Fascinating, it got me to thinking (careful now:)
Rats are a prolific and durable species in nature. Why did the rats in the box "with all needs met" become extinct? First of all, who says all needs were met? The scientists conducting the study? "Models under test" are approximations of reality based on best guesses as to what reality is. Since we don't know where the boundaries of reality end (do they end?), we can't even calculate the degree of compression in any model under test. This problem goes mostly unrecognized (god is dead, science is the new religion), and is one of the core reasons modern man is intractably hubristic. Hunter gatherers weren't hubristic, they lived in fear of the gods. But now god is dead. What was missing in the rat box was an unbounded ecosystem. Unbounded means unknown, it cannot be modeled.
What are the implications for post industrial man? Have we effectively put ourselves in a bounded box? If so is the only hope of our species survival an escape to Mars? An escape to an infinitely smaller ecology even compared to our very damaged ecology? Oh, but that's OK, we'll just engineer a new ecology, and it will be better because we will be in control of it.
If we have put ourselves in a bounded box, are the walls constructed of the hubristic assumption all things are knowable?
Perhaps we are focused on the wrong things. Insects and sharks are a good example of this problem, a "frame of apprehension" problem, or how we are incapable of seeing the bigger picture. For example, we know grass grows, but we cannot just sit down and watch it grow. The real time experience of watching grass grow is beyond the frame of apprehension.
Back to sharks and insects. How many humans die on average in a year from insect bites? 600,000. How many die in an average year from shark attacks? 10. But when there is a single shark attack we close beaches, put patrol boats in the water, discuss what has to be done to stay safe, and put nets in the water to protect swimmers. Meanwhile we are relatively nonplussed by the many orders of magnitude greater likelihood of death by insect. Call the exterminator, that will fix it. Be careful hiking in the woods. If we didn't do either of those things would the average yearly death rate from insect bites even double?
Bounded box studies have an inherent hubristic stupidity built into them, the box walls themselves are the metaphors of that hubristic stupidity. But we can't see this, it is beyond the frame of apprehension.
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