If I could I’d come back as an octopus. What awesome, majestic creatures.
At least you'd be well-armed.
What's it like to be an Octopus? (2017)
71–80 of 170 posts
Re: What's it like to be an Octopus? (2017)
#72It's an old trope in Sci Fi that alien intelligences would be so different from us that we couldn't even begin to comprehend them. Octopuses belie that idea... although we share some DNA, our last common ancestors barely had a nervous system, so any similarities in cognition between us really are the product of paralllel evolution. And since their environments are also very different from ours, this parallel evoution…
Can we comprehend them? From what I've read about it, consciousness in octopuses has to be completely alien to ours, because it's spread out over multiple brain centers, including one for each arm. So the arm is a semi-intelligent entity of its own. No idea to what extent the article discusses this; part of it is blocked by a paywall, after which it continues about eating moluscs. But just like people eat octopuses,…
Does the physical build actually matter? "We" are just virtual constructs that happen to run on a brain inside a skull at the top of a four-limbed creature.
For an organism that evolved on this planet, it stands to reason they'd have some experience similar to ours. The fact that their consciousness would run on multiple nodes is of little relevance imo
Re: What's it like to be an Octopus? (2017)
#73If I could I’d come back as an octopus. What awesome, majestic creatures.
Just try not to get eaten alive for YouTube views, I guess...
Re: What's it like to be an Octopus? (2017)
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Answer to both of your questions is that there was no evolutionary path. Evolution is blind and path dependent. It only responds to differential pressures affecting just now. Evolution is like greedy search https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greedy_algorithm They didn't develop longevity because intelligence + longlivety does not provide immediate advantage. They didn't develop collective strategies because they the path…
Yes. But I'd reverse these questions: why so much intelligence, with seemingly few opportunities to use it?
The marginal intelligence point makes survival to reproduce more likely, so octopi that are marginally smarter tend to be slightly more likely to reproduce.
However, they seem to die very soon after mating for some reason related to their evolutionary history. There's no way for a marginally longer-lived octopus to be more successful at reproduction, because reproduction is a one-shot event for them. If anything there's pressure to reproduce (and die) at a younger age, since these octopi would be more successful.
Such are the tragedies of evolution, the blind idiot god.
Re: What's it like to be an Octopus? (2017)
#75It's an old trope in Sci Fi that alien intelligences would be so different from us that we couldn't even begin to comprehend them. Octopuses belie that idea... although we share some DNA, our last common ancestors barely had a nervous system, so any similarities in cognition between us really are the product of paralllel evolution. And since their environments are also very different from ours, this parallel evoution…
> the product of parallel evolution.
Famously, their eyes are almost identical to ours, and are purely the product of parallel evolution.
One difference, though is that at some point during our evolution there was a glitch, or at least it took a less-than-optimal turn, that resulted in our retina being 'inverted', i.e. light must traverse the nerves and some tissue before reaching the light receptors, while theirs is as one would expect, i.e. with the light receptors at the front. [1] This also means that our retina has a blind spot, while theirs does not.
[1] https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/2015/01/12/the-poor-design...
Re: What's it like to be an Octopus? (2017)
#76Re: What's it like to be an Octopus? (2017)
#77It's an old trope in Sci Fi that alien intelligences would be so different from us that we couldn't even begin to comprehend them. Octopuses belie that idea... although we share some DNA, our last common ancestors barely had a nervous system, so any similarities in cognition between us really are the product of paralllel evolution. And since their environments are also very different from ours, this parallel evoution…
Cephalopods are magnificent. I knew they were smart and curious but I was caught off guard the first time I realized that a curious cuttlefish was making eye contact with me. No other reef animals exhibit anything like this kind of intelligence; the dissimilarity is striking. When you start to doubt your interpretation they quite literally flash their emotional state through color changes that seem as telling as huma…
To these I'd add the classic Vampyroteuthis infernalis by Vilém Flusser and Louis Bec.
https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/vampyroteuthi...
Re: What's it like to be an Octopus? (2017)
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that lifespan it is their biggest disadvantage, and the reason why there is no octopus civilization, unless you want to go beyond the Mountains of Madness. Modern humans for instance spend more time learning than the lifespan of most animals. If we were limited to a lifespan of 20 years, which is typical for a mammal of our weight class, human society would have been very different. Make it 5 years and there…
Answer to both of your questions is that there was no evolutionary path. Evolution is blind and path dependent. It only responds to differential pressures affecting just now. Evolution is like greedy search https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greedy_algorithm They didn't develop longevity because intelligence + longlivety does not provide immediate advantage. They didn't develop collective strategies because they the path…
> intelligence + longlivety does not provide immediate advantage
You gotta wonder what sort of environmental pressures make intelligent animals less fit for survival by creating communities. Few predators? Very simple environments that don't require passing on information to future generations? High competition for resources?
Re: What's it like to be an Octopus? (2017)
#79It's an old trope in Sci Fi that alien intelligences would be so different from us that we couldn't even begin to comprehend them. Octopuses belie that idea... although we share some DNA, our last common ancestors barely had a nervous system, so any similarities in cognition between us really are the product of paralllel evolution. And since their environments are also very different from ours, this parallel evoution…
Cephalopods are magnificent. I knew they were smart and curious but I was caught off guard the first time I realized that a curious cuttlefish was making eye contact with me. No other reef animals exhibit anything like this kind of intelligence; the dissimilarity is striking. When you start to doubt your interpretation they quite literally flash their emotional state through color changes that seem as telling as huma…
NOVA's Kings of Camouflage is another great doc - on cuttlefish
Re: What's it like to be an Octopus? (2017)
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that lifespan it is their biggest disadvantage, and the reason why there is no octopus civilization, unless you want to go beyond the Mountains of Madness. Modern humans for instance spend more time learning than the lifespan of most animals. If we were limited to a lifespan of 20 years, which is typical for a mammal of our weight class, human society would have been very different. Make it 5 years and there…
Answer to both of your questions is that there was no evolutionary path. Evolution is blind and path dependent. It only responds to differential pressures affecting just now. Evolution is like greedy search https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greedy_algorithm They didn't develop longevity because intelligence + longlivety does not provide immediate advantage. They didn't develop collective strategies because they the path…
I wonder if anyone is breeding cephalopods for longevity and intelligence