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Just how smart is an octopus?

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Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#271

Post by pmyjavec »

rgbrenner wrote: post #116
komali2 wrote: post #64

Total anecdote here, but when I volunteered at our aquarium in Charleston, SC (amazing aquarium, go check it out), we had a problem where our flounder were vanishing from their tank. We suspected theft and so put a camera up in the back room. The next time flounder disappeared we checked the feed - one of our octopi was escaping from his tank that we thought we had already anti-octopus'd, climbing over the walls, bre…

he broke back into his own tank after Octopus have dens that they only leave to eat and mate. they always return to their den after, and they only move every few weeks. So wouldnt that be normal behavior? I guess he could have moved his den to the flounder tank.. but maybe he just found out where it was, and caught him before he decided where to move to. or maybe there was something about the flounder tank that made…

I guess you could say the same for Humans we too have dens or homes, and often return to them after an adventure.

Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#272

Post by rybosome »

notdonspaulding wrote: post #249
rybosome wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well articulated. The entirety of my atheist morality is centered around the recognition that other humans are as acutely conscious as I am, and inflicting suffering on them (or allowing them to suffer through negligence or inaction) is cruel and distasteful. This is a fancy version of "treat others as you want to be treated", and is rooted in basic human empathy which stretches back millions of years - there is evid…

This worldview is fine, so long as you keep it to yourself. The trouble with this worldview comes when someone who holds it thinks anyone other than themselves ought to behave this way. Once you say people should treat others a certain way, you've crossed the line into moral absolutism. You think other people should live by some standard which you find better than the one they live by. Why should they? In the morally…

> Put another way, why shouldn't I go around raping people? Isn't that good for the survival of my genes?

Quoting myself: "The entirety of my atheist morality is centered around the recognition that other humans are as acutely conscious as I am, and inflicting suffering on them...is cruel and distasteful". I'm honestly not sure how you made the leap to my comment justifying rape, though I take your question in good faith.

Maybe you're pointing out that I've misunderstood relativism/absolutism? I feel that a moral hierarchy exists, but it does not exist independently of the (collective) human mind. I do think that everyone should behave with empathy because all humans have an equal capacity to suffer, and from that conclusion you get obvious things like "rape is bad", "murder is bad", etc. This still leaves a lot of ambiguity, however, and doesn't result in a strict, absolute code of ethics.

Am I actually a moral absolutist, but misunderstanding the terminology?

Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#273

Post by Graphon1 »

notdonspaulding wrote: post #247
jdmichal wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to note that agnosticism and theism are not opposing. Agnosticism simply declares that you view the existence and / or properties of one or more deities as unknowable [0]. That is not incompatible with theism. In fact, I argue that such is the definition of faith -- to believe despite not knowing. [0] Or, for weak agnosticism, currently unknown.

I find your lack of [a good definition of] faith disturbing. -- Darth Webster Seriously though, I think the "blind faith" usage of the term faith is its weakest form. "Trust" and "confidence" are good synonyms. Because as a rule, humans have faith in a great many things, and the vast majority of those faiths are not characterized by a lack of knowledge or evidence. Consider the following statements: - The astronauts…

> The astronauts had faith in the laws of physics.

You have used an analogy here, in order to aid your point, but it is not valid. Laws of physics do not intersect with faith. At all.

Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#274

Post by Graphon1 »

WalterSear wrote: post #139
cicero wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Christianity (at least Catholicism) has an animal ethic that is not man-made, but comes from divine revelation. Genesis says that man is given the responsibility to care for creation, and while since the time of the flood we have permission to eat animals, the general (at least Catholic) interpretation is that doesn't mean we can be cruel to animals. In other words, if we have a reasonable need to kill an animal for…

Except we no longer need to kill animals for food. Animal products are, on the whole, deleterious to our health. So, why is it still acceptable to most Catholics?

Habit, tradition, (Small-c) conservatism.

It's true we (most of us) don't absolutely need to kill animals for food. On the other hand there is a vast human momentum in the direction of raising, killing, and eating animals. That doesn't change overnight, or even in a generation or 5. It takes a long time to change such things.

My theory: It's for a similar reason that homosexuality has been taboo for so long. In the beginning, tribes needed to procreate in order to survive, and homosexuality didn't help with that, and it may have hurt. So it was written into old books: go forth and multiply, and don't have fun with those of the same gender. That won't produce offspring.

But now the challenges of survival do not involve "not enough offspring". So we no longer NEED to worry so much about homosexuality, not for 1000 years. And yet, the belief and habit of mind continues.

Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#275

Post by elastic_church »

virmundi wrote: post #254
elastic_church wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Really down voting because you don't agree? High expectations for someone thats been here for almost 10 years But I should correct you, ALL ethics are manmade, although I'm sure you are aware because anybody that would say that has accepted nihilism and the futility of moral relativity.

> High expectations for someone thats been here for almost 10 years. A) now you've gone and made me feel old. :( B) I hope to raise awareness about how HN should be. I'm not making a rallying cry, "Make HN Great Again!" We should be more civil. People coming in for the first time might not know that.

Okay, I agree with the civility, I wasn't trying to be hurtful

Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#276

Post by kabdib »

tzs wrote: post #84
bduerst wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fortunately for us, they have two biological strikes against developing that kind of culture. 1. They have short lifespans, limiting how much knowledge and wisdom an individual can acquire over its lifetime. 2. Reproduction is fatal. Males dies a few months after mating. Females spend all their time after the eggs are laid guarding them, and neglect to eat. They die of starvation around the time the eggs hatch. The o…

It's hard to light a fire under the water. You're not going to do much industry there. The deck is stacked against water-based intelligence developing technology.

Might be a good thing for us. I bet they could evolve into awesome tool users.

Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#277

Post by lisivka »

sho wrote: post #261
logfromblammo wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Octopus has three acceptable pluralizations in English. Octopuses is correct by English rules. Octopodes is correct by strict etymological Greek-origin rules. Octopi is correct by English's pseudo-Latin cognate rules. The latter means that any singular noun ending in a consonant and "-us" can be pluralized by chopping off the "-us" and appending an "-i" or "-ii", like alumnus, hippopotamus, virus, bacillus, hummus, l…

Honestly, as a native english speaker who is usually a nazi in spelling, grammar and pronunciation - octopi sounds most intuitively "correct" to me. Octopuses sounds awkward and inconsistent with idiomatic English, like a non-native speaker might guess at. Octopodes sounds like a scientific term. As far as I'm concerned octopi is correct. Screw the etymology.

AFAIK (I'm not a native speaker), English language has short and long words. Short words are native, long words are foreign. It's because long words in other languages are composed: short root, and suffix(es) to make proper form. English language uses other rules, so remnants of foreign languages are not welcome, but foreign languages are associated with wisdom, so longer words are associated with wisdom and science too. Can you confirm that?

http://writing-skills.com/does-word-length-matter

Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#278

Post by PerfectElement »

virmundi wrote: post #268
PerfectElement wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that we shouldn't have any moral consideration towards beings that don't have the cognitive capacity to understand ethics? If that's the case, do you think it's okay if a human sets a dog on fire just for fun? How about mentally challenged humans? Should their pain be disregarded? P.S: I didn't down vote.

I'm arguing that any moral consideration you have is arbitrary. If you want to protect dogs, go ahead. If the person lighting them kills you in the process, I can't necessarily say it's wrong, as an agnostic. If you can band together with other pro-life dog watchers, you can probably force your view. You don't have any more hold on the Truth than the Dog Lighters of America. You're not more legitimate in an ultimate…

No, it's not arbitrary at all. It's based on the concept that inflicting pain and suffering on another being should be justified.

I'm sure that given the choice between not being tortured and being tortured, you would pick the former. And that's because you recognize that pain -even if subjective and sometimes necessary- is a negative feeling for the one experiencing it.

What's arbitrary is saying that you don't want to inflict pain on human babies but are okay with inflicting pain on baby pigs, assuming both are equally capable of experiencing pain and distress. You are picking an arbitrary trait (species) and ignoring the relevant one (ability to feel pain).

Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#279

Post by pacaro »

lisivka wrote: post #277
sho wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, as a native english speaker who is usually a nazi in spelling, grammar and pronunciation - octopi sounds most intuitively "correct" to me. Octopuses sounds awkward and inconsistent with idiomatic English, like a non-native speaker might guess at. Octopodes sounds like a scientific term. As far as I'm concerned octopi is correct. Screw the etymology.

AFAIK (I'm not a native speaker), English language has short and long words. Short words are native, long words are foreign. It's because long words in other languages are composed: short root, and suffix(es) to make proper form. English language uses other rules, so remnants of foreign languages are not welcome, but foreign languages are associated with wisdom, so longer words are associated with wisdom and science…

It's always difficult to produce hard and fast rules with English. But there are often two words (or stems) for things, one from the Germanic roots and one from Latin (either via Norman French, or from later scientific etc. addition) which leads us to see with our visual system. The older Germanic words tend to be for more commonplace vocabulary, whereas the Latin tends to be for more formal or technical usage (YMMV). But because the inputs to English are mostly indo-European these two roots are sometimes similar anyway.

Re: Just how smart is an octopus?

#280

Post by [deleted] »

lisivka wrote: post #277
sho wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, as a native english speaker who is usually a nazi in spelling, grammar and pronunciation - octopi sounds most intuitively "correct" to me. Octopuses sounds awkward and inconsistent with idiomatic English, like a non-native speaker might guess at. Octopodes sounds like a scientific term. As far as I'm concerned octopi is correct. Screw the etymology.

AFAIK (I'm not a native speaker), English language has short and long words. Short words are native, long words are foreign. It's because long words in other languages are composed: short root, and suffix(es) to make proper form. English language uses other rules, so remnants of foreign languages are not welcome, but foreign languages are associated with wisdom, so longer words are associated with wisdom and science…

[deleted]
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