[Joel_Mckay]

Dr. John Calhoun did many experiments with mammalian behavioral shifts with population growth. Some seem upset by his works findings, but it does seem to predict developmental stages of aggression, the "Beautiful Ones", and cognitive deterioration in social mammals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CXj0AGuh4c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOFveSUmh9U

I would recommend getting out for an early walk everyday (especially when you don't feel like it), as spending too much time around news/catastrophe nonsense is bad for your health.

Have a great day, and I just found a surprise ice-cream cookie bar in the freezer I forgot about... hope your day gets that awesome too. =3

[23B1]

Dr. Calhoun's research, if you can call it that, has been roundly debunked due to flawed experimental design, lack of replication, anthropomorphizing, etc.

If you're interested in more up-to-date and relevant research on the sociological impact of the internet, I recommend checking out Sherry Turkle and her associates, or reading some stuff from RAND on psychological war, and then branching out from there. Jaques Ellul is also a more 'liberal arts' way into this field that I'm betting you'd enjoy.

[Joel_Mckay]

"Psychological war" sounds very dramatic, but Ms. Turkle is a sociologist with a specialization in human personality study. Hardly qualified to be an evolutionary neuroscientist, but maybe she is a good therapist.

"Not my monkey... not my circus..." as they say... =)

Indeed, Dr. Calhoun had many peers with better resources to study the phenomena. I agree that his initial interpretation was unexpected, but the later data, several papers, and peer-review is likely of better quality. Note the film clip documents a follow up study done with "Rat Utopia" that covers several of the unanswered questions of whether ecological carrying capacity features.

Personally, when I last reviewed the work I was more interested in shifts in the rates of aggression in pseudo-tournament species. Yet my interests shifted to neuromorphic computing long ago, and unfortunately it is off-topic for this thread.

Have a wonderful day, =)

[23B1]

I enjoyed this exchange.