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> It is not conscious like a mammal, bird, or octopus is conscious. I do not see how you could know this, because consciousness and how it forms is exceptional
by krageon 5y ago
> It is not conscious like a mammal, bird, or octopus is conscious.
I do not see how you could know this, because consciousness and how it forms is exceptionally poorly understood. If in the past two years major breakthroughs have happened on this subject I would love to read about it. Perhaps you can point me in the right direction.
- superkuh 5y agoYou don't need anything discovered in the last 40 years to be able to state that lobsters are not sentient. But, Rodolfo R Llinás' "I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self" is a really great book that explores the underpinings of sentience from single neurons on up. The tldr; is that the structures which seem to be necessary (if not sufficient) for consciousness in mammals (like 30-40 Hz thalamo-cortical loops) do not and cannot exist in the structures provided by the lobster nervous system. Do lobsters have some seperate, unrelated implementation of sentience? There's no behavioral evidence to support it. They're just big insects. I think anyone claiming that 100k neurons can support sentience needs to be providing the proof, not me providing the context and evidence for why not.
- krageon 5y agoNormally I would defer to your superior knowledge, but sadly I have done some amount of relevant university-level study of this subject with teachers that were experts in the field. They have always maintained that theories about how sapience develops and exists are just that: Theories. There is no solid proof of anything. Since your response leans on "seems" and then deflecting to saying that the opposite of your claim should be proven (even though both are equally unknowable), I'm going to assume you don't have solid evidence one way or the other about it either.