Octopi? Pah. Cuttlefish are fucking brilliant.
Agreed
Flamboyant ftw
Just how smart is an octopus?
31–40 of 329 posts
Re: Just how smart is an octopus?
#32Animals have always seemed to me smarter than humans in some (important) ways. Squirrels, for instance, are extremely resourceful and can survive in conditions few, if any, humans could. If that isn't being "smart", I don't know what is. In any case, the smart/brain weight ratio is not in humans' favor here, that is for sure!
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 ...
Re: Just how smart is an octopus?
#33Way to make me feel worse about eating them.
Apart from cognitive skills, an important factor is the capacity of suffering. So even dumb animals might be able to feel intense pain.
In humans, while forms of suffering like loneliness, depression can be bad, pure physical pain can itself a terrible thing. For instance severe torture for 10 minutes can be worse than months of depression.
Now even if cognitive aspects are diminished in animals, the physical senses are active and often much more sharp(birds eye sight, dogs hearing).
So, what we can do is independent of whether we are eating animals or not, is to recognize this fact that animals can suffer, and ensure that factory farms which deal with billions of animals atleast stop some of the more terrible forms of animal cruelty (dunking birds in hot water while still alive).
Re: Just how smart is an octopus?
#34Animals have always seemed to me smarter than humans in some (important) ways. Squirrels, for instance, are extremely resourceful and can survive in conditions few, if any, humans could. If that isn't being "smart", I don't know what is. In any case, the smart/brain weight ratio is not in humans' favor here, that is for sure!
Algae can also survive in conditions human couldn't. That isn't a very meaningful bar for intelligence.
Re: Just how smart is an octopus?
#35Way to make me feel worse about eating them.
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.
Re: Just how smart is an octopus?
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the route I took. I'm a meat-eater and eat plenty of it (including pork, which someone else mentioned in this thread), but I decided to stop eating octopodes. It feels a little funny compared to people who avoid meat in general or eat all of it, but at least for now it's the only thing I don't eat.
I don't care for eating them either. I imagine them someday becoming the dominant species and eating us in return.
I don't fear that at all. The males die after mating and the females starve to death on their egg brood. So there is no inter-generational knowledge transfer.
They would revert back to natural tool users with each succeeding generation. As an order, they wouldn't even be able to dominate house cats.
Re: Just how smart is an octopus?
#37Re: Just how smart is an octopus?
#38Re: Just how smart is an octopus?
#39Animals have always seemed to me smarter than humans in some (important) ways. Squirrels, for instance, are extremely resourceful and can survive in conditions few, if any, humans could. If that isn't being "smart", I don't know what is. In any case, the smart/brain weight ratio is not in humans' favor here, that is for sure!
Algae can also survive in conditions human couldn't. That isn't a very meaningful bar for intelligence.
Single celled organisms are in control, they're the original intelligence. Our minds are just slaves to supercolonies of trillions of cells.
Re: Just how smart is an octopus?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the route I took. I'm a meat-eater and eat plenty of it (including pork, which someone else mentioned in this thread), but I decided to stop eating octopodes. It feels a little funny compared to people who avoid meat in general or eat all of it, but at least for now it's the only thing I don't eat.
I bet there are other mammals you 'don't' eat - at least, that you'd refuse to eat. Man is the obvious one, but what about other primates, elephants, giraffes, etc.? I bet there are more animals that you don't eat than you do , and maybe there are even more that you would not be prepared to eat than you would .
At the end of the day, if it comes down to me or that animal, I'm choosing me. But that's not the reality for any of us on Hacker News. A lot of us have more money than we know what to do with, we don't struggle feed ourselves, we're not out hunting animals in the woods. We can make choices.