deviant sexual behavior in lower order animals that don't usually engage in recreational sex anything that's not for the purposes of reproduction Since the NIMH mice exhibited asexual and homosexual behaviors on a large scale id call it deviant behavior
Carson Powell
Haven't these rats read marx? All behavior is socially defined, all they'd have to do is start a pro breeding reeducation camp
I think he's trying to imply that humans wouldn't suffer from as adverse of effects as the mice did.
Just because eating paint is bad for mice doesn't mean it's bad for people dumb dumb! Obviously mice aren't going to be a 1 to 1 analog for people, but they're close enough that we can get the idea that ultra high population density is bad.
Lucas Garcia
So do the experiment again. Because the answer of "Societies change therefore this experiment can be ignored REEE."
No, fuck off,i want this proven. Figure out a way to adjust the experiment, and do it again. If the all the mice die, AGAIN… Then the first experiment was right.
But before you do, Ill quote will smith of all people:
"Somehow, I told you so, just doesn't quite say it."
Robert Jenkins
Fellow NutSac here, you're wrong. Rats are stupid and incapable of dividing resources intelligently. Us humans can utilize collectivism and ration things like land, food, healthcare. "Individualism" is a lie created by the 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧bourgeoisie🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧 to divide the goy- I mean proletariat. A few goyish billionaires like koch and gates are in on this too. Also right libertarianism is a lumpenprole ideology that makes good family men embrace laissez faire and ultimately fucks them over too.
