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What does Werner Herzog's nihilist penguin teach us? (2017)

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Re: What does Werner Herzog's nihilist penguin teach us? (2017)

#11

Post by beeflet »

tptacek wrote: post #4
observationist wrote: post #2

That's how new species happen. Over time, the penguins who get sufficiently tired of all the other penguins' shit march off to the edge of the map, and when they finally get lucky, enough of the smart, independent minded penguins survive to produce a new generation. The new adventure flock eventually garners enough members to march back to the feeding grounds and seize the territory from the loser normy penguins. Thu…

The whole point of the sequence is that there's no chance that these "badass penguins" are going to make new species. There's no food where they're monomaniacally heading. They're going to die.

It's convenient that colonies of penguins only live where there is food. One wonders how they got there, perhaps god set them there to live for eternity.

Re: What does Werner Herzog's nihilist penguin teach us? (2017)

#12

Post by arjie »

netsharc wrote: post #10

Interesting, I've seen videos about this nihilistic penguin the last few days on Instagram... Feels like content regurgitation, but I don't know who's creating and who's recycling it at the moment. (On HN there's often a story from one site one day, and a few days later the same story reported by a different news site..)

Internet commentator and political analyst made a reference to this a few days ago https://x.com/mattyglesias/status/2015810397295583630

I suspect it was something like that.

Re: What does Werner Herzog's nihilist penguin teach us? (2017)

#13

Post by tptacek »

beeflet wrote: post #11
tptacek wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of the sequence is that there's no chance that these "badass penguins" are going to make new species. There's no food where they're monomaniacally heading. They're going to die.

It's convenient that colonies of penguins only live where there is food. One wonders how they got there, perhaps god set them there to live for eternity.

Have you watched the film we're talking about?

Re: What does Werner Herzog's nihilist penguin teach us? (2017)

#14

Post by Towaway69 »

netsharc wrote: post #10

Interesting, I've seen videos about this nihilistic penguin the last few days on Instagram... Feels like content regurgitation, but I don't know who's creating and who's recycling it at the moment. (On HN there's often a story from one site one day, and a few days later the same story reported by a different news site..)

The article itself seems to predate this:

> It’s a decade since the film officially premiered at the 2007 Toronto Film Festival, and it remains one of Herzog’s finest achievements.

So it would seem the article is nearly a decade old.

Re: What does Werner Herzog's nihilist penguin teach us? (2017)

#15

Post by observationist »

tptacek wrote: post #4
observationist wrote: post #2

That's how new species happen. Over time, the penguins who get sufficiently tired of all the other penguins' shit march off to the edge of the map, and when they finally get lucky, enough of the smart, independent minded penguins survive to produce a new generation. The new adventure flock eventually garners enough members to march back to the feeding grounds and seize the territory from the loser normy penguins. Thu…

The whole point of the sequence is that there's no chance that these "badass penguins" are going to make new species. There's no food where they're monomaniacally heading. They're going to die.

I get what you're saying and all, but when you look back across the hundreds of millions of years of evolution, the whole reason humans exist is the extreme and sometimes arbitrary individual choices and "that never happens" situations that are exceptions to niche saturation. You could take the glass half empty, cold and pragmatic view and focus on the fact that millions, or maybe even tens of millions of antisocial/adventurous/moronic penguins have to get wanderlust and die frozen and alone before you might even get a single successful breeding pair, but who wants to look at life like that?

Most badass penguins don't make it. Being the badass penguin isn't a sensible life goal. The altar of time demands the blood sacrifice of nearly all the badass penguins before progress and change is allowed. Occasionally, though, they win, and new species are born. The exceptions end up forking the timeline, and provide a backdrop of meaning to the sacrifice of all those who came (or went?) before.

The thing I love most is the fact that you can project anything on to the penguin, from extreme heroism, to villainy, to meaninglessness, or even profound cosmic purpose. I'd love to know what the evolutionary psychology / behavior is that actually causes it, though.

Re: What does Werner Herzog's nihilist penguin teach us? (2017)

#16

Post by barcodehorse »

beeflet wrote: post #8

I would describe it as a faustian penguin, not a nihilist penguin. The other day there was a story here about a coyote that swam to alcatraz ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46674433 ). When we look at an animal that does such a thing, we characterize it as a strange and suicidal act of a disturbed creature hurtling it's life force into the abyss. But when man does the same thing, it is a heroic and uniquely hu…

> When we look at an animal that does such a thing, we characterize it as a strange and suicidal act of a disturbed creature hurtling it's life force into the abyss. But when man does the same thing, it is a heroic and uniquely human act of exploration.

I'd say that that's mostly because the man in question is rational. They strategize, they collect resources, and they do whatever they can to make sure they can return. The penguin can't do that. It doesn't have a goal in mind, or any way to sustain itself while it wanders. It just goes.

Re: What does Werner Herzog's nihilist penguin teach us? (2017)

#18

Post by ceejayoz »

dyauspitr wrote: post #7
observationist wrote: post #2

That's how new species happen. Over time, the penguins who get sufficiently tired of all the other penguins' shit march off to the edge of the map, and when they finally get lucky, enough of the smart, independent minded penguins survive to produce a new generation. The new adventure flock eventually garners enough members to march back to the feeding grounds and seize the territory from the loser normy penguins. Thu…

Interesting fantasy but these broken penguins are too infrequent to start something new. They usually just wander off to die alone in the cold. New species are usually formed gradually while introducing their mutations to the population until they eventually break off as a group. But more commonly there’s usually a geographic barrier that separates an existing group and they gradually just drift apart from each other…

> They usually just wander off to die alone in the cold.

Usually! But not always.

Every once in a while, one probably makes it to another colony many miles away, and helps prevent inbreeding as a result.

Or runs into a similar weirdo somewhere in between.

Re: What does Werner Herzog's nihilist penguin teach us? (2017)

#19

Post by brendoelfrendo »

ceejayoz wrote: post #6
tptacek wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of the sequence is that there's no chance that these "badass penguins" are going to make new species. There's no food where they're monomaniacally heading. They're going to die.

This particular one wasn't going anywhere useful. That's presumably why the comment said "when [collective they] finally get lucky", not "when [individual they] inevitably get lucky". A certain percentage of your species having genes encouraging risky/stupid behavior is likely somewhat useful.

A lone penguin wandering off is never going to create a new, badass species. There would need to be an entire group of penguins breaking off to establish a new population and eventually a new species. And they don't necessarily become more badass, just different; whatever alleles the founders had will be more consistently expressed in the new population, and eventually they may diverge enough to be a new species. Regardless, this penguin is marching off to die alone.

Re: What does Werner Herzog's nihilist penguin teach us? (2017)

#20

Post by mig39 »

netsharc wrote: post #10

Interesting, I've seen videos about this nihilistic penguin the last few days on Instagram... Feels like content regurgitation, but I don't know who's creating and who's recycling it at the moment. (On HN there's often a story from one site one day, and a few days later the same story reported by a different news site..)

It was big on TikTok a few months ago, which makes sense that it's on Instagram now.
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