#bad science

Just as I'm checking google scholar a recent paper shows up that is a perfect case study in how much of a minefield cetacean welfare research is.

If you didn't know what to look for, you might believe it to be legit. But it's published in a med science journal and there's not a single editor or reviewer that works with cetaceans, let alone animals.

It's not even trying to pretend not to be biased. It blatantly ignores MASSIVE swathes of papers and data on cetacean welfare. I won't touch on the elephant claims but I will absolutely pick apart a paper that only has 3 CITATIONS RELATED TO CETACEANS.

The only legit cetacean source is (2) Stevens, Hill and Bruck (2021), which is mentioned briefly in a paragraph... And then it just says a bunch of stuff that we know is false and the author doesn't cite a single source.

You can't just say these things without citing your sources. Because what this is implying is a widespread major welfare issue generalised to all facilities. If this was the case, no facility would have AZA, AMMPA or any other accreditation. The "evidence" for the behaviours described are not cited but is likely referring to a handful of cases of these behaviours occurring in varying contexts.

"Floating listlessly" - you mean surface resting? That's resting behaviour. It's only a concern if the animals are ONLY logging for long periods of time and may indicate a need for a better enrichment program. Or potential illness. Behavioural diversity is important for cetacean welfare and may indicate positive welfare.

"Banging bodies against walls" - Very dependant on context and can be socially related eg. ramming a gate or banging on the glass to make a loud noise. Or learned behaviour eg. banging on the glass gets a reaction.

"Swimming in circles" Is pattern/rhythm swimming. Also a resting behaviour. Can also be part of synchronised swimming patterns, which are potential positive welfare indications

As you can imagine the "suggestions" made in an obviously biased and poorly researched paper make zero sense and aren't supported by data.

There are multiple papers discussing positive or neutral impacts of programs in cetaceans: Willingness to Participate, Increase in Play Behaviour Following Programs , Increase in Behaviour Diversity after Programs

This paper also advocates to remove critical husbandry behaviour training, which they characterise as 'forced interactions'.

Like one story I recently read has an alien be surprised that an Earth plant, given ideal growing conditions, would proliferate like crazy, at the cost of other nearby plants, rather than be satisfied with the ideal conditions it has, and attributes it to Earth's survival of the fittest environment.

I'm sorry, but only an environment engineered down to the last "gene" of even the smallest organism and controlled with either a complete and enforced absence of mutagenic radiation or substances, or pervasive and near-constant scanning for mutated organisms on the cellular level, could ever have survival of the fittest possibly not be a thing, and these scenarios would be rather obviously artificial (I mean, it needs to be actively upheld) and contact with anything from outside, even from other alien worlds that works similarly, would be an existential threat to the absence of survival of the fittest, if not the entire ecosystem.

And that's not even taking into account the sapients themselves. Unless every last one of them has the same reproductive success regardless of physical features, personality, intelligence, social connections due to heritage or whatever, they themselves are subject to survival of the fittest, though it could be very hard to impossible to say what causes fitness.

Because at the end of the day, the subjects of the phrase "survival of the fittest" aren't individual beings but their combinations of genes and/or memes (in the sense of ideas, constituent parts of beliefs or cultural practices etc.), and their fitness is their success at getting passed along.

Something I am recently thinking a lot about is the idea of "social media addiction". This is not saying that social media is not often designed using dark patterns trying to keep people on the website for as long as possible to look at as many ads as possible. Obviously they are. But I do not think that those dark patterns are as strong as people make them out to be.

Nah. I think the main reason a lot of people are glued to some sort of social media or another is just the sense of community, and the fact that most of those people lack it in the real world. Because capitalism has designed the world in a way to keep us from forming communities as much as possible.

How many people have I seen joke about how impossible it is to make friends as an adult. But, y'know... That is not as thing that is normal. This is not normal. This is not how humans are supposed to live.

The reason people get hooked on social media is that they find a community online that they lack in the real world. And if they find a real world community they will often leave social media behind or at least greatly reduce their use.

Fuck man, I got told for a good chunk of my life that I was "addicted to the internet". But it was BS. I was "addicted" to having community and someone to talk to. Aka: I was showing very normal human behavior. I was simply lacking that community in the real world.