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Comment by zyxley | Hacker News Reader

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

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

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.

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.

I wouldn't say "strife" but perhaps "challenges". I think things like a wander-year, self-initiated long-term projects, like starting a business, writing a program, building something architecturally, making a short film, etc.

There's plenty of "strife" in day to day life, some other jerks on the road, to your co-workers, to your friends and family. Or just working on your long term goals and dreams in the face of the demands of every day life.

I don't think human conflict or violence is necessary for flourishing.

There are examples of great creative people who had come from backgrounds of violence or abuse, but I don't think that means much. If they were exposed to more violence, would they have been even more genius? What is the right amount of violence to expose people to to have genius blossom?

I think there's also something patronizing in promoting the inflictment of violence on beings to make geniuses out of them. Would the promoter like the same treatment?

Kind of like the human who makes the rat park and complains the rats are not happy?

Perhaps we will be happy in environments we choose to make for ourselves, not some that others have arbitrarily decided we should be happy in. I would say there's something inherently corrupt in an environment you do not control.

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

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...

That's an excellent article!

Thanks so much!

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.

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.

>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?

this is why we have "strife" of science and exploration, and this is why need to go to Mars - to avoid civilization implosion into always connected-status-updated one big Palantirized Facebook graph of well-fed humans. The key choice of our civilization today - between Thiel and Musk.

Makes me think of theories of allergies and runaway immune responses attacking the body because there hasn't been enough exposure to 'stuff to attack'.

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

At least one human based model of "what rodents need" is that. Perhaps it was more an experiment on crowding than utopian needs being met.

Edit: one, not our

This is untrue for rats: they are very curious, intelligent creatures and need intellectual "stimulation" such as areas to explore, toys to play with, etc.

What else is there?

The initial population seemed to have plenty of space though. Eventually any growing population will run into a space limitation. It just happens sooner the smaller the space is.

Humans seem to breed a lot less in more developed countries, so I think that conclusion is questionable. I don't think it would be all that hard to freeze population growth in developed places.

That's the point

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