The rat bastards are better than us

Almost every creature that lives in a harsh environment understands about looking out for your buddies. The next day, it might be you snapped into the trap. Allies are a precious thing. A lot of people prominent in our society have forgotten, but the rats have not, nor many of the people, either.
Remember this when they start deporting your neighbors next year.
- mutual aid: a factor of evolution
  
  rb>c
- Today you, tomorrow me.
  
  You made me a little nostalgic, reminding me of when reddit was good. Right around that timeframe was the last days of when it was a human place.
  https://aroundincircles.net/tales-from-a-dishonest-used-car-dealership-stories/
- Well, every social creature. There are plenty of species that don’t give a fuck.
- Perhaps most mammals and birds understand empathy, but plenty of animals in classes like reptiles, insects, amphibians, don't exert almost any empathy as humans understand it.
- Yeah, without empathy our current society would never have had existed, sadly greed is often more powerful once basic needs and safety are met.

I'm always mildly concerned about how shocked people are about animals being conscious beings with feelings. Do people really think we are mentally that different from other animals with brains?
- I'm more concerned that people believe it's rare, in both humans and the animal kingdom
  Predators will share territory if there's enough to go around, even forming close relationships across species, sometimes even raising their young together
  Empathy is the natural state, unless there's enough scarcity. Humans are naturally generous, unless we're raised in an environment of eternal artificial scarcity...
  
  All those rich bastards that are not generous at all must have been raised in a lot of artificial scarcity then. Really artificial since most of them grew up well to do as well.
  
  Predators will share territory if there's enough to go around, even forming close relationships across species, sometimes even raising their young together
  Some predators(and scavengers) have special move "Recruit!", which allows them to invite members of another guild(species) into their party.
  https://youtu.be/QaKwqsSIbIo
- To be fair, with academic types running experiments like this, the question is usually more along the lines of "At what point does instinct become empathy as we would recognize it?", and depending on how high the criteria is set for empathy there, the level of premeditation may be geniunely surprising in some animals.
- Yes, they really do.
- Yes
- Yes, they do. And Christian types often believe that we have "souls" and animals do not.

The rats don’t live in a system that exacerbates and encourages the worst excesses of the worst people. The rats that don’t help are our billionaires.
- Yeah, pick any two humans and put them in a similar situation, and I truly believe that you'll see similar empathy 99.9% of time time. But that fucking 0.1%, they're ruthless and they're rewarded handsomely for that behavior.
  
  they’re rewarded handsomely for that behavior
  It's more just that they aren't punished for it. They don't have the empathy to give a shit, and thus will do things regular people won't. If society doesn't punish them for being a piece of shit, then there's no downside to being a piece of shit for them, only upsides from taking advantage of situations others won't.
  
  This is why you have to introduce the concepts of mimics or demons that have access to change shape. Otherwise the party always frees the chained up maiden in the dungeon without asking any questions. Alternatively, if there is a rogue, you don't have to worry. They'll try their best to convince the others that they'll get xp for stabbing the prisoner.
- You might be curious to find that in many animal species studied, from pack animals down to ants, there is always a large percentage that contribute nothing and are a net-drain on the larger life-structure or colony. Humans and all other forms of life seem to share this commonality.
  
  And yet the groups survive anyway. So does it really matter?
  
  You don’t gotta out yourself like that bud

Rats are more compassionate than insurance companies CEOs.
- Cordyceps is more compassionate than insurance company CEOs.
- CEOs of publicly traded companies doesn't have the option to show empathy, they are there to maximize the company value for the shareholders.
  Going against that would be a crime.
  This is not an excuse for not doing it, this is an explanation of a faulty system.
  Insurance companies should not have shareholders.
  
  And not a "that was a bad business move and we're going to vote to fire you" crime, but an actual white collar prison crime.
  It is against US law to prioritize customers (remember, in matters like health insurance, food, and housing, "customers" means literally everyone. you cannot opt out and you must be a customer to live) over shareholders.
  Although the term "shareholder fraud" is mostly about CEOs themselves stealing from their shareholders for their personal piggy banks, there are plenty of lawsuits from shareholders claiming the company and/or CEO made decisions that didn't directly generate value for shareholders or didn't generate the maximum value it theoretically could have.

Capitalism wants us to believe that it's the only stable solution, because it comes close to the natural order, and that in nature there is only selfish behaviour, eat or get eaten, homo homini lupus and so on. The truth is, this supposed natural state is completely made up and animals and human beings naturally behave much more selflessly than what is expected from us under capitalism.
- Thing is, even the phrase homo homini lupus predates capitalism significantly, and the sentiment dates back to before even the phrase. 'Naturally behave' is a very questionable phrase.
  We have the ability to be better and build better societies than we currently have under capitalism. I just don't think an appeal to a state of nature is useful or accurate.
  
  I think there is definitely a line from early modern natural state theory to today's justification of capitalism, although the argument has somehow reversed itself.
  Actual natural behaviour is not even important, since we abandoned that some time ago, and it probably isn't desirable to go back. Its just easier to sell an ideology when you disguise it as natural order.
  
  People didn't wait for formal capitalism to be assholes.

Ok, but let's say they is a toy train and it splits into two tracks and put the rat at the lever.

The owners use their captured public education and for profit media to turn us on one another and make us monsters.
They tell us avarice/greed, a well known character deficit and social blight for thousands of years is instead virtuous rational self-interest.
They force us to compete against one another rather than cooperate with one another as the basis of our economy, when an economy is meant to be a lowly tool of society for the explicit use of maximizing the efficient, equitable distribution of goods and services for the benefit of the citizens of the society. Our tail wags the dog. We are slaves to economic growth/metastasis we as a society do not benefit from.
The problem is that the sociopaths, mentally ill people literally incapable of empathy, something most humans have a strong need to exercise, that are among us quickly game society using their mental deficit as an advantage to take more than they need and manipulate others into elevating them, then manipulate those below them into fighting one another perpetually to stay on top.
Humans are social creatures. We've been conditioned to act as monsters, condemning our fellow humans literally dying in our streets of exposure and capital defense force brutality as "lowering our property values."
This isn't natural. It's why our nation's mental health is basically its own apocalypse of mass depression, anxiety, and never ending trauma. We are strongly discouraged from supporting one another, as we're supposed to do the impossible, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, then claim we did it alone. That's the American delusion. 🇺🇸
- This really resonates with me. You are an excellent writer.
  The part about empathy is so real. A lack of empathy is a real advantage in today's world, unfortunately. I think empathy should be one of the most important values a society should strive for, and we decided to make a society that rewards sociopathy instead.
  
  Thank you, sincerely.
  I know my comment history is basically the same points rehashed over and over as applied to the symptoms of the day we're experiencing, but it helps me feel like I'm holding onto sanity in an insane society to describe the core rot as I see it, and I appreciate your kind words.

Rats. Can't use the term as an insult anymore considering they're more human than we are.
- Seems that's an insult to the rat.

Meanwhile humans, when put thru the same experiment, realize they can make the human in the unpleasant box pay $ if it wants out. They then learn to create more boxes for more profit.
- I dont believe this is inherent. It's not human nature. Its social conditioning as a result of living in a capitalist society.
  In a capitalist society, yes. Absolutely a lot of people would do this. But even then, its not everyone.
  I live in capitalism but i would certainly not force someone to pay me to let them out of a trap. Especially if they were suffering. And i would never befriend someone that would.
  I would think they were a cunt.
  
  you must suck at capitalism then and would literally never be able to chair a publicly traded company maximizing profits, no matter the cost, for shareholders then. (i say lovingly)
  
  And i would never befriend someone that would.
  My problem here: many of us are friends with one of the other person that thinks investing money in the stock market is a good idea and taxes for the rich is bad. Those people are already forcing others to pay to get out of a trap, they just have a few middle men.
- Meanwhile, humans are stuffing other animals into cages to see what happens.
  
  and then murdering them. good point.
  ironic that experiment on empathy done by scientists doing mouse experiments.
- This comes to my mind:
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JFCgz959ARY

After observing all of the animals I've ever lived with, I've come to the opinion (unsupported, I suppose, by any real evidence) that empathy is an important part of being alive. I think every living being has empathy, and humans just got quite good at beating it out of other humans to the point where displaying psychopathic traits became something culturally celebrated.
We've been trained to be this way, and we need to reverse that trend.
- Altrusim is a good trait to ensure the survival of a species, while being a selfish bastard is a good trait to ensure the survival of the individual. It all depends on the situation.
- I'd say this is the case for mammals and birds, but I think other branches of the tree of life are more hit or miss since they're less social animals.
  I'd be curious to see a study of empathy on octopi, the smartest non-social animal I think.
- But don't you see all the wealth we are creating by doing things this way?!

Don't think there has ever been much dispute of a rat's intellect
- I don't think this was about the intellect either, just about empathy. Sure, the free rat could learn to open it quicker, but the point is that it did. It didn't eventually figure "eh, nothing in it for me", it repeatedly went and freed the other to the point of routine.
- They're known to be the only animal on the planet more intelligent than dolphins. IIRC only two of them survived though, while the dolphins all left in time.
  
  That's mice, you fool!

I wonder about this in animals all the time. Like, many animals seem to really enjoy being loved on and getting scritches, have a relationship with their owner or caregiver, are happy to see them and snuggle up… but in the wild they might be mostly solitary, only interacting with their own kind for mating and maybe raising young. Yet they’re often very different from the (eat sleep reproduce survive) basic wild animal when given the opportunity. They have personalities, happiness, etc.
- It's called domestication. In the Soviet Union a scientist domesticated foxes by selecting for "niceness". It only took a couple of generations for the typical domestication signs to appear: longer childhood, friendlier face, smartness etc
  
  They’re talking about fully wild animals. Grab a baby squirrel, and it will enjoy human company in no time. Same with raccoons, ravens, mountain lions, etc.
  You’d be hard pressed to find an animal that doesn’t take to human companionship when given a real chance. And it has nothing to do with breeding.
- Rats, in specific, do what those studying them have described as laugh when being petted/tickled. It's ultrasonic, so we can't hear it, but other rats can hear it when a rat is enjoying themselves.
  https://www.science.org/content/article/tickled-rats-reveal-brain-structure-controls-laughter
  
  I'll take the risk of sounding like Willard here, but rats make delightfully playful and affectionate pets.
  It sounds counter intuitive but once your rats(need to have at least two) bond to you they treat you like a giant one of them. They'll groom you for hours, and you can play chase with them with your hands like you would with a kitten(without the scratches!) They're like a cat and dog together in a much smaller animal. One of mine played fetch.
  I just wish they lived longer and weren't so prone to cancer. Maybe one day science can fix that.
- A lot if it is selection bias. Humans prefer animals that show those traits. We instinctively understand how they are thinking/feeling, and that makes us more comfortable with it.
  It's also worth noting that complex mental pathways take a long time to evolve. Nature tends to play with there tuning, rather than strip it out when unnecessary. Most solitary creatures had ancestors that formed groups. There's no reason to risk breaking useful instincts. They just get overriden by newer ones.

Which is why rats never built empires and conquered the world
- In many cities, there are more rats than human. And yet, who feeds who?
- or destroyed it
- Tell that to the rat king

I like the one where they gave rats a lot of food and space (rat paradise) and let them breed till they were crawling over eachother till there wasnt enough food for them all. When most of them died and food was available once more, the remainders stopped eating and all the rats died.
Rats are interesting but I think the guy that programmed them left in some bugs.
- Even the creator of that experiment said it was deeply flawed, and that their colony broke down because there was literally nothing to enrich their lives in the habitat. They were essentially going crazy from boredom.
  He then went on to design rat experiments that were designed to actually facilitate a fulfilling and engaging life for the rats, and they thrived, from what I recall.
- Yeah idk if I just watched most of my friends and family drop dead from starvation, I don't think I'd want to go on living either.
- rats are strange little critters. incredibly clever, but you'll never know what they'll use their smarts for
- Is this going to be a model for the history of mankind?

That sounds eerily similar to a situation in Secret of NIMH (the book, not the movie), when the rats

The Washington Post still has the article up:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-new-model-of-empathy-the-rat/2011/12/08/gIQAAx0jfO_story.html
And here's the science article that prompted it:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1210789
and here's an old archive.org copy of it before the Washington Post started blocking the wayback machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140114012833/http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-new-model-of-empathy-the-rat/2011/12/08/gIQAAx0jfO_story.html

Couldn't this be explained by the "tit-for-tat" hypothesis? That selfless behaviour is learned in communal animals, and that its implied it will be you who need help next time?
- There is a bat species that I think feeds on blood, and they share the food they managed to get in a night, if a bat refuses to share one night then the next time they get left out of the sharing.

I think we shouldn't underestimate human empathy. The problem is just that we build structures to avoid it. Rich people choose to not see poor people too much or they would feel empathy and be inclined to help them. If the poor are far away, merely an abstraction that is said to exist, then their existence is not felt strongly enough to trigger an empathy response. Surely there are exceptions to some degree, but I think humans are very empathetic and that's one of our great powers.
- We have places like San Fransisco and New York, with some of the richest people in the whole world regularly walking past homeless encampments. I don't think the structure is the problem. I think it has much more to do with the culture and family they are raised in.
  We live in a society that rewards narcissism. Our society tells these rich people that homeless people are only homeless because of bad personal choices.
  There is no reward for empathy, besides the positive feeling a healthy person would get from being kind. In fact, being empathetic can be a detriment to being successful, so many upper class families skip that lesson plan on purpose.
  
  Yes I think you're right. Culture and upbringing are very important factors. What remains is that the potential of human empathy is incredible. I don't think empathy needs a reward per se, I think the positive feeling you describe is enough reward, again it's not to be underestimated. I am personally volunteering one day per week at my local homeless shelter, while I work a paid job 4 days per week at a mental hospital as a nurse. I don't want to be paid for the homeless shelter, I am fine with doing it voluntarily, I specifically wanted to do something voluntarily just to proof to myself that I don't maximize my income, to be sure I don't play the money game. But your point about how it is not only unrewarding financially but the reverse: it can even be a detriment to success, that's very true. Before my nursing school I got a degree in marketing & management (which made me incredibly unhappy). I'm very glad I chose to go do something else, because I feel like my contribution to society is far bigger now than it ever could have been as a marketeer. Despite that I would've made a lot more money as a marketeer. Free market capitalism is amoral when it comes what to contributing to ~~society~~ the market, if your job is to sell addicting products to people, that destroy their lives, but it makes you a decent profit, then you'll be rewarded for it. Far more so than most essential workers would ever earn. That combined with money not being just money (power), but also status: we celebrate wealth. Wealthy equals good. We don't look at how one earned his wealth, we just look at the wealth and are in awe. Obviously we are giving people the wrong incentives.

Why do you say the rats are better than us? Humans can be observed doing the same in similar circumstances.
- ~~Some~~ Most humans. The notable (but not exclusive) exceptions being people who manage to become ultra-wealthy.
  
  I do agree, but the thing that really defines your worldview is what you think the ratio of "good" to "bad" people are, along with how much you think people can change.
  Personally, I think a lot of humans are largely interested in maintaining the status quo and avoiding large amounts of change. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're bad or evil or unredeemable, it just means that they're influenced by the systems that we've built and take comfort in what is known.
  Be careful of diving too far into cynicism. Why would you try to change anything if you think it's impossible? Understand that the world is frustrating sometimes and give grace whenever you can when people make mistakes (as long as you make it clear when boundaries are crossed).
  
  I'm sure if you lock somebody in what used to be a filing cabinet or toolbox in a rich man's office and they start wimpering for help then the rich guy will get up and go let them out (unless he put them there).
  Might even share his chocolate chips with them.
  
  Some
  I disagree, from what I have seen, the vast majority of people are empathic, we just focus on those who are not
- I think is also shows the potential that empathy can be instinctual aswell as trained and reenforced
  A rat may save another rat purely on instinct. Aswell as being able to be rewarded for either action and be influenced in the future to embrace a particular ethos
- That's clearly not the point of the post.
  
  The post title says exactly:
  The rat bastards are better than us

A lot of animals are better at solving "prisoners dilemma" situations than us. Most animals would rather work together for the greater good but I guess they haven't heard of capitalism.
- heathens!
- I wonder if there is a more mutualist economic system. Oh wait!

have you considered that no longer hearing cries of healp is reason enough
- And the chocolate chip? Animals having empathy is the most logical conclusion if the experiment went as described here.
- "wow, that guy is annoying. Maybe this will shut him up"

Calling them "bastards" is completely uncalled for
- Show me a rat with a marriage license.

... which isn't news to me.
For a time it seemed that everybody wanted to shit on animals as being way inferior to humans in every way, including lacking empathy emotion feelings and stuff.
But that was always wrong. Who has ever worked with animals be it horses dogs or farm animals knows they have a soul. Well, but also a lot of them are just evil bastards.

Rats live like 2 years.
In two years, they learn how to be better to each other than a large part of the human race.
- I think of it in another way: What these rats display is the natural behavior.
  These rats live two years, so they don't have time to learn otherwise. Human greed is a learned behavior, and it takes a lot of time to learn that.
  
  Sounds like greed needs to have some cognitive feedback.

Rats can eat chocolate?
- Yeah to a degree, maybe it was some kinda low sugar chocolate or something
- Yes, sorta like how you're able to drink mercury, but you really shouldn't.
- They can eat most of the same stuff we can. Part of why they're frequently used for tests.

now make the rats comprehend fascism.
Would be an interesting study if that was possible.
- Another run of this experiment found rats free those with the same fur color faster or more readily
  
  huh, that's definitely an interesting paper to write.

Empathy over natural selection ftw.
- It's natural selection which has born empathy. There are a lot of species which are successful because they are collaborative.
  Same story with us humans. We usually prefer groups and collaboration. And look what we can achieve if we put all of our minds and strengths together.
  Yet, this hasn't been sufficient to overcome some individuals who live and enforce competitiveness.
  
  Dawkins' The Selfish Gene goes into this in greater detail. Many species are hardwired to be willing to sacrifice their own lives for the survival of their kin. Basically, genes that code for protective and social behaviors might result in any given individual more likely to die before reproducing, but makes that individual's close genetic kin more likely to survive to reproduction such that a particular group/pod/clan/flock is much more likely to persist over generations.
  The extreme example is ants and bees, where most of the workers we see biologically cannot reproduce and are dead ends as individuals. But they work for the hive/colony, and the reproducing queen is the center of that reproductive strategy.
  You see it with a lot of animals, especially those wired to be social.
- Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution
- Empathy was created by natural selection - of groups, not individuals, of course.
- Fear and stress shut down empathy. But narcissists feel constant fear and stress. And we've made a hellworld that rewards narcissism

On the other hand, they willingly live in sewers and their sense of smell is stronger than ours.
- But good or bad is still subjective.
  E: maybe a little broad. I meant pleasant smells. In the case of rats probably dictated by biology.
  You'd probably willingly live next to a bakery.
- Well, everyone's got their kinks.
  
  I'm just saying, we can be superior that we don't willingly live around the poo gas.

I'm curious if the rat would bother to let the other rat out if it's not confined to an enclosure with the caged rat. If the rat can just run off and ignore the cries for help, will it still help? That would be much more impressive.

Rats together strong

If a rat has a better developed sense of empathy than you do, then you've probably made some seriously awful life choices somewhere along the line.

You don't see them fuckng each other over for a goddamn percentage!

the phrase "the free rat would usually save at least one treat for the captive - which is alot to expect of a rat"...
it clearly isn't "alot to expect" if it's automatic normal behavior for their species. It actually implies it's the normal for a rat. It just isn't normal for those humans.
- I think it means "chocolate chips are precious to rats" by that - ie that it is a big sacrifice.

Empathy is the new intelligence.
- What does this mean