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The idea of whale intelligence is super interesting and I hope we do more to understand it. But the unfortunate pseudo-scientific need for the author to push th

The idea of whale intelligence is super interesting and I hope we do more to understand it. But the unfortunate pseudo-scientific need for the author to push the culture/religion angle becomes almost political at times, and seems like a stretch. We should be able to determine intelligence/communication first without antromorphizing the notion of culture. Some quotes from this article, and another linked by the author [1] > Bound by communality, sperm-whale culture expresses a collective individuality: “We” and “us” may be more important than “I” and “me”. If that isn’t a lesson for their Homo sapiens cousins, I don’t know what is. > Whales and dolphins observe rituals of the dead and exhibit grief. Could they, then, express spiritual sentiment, founded on values and belief – even a sense of religion? > As Whitehead observes, whale culture is many millions of years older than ours. Perhaps we need to learn from them as they learned from us. > Their culture is matrilinear, and information about the new dangers may have been passed on in the same way whale matriarchs share knowledge about feeding grounds [1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/10/cultural-lives-of-whales-and-dolphins-hal-whitehead-luke-rendell-review https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/10/cultural-lives...

WalterBright 6y ago
> Bound by communality, sperm-whale culture expresses a collective individuality: “We” and “us” may be more important than “I” and “me”. If that isn’t a lesson for their Homo sapiens cousins, I don’t know what is. For better or worse, people are individuals, not members of a collective. Collectives of people don't work, and it isn't for a lack of trying. People aren't whales or bees in a beehive. That doesn't mean, however, that people can't organize. Under free markets, people organize well and effectively, but they still organize based on self interest, not self sacrifice.
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  Collectives of people don't work The existence of armies and corporations suggests otherwise. I think you may be over-stretching the meaning of the term here to suggest some sort of entity that displaces individual cognition.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    Corporations are not collectives. They are organizations of people with self-interest, not selfless-interest. Armies consist of people forced to cooperate, usually under threat of death or at least imprisonment. Such cooperation isn't very efficient, and indeed armies tend to be extremely wasteful of lives, treasure and property. (Volunteer armies tend to be less wasteful of lives.)
    - anigbrowl 6y ago
      All organizations involve a certain pooling of individual interest for collective gain, whether that's the profit of the corporations owners and employees (which may overlap) or some altruistic purpose in the case of nonprofit corporations. And these are just two among many examples. While I thought this Guardian article was rather hyperbolic and tells us more about the author's personal views than about whales, it seems to me that you're taking the same approach from something like an objectivist standpoint. Perhaps it would be more insightful to look at collectivism vs individualism as a continuum rather than a binary choice.
      - WalterBright 6y ago
        > Perhaps it would be more insightful to look at collectivism vs individualism as a continuum rather than a binary choice. I already did in this thread: "The more the country tries to run the lives of its citizens, the worse the country does."
    - coldtea 6y ago
      >Corporations are not collectives. They are organizations of people with self-interest, not selfless-interest. Which is neither here, nor there. First because nobody said people on collectives can't also have self-interest: just that they work together for the benefit of the collective too. That said, there are also collectives where self-interest comes second (to the point of sacrificing yourself for them) and they work just fine. In fact the whole of human history they have been instrumental: families, armies, countries, and so on.
- s1artibartfast 6y ago
  >* For better or worse, people are individuals, not members of a collective. Collectives of people don't work, and it isn't for a lack of trying. People aren't whales or bees in a beehive.* It is hard to see how whales are more collective than humans. Humans for most of their existence lived in collective family units, not unlike whales.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    Families are indeed very small scale collectives. Even so, try to get the kids to clean their rooms, and you'll conclude that collective has its problems, too.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - bitwize 6y ago
      Nuclear families are, but for most of their existence humans have been part of large extended families.
      - WalterBright 6y ago
        The larger the extended family, the less like a collective it runs.
    - s1artibartfast 6y ago
      Having problems doesn’t mean something doesn’t work.
- herval 6y ago
  > Collectives of people don't work, and it isn't for a lack of trying Countries, companies, armies, sports teams, FAMILIES are all collectives of people. Not all of these organizations are voluntary, and not all are “based on self interest”.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    Ones not covered in other replies: > sports teams Of course they are based on self-interest. Team members all have different statuses and pay. They compete with the other team members to not get cut. They switch teams to gain personal advantage. > Countries are forced collectives. The more the country tries to run the lives of its citizens, the worse the country does.
    - coldtea 6y ago
      >are forced collectives You'd be surprised. There are people who would die for their country, and nobody has a gun to their head. Hell, historically people died to BUILD or FREE their countries.
      - WalterBright 6y ago
        I know quite a bit about military history. > There are people who would die for their country, We call them heroes and give them a medal and commemorate them with a statue. Because they are rare. > Hell, historically people died to BUILD or FREE their countries. It's pretty rare for people to do it knowing they will die. (People more often will risk death because of the value of the gain they'll get if they don't die. That's selfish behavior.) > and nobody has a gun to their head. Armies historically execute anyone disobeying orders to advance or show cowardice in the face of the enemy. The Soviets had blocking battalions ordered to shoot any of their own comrades who did not advance. Armies are trained and organized around the concept of forcing men into combat. And it starts with conscription. They quite literally do have a gun to their heads.
        EdwardDiego 6y ago
- coldtea 6y ago
  >For better or worse, people are individuals, not members of a collective. Huh? There might be a few "individuals" living individually in the history of the world. Isolated from the world, forgotten in some jungle, retreated to some cabin in Alaska, or so. Some not by choice (e.g. due to some accident with their boat or something), others by choice but only after they've first been raised and prepared by living in communities. The huge majority has always been members of communities and collective entities. Without living together with others, collaborating with them, inheriting traditions and knowledge from the past, you don't even have language, culture, science, or anything, not even a cuisine. You're like some animal... >Collectives of people don't work, and it isn't for a lack of trying Between famillies, villages, cities, companies, churches, armies, nations, and so on, I can't even think what you had in mind as "not working"...
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    I explicitly said that people still organize. Not as collectives, though. Perhaps you're missing what a collective is - it's an organization where people share equally in the results. It's characterized by self-sacrifice for the collective benefit. The huge majority of organizations are set up for selfish benefit, not collective benefit. Cooperation in mutual self-interest is NOT the same thing as cooperation in self-sacrifice. Company members, for example, certainly cooperate. But the employees are doing it out of self-interest.
    - ganafagol 6y ago
      Maybe it's you that has a too narrow definition of "collective". It's a cooperative organization. Nothing in that definition demands self-sacrifice.
      - WalterBright 6y ago
        > Nothing in that definition demands self-sacrifice. Sure it does. In a commune, everything produced is shared equally. That's self-sacrifice, as in if you produce more than the mean, that is taken from you.
- smolder 6y ago
  I'm not sure where you are drawing the line between organization and collective. I don't think there is such a clear separation, or much of a distinction at all. When I get a job at a company, yes I'm doing it in self interest, but I still make sacrifices to that group as part of my participation. Is it an ability to come and go independently and form or be part of different organizations that you think makes those non-collectives? My counter to that is that free markets allow for all sorts of coercion by organizations that harms individual freedom and prevents new organizations from succeeding. You get a join-us-or-lose situation, as you can see playing out with hyper-consolidation of various industries. Your premise that free markets translate into individual freedoms is limited to those freedoms that dominant organizations can't directly coerce you out of exercising or lobby/collude to take away from you.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    Let me put it another way. In a free market, any group is free to start a commune. In America, many thousands have been created. They all failed. People try it. After a few months, within a couple years, they tire of it and leave, and the commune collapses. What that strongly suggests is communes are just incompatible with human nature.
    - leto_ii 6y ago
      > What that strongly suggests is communes are just incompatible with human nature. I really don't understand how this conclusion follows from your premises. Even assuming that you're right and that all US communes failed, what does this have to do with human nature? By the same token you could say that people tried to be gay in Nazi Germany, but they all died, therefore it's against human nature to be gay (maybe my example is a bit strong, but hopefully you get the point).
      - WalterBright 6y ago
        > tried to be gay and getting murdered is not remotely like losing interest in commune life and leaving.
- austinjp 6y ago
  Collectives are fundamental to human society and always have been. Even hunter gatherers lived and still live in communities. These pre-date the "free market" (no idea why you introduce this) and will outlive it. Certainly, there is room for individuals, but individualism as you describe it is always the exception.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    I did not say or describe individualism. I said that people organize and cooperate out of self-interest, and that's what a free market relies on. > Collectives are fundamental to human society and always have been. Even hunter gatherers lived and still live in communities. Communities, sure. Collectives, not so sure.
GoblinSlayer 6y ago
FWIW humans do know a collectivist morality - Confucianism, and, well, it has its own failure modes.

WalterBright 6y ago

> Bound by communality, sperm-whale culture expresses a collective individuality: “We” and “us” may be more important than “I” and “me”. If that isn’t a lesson for their Homo sapiens cousins, I don’t know what is. For better or worse, people are individuals, not members of a collective. Collectives of people don't work, and it isn't for a lack of trying. People aren't whales or bees in a beehive. That doesn't mean, however, that people can't organize. Under free markets, people organize well and effectively, but they still organize based on self interest, not self sacrifice.

anigbrowl 6y ago
Collectives of people don't work The existence of armies and corporations suggests otherwise. I think you may be over-stretching the meaning of the term here to suggest some sort of entity that displaces individual cognition.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  Corporations are not collectives. They are organizations of people with self-interest, not selfless-interest. Armies consist of people forced to cooperate, usually under threat of death or at least imprisonment. Such cooperation isn't very efficient, and indeed armies tend to be extremely wasteful of lives, treasure and property. (Volunteer armies tend to be less wasteful of lives.)
  - anigbrowl 6y ago
    All organizations involve a certain pooling of individual interest for collective gain, whether that's the profit of the corporations owners and employees (which may overlap) or some altruistic purpose in the case of nonprofit corporations. And these are just two among many examples. While I thought this Guardian article was rather hyperbolic and tells us more about the author's personal views than about whales, it seems to me that you're taking the same approach from something like an objectivist standpoint. Perhaps it would be more insightful to look at collectivism vs individualism as a continuum rather than a binary choice.
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      > Perhaps it would be more insightful to look at collectivism vs individualism as a continuum rather than a binary choice. I already did in this thread: "The more the country tries to run the lives of its citizens, the worse the country does."
  - coldtea 6y ago
    >Corporations are not collectives. They are organizations of people with self-interest, not selfless-interest. Which is neither here, nor there. First because nobody said people on collectives can't also have self-interest: just that they work together for the benefit of the collective too. That said, there are also collectives where self-interest comes second (to the point of sacrificing yourself for them) and they work just fine. In fact the whole of human history they have been instrumental: families, armies, countries, and so on.
s1artibartfast 6y ago
>* For better or worse, people are individuals, not members of a collective. Collectives of people don't work, and it isn't for a lack of trying. People aren't whales or bees in a beehive.* It is hard to see how whales are more collective than humans. Humans for most of their existence lived in collective family units, not unlike whales.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  Families are indeed very small scale collectives. Even so, try to get the kids to clean their rooms, and you'll conclude that collective has its problems, too.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - bitwize 6y ago
    Nuclear families are, but for most of their existence humans have been part of large extended families.
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      The larger the extended family, the less like a collective it runs.
  - s1artibartfast 6y ago
    Having problems doesn’t mean something doesn’t work.
herval 6y ago
> Collectives of people don't work, and it isn't for a lack of trying Countries, companies, armies, sports teams, FAMILIES are all collectives of people. Not all of these organizations are voluntary, and not all are “based on self interest”.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  Ones not covered in other replies: > sports teams Of course they are based on self-interest. Team members all have different statuses and pay. They compete with the other team members to not get cut. They switch teams to gain personal advantage. > Countries are forced collectives. The more the country tries to run the lives of its citizens, the worse the country does.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    >are forced collectives You'd be surprised. There are people who would die for their country, and nobody has a gun to their head. Hell, historically people died to BUILD or FREE their countries.
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      I know quite a bit about military history. > There are people who would die for their country, We call them heroes and give them a medal and commemorate them with a statue. Because they are rare. > Hell, historically people died to BUILD or FREE their countries. It's pretty rare for people to do it knowing they will die. (People more often will risk death because of the value of the gain they'll get if they don't die. That's selfish behavior.) > and nobody has a gun to their head. Armies historically execute anyone disobeying orders to advance or show cowardice in the face of the enemy. The Soviets had blocking battalions ordered to shoot any of their own comrades who did not advance. Armies are trained and organized around the concept of forcing men into combat. And it starts with conscription. They quite literally do have a gun to their heads.
      - EdwardDiego 6y ago
coldtea 6y ago
>For better or worse, people are individuals, not members of a collective. Huh? There might be a few "individuals" living individually in the history of the world. Isolated from the world, forgotten in some jungle, retreated to some cabin in Alaska, or so. Some not by choice (e.g. due to some accident with their boat or something), others by choice but only after they've first been raised and prepared by living in communities. The huge majority has always been members of communities and collective entities. Without living together with others, collaborating with them, inheriting traditions and knowledge from the past, you don't even have language, culture, science, or anything, not even a cuisine. You're like some animal... >Collectives of people don't work, and it isn't for a lack of trying Between famillies, villages, cities, companies, churches, armies, nations, and so on, I can't even think what you had in mind as "not working"...
- WalterBright 6y ago
  I explicitly said that people still organize. Not as collectives, though. Perhaps you're missing what a collective is - it's an organization where people share equally in the results. It's characterized by self-sacrifice for the collective benefit. The huge majority of organizations are set up for selfish benefit, not collective benefit. Cooperation in mutual self-interest is NOT the same thing as cooperation in self-sacrifice. Company members, for example, certainly cooperate. But the employees are doing it out of self-interest.
  - ganafagol 6y ago
    Maybe it's you that has a too narrow definition of "collective". It's a cooperative organization. Nothing in that definition demands self-sacrifice.
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      > Nothing in that definition demands self-sacrifice. Sure it does. In a commune, everything produced is shared equally. That's self-sacrifice, as in if you produce more than the mean, that is taken from you.
smolder 6y ago
I'm not sure where you are drawing the line between organization and collective. I don't think there is such a clear separation, or much of a distinction at all. When I get a job at a company, yes I'm doing it in self interest, but I still make sacrifices to that group as part of my participation. Is it an ability to come and go independently and form or be part of different organizations that you think makes those non-collectives? My counter to that is that free markets allow for all sorts of coercion by organizations that harms individual freedom and prevents new organizations from succeeding. You get a join-us-or-lose situation, as you can see playing out with hyper-consolidation of various industries. Your premise that free markets translate into individual freedoms is limited to those freedoms that dominant organizations can't directly coerce you out of exercising or lobby/collude to take away from you.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  Let me put it another way. In a free market, any group is free to start a commune. In America, many thousands have been created. They all failed. People try it. After a few months, within a couple years, they tire of it and leave, and the commune collapses. What that strongly suggests is communes are just incompatible with human nature.
  - leto_ii 6y ago
    > What that strongly suggests is communes are just incompatible with human nature. I really don't understand how this conclusion follows from your premises. Even assuming that you're right and that all US communes failed, what does this have to do with human nature? By the same token you could say that people tried to be gay in Nazi Germany, but they all died, therefore it's against human nature to be gay (maybe my example is a bit strong, but hopefully you get the point).
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      > tried to be gay and getting murdered is not remotely like losing interest in commune life and leaving.
austinjp 6y ago
Collectives are fundamental to human society and always have been. Even hunter gatherers lived and still live in communities. These pre-date the "free market" (no idea why you introduce this) and will outlive it. Certainly, there is room for individuals, but individualism as you describe it is always the exception.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  I did not say or describe individualism. I said that people organize and cooperate out of self-interest, and that's what a free market relies on. > Collectives are fundamental to human society and always have been. Even hunter gatherers lived and still live in communities. Communities, sure. Collectives, not so sure.

GoblinSlayer 6y ago

FWIW humans do know a collectivist morality - Confucianism, and, well, it has its own failure modes.