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What's it like to be an Octopus? (2017)

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Re: What's it like to be an Octopus? (2017)

#81

Post by nabla9 »

cylon13 wrote: post #74
iguy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ther…

Octopus genome and weird epigenetics another interesting aspect in them and probably related to their intelligence. Octopus can do RNA editing.

https://www.nature.com/news/octopus-genome-holds-clues-to-un...

Trade-off between Transcriptome Plasticity and Genome Evolution in Cephalopods https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30344-6

• Unlike other taxa, cephalopods diversify their proteomes extensively by RNA editing

• Extensive recoding is specific to the behaviorally complex coleiods

• Unlike mammals, cephalopod recoding is evolutionarily conserved and often adaptive

•Transcriptome diversification comes at the expense of slowed-down genome evolution

Re: What's it like to be an Octopus? (2017)

#82

Post by macando »

pavanky wrote: post #59

If anyone is else is interested in thought experiments on how other forms of intelligence / sapience may evolve, try to read "Children of Time" and "Children of Ruin" by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Also if anyone else has other books that follow similar themes, please recommend!

The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov (2nd story in the book).

Re: What's it like to be an Octopus? (2017)

#83

Post by mongol »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #36
jbotz wrote: post #3

It'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…

I personally believe that at some point civilizations will stop using their bodies and live in something like computers or whatever it will be by then. So we may already be living in a highly networked universe without noticing it. With all the technological progress I can’t imagine why someone would want to deal with our very flawed bodies in the long run. We are already getting more and more of our experiences thou…

I don't understand how that could happen. It is something descibed in fiction from time to time. But I don't see how you can move your consciousness from your body somewhere else. Copy perhaps. But the consciousness that remain in the body will want to live on, I am sure. So that is why I cannot see us "stop" using our bodies. Certainly, we can become extinct, but that is something else.

Re: What's it like to be an Octopus? (2017)

#84

Post by abellerose »

gregfjohnson wrote: post #62

I wonder about the relationship between consciousness and Turing completeness. Although we don't have infinite tapes inside our heads, it seems that one could imagine a succession of progressively richer finite approximations to Turing-style computational universality. Perhaps "degrees on consciousness" as discussed in the article have to do with the depth of the approximation a creature with a given physiology can m…

Your comment reminds me of the question, is the human brain really just a collection of complex machines?

source - https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39482345

What we describe as awareness "consciousness" might not really exist. If everything is just a subsystem of the main system being the universe. Anyway I find it a fun philosophical question to think about.

Re: What's it like to be an Octopus? (2017)

#85

Post by The_Colonel »

quercusa wrote: post #2

The novel Blindsight by Peter Watts considers the issues humans would face in contact with similarly alien aliens. It's an intriguing read. Available under CC: https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm#CC

Coincidentally (or not?), Peter Watts is also marine biologist.

Re: What's it like to be an Octopus? (2017)

#87

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

0_____0 wrote: post #66
e40 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're all home (probably), but that [1] is NSFW! (it wasn't totally obvious to me before clicking, I thought it would be a text description)

Funny enough, there is a text description on the woodcut itself. If you click through to the photo on Wikipedia I believe there's a translation in the description. For the lazy: it's pure, unadulterated smut

Rhetorical question to make you think: where do we draw the line between smut and art?

Re: What's it like to be an Octopus? (2017)

#88

Post by blaser-waffle »

BurningFrog wrote: post #58
wtetzner wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Although first we'd do well to do a better job at communicating with and respecting the many non-human sentient beings on this planet.

Respecting aside, I don't think we have that much to talk about with other intelligent Earth species.

"Yo, squid guy, what do you think about Seinfeld?"

[...silence...]

Re: What's it like to be an Octopus? (2017)

#89

Post by nurettin »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #87
0_____0 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny enough, there is a text description on the woodcut itself. If you click through to the photo on Wikipedia I believe there's a translation in the description. For the lazy: it's pure, unadulterated smut

Rhetorical question to make you think: where do we draw the line between smut and art?

smut is gratituous and without meaning and has a singular purpose. It is pretty easy to tell apart.

Re: What's it like to be an Octopus? (2017)

#90

Post by recuter »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #87
0_____0 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny enough, there is a text description on the woodcut itself. If you click through to the photo on Wikipedia I believe there's a translation in the description. For the lazy: it's pure, unadulterated smut

Rhetorical question to make you think: where do we draw the line between smut and art?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it
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