Did you finish the article? Did not know The Rats of NIHM was inspired by that research.

Absolutely. Putting everything aside, and using even a very basic example here, mob mentality. Mob mentality of course, is called as such because it's labeled after the phenomenon that happens when you get a mob of people.

The entire group of people, becomes singular. And they all act together in a singular goal, with a singular purpose. Destroy shit. Fight. Reasoning goes down the drain and at that point it's pretty easy to say that the average collective IQ of the group goes downhill.

Let's throw in another factor. Every human being has a circle around them. This circle is the upper limit to how many people this person can know and care about before simply, not caring. The average, absolute upper limit is 100. You can personally know 100 people in your life before after that, you stop caring.

Now. Toss in human empathic nature and our ability to spread memes. Not internet memes. We're talking real memes. Like yawning. Walk into a restaurant, and yawn. You'll notice other people will likely start yawning on noticing you. Or, if you want, try it with a friend. Yawn and make sure they see it. Chances are in a bit they'll yawn.

That's empathic connection and what we call a meme. It's a sub conscious action that we do without really knowing why. These factors translate on an emotional level. Put people in a room with a sad, crying person and other people will feel distress. Anxious.

Put enough angry people together in a room and you get a mob.

Put enough sad and stressed people together, and things really start to fall apart.

Take all of these factors, and do the math.

What happens in cities? What's happening with the internet? People are crowded together. They live, work, and struggle for space. It's stressful, aggravating. People are being thrown together with thousands of others and they meet and talk with thousands more across the internet.

Their personal sphere of people can't handle it. They stop caring.

Average collective group intelligence decreases because lets face it, the only difference between a mob and people living together in a city is the mood and mindset.

Personal spheres collapse, people don't care. Packed living creates stress, depression, sadness, which because of our social nature, is very, very easily transmited through a crowd.

My point here is, we're social creatures. We naturally tend to group together for survival. But there's a limit. I wager there's a limit before benificial effects start to go downhill.

I'm not saying that we should disband, or even try to disband cities. But they need to be restructured. The more people cluster together, the more unhealthy they become.

Currently, mathematically speaking, you could take all 7 billion people on the planet and drop them in the grand canyon together and they wouldn't even fill it. Of course, being that cramped together would be no fun.

But the point is, as we stand now, there's enough room for people to live comfortably on the planet with 7 billion.

We're just not doing things right. But I've got no doubt that as population increases, as population clusters, things will get worse. And if you want even basic levels of proof, just look at society today. You can't say that something isn't fucked.

Quote from: Sandtrap on February 26, 2015, 11:12:30 PM

But the point is, as we stand now, there's enough room for people to live comfortably on the planet with 7 billion.

Overpopulation isn't about the literal size of room available so much as it is resources consumed.

No.

That's poverty.

Quote from: Sandtrap on February 26, 2015, 11:12:30 PM

But the point is, as we stand now, there's enough room for people to live comfortably on the planet with 7 billion.

Overpopulation isn't about the literal size of room available so much as it is resources consumed.

We're not even overconsuming resources. We're just using them and wasting them in the wrong way. With our current numbers we can sustain ourselves but the problem is, resources are being wasted.

Things are built cheap, designed to break and wear down, be thrown away, and then replaced. Food is over consumed when we actually have enough to go around for generally everybody.