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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   2090 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 26, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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So uh, what are we gonna do about the organized orca attacks? It doesn't seem like a good idea to let a community of killer whales that likes to capsize boats get established. The authorities might want to nip this in the bud quick. We don't know how complex the ideas that orcas communicate amongst themselves are. It's not outside the realm of possibility that "humans are bad actually" becomes an entrenched meme in orca society. I doubt the orcas could survive an all-out war with humans, but it would be a shame if it came to that.

The article that @George_E_Hale linked suggests that scientists think it’s only a handful of individual orcas that are responsible for all the attacks, and that they might be motivated by revenge after a sailing boat caused injury to one. It’s pretty interesting. I doubt it’s a ‘humans are bad’ meme, as yet they don’t seem interested in killing humans themselves even though they easily could.

There’s a lot of research into studying the way other intelligent animals communicate, but much less on actually attempting to communicate with them. Many scientists consider it unethical even to try. There should be a far greater public investment into seeing whether complex communication with cognitively advanced animals like dolphins/orcas, elephants and octopuses is possible. Primatologists do this, but only because with great apes the similarities with us are so undeniable.

Now that LLMs have shown how banal a lot of human cognition is, there is a strong case that a ‘strong dividing line’ between us and other smart animals might be more of a blur, and lesser but still intelligent species could well be capable of reasoning about the world in ways we’ve largely dismissed or ignored.

You wouldn’t need to do anything particularly extreme, simply equipping ships with a few loud explosives (think m80 or smaller firecrackers) would still solve this problem.

Interesting. Been tried apparently.

Fireworks appear—unofficially—to be the only effective deterrent method, but it is illegal and can lead to heavy fines, because the orcas are peaceful and loud noises risk damaging their hearing.

It must be said that cannon shots, known as seal bombs, are commonly used by American authorities to scare orcas away from oil spills. However, they are detonated at a long distance.

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