[HN Gopher] What's it like to be an Octopus? (2017)
___________________________________________________________________
What's it like to be an Octopus? (2017)
Author : samgilb
Score : 232 points
Date : 2020-08-10 14:38 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lrb.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lrb.co.uk)
| quercusa wrote:
| 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
| virtualritz wrote:
| Blindsight reminded me a lot of Lem's Fiasko[1] which I read as
| a teenager in the 80's.
|
| It's worth to read all of his 'first contact' themed ones. They
| all use a slightly different lens on the same theme:
|
| Eden, Solaris, The Invincible & His Master's Voice
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiasco_(novel)
| hcrisp wrote:
| Also, _The Europa Report_ film, where astronauts search for
| life in the liquid ocean beneath ice on one of Jupiter 's
| moons.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| Coincidentally (or not?), Peter Watts is also marine biologist.
| centimeter wrote:
| The second book in the Children of Time series by A.
| Tchaikovsky deals with rapidly-evolved octopus intelligence.
| Similar vibe.
| perardi wrote:
| Somewhat off-topic, but I just couldn't get into the second
| book, whereas I loved the first book.
|
| I think it's because Children of Ruin didn't have as much of
| the way relatable human (or Human, as the book goes into)
| characters to latch onto as an anchor while they explore the
| evolution of a different kind of intelligence. I was really
| rooting for some of the human characters in Children of Time,
| namely Lain, whereas Children of Ruin just felt a little too,
| uh, alien.
| kharak wrote:
| To this day I wonder if consciousness is needed, or a hindrance
| for intelligence. That is that SF is all about, raising and
| play with these kind of questions. Can truly recommend
| Blindsight.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I don't think we'll be doing well with SETI until we have a
| better understanding of the animals around us. This planet is
| teeming with non-mammalian intelligence and mostly we either
| ignore it, are irritated by it, or try to eat it.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/UsRxB
| alikim wrote:
| I strongly recommend both of these books. The Soul of an Octopus
| is more anecdotal and Other Minds is more academic; in sum they
| offer not just a fascinating picture of octopuses, but a larger
| discussion on consciousness and foreign intelligence.
| papito wrote:
| Now do raccoons do raccoons!
| jbotz wrote:
| 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 clearly hints that there is
| something universal in this consciousness we share, something
| that seems to want to evolve to similar parameters given half a
| chance.
|
| We don't know how common or rare sentience and consciousness are
| in the Universe, but because of the Octopus I believe that if
| ever we do encounter non-terrestrial sentience we'll have no
| trouble recognizing it and will find that we have enough in
| common to establish communications and a relationship. 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.
| [deleted]
| kensai wrote:
| Maybe the Aliens will worships the Octopus like some old
| forgotten God and spare us from disaster or kill us quickly
| when they find out we eat them!
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| > _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...
| Aeronwen wrote:
| It's because your whole body develops "inverted" compared to
| theirs. Evolution got your eyes to point the right way and do
| something useful even though there's a blind spot, instead of
| growing optimally but facing inward and being useless.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| I draw the exact opposite conclusion from the same premise.
|
| Octopuses (cephalopods) are our direct relatives; we have
| physical contact with them; we easily observe to be
| intelligent; we know them to communicate with each other, _and
| yet we can 't meaningfully communicate with cephalopods_.
|
| How do we have any hope of communicating with an extra-
| terrestrial intelligence?
| mcv wrote:
| 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, it's entirely
| possible that alien intelligence end up on our dinner plates
| before they end up at our negotiating table.
| joycian wrote:
| To be fair, our brain is also split into two halves that have
| limited bandwidth to communicate. It's not clear how much
| bandwidth is needed to "feel" like a single entity.
| sradman wrote:
| > Can we comprehend them? From what I've read about it,
| consciousness in octopuses has to be completely alien to
| ours...
|
| What is completely alien is the evolutionary path compared to
| our own. What feels familiar is the connection you feel with
| these animals when they interact with you. They seem to be
| caught in a comical struggle between fear and curiosity. It
| feels human.
| DonaldFisk wrote:
| Or vice-versa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_Man
| bserge wrote:
| 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
| baxtr wrote:
| You're optimistic. I like that. On a different note: I think
| it's also possible to imagine that humans will try to eat the
| aliens. Some love eating cuttlefish.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| 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 though
| means like TV and the Internet and I don't see that trend
| stopping.
| mongol wrote:
| 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.
| bserge wrote:
| Our bodies are extremely powerful and versatile. If we
| actually understood how they work and how to build/modify
| them, we'd get way more mileage out of them than an
| electromechanical alternative.
|
| Imagine a body with perfect physique, maximum strength, a
| bigger/denser brain, programmable immune system, etc. It
| could even be adapted for deep sea or outer space life.
|
| We haven't even begun to understand biotech at this level,
| because of moral/ethical concerns and a general aversion to
| anything organic (understandable, experimentation with
| sentient life is seen as bad, and our primitive side rejects
| most foreign biomatter altogether).
| wombatmobile wrote:
| Thank you for sharing those comments, jbotz.
|
| > We don't know how common or rare sentience and consciousness
| are in the Universe, but because of the Octopus I believe that
| if ever we do encounter non-terrestrial sentience we'll have no
| trouble recognizing it and will find that we have enough in
| common to establish communications and a relationship.
|
| And... what of terrestrial sentience?
| wtetzner wrote:
| > 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.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| How?
| nico_h wrote:
| Gorillas can use sign language, dogs can use speaking
| buttons, I'm sure dolphins or orcas could be taught
| something we would recognise as language, maybe even
| chimpanze
| robertfw wrote:
| There's quite a bit of speculation that dolphins, orcas,
| and sperm whales are already using communication with
| sufficient complexity to be seen as language.
|
| Here's a great talk that sent me on a recent youtube dive
| on the subject
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH9boP9pksM
| discreteevent wrote:
| I think it was the sleeve notes of "Stop making sense" by
| Talking Heads that had a lot of little aphorisms and one
| of them was something like: 'Dolphins are very smart but
| they don't want to talk to us'
| wombatmobile wrote:
| Ha! How about... other people?
| powersnail wrote:
| In the case of Gorilla, I think it wasn't quite the level
| of sign _language_ that it learned, but vocabularies and
| phrases.
|
| I had a psychology professor who was part of the research
| teaching Koko sign language. And according to him, what
| Koko learned was really impressive, more than they
| anticipated. But it was still fundamentally different
| from human language.
|
| It was a long time ago, and I don't recall what exactly
| was lacking. It could be on the lines of grammatical
| structures, that for Koko, there was no difference
| between "not want banana" and "want banana not". She
| didn't have an idea of what the negation was directed at.
| In the eye of linguistic psycholinguistics, the
| difference wasn't trivial.
|
| In contrast, human children, even with limited
| vocabulary, could grasp and even invent grammars.
| JackFr wrote:
| https://slate.com/technology/2014/08/koko-kanzi-and-ape-
| lang...
|
| The science isn't there for gorillas communicating like
| humans. No publications, no data and Robin Williams
| anecdotes instead. If there was something there one would
| think there would be more scientists doing research down
| that path.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Respecting aside, I don't think we have that much to _talk
| about_ with other intelligent Earth species.
| blaser-waffle wrote:
| "Yo, squid guy, what do you think about Seinfeld?"
|
| [...silence...]
| p1esk wrote:
| You would get same response from me
| [deleted]
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Given our experience with the octopus I suppose the first
| recognizably intelligent alien better hope it doesn't taste
| good fried.
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| Or the other way around _
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| If you want a picture of the future, imagine an intelligent
| root snacking on a human face - forever.
| bmitc wrote:
| > We don't know how common or rare sentience and consciousness
| are in the Universe, but because of the Octopus I believe that
| if ever we do encounter non-terrestrial sentience we'll have no
| trouble recognizing it and will find that we have enough in
| common to establish communications and a relationship.
|
| In my opinion, this is a stretch. By comprehend and recognize,
| what do you mean? For an octopus, ant, or orca, we have little
| to no comprehension of their intelligence, philosophy, or
| consciousness. All of those things are a black box to us. We
| can observe behavior and take notes, but I think it's a huge
| leap to say we comprehend their intelligence.
|
| It's an even bigger leap to say we could establish
| communications and relationships with an alien species. What is
| our relationship with orcas? We starve them, kill them with
| boats and pollutants, and we imprison them for entertainment.
| We try to rid the world of ants and attack and poison them on
| sight. We eat octopuses and also pollute their environment. I
| wouldn't call those things a relationship.
|
| As for communication, how do we do there? We have almost no
| capability of talking to orcas or octopuses. And it's not a
| fault of theirs. It's because we are indeed _different_. There
| is even less hope for ants.
|
| The existence of orcas, ants, and octopuses on Earth is the
| exact evidence I need to form the opinion that it is probable
| that there are alien species that we simply can't comprehend
| and vice versa.
|
| Is it really that hard to believe there's a species out there
| such that we humans are their ant?
| sradman wrote:
| 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 human facial
| expressions.
|
| The article mentions [NSFW!] _The Dream of the Fisherman 's
| Wife_ [1] (erotic Japanese art from 1814) and the books _Other
| Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of
| Consciousness_ [2] by Peter Godfrey-Smith and _The Soul of an
| Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of
| Consciousness_ by Sy Montgomery [3].
|
| [1] NSFW!
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman%27s...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Minds:_The_Octopus,_the_...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sy_Montgomery
|
| EDIT: added NSFW! warnings.
| e40 wrote:
| 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)
| 0_____0 wrote:
| 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
| jgwil2 wrote:
| Incorrect. It's erotic art, but art nonetheless.
| Otherwise we wouldn't be discussing it.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Rhetorical question to make you think: where do we draw
| the line between smut and art?
| recuter wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it
| nurettin wrote:
| smut is gratituous and without meaning and has a singular
| purpose. It is pretty easy to tell apart.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Then this is art.
| morelisp wrote:
| To these I'd add the classic _Vampyroteuthis infernalis_ by
| Vilem Flusser and Louis Bec.
|
| https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-
| division/books/vampyroteuthi...
| cwkoss wrote:
| NOVA's Kings of Camouflage is another great doc - on
| cuttlefish
|
| https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/kings-of-camouflage/
| baddox wrote:
| Our environments are very different places on Earth, but they
| might be very similar compared to some other sci-fi ideas about
| life, such as life evolving in charges particles suspended in
| plasma. :)
| praptak wrote:
| Let's not forget we have much work to do about communicating
| and respecting between different _very-much-human_ groups on
| this planet.
| felbane wrote:
| For some reason I really expected this to be an interview with
| Danny Carey.
|
| Parallel evolution is amazing. Developing complex communication
| between human and octopus would be an amazing feat and would
| likely answer some of our questions about the nature of
| consciousness.
| qwertygnu wrote:
| This was a really awesome article! Very well written and utterly
| thought-provoking.
|
| Also this blurb from the author's website is amazing[1]:
|
| > _To research her books, films, and articles, Sy Montgomery has
| been chased by a silverback gorilla, embrced by a Giant Pacific
| Octopus and undressed by an orangutan. But she is perhaps best
| known for her 14 year love affair with Christopher Hogwood, a
| runt piglet who grew to a 750-pound great Buddha master._
|
| [1] http://symontgomery.com/
| gooseus wrote:
| Does anyone know if there has ever been experimentation with
| training octopuses to use some kind of user interface (buttons,
| dials, sliders, joysticks) with a grayscale screen or some other
| kind of modulated output to solve problems for rewards?
|
| Could an octopus learn to play Super Mario Bros or Pac-Man to
| beat levels for crab?
|
| If we could find a reliable way to teach an input language to an
| octopus we could start probing what classes of problems are
| easier or harder for them solve. We could develop octopus input
| devices that maximize the size of the 'octo-bus', and find ways
| to give them an "immersive experience" by modulating their
| environment (temp, salinity, pH, etc) as feedback.
|
| Anyone with me on this? I haven't found anything, but I don't
| know if my "dorking" is up to par.
| mindfulplay wrote:
| One amazing snippet that is contradictory to human beings:
| octopuses are color-blind across their entire body (with their
| physical eyes as well as their "body" eyes) but they are
| excellent camouflage artists! How is that even possible. Don't
| you need to perceive color to be able to take it??
| john-aj wrote:
| Hm, that is a good question. Evolutionarily, there is not
| necessarily any benefit for the octopus to being _conscious_ of
| color, but there has to be some way in which its body, if only
| mechanically, "perceives" color and imitates it.
| hinkley wrote:
| I used to know someone whose favorite "are they kidding or
| serious" joke was that octopi were aliens.
|
| This often lead to a discussion about how we'd be an aquatic
| civilization of octopi lived much longer than they do.
| pbk1 wrote:
| The opening of this article references Hokusai's "Great Wave"
| woodblock print. There's an easter egg in this print I never
| noticed, which is that Mount Fuji is nestled in the trough of the
| wave.
|
| Learned this from a great NYT article on Hokusai focusing on
| another print from the same series:
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/07/arts/design/h...
| pavanky wrote:
| 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!
| macando wrote:
| The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov (2nd story in the book).
| gigatexal wrote:
| If I could I'd come back as an octopus. What awesome, majestic
| creatures.
| superfreek wrote:
| But... sadly, for them, sex is a death sentence.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Yeah. Or it's a selfless act of sacrifice for the next
| generation.
| Wistar wrote:
| At least you'd be well-armed.
| bserge wrote:
| Just try not to get eaten alive for YouTube views, I guess...
| gigatexal wrote:
| I'd come back as a cross between an octopus and one punch man
| ;)
| 40four wrote:
| I've always been amazed and fascinated by octopuses. Their
| intelligence, the way they can manipulate their bodies. Most of
| all the almost instantaneous ability to change their skin color
| and camouflage with their environment. I highly recommend this
| episode of PBS 'Nature' I recently watched.
|
| "Octopus: Making Contact"
| https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/octopus-making-contact-y8dya...
| deforciant wrote:
| I would recommend these scifi books
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25499718-children-of-tim...
|
| And https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40376072-children-of-
| rui...
|
| Lots of fun reading them, great author :)
| louisvgchi wrote:
| I've also read both books. It's a good exploration into the
| minds of spiders and octopuses, if given "uplift".
|
| A recent study I read about shows that spider intelligence is
| ill-studied but actually holds a wealth of interesting facets.
| Jumping spiders plan, such as when hunting, and can be
| surprised. They are also doing elaborate planning when building
| webs, and make adjustments to strength/stickiness in webs based
| on failed catches. It's sophisticated tool use. And yet their
| brains are teeny weeny puny things.
|
| Another novel that you might enjoy if you haven't read is "A
| Deepness in the Sky", it's similar to Children of Time (and
| predates it), but told in a different way. Both are highly
| enjoyable and packed with ideas.
| mrec wrote:
| If you're recommending _A Deepness in the Sky_ , you should
| also recommend _A Fire Upon the Deep_ by the same author
| (Vernor Vinge). A very different take on alien intelligence,
| and possibly more relevant to the octopus model in that it
| covers distributed selves, albeit over individuals rather
| than limbs.
| sgt101 wrote:
| rather than tell the OP what to do you should recommend
| things yourself. Or not.
| sgt101 wrote:
| Anecdote : I had a mate who was a paramedic; called to a
| junkies house he noted a tarantula in a tank and felt
| terribly sorry for it - so bought it for PS10. It lived for
| many years in it's flat, and it hid from people who it didn't
| know - but if you were calm and waited for it to try its
| courage, the after a while it would come and inspect you .
| Should you act kindly to it, well then for ever afterwards it
| would come out and greet you when you entered the room. I got
| the idea that it was a "personal" organism - it had an idea
| of others, and itself.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| For context so that people don't need to click on links: the
| first book is about uplifted, sentient spiders; the second one
| is about uplifted octopii.
|
| Both are absolutely great, I highly recommend them!
| deforciant wrote:
| Didn't want to provide spoilers :)
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I don't think these are spoilers, but selling points :).
| mindfulplay wrote:
| Fantastic article. Superb writing and makes me ponder about our
| species in general.
|
| I do have a general take on how humans perceive or judge other
| organisms through a very human lens. We characterize organisms
| based on their social structure, longevity, 'cleverness' etc.
| While looking at how humans compare with octopuses at a meta
| level, octopuses seem to be not waging wars, more peaceful, seem
| to have survived for more than 600 millions years. I wonder if
| human beings would have a similar track record: looks like humans
| are well into destroying their own kind and the environment
| faster than most other creatures.
|
| At the same time human beings seem ill equipped to judge or
| characterize 'alien' lives: we often want to 'make contact' or
| have a communication or social channel with aliens. As if a show
| of our mental power and social structure is the most important
| aspect..
|
| Just looking at how octopuses are being measured by humans, it
| feels rather silly the kind of approaches humans use to evaluate
| other species let alone aliens.
| mellosouls wrote:
| Paywalled. Please will the OP or somebody provide a readable
| link.
|
| Edit:
|
| For anybody who had the same problem as me, try using a different
| device or privacy mode.
|
| I can't access it on my PC due to the paywall but can on my phone
| (same, synced browser).
| [deleted]
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > Octopuses are the closest we can come, on earth, to knowing
| what it might be like to encounter intelligent aliens.
|
| Wow
| gregfjohnson wrote:
| 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 make to
| computational universality. I believe that the independent
| evolution of eyes resulted in surprising similarities, because of
| the underlying physics of photons, and the constraints placed on
| solving the same problems of interpreting streams of photons. It
| might be that there is some similar unifying computational
| phenomenon that drives evolution to similar mutually intelligible
| consciousnesses even via radically distinct evolutionary paths.
| codeulike wrote:
| Turing Completeness is pretty mundane. You just need GOTOs and
| IF statements, and registers/variables. Thats it really. Its
| not hard to acheive at all.
|
| The Emperors New Mind by Roger Penrose discusses the opposite
| idea, that consciousness has a non-computational element that
| could never even be approximated by a turing machine. I don't
| really agree with it but its an interesting book.
| abellerose wrote:
| 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.
| pengaru wrote:
| Radiolab did a great "Octomom" episode that seems apropos here,
| definitely worth a listen.
|
| https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/audio.wnyc.org/radi...
| dschuetz wrote:
| The article is a good read. I was left with even more questions:
| How come that most documentaries explain the vibrant and
| undulating colors as some sort of communication, when in
| actuality there is no evidence that they can observe colors? Even
| more interesting is the question where do the chromatophores get
| their color "data" since there are no apparent color receptors in
| their eyes or skin so that they can mimic their surroundings for
| camouflage?
| Double_Cast wrote:
| From what I've read elsewhere, an octopus's pupils isolate
| colors via chromatic aberration. They can see a range of
| colors, but only one color at a time.
| agency wrote:
| Something that totally blew my mind is that octopuses seem to
| react to MDMA in ways similar to us - socially disinhibited,
| acting "cuddly": https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
| shots/2018/09/20/6487881...
| cvaidya1986 wrote:
| The original 8X engineers.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Octopus intelligence is phenomenal achievement when you consider
| the restrictions they have:
|
| 1. No social interaction or learning. Octopuses[1] live alone.
|
| 2. Short life span. Most of them live only few years in the wild.
|
| ----
|
| [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-many-
| plura...
| GuB-42 wrote:
| 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 probably wouldn't have been any society at all.
|
| This, I believe, makes them even weirder. With so much
| intelligence, why didn't they evolve longevity as a way to
| capitalize on their experience? Why didn't they develop
| collective strategies that are so effective in other animal
| species?
| nabla9 wrote:
| 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 path to collective strategies providing gains is too
| long or too unlikely to happen.
| hhjinks wrote:
| > 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?
| nabla9 wrote:
| Energy and nutritional requirements, longer time before
| reaching adulthood. For humans one of the limiting factor
| is the female pelvis. Births become more difficult.
| iguy wrote:
| Yes. But I'd reverse these questions: why so much
| intelligence, with seemingly few opportunities to use it?
| cylon13 wrote:
| 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.
| nabla9 wrote:
| 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
| nabla9 wrote:
| Most likely because they have complex tentacles that need
| fine motor control. Their brains developed to control
| their body. Their eyes seem to be good as well.
|
| Even in human brain huge area of brain dedicated into
| hands. Human fine motor skill (or dexterity) is superior
| compared to other apes. We can do small detailed moves.
| Other apes and monkeys are clumsy.
|
| After the complexity of brain developed to control their
| dexterity, octopus gets benefit from spatiotemporal
| intelligence to exploit tentacles in hunting and moving.
| It's not surprising that intelligence plan and solve
| problems as well.
| iguy wrote:
| I guess that's it. Some other asocial animals are pretty
| smart, because they need it for hunting, or something.
| (Although even the most anti-social mammals still
| interact with their mom!)
| cwkoss wrote:
| I wonder if anyone is breeding cephalopods for longevity
| and intelligence
| GeneralMayhem wrote:
| I can think of a couple more major disadvantages they have.
|
| 3. Living underwater. Fire is the easiest way to extract energy
| from raw materials, and there's no real substitute. On land,
| there's a lot of local, controllable dynamism, but when you put
| things down they tend to stay where you put them, at least on
| short timescales. Water is exactly the opposite: lots of
| changes you can't control, but no way to get a lot of energy
| all in one place. Dolphins would have a hard time developing
| technology for the same reason, even if they had the dexterity.
|
| 4. Not being apex predators. This is part of the short lifespan
| problem, but I think it goes beyond that. Not many animals are
| going to mess with a human if they can help it, which means
| that it didn't take much for us to get to the point of having
| some free brain cycles to spend on improving things. An octopus
| is comparatively small and squishy, and shares an environment
| with comparatively more large and toothy carnivores, which
| means that even when they do manage to survive for more than a
| couple years they're doing it by spending most of their time
| eating and hiding.
| mellosouls wrote:
| I can't read the article at the moment to judge, but going by
| some of the comments, the original famous essay of this ilk
| (exploring the idea of consciousness by imagining experiencing
| life as an very different species) might be of interest.
|
| https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3...
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/UsRxB
| mellosouls wrote:
| Thank you
| Afton wrote:
| Nagel's essay is mentioned explicitly.
| coldtea wrote:
| It's handy.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-08-10 23:00 UTC)