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

71–80 of 102 posts

Re: “My Octopus Teacher” defied convention

#71

Post by dllthomas »

jbotz wrote: post #48
simmerup wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very rational to want the treatment of humans to be held to a high standard when you yourself are a human.

But I am also a primate, mammal, vertebrate, animal, terran life-form. And going the other direction I am homo sapiens as opposed to neanderthal, caucasian, German, member of my specific family. Why draw a sharp line specifically at "human"..?

One reason is that we can communicate with (most) other humans to establish the shared boundary in a way we cannot (as reliably?) with other life.

I make no particular claim here as to how this reason should be weighed against the various other reasons pulling in the various directions.

Re: “My Octopus Teacher” defied convention

#72

Post by trhway »

>The scientist you interacted with was probably a very nice person—but just didn’t seem to think that the animals they experimented on were very sentient and probably in enormous distress.

just a bit more than 100 years ago they were cutting dogs and cats alive without anesthesia.

and that is one of the popular calf castration methods which is still done without anesthesia even today - as described it is painful "only" the first 12-36 hours (left to your imagination what the calves feel during the next several weeks as the testicles and scrotum slowly necrotize and ultimately fall off)

https://www.amazon.com/calf-bander/s?k=calf+bander

Re: “My Octopus Teacher” defied convention

#73

Post by simmerup »

jbotz wrote: post #48
simmerup wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very rational to want the treatment of humans to be held to a high standard when you yourself are a human.

But I am also a primate, mammal, vertebrate, animal, terran life-form. And going the other direction I am homo sapiens as opposed to neanderthal, caucasian, German, member of my specific family. Why draw a sharp line specifically at "human"..?

Because humans that extract value from animals outcompete the humans that don't.

It's in a humans best interest to believe the narrative that allows them to extract that value without moral uneasiness.

Re: “My Octopus Teacher” defied convention

#74

Post by taneq »

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…

> 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 not like they don't have myriad other creatures to outsmart in their daily lives.

> But the puzzle still remains why their intelligence is similar at all to the one that evolved through forced social interactions.

Is it? Every time I see 'octopus' and 'intelligence' in the same sentence it's someone saying how weird and alien they are. Possibly they have some similarities when it comes to theory of mind because they're modeling generic other intelligences, but everything else about their minds seems totally alien unless presented with a large ladle of anthropomorphization poured over it.

Re: “My Octopus Teacher” defied convention

#75

Post by taneq »

sizimon wrote: post #14
1MachineElf wrote: post #9

deleted

Huh? He only has one kid- a son, who appears in a lot of the movie diving with him. I'm no expert on the filmmaker's life, but I've not heard that he 'turned his back' on his wife. In fact, you can read her feelings about his relationship with the octopus here: https://stories.seachangeproject.com/my-octopus-teacher-and-... She ends by saying that she dives almost every day with the filmmaker.

That does make me feel a bit better about it tbh. My main takeaway from my first watch through was "what are you doing obsessing over an octopus while you have a family at home that you seem to have forgotten about."

Re: “My Octopus Teacher” defied convention

#76

Post by tenpoundhammer »

drew55555 wrote: post #49
jbotz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I am also a primate, mammal, vertebrate, animal, terran life-form. And going the other direction I am homo sapiens as opposed to neanderthal, caucasian, German, member of my specific family. Why draw a sharp line specifically at "human"..?

Because humans are made in the image and likeness of God.

If your comment was some kind joke please disregard my comment.

Sorry to see you getting down voted into the basement, I too am a devout theist. I don't think the nature of your argument being theistic is the primary reason you are getting down voted though. I think if you built a stronger set of arguments about why this matters and how it relates to humans deserving a better level of treatment than other animals your comment would fair better.

A decent example might be something like, "As a Christian, I believe all humans are made in the image and likeness of God. This gives humans a special place in the order of the universe in Gods eyes and God asks us to respect that view in relation to how we treat other human beings. Giving humans a higher level of reverence than other animals. Being made in Gods likeness is also a reflection of the higher order cognitive, spiritual, and social faculties that humans share and other animals often don't display. Although we do see animals having some advanced emotions or social ordering we don't see them simultaneously containing all the high order functions that humanity does at once"

I wrote Christian because I'm a Christian, you might be part of any religion or none. Something like the above comment might be more constructive in the future best wishes.

Re: “My Octopus Teacher” defied convention

#77

Post by StavrosK »

simmerup wrote: post #46
Falling3 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is most people do not have a rational basis for the differences in the behaviors you outlined. The reasoning generally rests completely on logical fallacies.

It's very rational to want the treatment of humans to be held to a high standard when you yourself are a human.

If octopuses wanted to be treated humanely they would reply to this comment and say so!

Re: “My Octopus Teacher” defied convention

#78

Post by shuntress »

lm28469 wrote: post #62
shuntress wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was expecting some kind of mention of this guy's apparent privilege. As I recall, not even a single line in one of the talking-head section even as simple as "I've been incredibly lucky to be at a place in my life where I have the resources to make this film." I found this lack to be particularly off-putting when the general message (of this otherwise good documentary) is more-or-less "You can strengthen your soul…

You should go out and take a deep breath of reality. People in real life, especially outside of the US, aren't obsessed with talking about their or other people's privileges every time you put a microphone in front of their face.

You should go out and take a deep breath of reality. People in real life, especially outside of the US, care how they present themselves to other people and about their impact on society and culture.

People always tend to acknowledge their privilege or advantages. Here in the US we even have a national holiday for just that [0].

Don't try to twist this into some culture war bullshit.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving

Re: “My Octopus Teacher” defied convention

#79

Post by camjohnson26 »

tenpoundhammer wrote: post #76
drew55555 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because humans are made in the image and likeness of God.

If your comment was some kind joke please disregard my comment. Sorry to see you getting down voted into the basement, I too am a devout theist. I don't think the nature of your argument being theistic is the primary reason you are getting down voted though. I think if you built a stronger set of arguments about why this matters and how it relates to humans deserving a better level of treatment than other animals you…

The problem is that you’re approaching the discussion with a completely different philosophical framework than most people have, so they’ll latch on to specific things they disagree with in your example comment and dismiss the rest. For example your statement “I believe all humans are made in the likeness of God” will lead to “well I don’t”, and the discussion is over.

I think it’s more effective to find the core issue of disagreement, which here seems to be whether or not ethics can exist without some kind of a moral authority.

Christians have a tough time in public discussions these days, unfortunately because of some blunders in the past and poor arguments in the present.

Re: “My Octopus Teacher” defied convention

#80

Post by sneak »

moritzwarhier wrote: post #25
merpnderp wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly do you believe the link is between someone's profession and their genes? Because your comment reads like you believe there are genes for things you consider moral and immoral.

I was aiming at the fact that money is today a prime signifier of "evolutionary fitness", if that makes any sense. In my tangent about natural resources and fossil fuel I wanted to suggest that making money (especially big money) is strongly correlated with consumption of natural resources. (see tragedy of the commons) Mostly indirectly, even in professions that to not directly "burn fuel". Sell more goods, buy more…

I think power (specifically geopolitical) is significantly more of an indicator than money.

There are people substantially less wealthy than, say, Zuckerberg, who are far more likely to survive in a civilizational collapse/population bottleneck type evolutionary scenario.

In that sort of circumstance I'd rather be a Dr Strangelove (or high ranking military official, or an Air Force 1 crew member) than a Warren Buffet.

Post reply on HN