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Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

Isn't the entire idea of "being mean" an abstract and intellectual idea? Furthermore that thought process would have a number of complex implications. Do whales equate eating another animal with "being mean"? Does that mean they view hunting as "wrong" in some way? Do they have guilt over continuing to hunt? Are there some whales that morally object to hunting? Is there some orca out there that feeds on plankton because it is the whale equivalent of a morally motivated vegan?

It is much cleaner to isolate the motivation and equate it with something more animalistic like "it is instinctually initiating a preemptive attack on a predator and the seal was just a lucky but coincidental bystander".

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> Isn't the entire idea of "being mean" an abstract and intellectual idea?

Not really, it boils down to harm prevention.

I believe that, as humans, we greatly overestimate our own reliance or abstract ideas.

If we notice someone is harming another, and we intervene, we simply act.

The explanation for our behaviour (someone was being mean) comes later as post-hoc rationalisation.

Ironically, we then further rationalise and extrapolate from this incorrect idea that human behaviour comes from a fount of abstract values and ideas, and use it to devalue animals and their behaviour (assuming they have no complex cognition, and so must be dumb).

I've lived with dogs and birds and seen dogs intervene when other dogs fight, birds intervene when other birds fight and dogs intervene when birds fight.

I don't think stopping aggressive acts in one's vicinity requires more reasoning ability than plotting to long term ruin the outlooks for other specific species X, species Y is cute or some thoughts about the moral act of hunting. Most animals have some experience with others acting aggressively and would like that reduced. We don't think about who is involved either when we see a fight break out between humans or animals.

I just happened to come across a magpie that was fighting a mouse outdoors today, and the mouse got pinned in a hole in a tree where the magpie kept pecking. I don't know why but I walked over so that the magpie went up in a nearby tree and the mouse ran away. That same magpie then attacked some nearby other magpies before calming down.

A YouTube video I enjoyed several years back involved chickens (hens) breaking up a rabbit fight.

Edit: it proved surprisingly easy to find: https://youtu.be/D35uQCtr4EY

Physiologically it probably involves mirror neurones and what you describe shouldn't be all that surprising or require an internal philosophical discourse as parent might have suggested.

> > Isn't the entire idea of "being mean" an abstract and intellectual idea?

> Not really, it boils down to harm prevention.

Ask the fish whom that seal will subsequently eat how much harm is being prevented.

I'm not sure I understand the down votes. I posed the question in a flippant manner, but I ask the question in earnest.

The grandparent pointed out that the concept of 'being mean' can't easily be applied to animals. The parent asserted without argument (or even definition) that it comes down to 'harm reduction', and went on to pontificate about humans overestimating their exceptionalism. So are the humpback whales harming the orcas by depriving them of a food source? Are the orcas harming the seal by eating him? Are the humpback whales harming the smaller fish who the seal will eat?

> The grandparent pointed out that the concept of 'being mean' can't easily be applied to animals.

The complex cognition of 'being mean' might apply to an animal, or it might not. I'm not arguing that.

What I was trying to argue, was that complex cognitions aren't required for complex looking behaviour.

In this case a maternal behaviour that already exists in the whale, to protect it's offspring, seems to have been transferred to a seal.

I see no need for complex concepts or moral calculi to explain the whale's behaviour.

You are of course correct that it fails at reducing harm down the line, but that's what makes it tragic, and interesting.

There are Orcas that eat seals and orcas that eat only fish and this is split across pod boundaries that haven’t interbred in hundreds of years or more but are physically capable.

Point of interest: It's not clear, but it looks from your grammar structure like you're calling the Orca a whale. Orca are dolphins, calling them whales isn't wrong, per se, like calling a bottle-nosed dolphin a whale isn't wrong; they're cetaceans too; both belong to the taxonomic family 'dolphins'.

I gather we call them "killer whales" because of a mistranslation of "whale killers".

> I gather we call them "killer whales" because of a mistranslation of "whale killers".

I thought this was a stupid assumption so I set out to prove you wrong. I was wrong [0]. I could use practice humbly admitting that more often. Wiktionary, for what it's worth: Calque or mistranslation of Spanish asesina-ballenas (whale killer), referring to their tendency to hunt whales.

[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/killer_whale

Thanks for that interesting tidbit, I didn't know the taxonomy. But hey, at least I didn't call it a fish.

I expect seals and humpbacks enjoy interacting with each other and that supportive feelings accompany their relationship. Humpbacks don't as individuals try to protect their babies in order to pass on their genes and survive as a species, they love them. Its only a tenuous academic exercise to suppose that they do not have a complex appreciation of their neighbors - as though they might be operating with little consciousness, like microbes. There is no great argument that we should reduce the appearance of friendliness between intelligent and emotional species, to clinical survival strategies. Its perhaps a trend left over from recent history when animal psychologists conducted cruel experiments in the name of science.

>Isn't the entire idea of "being mean" an abstract and intellectual idea?

If it is then whales likely know more about it than us. Our brain structure is a subset of theirs and their extra parts are devoted to emotional processing.

Citation?

A cetacean citation even!

Perhaps the reasoning occurs at a more primitive level. For example, the whale may have had a previous fearful experience. Sensing fear in the seal triggered that feeling in the whale. By helping the seal, the whale may have been helping itself.

So like us, then.

Yes, but as humans we can also empathise without a prior related trauma.

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