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> With the octopus thought experiment, I initially had told the story in terms of a dolphin, because dolphins clearly are intelligent animals. My co-author on t

> With the octopus thought experiment, I initially had told the story in terms of a dolphin, because dolphins clearly are intelligent animals. My co-author on that paper, Alexander Koller, said it should be an octopus, because first of all, the environment that octopuses live in is much more distinct from where people live. It makes the metaphor more vivid, that the octopus is just feeling these pulses in the cable and has no way to look at what the people are looking at. On a completely tangential sidenote, octopusses are actually very very intelligent: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/octopuses-keep-surprising-us-here-are-eight-examples-how.html https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/octopuses-keep-surprising-us-...

genxy 4mo ago
The continued use of animal metaphors is doing them a great disservice. Esp as we learn more about animal cognition, on first look, it smacks of human exceptionalism that has littered the historic scientific consensus. Now if they had said, "Imagine your average American ..." (/s)
Sharlin 4mo ago
It's such a tragedy that they're also extremely solitary animals and die shortly after reproducing the first (and only) time. Almost all other particularly intelligent animals seem to be gregarious, and it's easy to conclude that a social lifestyle tends to select for more intelligence, a sophisticated theory of mind, and so on (I like to think that that's exactly what was responsible for a runaway intelligence explosion in humans). But in the case of cephalopods, there's something else that has been applying selection pressure towards exceptional intelligence.
- rob74 4mo ago
  It's also a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem: if they were raised by their parents like all other more intelligent animals, they wouldn't need to be as intelligent as they are in order to be able to relearn "octopus behaviour" without help from other members of the species.
- andrewflnr 4mo ago
  I agree, which is why I think this species might be the start of something amazing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larger_Pacific_striped_octopus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larger_Pacific_striped_octopus
  - Folcon 4mo ago
    I've never heard of these before, that's fascinating, thank you!
  - scotty79 4mo ago
    Is it a new species though? Or just a living fossil that exhibits behaviors that were bread out of all other octopi species? It's hard to imagine how high intelligence could be selected for without social component that provides the individuals a lot of pressure to outsmart each other.
    - andrewflnr 4mo ago
      Intelligence is plenty adaptive when you're just trying to outsmart the environment. The notion that this is a "living fossil" is... pretty wild. It's genus octopus. Unless it's wildly misclassified (doubtful), it has a recent-ish common ancestor with most other common octopuses, which all have normal octopus behavior. You find yourself in need of extraordinary evidence.
      - scotty79 4mo ago
        > Intelligence is plenty adaptive when you're just trying to outsmart the environment. I think there's very little evidence for that. Environment is just very slow when compared to outsmarting members of your own species that you tightly share the living space with. I don't think you appreciate how abnormal is high intelligence. How pathological conditions must have been to trigger development of something that bizarre and costly. This must have been run-away self-reinforcing feedback loop. We know of many such loops between predators and prey and none of them look strong and fast enough. Where we find intelligence, it's almost always tightly connected with social behaviors. It would be exceedingly strange if there was a true exception. > The notion that this is a "living fossil" is... pretty wild. It's genus octopus. I didn't mean that literally. What I meant was that the common ancestor of this octopus species and others might have been more like it, social, not like the rest. Maybe this species preserved of what normal octopus behavior used to be. If the solitary life became more evolutionarily favorable after the development of intelligence most descendant species could have switched. > You find yourself in need of extraordinary evidence. Yeah, maybe at some point we'll discover a huge collection of beaks in some under-ocean sediment and it will become obvious. Ocean floor is not really that explored.
- wazoox 4mo ago
  In Stefan Wul's SF novel "Nyourk", octopi evolve to become the Earth's dominant species, which was quite prescient back in 1957, when almost nobody knew octopi to be intelligent. :)
rob74 4mo ago
Also, last time I checked, the environment where octopuses live is actually the exact same environment where dolphins live?
- delis-thumbs-7e 4mo ago
  Well in a sense that monkeys and Great Condor inhabit the exact same environment.
  - rob74 4mo ago
    That's a bit exaggerated - monkeys can't fly, but both dolphins and octopuses can swim. I'm aware octopuses prefer to stay at the bottom, while dolphins have to come to the surface regularly to breathe, but for me it's still the same environment...
    - delis-thumbs-7e 4mo ago
      You know monkeys can swim? Do you know what happens to a monkey 2-6km under the surface? Monkeys can also climb trees, very high. Monkey still no condor, sadly.
    - burnte 4mo ago
      Tidal basins and ocean bottoms are very different from the open ocean surface. Much like tree tops and 3 miles in the air are different. Both are up in the air, but still quite different, just like "ocean" but still different.

genxy 4mo ago

The continued use of animal metaphors is doing them a great disservice. Esp as we learn more about animal cognition, on first look, it smacks of human exceptionalism that has littered the historic scientific consensus. Now if they had said, "Imagine your average American ..." (/s)

Sharlin 4mo ago

It's such a tragedy that they're also extremely solitary animals and die shortly after reproducing the first (and only) time. Almost all other particularly intelligent animals seem to be gregarious, and it's easy to conclude that a social lifestyle tends to select for more intelligence, a sophisticated theory of mind, and so on (I like to think that that's exactly what was responsible for a runaway intelligence explosion in humans). But in the case of cephalopods, there's something else that has been applying selection pressure towards exceptional intelligence.

rob74 4mo ago
It's also a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem: if they were raised by their parents like all other more intelligent animals, they wouldn't need to be as intelligent as they are in order to be able to relearn "octopus behaviour" without help from other members of the species.
andrewflnr 4mo ago
I agree, which is why I think this species might be the start of something amazing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larger_Pacific_striped_octopus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larger_Pacific_striped_octopus
- Folcon 4mo ago
  I've never heard of these before, that's fascinating, thank you!
- scotty79 4mo ago
  Is it a new species though? Or just a living fossil that exhibits behaviors that were bread out of all other octopi species? It's hard to imagine how high intelligence could be selected for without social component that provides the individuals a lot of pressure to outsmart each other.
  - andrewflnr 4mo ago
    Intelligence is plenty adaptive when you're just trying to outsmart the environment. The notion that this is a "living fossil" is... pretty wild. It's genus octopus. Unless it's wildly misclassified (doubtful), it has a recent-ish common ancestor with most other common octopuses, which all have normal octopus behavior. You find yourself in need of extraordinary evidence.
    - scotty79 4mo ago
      > Intelligence is plenty adaptive when you're just trying to outsmart the environment. I think there's very little evidence for that. Environment is just very slow when compared to outsmarting members of your own species that you tightly share the living space with. I don't think you appreciate how abnormal is high intelligence. How pathological conditions must have been to trigger development of something that bizarre and costly. This must have been run-away self-reinforcing feedback loop. We know of many such loops between predators and prey and none of them look strong and fast enough. Where we find intelligence, it's almost always tightly connected with social behaviors. It would be exceedingly strange if there was a true exception. > The notion that this is a "living fossil" is... pretty wild. It's genus octopus. I didn't mean that literally. What I meant was that the common ancestor of this octopus species and others might have been more like it, social, not like the rest. Maybe this species preserved of what normal octopus behavior used to be. If the solitary life became more evolutionarily favorable after the development of intelligence most descendant species could have switched. > You find yourself in need of extraordinary evidence. Yeah, maybe at some point we'll discover a huge collection of beaks in some under-ocean sediment and it will become obvious. Ocean floor is not really that explored.
wazoox 4mo ago
In Stefan Wul's SF novel "Nyourk", octopi evolve to become the Earth's dominant species, which was quite prescient back in 1957, when almost nobody knew octopi to be intelligent. :)

rob74 4mo ago

Also, last time I checked, the environment where octopuses live is actually the exact same environment where dolphins live?

delis-thumbs-7e 4mo ago
Well in a sense that monkeys and Great Condor inhabit the exact same environment.
- rob74 4mo ago
  That's a bit exaggerated - monkeys can't fly, but both dolphins and octopuses can swim. I'm aware octopuses prefer to stay at the bottom, while dolphins have to come to the surface regularly to breathe, but for me it's still the same environment...
  - delis-thumbs-7e 4mo ago
    You know monkeys can swim? Do you know what happens to a monkey 2-6km under the surface? Monkeys can also climb trees, very high. Monkey still no condor, sadly.
  - burnte 4mo ago
    Tidal basins and ocean bottoms are very different from the open ocean surface. Much like tree tops and 3 miles in the air are different. Both are up in the air, but still quite different, just like "ocean" but still different.