Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“My Octopus Teacher” defied convention

nautil.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 102 posts

Re: “My Octopus Teacher” defied convention

#51

Post by awb »

shuntress wrote: post #47
awb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was expecting some kind of mention of this guy's apparent privilege. What's the goal of this though? Any popular documentary is the result of privilege somewhere along the line. Either it's self-funded by a privileged person, or it raised money from privileged people. Either way, all the content you're able to view on TV, streaming or in the movies is because someone along the line had the privilege to make the f…

This specific story is explicitly personal and delivers a personal message, rather than an objective "Here is an octopus in it's natural environment." "I was unhappy in my life so I spent time personally connecting with and understanding nature and now I feel more fulfilled and whole as a person" is likely to cause viewers who think "Yikes, I sure wish I could afford to drop everything go swimming every day" to respo…

> is likely to cause viewers who think "Yikes, I sure wish I could afford to drop everything go swimming every day" to respond with resentment

Really? I doubt given the choice that many people would choose to dedicate a year to daily cold water swimming and filmmaking.

And we have no idea about the financial arrangements. Maybe he pitched the idea and got an advance. And we don’t know if he was consulting on the side.

Resentment probably says more about the viewer than the filmmaker. At that point you might just as well resent capitalism.

> The "goal" is to craft a more resonant/engaging story

The privilege exists wether it’s acknowledged or not. I don’t need all my characters to be fully self-aware or without flaws to find them engaging. But we know very little of his life story. All we see is a small glimpse into the fact that he’s burnt out.

> I think you need to assess why you have assumed I have some sort of agenda

I didn’t assume you had an agenda. Why did you assume that? I meant “what’s the goal” as in “what’s the point”, like “why is that important to you”.

Re: “My Octopus Teacher” defied convention

#52

Post by mycologos »

shuntress wrote: post #47
awb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was expecting some kind of mention of this guy's apparent privilege. What's the goal of this though? Any popular documentary is the result of privilege somewhere along the line. Either it's self-funded by a privileged person, or it raised money from privileged people. Either way, all the content you're able to view on TV, streaming or in the movies is because someone along the line had the privilege to make the f…

This specific story is explicitly personal and delivers a personal message, rather than an objective "Here is an octopus in it's natural environment." "I was unhappy in my life so I spent time personally connecting with and understanding nature and now I feel more fulfilled and whole as a person" is likely to cause viewers who think "Yikes, I sure wish I could afford to drop everything go swimming every day" to respo…

It seems like there is a spectrum for this sort of thing. I think I'd have a similar reaction to, say, an extremely rich person recommending that a frontline worker take a 1-month detox at an expensive yoga camp. But for me personally, "My Octopus Teacher" was pretty far away from that extreme, and I think an explicit discussion of privilege would have taken me out of the movie, so I'm glad they didn't add one.

Re: “My Octopus Teacher” defied convention

#53

Post by anonAndOn »

Avalaxy wrote: post #34
WhompingWindows wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are supposedly born with inalienable rights - life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. Our societies in the West are built upon this shared foundation of rights. To deprive any adults of the ability to procreate would be considered barbaric, as they want to pursue the creation of "life" with their liberty, and to support their own happiness. Meanwhile, nature is just raw competition, we're used to talking abou…

> To deprive any adults of the ability to procreate would be considered barbaric There are two ways to look at this. There is a difference between forbidding people to procreate, for example by forced sterilization, and simply not forcing things with unnatural interventions, for example with IVF for people who cannot conceive in a natural way. I don't think it's barbaric to see IVF as detrimental to the human gene po…

Just a thought, is IVF an unnatural response to ubiquitous unnatural hormone disruptors and the proposed reduction in gametes? Would IVF even be known outside of the lab if men were as virile as their grandad (generally speaking)?

Re: “My Octopus Teacher” defied convention

#54

Post by faitswulff »

Avalaxy wrote: post #8

> The only thing to add to that, where you have to be slightly careful, is if an animal hasn’t got strong genes. And then you interfere and you allow that animal to procreate. You could potentially be making the gene pool weaker and more susceptible to mange. That’s where you have to be a bit careful. It's interesting that we can talk about this in such an objective and rational way when it involves non-human animal…

What makes for “strong” genes in humans? Accepting the axioms of that discussion is a quick way to arrive at eugenics.

Re: “My Octopus Teacher” defied convention

#55

Post by joezydeco »

js2 wrote: post #37
Avalaxy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really found the way Craig injected himself into the story to be a distraction and wish this had been more like Sir David Attenborough documentary Can you already see this 94 years old guy jumping into the water to build a personal relationship with an octopus? ;) I think the whole point of the movie was not capturing the life of the octopus, but showing the relationship between human and octopus. This would not…

Sure, but I didn't need to hear CF's life story. He could've presented the octopus and his interaction with it without all that. Almost everyone I've talked to found it to detract from the documentary.

I thought CF's story could have been a bigger hook into how he rediscovers the circle of life and his place in it. But the film never closses that loop successfully.

Re: “My Octopus Teacher” defied convention

#56

Post by shuntress »

mycologos wrote: post #52
shuntress wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This specific story is explicitly personal and delivers a personal message, rather than an objective "Here is an octopus in it's natural environment." "I was unhappy in my life so I spent time personally connecting with and understanding nature and now I feel more fulfilled and whole as a person" is likely to cause viewers who think "Yikes, I sure wish I could afford to drop everything go swimming every day" to respo…

It seems like there is a spectrum for this sort of thing. I think I'd have a similar reaction to, say, an extremely rich person recommending that a frontline worker take a 1-month detox at an expensive yoga camp. But for me personally, "My Octopus Teacher" was pretty far away from that extreme, and I think an explicit discussion of privilege would have taken me out of the movie, so I'm glad they didn't add one.

I agree, an explicit discussion of privilege would have made this a significantly different movie but please note that I said I was looking for "A small acknowledgement" rather than "an explicit discussion".

Re: “My Octopus Teacher” defied convention

#57

Post by viciousvoxel »

simmerup wrote: post #20
scotty79 wrote: post #4

What's weird is that octopuses are not a social species. So it's a bit of a mystery how they evolved so high intelligence without having to outsmart other individuals of their own species constantly. It's theorethized that they have very rich environments and have to work very hard to hunt and to stay alive as they have no armor. But the puzzle still remains why their intelligence is similar at all to the one that ev…

I heard a theory that a large reason humans have complex brains is that we need them to do fine motor control with our hands and throw things accurately. Similarly, a octopus probably needs a big brain to control all the muscles in its arms

Or, more accurately, one medium-sized brain in each arm

Re: “My Octopus Teacher” defied convention

#58

Post by lm28469 »

koboll wrote: post #30
Avalaxy wrote: post #8

> The only thing to add to that, where you have to be slightly careful, is if an animal hasn’t got strong genes. And then you interfere and you allow that animal to procreate. You could potentially be making the gene pool weaker and more susceptible to mange. That’s where you have to be a bit careful. It's interesting that we can talk about this in such an objective and rational way when it involves non-human animal…

Humans have technology like medical care and a lack of natural predators that substantially mitigates any impact gene pool deficiencies might cause, whereas wild animals do not. So there's no real danger that the human population will collapse without eugenics. That isn't true of the wild. This changes the ethical calculus quite a bit.

A weaker gene pool puts a huge strain on our medical systems though.

For examples: the gut microbiome directly impact our health, diets influence gut microbiome, junk food has a negative impact on it, it is mostly inherited from your parents

Which means in just a few generations you can end up with massive changes. Diabetes, obesity, cardio vascular disease, cancer, &c.

I think we shouldn't have blind faith in tech, we can fix broken bones and a few other neat things but we're far from having the right tools to work on these kind of problems on a global scale, especially since we usually detect the changes after they're too late to properly revert them.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3983973/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5385025/

https://www.popsci.com/holiday-junk-food-gut-microbiome-fibe...

https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/most-of-the-mi...

Re: “My Octopus Teacher” defied convention

#59

Post by dv_dt »

Avalaxy wrote: post #8

> The only thing to add to that, where you have to be slightly careful, is if an animal hasn’t got strong genes. And then you interfere and you allow that animal to procreate. You could potentially be making the gene pool weaker and more susceptible to mange. That’s where you have to be a bit careful. It's interesting that we can talk about this in such an objective and rational way when it involves non-human animal…

The quote takes a position of non-interference with the process with naturally occurring selection pressures on animals.

When the discussion involves humans and eugenics, it's the complete opposite and revolves around substituting a human chosen selection criteria with all the possible inclusion of criteria with very limited knowledge of the long term impacts, a minimal knowledge of short term impacts, and often biases driven by hubris and racism assessing the benefits vs the unknowns. That's why it's controversial.

Re: “My Octopus Teacher” defied convention

#60

Post by mycologos »

shuntress wrote: post #56
mycologos wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like there is a spectrum for this sort of thing. I think I'd have a similar reaction to, say, an extremely rich person recommending that a frontline worker take a 1-month detox at an expensive yoga camp. But for me personally, "My Octopus Teacher" was pretty far away from that extreme, and I think an explicit discussion of privilege would have taken me out of the movie, so I'm glad they didn't add one.

I agree, an explicit discussion of privilege would have made this a significantly different movie but please note that I said I was looking for "A small acknowledgement" rather than "an explicit discussion" .

Interesting, so literally one sentence somewhere like "Luckily, I had time and savings to figure things out. So, I started going to the shore..." would have made a big difference?
Post reply on HN