Universe 25: Are We Building Our Own Behavioral Sink?

TL;DR

The Universe 25 experiment showed that mice in a perfect utopia with unlimited resources eventually went extinct. With AI promising abundance and UBI discussions growing, I wonder if we're building our own behavioral sink. But humans have survived four ice ages by staying together through hard times, so maybe we'll figure this out too.

In 1968, ethologist John B. Calhoun created a mouse paradise. Unlimited food. Unlimited water. No predators. No disease. Perfect temperature. He called it Universe 25. Every mouse that lived there eventually died. Not from starvation or sickness. They died because they stopped being mice.

If you want the full academic breakdown, there's a detailed research paper from LSE that covers Calhoun's work.

What Happened in Universe 25

Calhoun ran this experiment multiple times. 25 times, actually. The result was always the same.

The colony started with 8 mice. Population exploded at first. By day 315, they hit 620 mice. Everything looked great. Then things got weird. Males stopped defending territory. Females became aggressive and neglected their young. Some mice became what Calhoun called "the beautiful ones," males who did nothing but eat, sleep, and groom themselves. They had no interest in mating, fighting, or any social behavior.

By day 560, the population peaked at 2,200. Then it crashed. The last birth was around day 600. After that, the mice just existed until they all died. Calhoun called this the "behavioral sink," the point where social structure breaks down completely.

The Uncomfortable Parallel

I keep thinking about this experiment when I read about AI and automation. We're building systems that could provide abundance. Food production is becoming more efficient. AI could automate most jobs. Discussions about Universal Basic Income are everywhere. Some version of utopia seems possible.

But the mice had utopia. They had everything they needed to survive. What they lost was purpose. They lost struggle. They lost the social structures that formed through competition and cooperation.

We've Been Through Hard Times Before

Here's what gives me some hope. Humans aren't mice. We've survived things that should have killed us.

Modern humans have lived through at least four major ice ages during the Pleistocene epoch. The last one ended about 11,700 years ago. During these periods, average global temperatures dropped by 4-7 degrees Celsius. Sea levels fell by over 100 meters. Ice sheets covered much of North America and Europe. The human population may have dropped to as few as 10,000 individuals at one point.

For roughly 2.5 million years, our ancestors lived in harsh, unforgiving conditions. Food was scarce. Predators were real. Survival was never guaranteed. And yet here we are, 8 billion strong.

We didn't survive by having everything handed to us. We survived by working together. By solving problems. By adapting to impossible situations.

The Question I Can't Answer

Are we different enough from those mice to avoid their fate? Maybe the struggle is what made us human. Maybe taking away all challenges will break something fundamental in us.

Or maybe we're smarter than mice. Maybe we can create purpose even when survival isn't at stake. Maybe art, science, exploration, and connection can fill the void that abundant resources might create.

I honestly don't know the answer.

What I do know is that every time things got easy for those mice, they fell apart. And every time things got hard for humans, we pulled together and survived.

We're heading toward abundance. AI is coming whether we're ready or not. UBI might become necessary when automation takes enough jobs. The utopian future that killed those mice might be our future too.

The question is whether we can be the first species to have everything and still want something.

Thoughts? Hit me up at [email protected]