[Derpdiherp]

"Newer generations born in the now dysfunctional mouse utopia became withdrawn, spending their days grooming obsessively and dedicating their time solely to eating , drinking and sleeping. This generation, for all the emphasis they placed on grooming, would not reproduce. Moreover, these mice were noted to be unintelligent compared to previous generations."

Intelligence has surely risen in our population, obesity is becoming a real problem in successful populations. The "selfie" self absorbed cultural shift we're seeing at the moment is another parallel.

Whilst we're not cannibalising each other or becoming any more aggressive than we have been in the past (although we are still plenty aggressive), I think we are starting to see some of symptoms for lack of a better term that are highlighted above to some degree or another.

Edit - perhaps there are also similarities between the hikikomori NEET lifestyle that's arisen in Japan as well.

This is purely an opinion without any statistics to back it up though, I'd be interested to hear counter arguments.

[projektir]

Getting obese seems like the opposite of excessive grooming. Most of the tendencies you're talking about are not happening in the overpopulated areas. The selfie thing is hugely overblown, a lot of people may be self-absorbed, but what says that's new, and a lot of people are also depressed.

The mice thing is not a utopia, it's an extremely artificial situation that only fits a very banal and shallow definition of "utopia". And that is not and probably never will be a situation humans will find themselves in since it requires a third party to engineer. None of us right now are in a closed environment, and we're definitely not in a no scarcity situation, since people are still worried about holding a job. The NEET thing is, too, related to the whole job thing.

In what way are these situations at all related?

[Derpdiherp]

I think you're reading into the term "utopia" too much. The experiment was a utopia of the body perhaps where there are no biological needs that aren't satisfied with no external forces of nature acting to reduce population aside from the size of the habitat that the rats lived in - as you mention we do not live in a utopia as people do grow hungry and are lacking jobs.

It also was not a utopia because the rats clearly where not happy.

I'd disagree and say that in overpopulated areas there is a higher rate of depression, obesity and psychological problems than in places with lower populations - but I haven't provided numbers there and neither have you - so both of our arguments are anecdotal.

As an aside I was more referencing the hikikomori phenomenon when I mentioned NEET's - whilst they are NEET, they are extreme cases of social withdrawl and other mental problems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori

[hx87]

> I'd disagree and say that in overpopulated areas there is a higher rate of depression, obesity and psychological problems than in places with lower populations

What scope and scale are you looking at though? Because within first world countries such as the USA, psychological problems doesn't correlate much and obesity correlates negatively with population density. The problems you mention correlate much more with social and economic opportunities (or lack thereof) than population density itself.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3481194/

[Derpdiherp]

Thanks very much for the paper, I'm always more than happy to be proved wrong, I'll have a read.

[projektir]

But do words not matter? The word "utopia" has a specific connotation in the minds of many people, and such experiments continue to drive the narrative that humans cannot be happy unless the conditions are bad.

> I'd disagree and say that in overpopulated areas there is a higher rate of depression, obesity and psychological problems than in places with lower populations - but I haven't provided numbers there and neither have you - so both of our arguments are anecdotal.

I'm honestly not sure what you are referring to. Obesity is much higher in the US, by a wide margin, than, say, India, and India is definitely much more populated. I don't know if I really need to provide numbers for that.

The NEET issue could easily have been caused by bleak job prospects.

My point is, the rat experiment and the current situation don't seem to be even remotely related. Our population growth is not the same, and our population growth is very uneven. We have external forces acting to limit how people live still. There are just so many variables not accounted for that trying to find any connections is more dangerous than it is helpful.

[Derpdiherp]

It's an interesting point about India, but I'd say there is much more of a focus on getting enough food to survive there than in overpopulated first world cities - which is closer to the subject matter.

By no means do I think the situation we are in are comparable - nature does play a role for us unlike in the experiment and there are hardships for some.

But I think examining extreme overpopulation and it's effects on individuals is important - and is relative to a lesser degree to problems we have the potential to face, and may be facing in diluted forms in certain areas. Maybe not as much today, but who knows where we could be tomorrow.

The other glaring difference is the difference in behaviour between people and rodents - you can't draw conclusions and act upon them, but you can at least study the connections.

I wouldn't call that dangerous at all, I'd say it was dangerous to ignore.