Side-note, this project was one of the inspirations behind the cult-classic Ecco the Dolphin game for the Sega Genesis
This video explains it very well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xUvhUK8Dv8
The dolphin who loved me: the Nasa-funded project that went wrong (2014)
21–30 of 63 posts
Re: The dolphin who loved me: the Nasa-funded project that went wrong (2014)
#22I had read about these stories separately, the consensual, interspecies sex and the dolphin suicide, but for some reason I failed to realized or had forgotten it was the same dolphin. I admit I sort of fail to understand the outrage about the sex thing and about the attempt to teach it English. I'm probably naïve but I still think some basic form of communication should be possible, like with great apes.
I think the mindset of the 60's was way different. Today nobody blinks twice when a horse needs to be manually gotten-off to ship off the semen to other parts of the word.
I notice that your analogy ends with the collection of the semen...
Re: The dolphin who loved me: the Nasa-funded project that went wrong (2014)
#23Side-note, this project was one of the inspirations behind the cult-classic Ecco the Dolphin game for the Sega Genesis This video explains it very well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xUvhUK8Dv8
Relevant Vice article: https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/exmjpz/the-ketamine-secre...
Re: The dolphin who loved me: the Nasa-funded project that went wrong (2014)
#24I had read about these stories separately, the consensual, interspecies sex and the dolphin suicide, but for some reason I failed to realized or had forgotten it was the same dolphin. I admit I sort of fail to understand the outrage about the sex thing and about the attempt to teach it English. I'm probably naïve but I still think some basic form of communication should be possible, like with great apes.
> the consensual As a species, we’ve pretty universally said that some humans can’t legally/morally consent. A prisoner can’t consent to sex with their captors, even if they want to. A minor can’t consent to sex with an adult, even if they want to. In short, I think declaring this as consensual is in question, rather than assumed. The power disparity here is huge between human and dolphin, in this context.
You're mixing up a legal definition with a colloquial one.
Re: The dolphin who loved me: the Nasa-funded project that went wrong (2014)
#25There's a really good documentary about this: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3822614/ The BBC showed it a few years ago, it's fascinating: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b046w2n8
Definitely gave me vibes of The Shape of Water: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5580390/
Re: The dolphin who loved me: the Nasa-funded project that went wrong (2014)
#26I had read about these stories separately, the consensual, interspecies sex and the dolphin suicide, but for some reason I failed to realized or had forgotten it was the same dolphin. I admit I sort of fail to understand the outrage about the sex thing and about the attempt to teach it English. I'm probably naïve but I still think some basic form of communication should be possible, like with great apes.
I think the mindset of the 60's was way different. Today nobody blinks twice when a horse needs to be manually gotten-off to ship off the semen to other parts of the word.
As others pont out, the purpose matters. It’s like when people go to a sperm bank and do what thry need to do. The context is different. Context is important in these things.
Re: The dolphin who loved me: the Nasa-funded project that went wrong (2014)
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the mindset of the 60's was way different. Today nobody blinks twice when a horse needs to be manually gotten-off to ship off the semen to other parts of the word.
> Today nobody blinks twice when a horse needs to be manually gotten-off to ship off the semen to other parts of the word. That's perhaps a city thing. In farms people did similar things (to cows etc) all the time as part of routine job.
Yup. This is literally where milk comes from.
Re: The dolphin who loved me: the Nasa-funded project that went wrong (2014)
#28The Dollop podcast did a hilarious episode on this.
Re: The dolphin who loved me: the Nasa-funded project that went wrong (2014)
#29I had read about these stories separately, the consensual, interspecies sex and the dolphin suicide, but for some reason I failed to realized or had forgotten it was the same dolphin. I admit I sort of fail to understand the outrage about the sex thing and about the attempt to teach it English. I'm probably naïve but I still think some basic form of communication should be possible, like with great apes.
> the consensual As a species, we’ve pretty universally said that some humans can’t legally/morally consent. A prisoner can’t consent to sex with their captors, even if they want to. A minor can’t consent to sex with an adult, even if they want to. In short, I think declaring this as consensual is in question, rather than assumed. The power disparity here is huge between human and dolphin, in this context.
Because I have never found the topic at all disturbing, a lot of zoos have come out to me (two on hacker news, even!). As a result, really terrible arguments about this topic, pro and con, are something I’ve seen far too much of.
The topic of consent also ties in with one of my AI philosophy interests: what counts as a mind capable of being wronged.
I don’t know the answer. Suffering? What is that, though? We can all make something that looks like it’s suffering but is really just a video recorder of ourselves acting. Worse, on the other hand, we probably literally cannot percieve all forms of suffering: the squeaking of a dog toy is mimicking the sound of a rodent suffering, why would we be better, why would we have evolved to recognise the pain in our prey?
I don’t know where the capacity to suffer begins or ends, if it’s binary or shades of grey.
That’s why I’m vegetarian (nothing weirder to me than someone chomping down on a beef burger while they say cows can’t consent), and I would be vegan if I had more self control. Doesn’t mean it’s wrong to eat meat —again, I don’t know if they can suffer, I’d just rather needlessly restrict my diet than make the other error. Pascal’s Wager for animal welfare, if you will.
And on the topic of bad arguments, noticing that hypocrisy doesn’t make the sexual act okay: if they’re able to suffer, meat is bad and consent becomes necessary.
If someone comes out to me, the moral code I apply is “can that particular animal win a fight with you if they wanted to?” (it would be “are they enthusiastic?” but I don’t know how to judge that, especially second hand). This generally changes the anti-argument from consent to informed consent, which brings up the spectacular everyone’s-a-failure counterpoint that interspecies STDs just don’t seem to have any research, (gee, I wonder why :P) so even the humans can’t give informed consent.
Re: The dolphin who loved me: the Nasa-funded project that went wrong (2014)
#30This is such an out there article, I'm not surprised at the lack of comments. I suspect very few want to comment and possibly be associated with zoophila. It did remind me of a site I stumbled upon in the 90's possibly later describing in a fairly clinical manner how to have sex with a dolphin. It is not graphic at all, but definately NSFW. Not Safe For Work! https://web.archive.org/web/20040131140419/http://www.dolphi...
I'm not attracted to dolphins, but my purient interests found the site interesting and amusing.