Thread

Weeping whales: Stillborn humpback whale grieving documented

243 points · 192 comments · wglb

georgemcbay · 1789884732 · focus · HN ↗
Blows my mind that so many people just have this hardened internalized idea that we're somehow significantly different than any other animal.
Sure, we've got them beat on language and planning, but we're currently in the process of being passed up on both those fronts by multi-dimensional arrays of floating point numbers sitting inside of sand. So, like, how special is that then, really?
1. card_zero · 1789885143 · focus · HN ↗
  Do LLMs grieve?
  1. georgemcbay · 1789885394 · focus · HN ↗
    Nope.
    They can pretend to, of course, and use the language of grief, but if you can't feel the cold bottomless pit that has bored through your gut then you aren't really grieving.
    card_zero · 1789885766 · focus · HN ↗
    Do whales grieve?
    stackghost · 1789885980 · focus · HN ↗
    They exhibit behaviours that seem to defy alternative explanations, though I doubt anyone could say for certain whether they do or don’t
    card_zero · 1789886415 · focus · HN ↗
    You could have an alternative explanation: large animals invest lots of food energy in their offspring, and so the slimmest chance that a calf might not be dead is worth lots of effort. Say one in a thousand actually revive.
    Here's an article about orcas: <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-64559047" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-64559047
    It seems that an orca invests so much in a son that it's like an all-or-nothing one way ticket to pass her genes on. (She might get second try later, but the probability is much lower.)
    pastel8739 · 1789887863 · focus · HN ↗
    You might also argue that although there may be a non-emotional argument for why grieving could be beneficial, it’s possible or even likely that evolution encoded this instinct in something like emotions. Just how evolution encoded the tendency to care for one’s family and community in emotions for humans.
    card_zero · 1789888766 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes! Which leads into strange territory, because we can say that attachment is not entirely rational, but is influenced by genes pointing us toward more successful reproduction, without concern for creating knowledge. But then this environment of instincts is the environment we've built up all our cultural store of meaning in, it's the human condition, so the argument can be turned around to say that meaning isn't entirely rational. So even gene-driven attachment isn't meaningless, but at the same time, I don't want to be bullied and herded around emotionally by little nucleic acid spirals just so they can replicate themselves.

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