What if Dolphins had opposable thumbs?

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A dolphin joining us as we sail to our next port in the Mediterranean Sea

October 18, 2013 – I had the most interesting conversation with a fellow in my office. It actually started a couple of weeks ago. First he stopped at my desk and asked me why humans have two nostrils.

Yes, it was a weird question and it gave me pause. He pointed out that two eyes and two ears made sense, but not two nostrils. We see and hear in stereo. Two eyes provides depth perception, and two ears provides directionality to sound. But we don’t smell in stereo. . . do we?

Turns out that we do.

When smelling multiple smells, the brain will pay attention to one, then the other, this is why smells seem to fade and return when there is a mix of odours. Not all scent molecules are absorbed at the same rate, so twin nostrils allow for more complicated processing.

A few weeks later he threw another one at me. Why do the majority of people sneeze twice? Best guess on this one is that we are wired a bit differently, but I’d imagine that when something irritates the nasal membranes the first explosion dislodges and the second on expels. Some people generally only sneeze once, maybe they are just more explosive sneezers. Not sure anyone has ever actually researched that one.

But then the real zinger came. And he asked me this:

“I have another question on animals adapting their environment to suit their needs (i.e. if dolphins had opposable thumbs would they build and ride jet skis?) but I would need to explain that one in person – too long for email!”

It took a couple of weeks before we were both in the office really early and decided to explore the question. He had a notepad with his “arguments” prepared, so I knew this was going to be more of a debate than anything simple. And it was quite the interesting 30-40 minutes we spent talking.

He started by stating that humans shouldn’t bother recycling and should happily drive their gas guzzling, carbon spewing Cadillac cars to their hearts content. His argument was based on the thesis that we are animals, like any other on the planet. He argued that other animals also both adapt to the existing environment and modify their environment to suit their needs. Beavers build dams, humans build cars. He argued that the change in the environment may very well wipe us out but why should we care because eventually the planet will change and we and other organisms may or may not adapt, but the planet itself would shape the next evolutionary wave regardless of our presence or absence.

While we both agreed that environmentalism has become the new religion – complete with extremists, and we both agreed that people will believe anything if it sits well with their emotional and mental standards, we diverged when it came to the question of whether or not we should care and actually try to be environmentally conscious.

After laughing and saying “You really are a social anarchist, aren’t you?” I threw out some thoughts regarding the fact humans have artificially altered their own existence through medicine and extended our lives unnaturally. In nature, a population explosion such as ours would have been controlled through natural causes such as disease, but we have short-circuited that control.

He argued that chimpanzees may have done the same if they were the superior organism. He also argued that not having children is the biggest carbon footprint savings that anyone could do, particularly in the western world.

We agreed that things like “Right and Wrong” and “Good and Evil” and religion are merely social constructs designed to control human behaviour and are not real. What is perceived as morally reprehensible to our culture may be a perfectly normal cultural fact in another and we have no “right” to press our moral structure on other cultures and countries. However, we both agreed that there are certainly many things that our moral standards “should” argue against, although do we really have a “right” to do so?

He fairly argued that a tiger may eat the last gazelle on the planet and doesn’t care or think about that fact. It needs to eat, and it will eat. So why should humans be any different.

Where we finally came to an impasse was when I put forth the fact that humans should care about the environment simply because we have analytical brains that have the power to reason. Unlike the tiger, humans can see ahead and plan and rationalize the impacts of their actions on a larger scale.

Reason: he hadn’t considered that aspect of the human evolution.

Through reason we can see what impacts, long and short terms, we are having on our environment – social and physical – and we have the capability to use that reason to extrapolate and attempt to work towards a more harmonious existence. If we have reason, we can attempt to extend our existence by ensuring that our world can support the species, and the underlying webs, for as long as possible.

Where will that ultimately take us?

Who knows.

He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his chin and mulled that over before acknowledging that he had not considered reason.

I’m sure we will revisit this discussion, but just before I got up and left his office he said something that both made me unhappy about humans in general, but pleased about his perception of me.

He said “Thanks for the discussion, when I bring something like this up people usually do one of two things. They either say very little and just nod because they don’t know how to process it, or they just get angry and eventually walk away without actually exchanging ideas. Thanks for taking the time to think about it and actually debate it.”

And that was probably the most interesting part of the discussion. It always disappoints me when people just get angry if you don’t see their point of view, of more accurately, if you disagree with it. I have friends, and family, and co-workers that have their opinions and if they are challenged they are so offended. They get angry and petty, and it’s depressing to me. The best discussions are not ones where someone wins, but where ideas are exchanged in a rationale and open manner.

He’d be an interesting person to spend a few hours with over a few drinks 🙂

When someone ignores reason and refuses to consider that their position may be flawed when a solid argument with valid justification is made, then I have a reduced respect for them. When I disagree with someone and they just get mad about it, all I see is an unreasonable individual, I see an immature response to opposition.

It’s not a betrayal to disagree, it’s an opening point for an interesting conversation.

We all believe certain things to be fact. Sometimes those things are plain weird, and sometimes they are based on a solid foundation of evidence. And sometimes they are based on fairy tales, cherry picked data, or ignorance. Sometimes our positions are based on flawed or incomplete knowledge, and it is illogical to be completely fixed in our stance. But most people hate to think that they are mistaken.

Carl Sagan is quoted as saying:

“In science it often happens that scientists say, ‘You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,’ and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.”

And on that note, here is a great video that is not only entertaining, but validly asks the question “Why do people believe weird things?”