There is a video going around about a Mouse Utopia1 and its warning for humanity. Don’t let it bring you down. Does this look like a utopia to you?
It looks more like a dungeon to me. This study was done around the same time as the initial rat addiction studies. Remember those, where they isolated rats2 and gave them no stimulus other than a bottle of heroin or cocaine water and then they watched as the poor lonely rats killed themselves with avid chemical consumption?
These studies were then used to convince people that humans would do the same with drugs in any environment. As should be no surprise to anyone, those studies were completely falsified by the Rat Park Study3, wherein rats were also given non-narcotic based options of activity and chose to not kill themselves with the funny water.
This Mouse Utopia study only proved that when you overcrowd mice in a situation where they have-
No normal activity other than living atop one another.
No normal survival requirements like hunting, finding water and shelter, etc.
No natural light or fresh air.
No privacy or ability to exit a small confining space.
They eventually lose both the will to breed and the will to live. The scientists could have run the same experiment with 4 pandas and the results would have been the same. Any species, really. There is no analog in this study that works for any part of human society, outside of prison.
But we do have a problem.
Or rather, we had a problem. The past tense will make sense a little further down the page.
With the arrival of smartphones and social media, we accidentally conducted the largest psychological experiment in human history, on children. For the first time, we created a world in which no mistake, no lapse in judgment, no drunken rant, awkward phase, or catastrophic haircut could ever fully die. Every stupid thing became permanent. Every moment of immaturity became searchable.
Humans are built to do stupid things. Young humans energetically specialize in it. It’s how learning works. Trial. Error. Shame. Growth. All natural parts of the sequence of growing up, except we quietly did away with the “forgetting” and “getting over it” parts.
Instead, we archived it.
We built an environment where adolescence became a global public performance. Youth’s natural disasters were preserved in high definition and distributed universally, forever. And then we acted surprised when anxiety, depression, social paralysis, pathological introversion, narcissistic overreaction, and suicidal / homicidal ideation all skyrocketed.
The fix.
We need to update our rules for recording and broadcasting people without their consent, borrowing from older photographic standards. Something akin to a universal, mandatory Model Release for reality itself. If you want to film someone and publish it to the public internet, they should have to explicitly agree.
We also need laws that give people absolute rights to their own likeness: from birth, in perpetuity, across every corner of the universe, timeline, simulation, and poorly ventilated server room. Like a standard entertainment industry contract takes away from a person, but in reverse. It’s your face. You should get to decide who wears it, where it goes, and which synthetic nightmares it’s forced to star in.
Because the alternative is simple: every human life becomes a semi-fictional documentary, no one consented to be in, and no one can ever escape.
Of course, this argument is already obsolete.
2022 was the last year in human history when photos and videos had any remaining relationship with truth. Now all it takes is one vindictive ex, a few innocent selfies, and some literal pocket change to generate nearly flawless footage of you doing things you would never do, saying things you would never say, and becoming someone you have never been. Online reality has become a suggestion, easily ignored by both the wise and the rest of us.
From here on out, video evidence means exactly nothing. If a clip surfaces of you committing some unspeakable act, the correct response isn’t denial. It’s a tired nod and the words, “Sure. Why not? Put it on the pile.”
Generation Z took this technological miracle / psychosocial psychosexual collapse right to the face, mid-development. They carry the scars and for that, we all owe them a huge apology.
Generation Alpha will be completely inoculated against this, because they will never know a world where seeing meant believing. Their default assumption will be that nothing is real, no one is innocent, and everything is editable. Quite possibly the most accurate worldview in history.
There you have it-
A terminal societal disease, cured by AI. Side effects may include temporary epistemological ruin, intermittent acute and chronic loss of trust, and a gentle, but growing sense of existential fatigue.
Look on the bright side, at least the fight scenes are getting really good.
Let's Talk About AI Video Production
I keep seeing these quick clips of AI video generation and yes, they look impressive. Tom Cruise fighting Brad Pitt:
Bravo! Nice description