301–310 of 329 posts
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For those who are confused, the above line is just quoting the movie Pulp Fiction.
Heh, was going to mention this. Funny how nobody expects inline pop culture references in HN discussions, so they're often just taken at face value.
Or the average age of the site is too young to remember Pulp Fiction.
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I think you've identified precisely why tribal culture would have helped octopodes: (never thought I'd be saying that today) 1. Before writing, technology was passed down through word of mouth from elders to younger generations in tribes. 2. Rearing/protecting young is assigned to specialized members of the tribe while others hunt/gather resources.
As an experiment, I wonder if octopuses could be taught rudiments of culture that would have evolutionary advantages...
That's going on your headstone come the Great Octopus War of 2033.
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…
Presumably he (or she?) wanted to go back to his own tank to get the regular food. Frankly I think you should take the carpet down - OK you don't want to keep losing flounder, but if the guy can wander around and climb out of his own tank you should be studying that , not trying to make the behavior go away. If nothing else, it's cruel to bore him like that. Yes, I'm serious.
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I also suspect it's a lot harder to advance technologically when you live underwater. One of the big boosts to human evolution was the mastery of fire and development of cooking.
Also booze. The desire to make our own alcohol is what triggered the spread of agriculture, if I remember my old history classes correctly.
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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…
In the parking lot near my house, there are a bunch of Toyota Priuses that park in one corner. We've started calling them Prii.
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If you like reading about minds that are fundamentally different from our own, you might also enjoy the science fiction novel "Blindsight" by Peter Watts. Exploring the space of possible minds in the universe is a fundamental theme of that work.
To give a bit more context for others, the novel is a really well done first contact story. I'd highly recommend it, especially because Watts makes it available online for free. http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
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Anyone who thinks animals do not suffer is an idiot. They have nervous system, therefore they feel pain, just like us. They also suffer emotional pain, not just physical. Kill a pig in front of another pig and he/she is going to be terrified.
>They have nervous system, therefore they feel pain, just like us. // The second part doesn't follow from the first. People have largely the same nervous systems and largely the same brain structures (AFAIK), and yet they react quite differently to pain and in the extremes they react exceedingly differently to the suffering of others. Do you think that sows when they crush some of their piglets by lying on them behav…
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…
Presumably he (or she?) wanted to go back to his own tank to get the regular food. Frankly I think you should take the carpet down - OK you don't want to keep losing flounder, but if the guy can wander around and climb out of his own tank you should be studying that , not trying to make the behavior go away. If nothing else, it's cruel to bore him like that. Yes, I'm serious.
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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…
Anyone who thinks animals do not suffer is an idiot. They have nervous system, therefore they feel pain, just like us. They also suffer emotional pain, not just physical. Kill a pig in front of another pig and he/she is going to be terrified.
One day he goes out and shoots one of the pigs to slaughter it. Before he can get the dead pig out of the pen the other pig comes running over and starts eargly licking up the blood up of his brother from its dead body.
They may be smart, but we should not anthropomoprhize to the point that we imagine them having the same kind of empathy and self-consciousness as us.
3x smarter than a managing director
You've posted plenty of unsubstantive comments to HN. We ban accounts that keep doing that, so please stop doing that.
This is a country of free speech and you little cunts like Facebook can stick up your asses your nazi-like politically correct attitude. Go fuck yourselves and carry your Frankfurt school with you.