Any bets on what comes first: sapient AIs or sapient Orcas?
Sapient pearwood
Have we found wrecks of yachts damaged as though kicked very hard by 1,000 feet?
Orca rams into yacht near Scotland, suggesting the behavior may be spreading
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Re: Orca rams into yacht near Scotland, suggesting the behavior may be spreading
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
That link says: “Owing to the lack of reproducible data, the existence of ball lightning as a distinct physical phenomenon remains unproven”
We had ball lightning blow a painting off of our wall in front of 30-odd people at Thanksgiving. It’s possible it was a mass delusion or a ghost but both of those strike me as less likely.
The theory is that it's regular lightning, and the rest is a retina-caused illusion? So people actually see ball lightning, but it would be almost impossible to get on a digital camera. So it does, in fact "exist", just not physically.
Re: Orca rams into yacht near Scotland, suggesting the behavior may be spreading
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd say that orcas are already sentient and have been for a long time.
I'd be willing to argue that "sentient" is a bad word. These creatures are capable of transmitting complicated ideas. That means they have wisdom. This means they are sapient, not sentient. Sentient means they are able to respond to input, but we don't go around and call HTTP servers sentient.
That's a distinction I hadn't paid attention to before. Yeah, it would seem orcas have both -- sentence and sapience. And the sapience is more interesting / less immediately obvious.
Re: Orca rams into yacht near Scotland, suggesting the behavior may be spreading
#184It's a bit surprising that something like this didn't start happening sooner. It's not as if one can expect to mosey through the territory of large intelligent land predators completely unassailed.
I thought territoriality was more a thing for "peer" sizes. Adult lions don't chase mice for invading territory. And while foxes may be highly territorial they aren't stupid enough to try to attack say a bear for invading.
Re: Orca rams into yacht near Scotland, suggesting the behavior may be spreading
#185While I don't much care about the yachts and find the fact that the behaviour is spreading fascinating, my fear out of all this is people will start hurting the whales to try to get them to stop.
there is bound to be some kind of response if this remains a trend; and given that some of these boats are having their fin/bulb keels seemingly targeted by these animals means that the crews of the boats are in some greater level of mortal peril than is already provided by the hobby.. I feel bad for the animals, but sailing doesn't seem to be going anywhere as a global interest and boats produced are getting to be m…
Seems like it would be better to disallow sailing in Portugal than trying to wipe out all the orcas in their waters
Re: Orca rams into yacht near Scotland, suggesting the behavior may be spreading
#186This American Life just did a segment where the experts were very skeptical of both the theories presented in this article - that the first encounters near Spain were caused by a traumatic event of a matriarch, and also that orca pods would communicate with each other to spread the behavior. The theory presented in that segment was the first orcas are sort of like rowdy teenagers participating in a fad, and the newer…
My gut is telling me it’s a parasite or toxin causing the aggression. But I have zero professional knowledge in this space.
Exactly - they look like they are itching themselves on the point of the rudder. Maybe there is some infection near their blowhole that they are trying to scratch.
Take some bio samples from the rudders for analysis.
Re: Orca rams into yacht near Scotland, suggesting the behavior may be spreading
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they wanted to eat humans they had plenty of chances. Incidents where an orca attacked a human are rare, with the notable exception of orcas in captivity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orca_attacks
> If they wanted to eat humans they had plenty of chances. Have they, though? Captive orcas aren't opportunistically hunting with their pod, and they're constantly kept fed. Their behaviors are reinforced. Apart from captivity, human swimmers seldom interact in the wild. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Orcas eat land mammals, and we have plenty of evidence for that.
The ones in captivity did it because they're basically an imprisoned intelligent creature, traumatized and borderline psychotic living in such confined spaces.
Re: Orca rams into yacht near Scotland, suggesting the behavior may be spreading
#188We have caused the Halocene extinction. Our wasteful lifestyles are the virus of the planet. The overconsumed. The technologists who think our devices and social media and VR are a substitute to blind us from the truth. We are destroying our planet. That’s reality. Our devices and travel are our escape. “You are not special. You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as every…
These whales are just playing around and you declare they are the Che Gueveras of the ocean?
Re: Orca rams into yacht near Scotland, suggesting the behavior may be spreading
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
If someone is out there secretly training and paying Orcas to sink yachts... that would be pretty neat.
I want the orcas to fight back more and more, but deep down I know we will just wipe them out, which would be horrible
I agree. Frankly, we deserve it.
Re: Orca rams into yacht near Scotland, suggesting the behavior may be spreading
#190This is not the first time orcas have shown an awareness of us in boats: through the second half of the 1800s orcas in Australia actually helped whalers hunt baleen whales: herding the prey, and even grabbing ropes in their mouths to help haul, in exchange for the most valuable (to them) parts of the carcasses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whales_of_Eden,_New_Sou... Old Tom, one of the most helpful orcas, die…
If someone is out there secretly training and paying Orcas to sink yachts... that would be pretty neat.
The yachts they can disable are the smaller, wind powered ones. Probably not the kind of boat you had in mind.
A sinking yacht it a serious threat to life but, hey, it's pretty neat, right?