this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2025
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Hypothetically, that is.

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[–] Smokeydope@lemmy.world 16 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (4 children)

The mouse utopia experiment but on humans. Ive always seen a subset of people who bemoan having to work or develop specialized skills to contribute to society. They want everything provided for them so their whole life can be leasure and comfort. A lot of socialism and communism selling points tend to be about having social services and things provided to you.

I'm interested to see the long term affects of people in a society where EVERYTHING is provided for you all the time. Every survival concern, sexual pleasure, every base urge, every whim and desire. For decades and decades and decades. Would it be a genuine good for society or would it be a monkeys paw situation?

Ive always hypothesized that any human society that attempts this will quickly erode into something similar to the mouse utopia.

Without any environmental pressures or meaningful challenges to overcome a large portion of the population without strong internal drives will become lethally/suicidally lazy, apathetic, and narcicistic

I suspect theres a large amount of people who simply have zero internal drives to apply themselves to doing a thing unlesd they have to. without the pressure of survival in either a physical or economic way they would simply sit on their ass, jerk off, play games, and maybe groom themselves, for decades until they die. Merit and overcoming challenge are important aspects of drive and dopamine generation. You deprive a person of those things they become lethargic. If that sentiment proves itself true it will be a hard pill to swallow for a lot of ideologies.

Unethical questions:

Statistically speaking, how many people would escelate their wants to socially taboo depravities? How quickly?

How long on average would it take for pleasure to become less meaningful in the face of instant gratification? Is there a logarithmic function that charts this?

How many people on average decide to begin self harm out to seek novel sensations? How long until onset?

How many people choose to live out a full life vs taking the placebo cyanide capsule and being removed from experiment? What would their reasonings be?

[–] nylo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 5 days ago

the issue that caused societal collapse in the ~~mouse utopia~~ Behavioral Sink was overpopulation, not that they had their needs met comfortably lol

for a more accurate comparison look at Rat Park Experiment.

TL;DR: rats in solitary confined standard lab testing cages will consume lots of morphine laced water available as an alternative to normal water, rats in a spacious cage with other rats of both sexes and entertainment are not very interested in the morphine laced water. in fact they drank more of the laced water when naloxone, a drug that negates the effects of opioids, was added to it. the implication being that the rats were more interested in sweet water than morphine in good social conditions

[–] stelelor@lemmy.ca 9 points 5 days ago

I think we see aspects of this in the behaviour of the rich and ultra-rich (where "screw the rules I have money" applies). It's pedophilia all the way down.

[–] brrt@lemm.ee 3 points 5 days ago

I'm in that Foto and I don't like it!

Would it be space limited like the mousetopia too? If not you could have everything you desire and just go hiking for the Dopamin would be my dream lol

[–] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 days ago

I'm curious if it's even possible to satisfy every whim of a human. Do they get any access to human culture? If not, it would be like cloned birds failing to migrate.