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> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html




I don't find the comment to be without substance. It's a concise and concrete critique.


It's dismissive without substance. The point is discussing if the whale feels grief. A blanket dismissal of all animals feeling anything "just because" is not a critique. If there is some reason science should dismiss everything like this as valueless and not worth even considering then I don't know it yet and a comment talking about that would be constructive.


> A blanket dismissal of all animals feeling anything "just because" is not a critique.

The idea that animals feel human emotions (much less "grief") is based only on the fact that orcas look pretty to the human eye.

Would you be willing to entertain "grieving" ants? (Ants are the only animals beside humans to have successfully built a civilization. Can't say they are unintelligent.)




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