

Sea Otters Are Jerks. So Are Dolphins, Penguins, and Other Adorable Animals - aaron695
http://www.slate.com/blogs/wild_things/2013/10/28/sea_otter_dolphin_and_penguin_behavior_your_favorite_animals_are_jerks.html

======
6ren
Our values do come from evolutionary fitness.

It's just that cooperation, exchange, and division of labour benefit all of us
better than some zero-sum game. If this were not the case, savagery would rule
the world, instead of global trade.

Enlightened self-interest favours respect of diversity and non-conformance -
because exploration is more effective when everyone tries a different approach
(instead of the same one). And exploration, especially in science and
technology, benefits us all, particularly in increasing carrying capacity so
we needn't choose between intertribal warfare, infanticide and starvation.

I took the following from studying world war two in school (though I don't
think it was explicitly stated): the Nazis started WWII and sought to
eliminate many groups, including Jews, on the basis of eugenics (apparently,
eugenics was broadly popular at the time). Yet Einstein, a German Jew, created
the basis of atomic weapons which ended the war (if not, they would have ended
it).

Eugenics is a misunderstanding of the Darwinian value of a human life.

To some people, this point of view may seem cynical, ugly and horrible. But to
me, it is the most hopeful view I've ever seen. It means that if some overly-
controlling group tries to enslave the world, they will likely fail - because
their very nature weakens them. It also means that over time, the Darwinian
pressure is for us to become ever more good, as that is what gets rewarded.
Therefore, if one day we meet powerful aliens, they are likely ethical aliens.
Taken to the furthest extreme, one could see symbiosis as the nature of the
universe.

Is that taking it too far? Maybe. But it follows from the evidence, and the
logic of division of labour. Of course, it's just a probability - selfishness
can strike at cooperation at any time. And does. All I claim is that
cooperation is the way to bet.

Ethics is power.

~~~
aac
Why are bringing Einstein into this? That has nothing to do with the original
topic. Your post also contains quite a number of inaccuracies and self-
observations. Ethics is power? You can try expanding upon that a bit next time
you post a comment similar to that.

~~~
nikatwork
The comment made perfect sense. OP was extrapolating the "animals are jerks
because of evolutionary pressure" idea to humans, and reasoning that non-zero-
sum ethics are also the result of that pressure. "Ethics is power" was the
summation, not the initiation.

It seems like you need to work on your critical reading skills before getting
so snarky.

~~~
vacri
aac is trolling by creating a throwaway account and intentionally violating a
few of the comment-posting guidelines.

------
existencebox
Maybe I'm missing the point; or that this is implied, but this seems to really
beg the question of, "Humans do all of these behaviors AND MANY MORE!" what
sort of "jerks" are we?

In fact, it seems that the whole "jerk" thing is rather contrived, and the
occurrences as a whole seem to merely suggest "this is what it is to be an
animal."(They seemed to be going in this direction; but then turned it into a
"this is why animals aren't actually good and nice and our superior reasoning
ability allows us to avoid this" but I would respond with, "it hasn't.")

I don't mean to legitimze, but rather to suggest that it puts any suggestions
that humans are more than "just animals" (tm) in an interesting light.

~~~
aac
You don't need to be sorry for your thoughts. "Maybe I'm missing the point",
"I don't mean to...", and other similar phrases can be avoided. You don't need
to use phrases such as these. Just say what you think, and if you find
yourself unable to post without using those phrases, then that means your
comment/argument is flawed and you shouldn't be posting such a comment.

~~~
existencebox
I've found, especially in dealing with certain crowds which can often be known
as adversarial to put it kindly, a lot of times you avoid conflict by coming
across more defensively. Perhaps I've just had to deal with very abrasive
people in my day to day work environment, but I phrase things in such a way
consciously, aside from any judgement on the argument itself.

------
noonespecial
Teleological reasoning is always trouble when it comes to evolution. The
biggest problem these days seems to be going from valid assumptions like "the
best foods to eat are the ones we evolved to digest" to the less valid "that's
how we evolved so that's how we should be". The first makes one healthy, the
second makes one Nazi.

~~~
aac
And yet another instance of Godwin's law being invoked. What do Nazis have to
do with this topic? None. Please don't post this type of comment in the
future.

~~~
stcredzero
_What do Nazis have to do with this topic?_

Eugenics. Sloppy reasoning using evolution.

 _Please don 't post this type of comment in the future._

As far as I can tell, you didn't have the background to know what the gp
commenter was saying, so you counterfactually knee-jerked a reaction amounting
to censorship.

It would be nice if we could rationally talk about the Nazi regime in a
historical and cultural context. It's especially instructive, as they
sincerely believed they were "the good guys." What was the most used word
referencing an emotion at the Nuremberg Rally the year Leni Riefenstahl filmed
_Triumph of the Will_?

"Love."

The Nazis thought they were the good guys, and they were able to convince
enough of an entire country to achieve a totalitarian state. What they did
afterwards was truly horrible -- which is a glaring indication that we have
lots of valuable stuff to learn about how human beings can go horribly wrong
by _thinking about what happened._

Godwin's law is an anti-rational knee jerk.

The person who originally introduced me to this idea? (Not in specific
reference to Godwin's law, but generally.) A young jewish woman I had fallen
in love with. Chew on that.

~~~
defen
> Godwin's law is an anti-rational knee jerk.

(Off-topic)

Actually, I think parent poster and you misunderstand Godwin's law. Godwin's
law is just the empirical observation that, as an Internet thread grows
longer, the probability of someone making a Nazi reference approaches unity.
It's a "law" in the same way that Moore's Law is one. It's not (originally)
intended to be a way to shut down discussion. There's nothing special about
the Nazis in this regard - there is a tendency toward a "race to the bottom"
when constructing analogies, and it just so happens that in our culture
they're considered the worst thing that ever happened. If the Nazis never
existed Godwin's Law would have referenced something else - slavery, some
other genocide, etc.

~~~
andrewflnr
Maybe this is a different law, but I thought Godwin's law was more along the
lines of "whoever first makes a comparison to hitler automatically loses the
argument".

------
triplesec
I don't like this piece. It's anthropomorphising but to little useful effect.
We know animals are not humans, and imputing American C21st values to animals,
which are really doing things which animals do, doesn't enlighten us one bit.
There is a good point to it, but the tone, that "they're jerks" is way too
simplistic for a good undersanding of the factors and survival metrics
involved here. Why do x do y, and why is that different from us, here are some
factors and likelihoods would be a much more useful approach.

------
elwell
I loved the conclusions at the end. The "naturalistic fallacy" has been on my
mind for quite a while.

~~~
novalis78
yes, indeed. It's easy to forget the terror and brutality of survival that is
a daily given for most animals and a certain percentage of humans when you
live in the "developed" world. Amazing how quickly we get accustomed to a safe
and routine life when all it takes is a month in a jungle - or Calcutta for
that matter - to re-appreciate how far we have come using reason, stepping
beyond what could be classified as "natural".

~~~
gurkendoktor
We are safe not just thanks to reason in our social behaviour, but also our
hygiene:

[http://www.amazon.com/Parasite-Rex-Bizarre-Dangerous-
Creatur...](http://www.amazon.com/Parasite-Rex-Bizarre-Dangerous-
Creatures/dp/074320011X)

I thought that anyone who has raised a cat knows that animals are jerks
(playing with bleeding mice for hours and all), but I was shocked by the added
layer of terribleness from parasites in almost all species.

------
tobylane
Cats, pigs and bettafish continue unslandered, no one wants to annoy Reddit.

~~~
selmnoo
That actually bugs me a lot. Cats are wreaking environmental havoc:
[http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/29/cats-
wi...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/29/cats-wild-birds-
mammals-study/1873871/)

Raising this point on Reddit only gets you downvotes.

~~~
forktheif
The impact cats are having has been greatly overstated for two main reasons.

1\. Original studies over estimated the amount of animals a typical cat kills.

2\. Cats roam over a lot less area than you'd think, rarely going even half a
mile away from their home. Putting the majority of wild animals out of reach
of a house cat's range.

------
openforce
I think it is our society which has encouraged the cuddly, cute side of these
animals to be more recognized. Maybe, If we get to look at a wildlife
conservation group's data, we will probably find that the cute pictures of
these animals got through to a bigger audience and brought in more donations
than a violent/non-cute picture. I am not saying it is wrong, but that is just
how it is. This will continue to happen unless more people actually show
interest and try to learn more about the wildlife around them.

------
krakensden
He's missing my favorite bit of mean Adélie behavior- before they jump in the
water as a group, they shove a weak or unlucky penguin in and wait for a
second to see if a seal eats it.

------
Demiurge
Correction: animals are jerks.

------
greygoose
This is especially problematic in Monterey Bay, where there are more male sea
otters than females. The reason for this skew in the population is unclear,
but it leaves male sea otters in a bind. The rehabilitated sea otters were
released into an environment of intense competition and were at a disadvantage
when it came time to find a mate. > Hello CS class.

------
twotwotwo
(I read "so are developers" for a second.)

~~~
aac
^Not a useful comment, as it tells nothing new or insightful, so please don't
post this type of comment in the future.

------
geoka9
Actually, males of many species are mostly jerks. Females, on the other
hand...

------
aac
This should not be on the front page.

~~~
CodeMage
So flag it. Oh, that's right, you can't -- because you created a throw-away
account to post a bunch of comments on this thread, telling other people what
they should or shouldn't post.

------
lurkinggrue
To be fair, the baby seals were asking for it.

~~~
aac
Please don't troll.

