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The same logic can be applied to humans. “I don’t believe parents actually love their children and vice-versa. Parents are merely delivery vehicles of food for

The same logic can be applied to humans. “I don’t believe parents actually love their children and vice-versa. Parents are merely delivery vehicles of food for children. Children are delivery vehicles of future care for parents. Humans are probably projecting their fantasies about themselves being fundamentally better than they are in reality.” We don’t directly perceive that dolphins project their fantasies about humans, but like with our fellow humans, it doesn’t mean they aren’t doing that.

cephaslr 6y ago
Being merely a delivery vehicle for my children's food would explain some of their behavior...
number6 6y ago
You clearly don't have children. No amount of fantasy projection makes up for the trouble you go through. You have to be spiked with oxytocin to cope with it.
- tprice7 6y ago
  I think that was the point. They are trying to show how that sort of logic is flawed.
  - number6 6y ago
    You are right.. sleep deprivation is a bitch
    - smichel17 6y ago
      I appreciate that HN is a place where people are willing to admit mistakes like this / change their mind, etc. Thank you :)
pmiller2 6y ago
I was going to downvote out of disagreement, but, on second thought, this makes good sense. We probably wouldn't hesitate to say "I don't believe $NONHUMAN_ANIMAL parents love their children, and vice-versa...." about most animals. There might be hesitation when it comes to apes, monkeys, and maybe dogs, but I can imagine people would say it about, say, hyenas, and it would seem plausible.
- ComputerGuru 6y ago
  I don’t know about “love” because it has a lot of connotations but try to take a baby from a litter from any animal and watch how crazy mama animal gets. Swans, cats, birds, dogs, bears, whales, whatever.
- Sharlin 6y ago
  It's easy to anthropomorphize animals, but it's also easy to go overboard in the other direction. In general, as our understanding of animal cognition has increased, we have moved away from human exceptionalism, finding that traits once thought to be unique to humans are anything but. Certainly we've come far from the Cartesian viewpoint of non-human animals as mindless automata. "Love" in particular, of course, is both a highly loaded and acutely ill-defined concept, so "can a <non-human animal> feel love" is probably a wrong question [1]. By the way, it's rather appropriate that you mentioned hyenas given how misunderstood they are by laypeople, in no small part due to their presentation in a certain Disney film. [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XzrqkhfwtiSDgKoAF/wrong-questions https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XzrqkhfwtiSDgKoAF/wrong-ques...
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    Yeah, I agree. It's a difficult enough philosophical problem to understand the mental states of even another human, much less an animal with a completely different brain structure. There has been some work purring dogs in fMRI machines that shows that their brains respond to humans in ways that indicate they like us, but that's pretty far from conclusive. After all, I know my dog likes dinner, so she'd probably display activity in the pleasure center when presented with a bowl of her food. In any case, what matters is that I love her, and she is doing nothing to disabuse me of the notion. ;) Oh, and, yes, I did choose hyenas specifically because they're a misunderstood species. Glad you picked up on that.
roosterdawn 6y ago
I don't think this logic applied to humans actually is inaccurate. For much of human history, extended family cohabitation was the norm, and the standard American nuclear was a radical, almost unimaginable idea. Most animals operate on a biological impulse to further their offspring; do most animals operate this way to pursue immortality and evade death? I don't see anything inaccurate with this base level analysis, although it obviously elides most of the finer elements of human existence that exist a bit higher up on Maslow's hierarchy.
em-bee 6y ago
this can be seen in some cultures where the eldest son and his family are held in high esteem because he is the one responsible for taking care of the parentd while daugthers are a burden, since they will be with their husband supporting the husbands parents.
amelius 6y ago
It seems we are getting in philosophical territory here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_love https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_love

cephaslr 6y ago

Being merely a delivery vehicle for my children's food would explain some of their behavior...

number6 6y ago

You clearly don't have children. No amount of fantasy projection makes up for the trouble you go through. You have to be spiked with oxytocin to cope with it.

tprice7 6y ago
I think that was the point. They are trying to show how that sort of logic is flawed.
- number6 6y ago
  You are right.. sleep deprivation is a bitch
  - smichel17 6y ago
    I appreciate that HN is a place where people are willing to admit mistakes like this / change their mind, etc. Thank you :)

pmiller2 6y ago

I was going to downvote out of disagreement, but, on second thought, this makes good sense. We probably wouldn't hesitate to say "I don't believe $NONHUMAN_ANIMAL parents love their children, and vice-versa...." about most animals. There might be hesitation when it comes to apes, monkeys, and maybe dogs, but I can imagine people would say it about, say, hyenas, and it would seem plausible.

ComputerGuru 6y ago
I don’t know about “love” because it has a lot of connotations but try to take a baby from a litter from any animal and watch how crazy mama animal gets. Swans, cats, birds, dogs, bears, whales, whatever.
Sharlin 6y ago
It's easy to anthropomorphize animals, but it's also easy to go overboard in the other direction. In general, as our understanding of animal cognition has increased, we have moved away from human exceptionalism, finding that traits once thought to be unique to humans are anything but. Certainly we've come far from the Cartesian viewpoint of non-human animals as mindless automata. "Love" in particular, of course, is both a highly loaded and acutely ill-defined concept, so "can a <non-human animal> feel love" is probably a wrong question [1]. By the way, it's rather appropriate that you mentioned hyenas given how misunderstood they are by laypeople, in no small part due to their presentation in a certain Disney film. [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XzrqkhfwtiSDgKoAF/wrong-questions https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XzrqkhfwtiSDgKoAF/wrong-ques...
- pmiller2 6y ago
  Yeah, I agree. It's a difficult enough philosophical problem to understand the mental states of even another human, much less an animal with a completely different brain structure. There has been some work purring dogs in fMRI machines that shows that their brains respond to humans in ways that indicate they like us, but that's pretty far from conclusive. After all, I know my dog likes dinner, so she'd probably display activity in the pleasure center when presented with a bowl of her food. In any case, what matters is that I love her, and she is doing nothing to disabuse me of the notion. ;) Oh, and, yes, I did choose hyenas specifically because they're a misunderstood species. Glad you picked up on that.

roosterdawn 6y ago

I don't think this logic applied to humans actually is inaccurate. For much of human history, extended family cohabitation was the norm, and the standard American nuclear was a radical, almost unimaginable idea. Most animals operate on a biological impulse to further their offspring; do most animals operate this way to pursue immortality and evade death? I don't see anything inaccurate with this base level analysis, although it obviously elides most of the finer elements of human existence that exist a bit higher up on Maslow's hierarchy.

em-bee 6y ago

this can be seen in some cultures where the eldest son and his family are held in high esteem because he is the one responsible for taking care of the parentd while daugthers are a burden, since they will be with their husband supporting the husbands parents.

amelius 6y ago

It seems we are getting in philosophical territory here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_love https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_love