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Comment by swid | Hacker News Reader

This American Life just did a segment where the experts were very skeptical of both the theories presented in this article - that the first encounters near Spain were caused by a traumatic event of a matriarch, and also that orca pods would communicate with each other to spread the behavior.

The theory presented in that segment was the first orcas are sort of like rowdy teenagers participating in a fad, and the newer event near Scotland was something of a coincidence.

It’s a good segment regardless of what you think, and the first half of the episode was one of the better reports of ChatGPT I have heard, so also of interest to people here. The name of the episode is “Greetings, People of Earth.”

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something of a coincidence

Orcas do go in for fads (look up 'orca salmon hats') but experts oftentimes dismiss things as coincidence because they don't have a theory and don't want to look stupid by speculating. When I was growing up reports of ball lightning were dismissed as hallucinations or optical illusions until video and spectrographic technology advanced sufficiently to capture the phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning

That link says: “Owing to the lack of reproducible data, the existence of ball lightning as a distinct physical phenomenon remains unproven”

There are videos of it, and lots of people have seen it, not sure how much more proof you need:

> An optical spectrum of what appears to have been a ball lightning event was published in January 2014 and included a video at high frame rate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bBNeyrMOJE

I think what that sentence is saying is that we don't know how to reproduce it in a lab. We don't know what exactly is happening in the real world that is causing us to perceive this. It could be an illusion I guess, but I think it's undisputed it's a real phenomenon.

> There are videos of it, and lots of people have seen it, not sure how much more proof you need

That describes Bigfoot. I’d hope your epidemic standard is beyond anecdotes + videos that report to show what they report they’re showing. Else you can be made to believe anything.

I don’t know enough about ball lightning to care one way or another.

This is a dishonest comment.

No one has dressed up and walked in front of a camera as ball lightning

Not yet they haven’t.

Haha look Hold my beer

This is an even more dishonest comment because the answer to the question "can evidence of ball lightning be easily faked using video editing?" is quite obviously "yes".

Talk about a dishonest comment. You are literally replying to a thread in which a History Channel feature of a confirmed CGI video was used as evidence that "there are videos of" ball lightning.

The History channel is junk, sadly. They're perfectly willing to promote false things. Both of the two recordings shown are likely not ball lightning.

I personally agree that ball lightning probably exists. However, there is another interesting phenomenon where a brilliant blue/white "spark" of electricity can travel along a wire. I don't have a name for it but power companies are certainly familiar with it. I've seen footage of it happening repeatedly along the same stretch of wire after a storm as an automated system tried to restore power a few times before keeping the power shut off.

At the end of the video you linked, they admit it was CGI.

admitted one of the 2 videos were cgi but the other one is not conclusive.

We had ball lightning blow a painting off of our wall in front of 30-odd people at Thanksgiving.

It’s possible it was a mass delusion or a ghost but both of those strike me as less likely.

The 31st person dressed up and walking behind the painting may have had something constructive to say about the situation

The theory is that it's regular lightning, and the rest is a retina-caused illusion? So people actually see ball lightning, but it would be almost impossible to get on a digital camera. So it does, in fact "exist", just not physically.

My father saw ball lightning. He described it as occurring near a small fence -- really a couple stakes and string with flags for visibility hanging off it. Said that the ball would hover as it jumped from post to post then fizzled out.

Ball lightning is one of those things that you'd expect to be easier to detect because of the increased use of cameras. Why isn't Youtube flooded with dozens of videos showing lightning balls? There are a few, but none of them are convincing. (One is clearly a drone being flown in a thunderstorm.) Most are fakumentaries. (3 seconds of shaky zoomed-in "proof" and 5 minutes of a so-called expert breathlessly talking about it.) How can ball lightning both have lots of people claiming to see it, but is infrequently caught on video?

My suspicion is people are encountering normal lightning discharges at close range and the "ball" is an illusion caused by how eyes work. If someone attempted to get ball lightning on camera they'd be disappointed to see the recording look nothing like how they remembered it.

I have seen ball lightning here in Alaska. One time, at night. Distance maybe 120 feet away. I watching a glowing orb perhaps 3 feet in diameter drift from the front of my parents garage towards their house before disappearing. An absolutely crystal clear view. I was on the phone with my wife at the time and describing the event to her, it was absolutely chilling to see ! I have never seen anything like it before or after. I should have ran down there and seen if I could sense any after effects, but quite frankly, I was terrified.

I think I saw this once in Florida as a child.

I had climbed a tree (at night) and looked down and there was a red glowing ball of light that drifted and bobbed along horizontally maybe 6 or 8 feet off the ground, and then disappeared. It was maybe a foot across or a little less. A friend was with me, we both watched in amazement.

I never knew what it was and halfway thought maybe I imagined it (except my friend saw it too). Until today I never knew what it might have been as this is my first time hearing of ball lighting. But it seems likely that is what it was.

After so many decades, glad to have a rational explanation at last! Thanks HN!

Cixin Liu has a pretty fun sci-fi book about Ball Lightning

Are you sure it was ball lighting? Other possible explanations: ghost, aliens, portal to another dimension, glitch in the matrix, …, any of a long list of psychic abilities? [1]. Personally, I hope the chupacabra was involved in some shape or form.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_psychic_abilities

salmon hats? the color or the fish?

The fish. One cool Orca put the dead saumon in their nose as a kinda of earring/complement/statement. It took off and several did it too for decades

Link for context https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/02/14/66693872/and-now...

> orcas are sort of like rowdy teenagers participating in a fad

That sounds more amazing to me than the theory of the traumatic event, an Ocra equivalent to a TikTok trend.

But why not? They're intelligent, social animals.

https://www.yahoo.com/now/delta-states-fighting-okra-mascot-...

crows are similar

Seconding! You can find the specific segment (only 7 min!) here! https://www.thisamericanlife.org/803/greetings-people-of-ear...

The brilliant American Life segment with a juxtaposition of the “Greetings, People of Earth” story with reporting on ChatGPT and the Orcas creates a bricolage that may spur thoughts around questions related to our ability to recognize non-human intelligence.

Clearly orcas have culture that spreads. It’s a bit silly to speculate about patient zero being a matriarch as there’s zero evidence, likewise until a mechanism of communication is known saying it was or was not communicated between pods without evidence isn’t reasonable.

In this case I think it's interesting how people project their personal social views onto the blank slate. The idea that the trend must have started by a female whale that was somehow harmed and is now seeking Justice if it's cleanly into the framework with what some people view the world.

The idea that it was started by some way all that got a kick out of causing destruction doesn't have the same social resonance

> In this case I think it's interesting how people project their personal social views onto the blank slate. The idea that the trend must have started by a female whale that was somehow harmed and is now seeking Justice if it's cleanly into the framework with what some people view the world.

You are injecting a political spin where there is none. Orcas live in a matriarchical hierarchy. People assume that the orcas have started hunting because the "pack leader" was hurt. They might or might not be correct, but they're not doing what you're describing.

And I think they are doing what I'm describing. There's basically no scientific reason to favor Revenge story over entertainment except that it resonates with people and gets more clicks

Aside from the "scientific reason" I've mentioned of course, which is the logic followed with other "revenge stories" as well.

Haven't listened to that show in a bit. Did they change narrators? The guy sounds sick and it's pretty distracting :/

Edit: ok Ira was sick and it's mentioned halfway through

My gut is telling me it’s a parasite or toxin causing the aggression. But I have zero professional knowledge in this space.

I recommend probiotics.

The animal does not seen disoriented, just exploring the object. I seems play behavior

If I'm not wrong, the giant worm Crassicauda does not affect orcas, but can attack false killer whales and relatives, so is not an impossible hypothese

Exactly - they look like they are itching themselves on the point of the rudder. Maybe there is some infection near their blowhole that they are trying to scratch. Take some bio samples from the rudders for analysis.

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