I found an old textbook on my sheLf. Something "prompted" me to take it out and put it on the tabLe. I didn't know why I was Moved to do that—until now. But wow, what a connection!
Before you get too excited about that future where we can do and have whatever we want instead of what we need, you should look into the "mouse utopia" experiments.
They wanted to study the effects of overpopulation. They created a habitat designed for 3000 mice. Remember that: 3000 represented "full" population.
They started with 8 breeding pairs, and let them go. Habitat, with nesting areas & runs & all; all the food & clean water they needed; population exploded as expected, and yet --
In every iteration (it was repeated several times) the population peaked at ~2200, well short of "full" population. And it was a peak, not a plateau. The population crashed and, again in every iteration, in about 12 generations *died out to the last mouse*.
The experiments never achieved full population, let alone overpopulation, and the colonies died out.
One other thing to note: population collapse came accompanied by weird behavior. Some mice became wildly aggressive; some became recluses that would not go out until the other mice slept; some areas did become extremely crowded while other areas were never used at all; they mated less and less frequently, and mothers often just walked away from their litters; some groomed themselves obsessively but never sought mates.
Two things strike me about the experiments:
1) the complete absence of any other life: not so much as an ant or a cockroach; not a blade of grass;
and
2) they had everything they needed, on demand.
We're seeing population start to collapse now (at least, Elon Musk is worried about it). And we're seeing a dramatic rise in seriously weird behavior (have you seen some of the selfie meltdowns people post on TikTok?)
quite familiar with that experiment. Signs of this already appear in some pockets of the world. Thus the need for the ability of humans to create self sufficient, standalone communities so that those humans who are immune to that self destructive energy can thrive.
We can also think about it, as mice could not, and choose differently. But we have to get our forebrains engaged & in control before our hindbrains take over. Which it sounds like you’re doing!
A related story: I once heard Jerry Harvey (_The Road to Abilene_) speak; he told of a colleague, in the same field of business psychiatry, who worked with a company with an unusual distribution of “competent workers”: instead of a classic bell curve, 95% were very high achievers, very productive — and 5% were often worse than useless.
Picture a line from 0-100, representing “how productive” someone was, with a tiny bell curve centered on "5” and a large, very sharp one centered on “95”.
They identified the 5% and fired them.
And the whole company promptly shifted into a standard bell curve, but NOT centered on 95; the centroid shifted down to 50!
The company, under Harvey’s colleague’s advice, hired some idiots — and productivity shot back up to centered-on-95 (with another little bump at 5).
Maybe we need our idiots, even our criminals. We can’t let them run amok, of course; I suspect the very process of dealing with them is somehow needful (and the nature of that process might be almost irrelevant).
(There’s a name for that 5/95 kind of distribution, but I can’t remember what.)
Eric, you’re stirring up memories—some I had forgotten, and others I might not have even realized were there at the time. Linear Algebra is completely beyond me. Growing up and going to school in Germany, I never even had advanced Algebra.
But setting Linear Algebra aside, one thing that stands out—and always has—is your passion for math and science. I remember back when you were a senior in high school in Indianapolis. Your math teacher walked out of the classroom one day, clearly frustrated—I can’t recall exactly why. But with a Calculus test looming the next day, and the class suddenly without a teacher, you stepped up. You went to the blackboard and took over.
Even then, your teaching skills were unmistakable. You prepared your classmates for the test, and I remember being so impressed and proud. It was clear you had a gift.
I loved Linear Algebra and Group Theory (mid 1970s for me). While I couldn't see the applications then, it didn't take long as I watched computer programs evolve until office then home computers become the norm. Thanks for the inspiration to pull out my Linear Algebra book which has survived 50 years of moves and occasional purges.
My favorite math course was differential equations. I got lot mileage from it. I signed up for linear algebra but soon dropped because at the time I didn’t how I could use it, nor did I have a proof with the foresight to explain it. Thanks for your insights here.
Like many courses in high school and college, sometimes it comes down to the skill of the teacher. I was fortunate to have been accepted to Rose Hulman in the mid 80's, because their faculty did not focus on research, only on teaching--and they had some of the best educators in engineering then. Linear Algebra might have been a bore, if not for Lautzenheiser.
Before you get too excited about that future where we can do and have whatever we want instead of what we need, you should look into the "mouse utopia" experiments.
They wanted to study the effects of overpopulation. They created a habitat designed for 3000 mice. Remember that: 3000 represented "full" population.
They started with 8 breeding pairs, and let them go. Habitat, with nesting areas & runs & all; all the food & clean water they needed; population exploded as expected, and yet --
In every iteration (it was repeated several times) the population peaked at ~2200, well short of "full" population. And it was a peak, not a plateau. The population crashed and, again in every iteration, in about 12 generations *died out to the last mouse*.
The experiments never achieved full population, let alone overpopulation, and the colonies died out.
One other thing to note: population collapse came accompanied by weird behavior. Some mice became wildly aggressive; some became recluses that would not go out until the other mice slept; some areas did become extremely crowded while other areas were never used at all; they mated less and less frequently, and mothers often just walked away from their litters; some groomed themselves obsessively but never sought mates.
Two things strike me about the experiments:
1) the complete absence of any other life: not so much as an ant or a cockroach; not a blade of grass;
and
2) they had everything they needed, on demand.
We're seeing population start to collapse now (at least, Elon Musk is worried about it). And we're seeing a dramatic rise in seriously weird behavior (have you seen some of the selfie meltdowns people post on TikTok?)
Be careful what you wish for.
quite familiar with that experiment. Signs of this already appear in some pockets of the world. Thus the need for the ability of humans to create self sufficient, standalone communities so that those humans who are immune to that self destructive energy can thrive.
We can also think about it, as mice could not, and choose differently. But we have to get our forebrains engaged & in control before our hindbrains take over. Which it sounds like you’re doing!
A related story: I once heard Jerry Harvey (_The Road to Abilene_) speak; he told of a colleague, in the same field of business psychiatry, who worked with a company with an unusual distribution of “competent workers”: instead of a classic bell curve, 95% were very high achievers, very productive — and 5% were often worse than useless.
Picture a line from 0-100, representing “how productive” someone was, with a tiny bell curve centered on "5” and a large, very sharp one centered on “95”.
They identified the 5% and fired them.
And the whole company promptly shifted into a standard bell curve, but NOT centered on 95; the centroid shifted down to 50!
The company, under Harvey’s colleague’s advice, hired some idiots — and productivity shot back up to centered-on-95 (with another little bump at 5).
Maybe we need our idiots, even our criminals. We can’t let them run amok, of course; I suspect the very process of dealing with them is somehow needful (and the nature of that process might be almost irrelevant).
(There’s a name for that 5/95 kind of distribution, but I can’t remember what.)
Great post.
Eric,
You are on to something about the real purpose and the uses AI is about to be put to. I believe you have nailed it.
In the beginning was the Word.
By the bye, you have once again explained a complex concept in a way that I completely understand. Thanks!!
This is such a wonderful article, I’m half tempted to send this to your professor. I’m sure he would really enjoy reading it.
Did he ever reply?
No, he hasn’t replied.
You should check out what the Farsight institute is doing with AI and remote viewing:
https://farsight.org/posts/rv-with-chatgpt
Eric, you’re stirring up memories—some I had forgotten, and others I might not have even realized were there at the time. Linear Algebra is completely beyond me. Growing up and going to school in Germany, I never even had advanced Algebra.
But setting Linear Algebra aside, one thing that stands out—and always has—is your passion for math and science. I remember back when you were a senior in high school in Indianapolis. Your math teacher walked out of the classroom one day, clearly frustrated—I can’t recall exactly why. But with a Calculus test looming the next day, and the class suddenly without a teacher, you stepped up. You went to the blackboard and took over.
Even then, your teaching skills were unmistakable. You prepared your classmates for the test, and I remember being so impressed and proud. It was clear you had a gift.
I loved Linear Algebra and Group Theory (mid 1970s for me). While I couldn't see the applications then, it didn't take long as I watched computer programs evolve until office then home computers become the norm. Thanks for the inspiration to pull out my Linear Algebra book which has survived 50 years of moves and occasional purges.
this is also excellent, but information dense
https://youtu.be/eMlx5fFNoYc?si=AYiIaE0GsxLq50ec
If you're a math nerd like me, you'll enjoy the part of the video that starts here (the Johnson Linden Strauss Lemma in particular.)
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxrMKr0sIqBFrkIFMnf53Sq6Rui4g-BnpC?si=stJiVRIdYEGWcsiN
My favorite math course was differential equations. I got lot mileage from it. I signed up for linear algebra but soon dropped because at the time I didn’t how I could use it, nor did I have a proof with the foresight to explain it. Thanks for your insights here.
Like many courses in high school and college, sometimes it comes down to the skill of the teacher. I was fortunate to have been accepted to Rose Hulman in the mid 80's, because their faculty did not focus on research, only on teaching--and they had some of the best educators in engineering then. Linear Algebra might have been a bore, if not for Lautzenheiser.