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Study finds juvenile dolphins who play together are more successful as adults (phys.org)
125 points by PaulHoule 5 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 38 comments





I'm certain this is the case with humans as well.

Growing up, I had a tight-knit group of four friends in a lower middle-class townhouse community. I think the enthusiasm we all brought to our childhood and embracing our diversity (all four of us were completely different races) helped us all excel as adults. It's been 15-20 years since college, but I remember how socially underdeveloped many of my peers were. Almost two decades since then, it's not a surprise to anyone that the more socially and emotionally in-tune people climb their industries faster.


Lots of successful leaders (Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Thomas Edison ...etc) are/were introverts with few to no friends during their childhood.

On the other hand, that depends on the environment: if Joe is born in a poor crowded corner of the town where drugs and stuff are the coin, Joe may have more chance to succeed in life if his parents isolate him from the neighborhood as a child/teenager.


Are any of those successful leaders? They're successful entrepreneurs no doubt, but all exhibit(ed) sociopathic behaviour and are widely documented as not being nice nor nice to work for, being extremely particular, demanding to the extreme, and genuine assholes.

None of those are good leadership qualities.


>Are any of those successful leaders?

Is the OP, or any of his friend group?


Agreed. The three individuals they listed are not anyone I would want my child to grow up to be.

Or people I anyone would like to work for.

Disagree, I'd like my son to lean towards Elon Musk.

Why? He is a terrible person and a terrible role model. Greedy, self centered, fosters a cult of personality, emotionally immature, and refuses to acknowledge his own daughter without any good reason. I wouldn't shake his hand if he offered it.

He's a person to point your son to as an example of what not to be.


You would like your son to be arrogant, extremely incompetent in lots of things (reminded that the man thought he knew better than cave divers about caves, and was evaluating developers by number of lines written), publicly embarrass himself weekly, and be hated by all of his former wives and children of which there are many?

Somewhat related, but one of my favorite philosophy books is "Finite and Infinite Games" by James P. Carse[1]. It contextualizes everything from relationships, to school, to business, to geopolitical conflict as a game.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Finite-Infinite-Games-James-Carse/dp/...


Success in human life is very strongly affected by one’s ability to cooperate with other humans.

Play helps develops a range of skills in a dynamic environment that mixes physical, mental, emotional dimensions.


Citing Todd Flanders:

> That's all well and good for sheep, but what are we to do?


How are they measuring dolphin success? Children? Income? Education?

It's in the second paragraph

> juvenile males who spend more time practicing will father more offspring as adults.

Your attempt at stir controversy doesn't even reach the bar for 'low effort'


Local dolphin doesn't like fun, yells at seaweed.

I didnt read kept chuckling about the wording of the title. Makes partner at her dolphin law firm by 30, tried first state supreme court case by 35. Porsche, Land Rover, and a classic mustang.

Keep your kids inside and teach them to code.

But that’s you wind up where the only socialization they get is with other weirdos on the internet.

Oh, they don’t need an internet connection! Just a terminal, vim, and gcc.

GCC because C is small, you can just give them paper docs.


If you don't give them a copy of Kernighan and Ritchie, it's child abuse.

> "We found that juvenile play involves immature versions of adult reproductive behaviors that are crucial for males to access and mate with estrous females, and the time spent doing these play behaviors predicts how many offspring males eventually sire as adults."

> Adult male dolphins in Shark Bay form long-term alliances to help each other secure access to females and these alliances are formed between males who were closely bonded as juveniles. As adults, pairs or trios of allied males will coordinate their behavior to consort individual females, and this work shows that young males practice this coordination with their likely future allies, years before they become sexually mature.

In summary, dolphins that do practice-gangbangs in their youth tends to have more offsprings as adults.


“secure access to females” ok lol. this is masqueraded as science but just projecting their desires and the exclusion and frustration the researchers are feeling interpersonally.

given how popular the choice of linguistics is amongst the excluded crowd, they should have spent more time socializing.


> allied males will coordinate their behavior to consort individual females

Yeah there are different ways to phrase this which might be more appropriate considering the behavior and likely intelligence of dolphins.

Apparently a lot of marine biologists really hate dolphins.


They shouldn’t have become scientists, then, if they bring morals with them when studying animals.

I really roll my eyes at the marine bio dislike of dolphins which seems to boil down to “they do things they know are bad”

Coming from a human, that reeks of someone hating someone else for reflecting their own flaws.


It was only after how many thousands of years after the wheel was invented that women got the right to vote? I agree. It’s ridiculous to judge dolphins. They don’t even cultivate crops yet!

> after how many thousands of years after the wheel was invented that women got the right to vote

The Haudanashonee clan mothers, Cleopatra, Kush queen mothers and Anasazi at Chaco might like to have a word on that.


Fair point

[flagged]


What the fuck

Just like with humans, dolphins that play with each other are presumable more “normal” and their play is a result of being the way they are.

Yes. Or put another way, there has to be something off for social mammal juveniles not to play together with others. And something off is not generally popular with mating females.

On that note, "7 minutes in Heaven" is in Munroe's "Computers may never outplay humans" category in https://xkcd.com/1002/ .

(as glass bead games are closely related to Calvinball, I'd be interested to see if that categorisation remains accurate or if we wind up in the world of https://xkcd.com/810/ )


What a delightful followup.

I just found out about "7 minutes in Heaven", but as it's described on the WWW, I'd hazard a guess Ken Jennings could in principle find himself dethroned simply by current technologies with copious amounts of reinforcement feedback (and letting Honda iterate a bit on the implementation).

Conquering Calvinball seems like it's going to require at least 810 and probably quite a bit beyond that.


What are glass bead games?


I found the above comment juxtaposed with this comment funny.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40686631


I think you have that the wrong way round. They are the way they are as a result of play. Play is fundamental to their adult behaviour.

I think you're both wrong. It's actually bidirectional: dolphins with more harmful mutations are less likely to 'play' normally, and play is also extremely beneficial to development.



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