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In Defence of Those Stoned Rats Science Just Labelled 'Lazy'

Uptight researchers are putting mad unfair value judgements on really chilled out rats.

"Researchers" at the "University of British Columbia" (read: "the Man" at the "Canadian Institute of Being a Buzzkill") have released a study suggesting lab rats that are given large doses of THC—the principal constituent of marijuana, which gives the plant its chronic dankness—become less likely to perform difficult tasks for reward. The rats' actual ability to complete these tasks doesn't drop, they just don't want to do them anymore.

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To study the effects of THC on the rats, the researchers trained them to perform two different tasks. The first was a simple button press task, which was rewarded with a single sugar cube. The second was a more complicated task, requiring longer periods of concentration, but the reward was two sugar cubes.

The researchers noted that under "normal" conditions, the rats were more likely to choose the more difficult task in order to receive a larger (two sugar cube) reward. Once plied with THC, however, the now much more chill rats became far less interested in exerting themselves mentally for a greater reward, when it was just so much chiller to just not even fuck with that shit, since one sugar cube is enough anyway.

"What's interesting; however, is that their ability to do the difficult challenge was unaffected by THC. The rats could still do the task—they just didn't want to," said Mason Silveira, a PhD candidate at UBC.

Interestingly, the conclusion that the researchers drew from this study was—in the words of Silveira—"when we gave THC to these rats, they basically became cognitively lazy."

It's unclear how exactly the rats came to be denounced as "cone-punching layabouts" (partly because, at time of writing, the author of this news piece was too grilled to actually read the scientific report in full.)

However, outside commentators noted the inability of the rats to get out of bed before 2 PM, the fact that the rats have been pretending to read the same copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for six weeks now, and the fact that one of the rats has yet to wash their only pair of black skinny jeans after spilling brownie mix on them during a "bake and bake" sesh at Bonesy's house last Tuesday night.

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Why even try? Everyone knows nothing gets chocolate out. Image via

What if though, and please excuse me for blowing your mind here Dr Starched Shirt, the stoned rats weren't being lazy. What if they just weren't going to needlessly amass sugar cubes because some guy in a white coat made them feel like they had to? Maybe the rats don't care about your sugar economy, man, maybe there's more important things in their lives, like watching John Oliver videos about the prison system and looking up laksa recipes.

The values of your capitalist, unchill university were made pretty clear when Associate Professor Catharine Winstanley said that the decreased likelihood of rats to exert themselves for material gain was pretty scary, when "thinking about how essential that is, for people to fulfil their potential and economic success."

What about the rats' potential success at learning to play the same three-chord Bright Eyes song over and over again, Professor? What about their potential success at finding the best How it's Made videos on YouTube, Professor? It's this one, FYI

I, for one, want to know what the now-enlightened rats think of all this. Maybe the rats never wanted to be dragooned into your unfair labor market, maybe they had aspirations other than just pushing buttons for short term reward. I'm pretty sure I've seen lab rats hanging up prayer flags in their cages before. Maybe these rats have more important issues to fuck with, like reading the first few paragraphs of Guardian articles about what's wrong with neoliberalism.

What the report fails to mention is that, since being released from their cages, many of the rats have gone on to be really useful members of the community in British Columbia. At time of writing, several of the 29 rats have started an infrequently updated Anarchist Facebook page. Another half dozen are organising charity bush doofs, raising funds for giving the troubled youths of Vancouver acupuncture sessions.

One surprisingly hot and actually kind of buff (for a vegan) rat has even started working at an outdoors equipment store, and totally gets why it's kind of weird and problematic that his white girlfriend has dreadlocks and teaches yoga, but still isn't going to call her out on it because he loves her and he feels like she really gets what he's trying to do with his life and his music right now way more than anybody else does.

And isn't that what's really important, more than any sugar cube?

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