The dolphin who loved me: the Nasa-funded project that went wrong (2014)
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
I admit I sort of fail to understand the outrage about the sex thing and about the attempt to teach it English. I'm probably naïve but I still think some basic form of communication should be possible, like with great apes.
That's a bold statement. I don't even know where to begin, there are so many levels here. Like, why would you even make such a claim? I mean I'm not against the claim per se, but it does not seem like you have any evidence, or that you even looked for it. Seems to come right out of some human moral position instead, one that is not rooted in nature, given how many "weird" sex stories and video documentation we can find easily these days about all kinds of animals. Like dogs humping pillows, chimpanzee "using" a frog, quite a few stories about dolphins, etc.
Back to the human/dolphin story here, there also is a pretty well-known (or at least well-published) "man had sex with female dolphin" story, example article: https://www.unilad.co.uk/animals/guy-who-had-sex-with-a-dolp...
If there was a case where a horse was infatuated with the person doing the deed and the person was doing it for the sole purpose of the horses enjoyment then that'd be just as weird.
Clearly the weirdness is rooted in human morality. I don't think it's unusual to judge the behaviours of humans differently to animals. Otherwise it'd be acceptable to fight to the death over "access" to females; sexual consent would be a very loose concept and defecation on street corners would be acceptable.
Whereas with the dolphin example, the point was for the dolphin to enjoy it. There was no "morally purer" point.
>I'm saying that intent informs morality. eg: Murder and Man Slaughter.
The shocking thing is the way that Lilly started with the assumption that dolphins were sentient and worth communicating with, and ended with "It's just a dumb animal, so why should we care how it feels?"
The turning point seems to have been the observation that it didn't start turning cartwheels - metaphorically or otherwise - when dosed up on acid.
Basically he dismissed it when it didn't turn into an acid freak - ignoring the fact that it was demonstrating curiosity, the ability to relate and form attachments, and many human-like elements of language.
All of which were far more convincing as evidence of real sentience, and more worthy of research, than the fact that it failed to trip balls on cue.
You mean from your (current) moral standpoint. "Moral" is not exactly something fixed, it is varies greatly depending on both space and time.
But being an agriculture practice, goal-oriented... most people leave it at weird and move on.
Here, there's more eccentricity. LSD, interspecies communication, alien languages, animal personhood.... It doesn't take many leaps to get to "drug fueled bestiality."
That's perhaps a city thing. In farms people did similar things (to cows etc) all the time as part of routine job.
http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/reprod/semenev...
So yes, that is where the milk comes from.
I'm more intrigued by the moral code that finds sexually stimulating an animal on its request morally wrong, but force-feeding them LSD a-okay.
As a species, we’ve pretty universally said that some humans can’t legally/morally consent. A prisoner can’t consent to sex with their captors, even if they want to. A minor can’t consent to sex with an adult, even if they want to.
In short, I think declaring this as consensual is in question, rather than assumed. The power disparity here is huge between human and dolphin, in this context.
The topic of consent also ties in with one of my AI philosophy interests: what counts as a mind capable of being wronged.
I don’t know the answer. Suffering? What is that, though? We can all make something that looks like it’s suffering but is really just a video recorder of ourselves acting. Worse, on the other hand, we probably literally cannot percieve all forms of suffering: the squeaking of a dog toy is mimicking the sound of a rodent suffering, why would we be better, why would we have evolved to recognise the pain in our prey?
I don’t know where the capacity to suffer begins or ends, if it’s binary or shades of grey.
That’s why I’m vegetarian (nothing weirder to me than someone chomping down on a beef burger while they say cows can’t consent), and I would be vegan if I had more self control. Doesn’t mean it’s wrong to eat meat —again, I don’t know if they can suffer, I’d just rather needlessly restrict my diet than make the other error. Pascal’s Wager for animal welfare, if you will.
And on the topic of bad arguments, noticing that hypocrisy doesn’t make the sexual act okay: if they’re able to suffer, meat is bad and consent becomes necessary.
If someone comes out to me, the moral code I apply is “can that particular animal win a fight with you if they wanted to?” (it would be “are they enthusiastic?” but I don’t know how to judge that, especially second hand). This generally changes the anti-argument from consent to informed consent, which brings up the spectacular everyone’s-a-failure counterpoint that interspecies STDs just don’t seem to have any research, (gee, I wonder why :P) so even the humans can’t give informed consent.
Don't know the last time you tried, but the world of dairy substitutes (at least for me in San Francisco) is much better than five years ago, and incredibly better than ten years ago.
On the other hand, soy milk comes in many good flavours now, both in the UK and Germany, as does soy yoghurt.
My biggest weakness is where non-vegan stuff is an ingredient: cake (eggs, milk), chocolate (milk), bread often has milk powder too.
It is getting easier though.
Damn, I love how you've put that.
I will suggest that, in this case, the outrage may be rooted in the fact that the dolphin literally killed itself.
She didn't masturbate the dolphin for her own sexual pleasure. To her, it was a perfunctory part of her job. It was expedient, to free up time to teach the dolphin. And no one stopped to wonder what the emotional and psychological consequences would be for the dolphin.
It was smart enough to try to teach language to, but then it was simultaneously assumed to be a "dumb animal" just needing to ejaculate, like that's a necessary bodily function like peeing and that's it. But the dolphin apparently experienced emotional bonding and was completely devastated when separated from her and literally committed suicide because of it.
So I think on some level people are reacting not to the "sex" per se, but to the "You did a thing that caused an intelligent creature to want to be dead because of the thing you did. Seriously? What is wrong with you?"
https://zoom.earth/#18.318131,-64.859424,19z,sat
We used to sail past it in the 1970s, and the buildings were abandoned but had roofs then. Back in 2011 there were plans to develop the area but I guess they fell through. Back then the risque part of the story was well known, though the LSD experiments were not. They had it all backwards, the LSD should have generated an outcry instead. Mammals are similar enough that the scent of female human would surely provoke such a response.
This couldn't possibly be correct. Female humans don't need to worry about e.g. amorous stallions, bulls, or even male chimpanzees. The fact that sexual relations of some sort have occasionally taken place between different species doesn't make anything about it "sure". If it were, mammals would waste a lot of time and energy on behavior that does not contribute to genetic fitness. Besides dolphins don't have olfactory nerves.
This video explains it very well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xUvhUK8Dv8
https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/home-where-your-dolphin-is...
The BBC showed it a few years ago, it's fascinating: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b046w2n8
Szilards 'the voice of the dolphins' story is much more a political work post bomb physiscs career.