Hacker News Reader

Comment by Eyas | Hacker News Reader

That's uncomfortably close to Eurocentric claims of superiority that point to their colonization and exploitation of other countries in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth century.

I don't necessarily buy it. A pacifist civilization might be "dominated" by a violent civilization, but they might still choose death over becoming violent themselves.

View on HN

I agree with your post but it’s worth noting it does not apply to dolphins. Dolphins are not pacifists[0].

[0] http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160204-cute-and-cuddly-dolp...

They can be pretty brutal to sharks and themselves. Also on a more bizarre note they can get rather rape-y esp. on hallucinogens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prmx0lYBTko

I do not read that the previous poster meant that the superior one was morally superior. Only superior in terms of violent power.

You're not buying it but they're not selling it?

The nets aren't a plot to subjugate the dolphins though; for the most part humans would rather not have dolphin bycatch. They're just something that dolphins haven't collectively figured out how to avoid.

That’s like saying humans aren’t intelligent because they can’t avoid car accidents in the rain.

Even if you were super intelligent, i bet you’d get fucked up in a net if you had low visibility in the water, you were traveling at high speed, and you didn’t have opposable thumbs to untangle yourself.

If I was an sonar-equipped aquatic mammal that was also superintelligent, I'd expect generations of losses might have taught my civilization not to swim near boats.

(Unless we're positing that running the risk of being trawled is an essential part of mucking about and having fun, or a scientific experiment, or dolphins having enough imagination for some of them to speculate warnings about boats are a conspiracy to keep them from the best fish :D)

Boats go where your food is. Avoid boats and you'll have to avoid the most plentiful food sources. Either starve or run the risk that you might stumble upon a boat and someone from your group might get tangled.

> humans aren’t intelligent because they can’t avoid car accidents in the rain

A reasonable exhibit one for the presently observable limits on (at least collective) human intelligence.

Where did anyone say anything about superiority? If anything, the implication is that the humans are stupid for not mucking about and having a good time, and that even though the dolphins may be “superior” in this regard, it’s a race to the bottom since the more violent species wipes out the fun-loving one.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com