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How sapient is your dog? This is calling for more humane treatment when slaughtering these creatures. I'd prefer it didn't happen at all.

causi 5y ago
My dog isn't sapient at all. He's quite sentient, though. Judging by the paper we shouldn't be killing octopuses at all, let alone inhumanely.
- utexaspunk 5y ago
  I'm not sure that's salient to this conversation
  - causi 5y ago
    It isn't, but he asked.
    - utexaspunk 5y ago
      I just wanted to add salient to sentience and sapience ;)
- pygy_ 5y ago
  > Wisdom, sapience, or sagacity is the ability to contemplate and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight. Dogs are more than sentient. Part of their behavior is learned, they have knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense (with both dogs and humans). No idea if insight has been studied in dogs specifically, but it isn't a human exclusive either (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23231629/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23231629/).
  - taneq 5y ago
    By that definition any sentient creature is sapient. Which, I mean, they are. Here's a litmus test: Is that creature so simple that you (or a suitably skilled technologist) could build one? If so then it's not sentient/sapient/a person/something we shouldn't be mean to. If not then maybe we should pay it a little more respect.
    - pygy_ 5y ago
      That argument is pretty weak, technological advances may allow people to create pretty complex beings in the near future (assuming we can't already). Sapience was probably defined hoping to make it a human exclusive, but recent science has eroded the idea of a qualitative singularity in humans. We are merely quantitatively different. Even single cells can be conditioned using the Pavlovian paradigm, which is a basic form of learning. I'd expect an entity with complex and immutable information processing ability (no writable memory) to be purely sentient.
      - taneq 5y ago
        Yeah, it wasn't meant to be an abiding definition, just a right-now thumb-suck feasibility test. "If I can code you, you're probably not a person." You're bang on the money with sapience being originally intended to be a merit badge for being human. I'm guessing your last line was just riffing on functional purity but if not, my definition of sentience (which is a superset of consciousness) includes perception of current and past self-states which means (by my definitions, at least) an immutable construct isn't sentient by itself. I guess if you always pass in a self-state-vector then the system of (construct, self-state) could be conscious?
    - hypertele-Xii 5y ago
      Name any creature in the world, and I'll name a human who can make you more of them, for a price. It's especially ironic because the very dogs in question were engineered by humans over vast generations, with a genetic engineering technique called selective breeding. Dogs aren't just built, they're designed.
      - 5y ago
- bitwize 5y ago
  I've stopped eating octopus-containing foods, including takoyaki, after learning how smart those little creatures are. They've only got one or two short, brilliant years on Earth... I don't need to be making things worse for them.

causi 5y ago

My dog isn't sapient at all. He's quite sentient, though. Judging by the paper we shouldn't be killing octopuses at all, let alone inhumanely.

utexaspunk 5y ago
I'm not sure that's salient to this conversation
- causi 5y ago
  It isn't, but he asked.
  - utexaspunk 5y ago
    I just wanted to add salient to sentience and sapience ;)
pygy_ 5y ago
> Wisdom, sapience, or sagacity is the ability to contemplate and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight. Dogs are more than sentient. Part of their behavior is learned, they have knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense (with both dogs and humans). No idea if insight has been studied in dogs specifically, but it isn't a human exclusive either (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23231629/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23231629/).
- taneq 5y ago
  By that definition any sentient creature is sapient. Which, I mean, they are. Here's a litmus test: Is that creature so simple that you (or a suitably skilled technologist) could build one? If so then it's not sentient/sapient/a person/something we shouldn't be mean to. If not then maybe we should pay it a little more respect.
  - pygy_ 5y ago
    That argument is pretty weak, technological advances may allow people to create pretty complex beings in the near future (assuming we can't already). Sapience was probably defined hoping to make it a human exclusive, but recent science has eroded the idea of a qualitative singularity in humans. We are merely quantitatively different. Even single cells can be conditioned using the Pavlovian paradigm, which is a basic form of learning. I'd expect an entity with complex and immutable information processing ability (no writable memory) to be purely sentient.
    - taneq 5y ago
      Yeah, it wasn't meant to be an abiding definition, just a right-now thumb-suck feasibility test. "If I can code you, you're probably not a person." You're bang on the money with sapience being originally intended to be a merit badge for being human. I'm guessing your last line was just riffing on functional purity but if not, my definition of sentience (which is a superset of consciousness) includes perception of current and past self-states which means (by my definitions, at least) an immutable construct isn't sentient by itself. I guess if you always pass in a self-state-vector then the system of (construct, self-state) could be conscious?
  - hypertele-Xii 5y ago
    Name any creature in the world, and I'll name a human who can make you more of them, for a price. It's especially ironic because the very dogs in question were engineered by humans over vast generations, with a genetic engineering technique called selective breeding. Dogs aren't just built, they're designed.
    - 5y ago
bitwize 5y ago
I've stopped eating octopus-containing foods, including takoyaki, after learning how smart those little creatures are. They've only got one or two short, brilliant years on Earth... I don't need to be making things worse for them.