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Just how smart is an octopus?

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Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#41

Post by [deleted] »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #32
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using analytic thought to problem solve? That's probably a pretty common definition. And most animals don't do that.

One interesting aspect of this is that, as a human species, we are discovering over time more and more animals that do use analytic though to problem solve. I wonder if many more than we currently know about do actually do that, we're just unaware of it at the moment. Dystopian sci-fi incoming: maybe all animals are totally aware and intelligent, and maybe we'll understand that one day ...

[deleted]

Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#42

Post by rayiner »

> And yet . . . could we be missing something here? While they can’t see much of their own kaleidoscopic skins, they can clearly sense inside what they are doing. Remote cameras on the seabed show octopuses crackling with color changes, even when there is no other creature present to observe them. Godfrey-Smith believes this is just a byproduct of neural activity, no more than an expressive quirk. But maybe it isn’t. Perhaps they are talking to themselves.

God I hate science reporting. It's like they can't help but interject spasmodic blather into an article.

Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#43

Post by virmundi »

overcast wrote: post #35
virmundi wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why worry? They'd eat you. Realize that all animal ethics are entirely manmade and foreign to the background of the Universe's amorality. Edit: Really down voting because you don't agree? The comment was on topic, provided a view, and contributed to the conversation in some way. If you want to down vote, please be responsible enough to say why.

That's the side effect of being self conscious beings, with the capacity of understanding things deeper than survival 101. If other animals had this capacity, you can't say it's just man made thing.

You've made it a side-effect. As a conscious being I know that there is a circle of life. I know that animals eat each other. I know that without getting into franen-foods, the human body evolved to eat other animals too. You picked an ethic. Probably because it felt good.

I too picked an ethic. Mine is Christian with a good deal of Epicurean infusion. Religiously I believe we can eat animals, but need to care for the whole world (that's man's job). So I eat them. I don't kill things for the fun of it.

Presuming an agnostic world view for a moment, the same applies. You can do what you want. There are consequences. You've made one of them feeling bad at the thought of eating a complex animal. Why does that matter? I'm not saying you're totally wrong for thinking that. Just try to understand truly why. Is it because something got imported into your world view to make you think that it should matter. If so is that a valid importation?

Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#44

Post by nsebban »

jnbiche wrote: post #37
ch4s3 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well pigs are smarter than dogs, and many people eat them.

Yeah, but a dog's got personality. Personality goes a long way.

You'd be surprised how interesting a pig can be as a pet. They show amazing social behaviours, and they also seem to be quite good at understanding simple spoken communication.

Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#45

Post by okreallywtf »

howlin wrote: post #38
jnbiche wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but a dog's got personality. Personality goes a long way.

Pigs have personality too. But most people would never know it given how livestock are treated.

As someone who has been around beef-cattle and also had milk cows growing up, cows are much the same way. They have a lot of personality and are not altogether different than dogs or anything else. Cattle raised for beef have a lot less human interaction and therefore have less "personality". Our cows knew their names and were very affectionate but they also had been interacted with since birth.

Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#48

Post by Raphmedia »

Saving you a click: "Are they capable of conscious thought? Godfrey-Smith treks through some rather testing philosophical and psychological terrain to conclude in the negative. While cephalopods are capable of exceptional complexity in their signalling, the machinery of interpretation is too limited. Humans, perhaps uniquely, have gained the ability to step outside ourselves, to think about our thoughts by means of an unstoppable internal monologue."

Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#49

Post by bduerst »

Nexxxeh wrote: post #9

I love how completely alien they are compared to us. The sort of decentralized nature of their nervous system compared to our path of evolution. (I'm no marine/evolutionary biologist so I'm probably butchering the terminology...) I loved reading the two pieces Sy Montgomery wrote that are in Orion Magazine. https://orionmagazine.org/article/deep-intellect/ And the follow-up: https://orionmagazine.org/2011/11/intervie…

I went diving with a retired marine biologist who said, half-jokingly, that if octopodes had ever formed the same tribal culture as primates that we would have been competing with them for dominance at some point.

Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#50

Post by HCIdivision17 »

rayiner wrote: post #42

> And yet . . . could we be missing something here? While they can’t see much of their own kaleidoscopic skins, they can clearly sense inside what they are doing. Remote cameras on the seabed show octopuses crackling with color changes, even when there is no other creature present to observe them. Godfrey-Smith believes this is just a byproduct of neural activity, no more than an expressive quirk. But maybe it isn’t.…

The phrase "believes this is just a byproduct of neural activity" taken at face value is just a strange thing to say.

I feel like the author is playing a trick on me, and feels like when Feynman cracked the joke about a French curve "The French curve is made so that the lowest point on each curve, no matter how you turn it, the tangent is always horizontal." [0] Neat! ... wait. Oh. Right. Of course.

[0] https://todayinsci.com/F/Feynman_Richard/FeynmanRichard-Fren...

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