What Calhoun's mouse utopia collapse teaches us about a post-scarcity AGI society
neochrome · reddit · 2026-11-03
The poster revisits John Calhoun's 1960s mouse "utopia" experiments: with unlimited resources, the populations collapsed — females isolated like hermits, while males groomed all day (Calhoun's "beautiful ones") with zero interest in courting or social life. The question for the AGI era: if effort is no longer required even for basics, will humans drift into isolation, while over-competition for status creates its own detached groups? Keeping that balance may be the key lesson for a post-scarcity singularity.
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