like i’m watching blue planet and i’m yelling at the tv!
there’s all these yimmer yammer hand-wavey scientific rigor lines where it’s like ‘we may believe that these animals do on occasion have a base brain-related impulse that allows them to experience feelings somewhat like to those of friendship’ or whatever in the script on top of footage that they then describe as ‘it seems as though these two groups [of fish, different species] are old friends…’ in an almost whimsical manner.
can’t they give them some credit! they have eyes and a face, why is it so insane to think they can’t experience friendship or love or joy just like us? ‘buhhu uhhh its only accurate science if we only observe observable behavior’ why?? you’re neglecting a whole part of any living thing’s experience! inner life can’t be hand waved away! even for a mollusk!
and people loved doing this on reddit as well – oh actually your cat doesn’t understand love or joy or humor, it is simply reacting to the physical warmth of your lap, they don’t actually care for you. don’t worry, depth and emotion does not exist!
The only trap here is that my point was that it’s not ignored by science. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Just because we have no way of proving a theory, doesn’t mean we don’t try and find ways to do so. We still make hypotheses and theories even if we have no proven way, or understanding of how we might prove them. That’s still science.