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Whales in 19th century shared information about ship attacks

theguardian.com

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Re: Whales in 19th century shared information about ship attacks

#31

Post by coldtea »

WalterBright wrote: post #20
anigbrowl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collectives of people don't work The existence of armies and corporations suggests otherwise. I think you may be over-stretching the meaning of the term here to suggest some sort of entity that displaces individual cognition.

Corporations are not collectives. They are organizations of people with self-interest, not selfless-interest. Armies consist of people forced to cooperate, usually under threat of death or at least imprisonment. Such cooperation isn't very efficient, and indeed armies tend to be extremely wasteful of lives, treasure and property. (Volunteer armies tend to be less wasteful of lives.)

>Corporations are not collectives. They are organizations of people with self-interest, not selfless-interest.

Which is neither here, nor there.

First because nobody said people on collectives can't also have self-interest: just that they work together for the benefit of the collective too.

That said, there are also collectives where self-interest comes second (to the point of sacrificing yourself for them) and they work just fine. In fact the whole of human history they have been instrumental: families, armies, countries, and so on.

Re: Whales in 19th century shared information about ship attacks

#32

Post by coldtea »

WalterBright wrote: post #23
herval wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Collectives of people don't work, and it isn't for a lack of trying Countries, companies, armies, sports teams, FAMILIES are all collectives of people. Not all of these organizations are voluntary, and not all are “based on self interest”.

Ones not covered in other replies: > sports teams Of course they are based on self-interest. Team members all have different statuses and pay. They compete with the other team members to not get cut. They switch teams to gain personal advantage. > Countries are forced collectives. The more the country tries to run the lives of its citizens, the worse the country does.

>are forced collectives

You'd be surprised. There are people who would die for their country, and nobody has a gun to their head.

Hell, historically people died to BUILD or FREE their countries.

Re: Whales in 19th century shared information about ship attacks

#33

Post by WalterBright »

coldtea wrote: post #29
WalterBright wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bound by communality, sperm-whale culture expresses a collective individuality: “We” and “us” may be more important than “I” and “me”. If that isn’t a lesson for their Homo sapiens cousins, I don’t know what is. For better or worse, people are individuals, not members of a collective. Collectives of people don't work, and it isn't for a lack of trying. People aren't whales or bees in a beehive. That doesn't mean, h…

> For better or worse, people are individuals, not members of a collective. Huh? There might be a few "individuals" living individually in the history of the world. Isolated from the world, forgotten in some jungle, retreated to some cabin in Alaska, or so. Some not by choice (e.g. due to some accident with their boat or something), others by choice but only after they've first been raised and prepared by living in c…

I explicitly said that people still organize. Not as collectives, though. Perhaps you're missing what a collective is - it's an organization where people share equally in the results. It's characterized by self-sacrifice for the collective benefit.

The huge majority of organizations are set up for selfish benefit, not collective benefit.

Cooperation in mutual self-interest is NOT the same thing as cooperation in self-sacrifice.

Company members, for example, certainly cooperate. But the employees are doing it out of self-interest.

Re: Whales in 19th century shared information about ship attacks

#34

Post by WalterBright »

coldtea wrote: post #31
WalterBright wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations are not collectives. They are organizations of people with self-interest, not selfless-interest. Armies consist of people forced to cooperate, usually under threat of death or at least imprisonment. Such cooperation isn't very efficient, and indeed armies tend to be extremely wasteful of lives, treasure and property. (Volunteer armies tend to be less wasteful of lives.)

> Corporations are not collectives. They are organizations of people with self-interest, not selfless-interest. Which is neither here, nor there. First because nobody said people on collectives can't also have self-interest: just that they work together for the benefit of the collective too. That said, there are also collectives where self-interest comes second (to the point of sacrificing yourself for them) and they…

> armies

We tend to give medals to soldiers who self-sacrifice, because it's unusual. Not many are interested in dying for their country. If you refuse an order to advance on an enemy stronghold, you'll get shot. Remember those Soviet blocking battalions? How does that relate to self-sacrifice for the collective?

You overlooked the rest of what I wrote about armies.

Re: Whales in 19th century shared information about ship attacks

#35

Post by WalterBright »

coldtea wrote: post #32
WalterBright wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ones not covered in other replies: > sports teams Of course they are based on self-interest. Team members all have different statuses and pay. They compete with the other team members to not get cut. They switch teams to gain personal advantage. > Countries are forced collectives. The more the country tries to run the lives of its citizens, the worse the country does.

> are forced collectives You'd be surprised. There are people who would die for their country, and nobody has a gun to their head. Hell, historically people died to BUILD or FREE their countries.

I know quite a bit about military history.

> There are people who would die for their country,

We call them heroes and give them a medal and commemorate them with a statue. Because they are rare.

> Hell, historically people died to BUILD or FREE their countries.

It's pretty rare for people to do it knowing they will die.

(People more often will risk death because of the value of the gain they'll get if they don't die. That's selfish behavior.)

> and nobody has a gun to their head.

Armies historically execute anyone disobeying orders to advance or show cowardice in the face of the enemy. The Soviets had blocking battalions ordered to shoot any of their own comrades who did not advance.

Armies are trained and organized around the concept of forcing men into combat. And it starts with conscription.

They quite literally do have a gun to their heads.

Re: Whales in 19th century shared information about ship attacks

#36

Post by [deleted] »

coldtea wrote: post #29
WalterBright wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bound by communality, sperm-whale culture expresses a collective individuality: “We” and “us” may be more important than “I” and “me”. If that isn’t a lesson for their Homo sapiens cousins, I don’t know what is. For better or worse, people are individuals, not members of a collective. Collectives of people don't work, and it isn't for a lack of trying. People aren't whales or bees in a beehive. That doesn't mean, h…

> For better or worse, people are individuals, not members of a collective. Huh? There might be a few "individuals" living individually in the history of the world. Isolated from the world, forgotten in some jungle, retreated to some cabin in Alaska, or so. Some not by choice (e.g. due to some accident with their boat or something), others by choice but only after they've first been raised and prepared by living in c…

[deleted]

Re: Whales in 19th century shared information about ship attacks

#37

Post by EdwardDiego »

WalterBright wrote: post #35
coldtea wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> are forced collectives You'd be surprised. There are people who would die for their country, and nobody has a gun to their head. Hell, historically people died to BUILD or FREE their countries.

I know quite a bit about military history. > There are people who would die for their country, We call them heroes and give them a medal and commemorate them with a statue. Because they are rare. > Hell, historically people died to BUILD or FREE their countries. It's pretty rare for people to do it knowing they will die. (People more often will risk death because of the value of the gain they'll get if they don't die…

> The Soviets had blocking battalions ordered to shoot any of their own comrades who did not advance.

Well, yes, but also not that straightforward.

https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/3igu17/on_the_c...

Re: Whales in 19th century shared information about ship attacks

#38

Post by smolder »

WalterBright wrote: post #16
ramblerman wrote: post #15

The idea of whale intelligence is super interesting and I hope we do more to understand it. But the unfortunate pseudo-scientific need for the author to push the culture/religion angle becomes almost political at times, and seems like a stretch. We should be able to determine intelligence/communication first without antromorphizing the notion of culture. Some quotes from this article, and another linked by the author…

> Bound by communality, sperm-whale culture expresses a collective individuality: “We” and “us” may be more important than “I” and “me”. If that isn’t a lesson for their Homo sapiens cousins, I don’t know what is. For better or worse, people are individuals, not members of a collective. Collectives of people don't work, and it isn't for a lack of trying. People aren't whales or bees in a beehive. That doesn't mean, h…

I'm not sure where you are drawing the line between organization and collective. I don't think there is such a clear separation, or much of a distinction at all. When I get a job at a company, yes I'm doing it in self interest, but I still make sacrifices to that group as part of my participation. Is it an ability to come and go independently and form or be part of different organizations that you think makes those non-collectives?

My counter to that is that free markets allow for all sorts of coercion by organizations that harms individual freedom and prevents new organizations from succeeding. You get a join-us-or-lose situation, as you can see playing out with hyper-consolidation of various industries.

Your premise that free markets translate into individual freedoms is limited to those freedoms that dominant organizations can't directly coerce you out of exercising or lobby/collude to take away from you.

Re: Whales in 19th century shared information about ship attacks

#39

Post by WalterBright »

smolder wrote: post #38
WalterBright wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bound by communality, sperm-whale culture expresses a collective individuality: “We” and “us” may be more important than “I” and “me”. If that isn’t a lesson for their Homo sapiens cousins, I don’t know what is. For better or worse, people are individuals, not members of a collective. Collectives of people don't work, and it isn't for a lack of trying. People aren't whales or bees in a beehive. That doesn't mean, h…

I'm not sure where you are drawing the line between organization and collective. I don't think there is such a clear separation, or much of a distinction at all. When I get a job at a company, yes I'm doing it in self interest, but I still make sacrifices to that group as part of my participation. Is it an ability to come and go independently and form or be part of different organizations that you think makes those n…

Let me put it another way. In a free market, any group is free to start a commune. In America, many thousands have been created.

They all failed.

People try it. After a few months, within a couple years, they tire of it and leave, and the commune collapses.

What that strongly suggests is communes are just incompatible with human nature.

Re: Whales in 19th century shared information about ship attacks

#40

Post by WalterBright »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #37
WalterBright wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know quite a bit about military history. > There are people who would die for their country, We call them heroes and give them a medal and commemorate them with a statue. Because they are rare. > Hell, historically people died to BUILD or FREE their countries. It's pretty rare for people to do it knowing they will die. (People more often will risk death because of the value of the gain they'll get if they don't die…

> The Soviets had blocking battalions ordered to shoot any of their own comrades who did not advance. Well, yes, but also not that straightforward. https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/3igu17/on_the_c...

The fact they existed at all makes the point that the army discipline was forcibly applied, including executions for cowardice. Even just a few executions gets the point across to the troops.
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