Do you mean that in a literal way, like there's a pressure imposed by natural selection toward it? Or maybe something a bit less direct, such as this is what octopi want to do/are trying to do (to the extent that they want or try things)?
what if aliens who maybe are more like octopuses than us, decided to take existing octopuses and speed up evolution and strengthen their genome to basically be longer living, more durable, and able to out think humans.
I enjoy the genre of 'marine biologist writes sci-fi about the nature of consciousness', but I can only take so much Peter Watts before I feel the need to read something with at least a dreg of hope, you know?
In the second or third book, amongst other things, a planet is seeded with octopuses and an "uplift virus" that dramatically boosts their sentience. It's a brilliant trilogy in its own right, but the sentient squids were my favorite species by far. Each having 8 independent minds to gather data and execute, plus a central vague philosophically minded intellect that holds their volition and long term planning.
Those books are interesting, but suffer a bit from the author just handwaving away increasingly unlikely bio-technology as it goes on despite trying to keep a "hard" scifi premise.
Spoilers for the books, I disagree with the above but don't want to spoil it for anyone who doesn't want it spoiled.
I think that's basically justified. He gives the foundation of their tech with a good amount of rigour and plausibility, and then as their civilisation develops and becomes equivalent to human civilisation and then significantly higher tech he obviously can't go into full detail on every piece of technology any more than you could write a story about modern human society while including a description of how every piece of our technology that is mentioned works, from first principles - the resulting book would be beyond the capability of any individual to write and would include far, far more descriptions of technological principles than actual plot. Just imagine if you wanted to tell a story about an interpersonal relationship between two people, but one of them uses a chat program on their phone and even though you've previously explained how our computation basically worked, now you have to explain neural networks and then LLMs - I think it's reasonable to just expect the viewer to imagine the things that aren't directly explained as being approximately as well explained and justified as everything else was.
He does definitely go beyond hard sci-fi at the end of book two though. The idea that c as a limit is simply a result of our brains thinking too linearly is silly, and in general going beyond the hard laws of physics is where I draw the line.
I know.
A Darkling Sea is a pretty good first-contact-with-marine-aliens story, and no bleaker than anything else where the humans are their own worst enemy.
Came here to comment about this book. Great read and focuses almost entirely on a somewhat uncommon theme within SF: challenges in communication between two differently-abled sentient species. I quite liked the book both for the core SF bits and the tone/pacing.
Yay! Glad to hear there's others in the audience for it. And yeah, the communication and nature of language stuff was good -- along with the general reflection on accounting for the "Other."
The title — grammatically —- hints at the idea that this is new behavior. (As opposed to newly-discovered behavior.) Why phrase it as “are building” instead of “build”?
Within the article, there is this quote that further hints at the click-baity idea that this is some new behavior: “ Researchers now suspect octopuses have been building group habitats for a long time.”
Would one say that squirrels have been hiding nuts for a “long time”?
Phrasing it this way, in my opinion, misleads the reader it I thinking this is some new behavior which has been going on for a “long time” — perhaps for several decades!
When, in reality, it’s probably normal octopus behavior thst had been occuring for as long as there have been octopuses.
I picture s 18th century naturalist breathlessly writing to the Royal Society: “you know the beavers we heard about? Well, you’re not going to believe this, but they are now building dams! And I think they’ve been up to this for quite some time! What will they come up with next?!”
He’s got a third now, Children of Memory - it also is quite good. The whole series is really fantastic, although I think I enjoyed the second book with the octopi the most.
I like the author (read through a few of his other series) but it gets a little tiring how often he switches between perspectives. Each perspective is a different plotline and they all tie together in the finale but it feels like a 50-100 page story is being stretched into 300.
Especially since the dialog can be a bit boring imo (each character has some quirk and all their lines / actions tend to be predictable when taking this into account). IIRC, the Children of Time books aren't so bad in this regard (less drama, more reverse-engineering alien tech), but I definitely think the newest book for The Final Architecture kinda suffers from this.
But yeah nonetheless I really enjoy how creative the world building / overall plots are and would definitely recommend his stuff to anyone who likes sci-fi.
Nothing turns me off an author who can write prose well faster than switching perspectives every chapter - you're throwing out one of, if not _the_ biggest advantage of long-form narrative : the ability to get deeply into the head of a character.
I had to stop reading Cloud Cuckoo Land because of this. And while I'm shouting into the void, this goes for you too, TV/movie producers:
Just tell the damn story straight. If you can't do that and make it interesting, you need a better story.
Wow! Thanks, I've read Children of Time, while people thought it was boring (according to some reviews) I liked the exploration of the concept.
I knew it was a series but everyone said the others weren't as good, so I just never bothered. But that sounds interesting enough that I just placed a hold on it in my library app (81st in line?! Children of Ruin is that popular? shh I also placed it on hold in a different library app).
If we have the technological capability of giving animals enhanced cognitive capabilities—and we do not give it to them—that is an interesting moral choice. Worth a thought.
Edit: missed the "if". Assuming you put that there because we currently do not have this tech. Speculatively: like most society wide moral choices, it'd probably be made in such a way as to serve the short term interests of whoever had the power to enact the policy.
Alternatively: Would octopus uplift increase the quarterly profits? If so, say hello to your new eight-legged neighbors.
Genetically engineered octopi could be developed to grow hard little nubs on their tentacles so they were capable of giving massage therapy. Quarterly profits indeed!
But then, perhaps they would learn to give each other nub rubs and then we’d have this runaway hedonic biological phenomena underseas. My god.
Then again perhaps giving them enhanced cognitive capabilities would only serve to make existence worse for them? In which case, giving them enhanced cognitive capabilities would be morally worse than leaving them as is.
I had a short story idea where explorers come across a planet full of ancient ruins and gentle unintelligent beasts. It turns out that to survive the great filter the sentient life on the planet deprogrammed themselves of all sentience and now the explorers need to decide if they should use the same tech on their own civilization or not.
That's a fascinating one. May I ask the nature of the great filter in this scenario? I understand the "great filter" can be a variety of different things, such as global warming, discovery and use of nuclear capabilities, or various other existential threats, and different "filters" could require different workarounds.
Blindsight, by Peter Watts (free to read), is a very interesting read if that's your cup of tea (give it until they reach Big Ben). The book explore how counciousness can present itself. I don't want to spoil it - give it a read!
Having to grapple with existential questions, with meaningfulness has it's downsides but being a meaningless creature seems unideal. To me.
Becoming sentient on an already developed industrialized world seems like it would be awful, though . I like to think there are many paths where a species could be welcomed & supported well, but it's hard to imagine that happening on our present earth.
Nope! Plenty of atheists roll out this line; superficially it seems true, so it's a powerful rhetorical device.
A lot of discussion on the problem of evil is quite obscure but worth reading if you're in any doubt about all of creation being a fundamentally excellent thing.
That's an interesting idea for a couple of reasons. One, it basically co-signs the idea that we should consider intervening if we believe it will make things "better" in some sense for them. Which is a big thing to agree to and carries big implications. It would imply that we actually should intervene in cases where we judge certain creatures to have "too much" cognitive capability for their own good. You could, for instance, consider alewives to be a canddidate, as they face impossibly long odds of living and high odds of being eaten alive, which probably sucks.
As it happens, I am perfectly comfortable with the idea of intervening to help animals in more cases than we currently do, and if I had to guess what one belief we have now that will be regarded as appalling by some future generation, I think this (letting nature run its course when it leads to animals suffering) could be one of them.
We absolutely should at least try to do so. Re-engineer their neural DNA based on human DNA (probably harder than with other animals since their brain is spread out onto their limbs), or simply at least increase the neural counts of various regions, etc.
We shouldn’t just leave them as-is after doing so though—we should build a super massive aquarium, and if we actually succeeded in making them smarter — be there to teach them science, math, physics, biology, medicine, computer science, etc.
In the absence of their ability to consent either way, it’s unclear how to give them what they want. How to, for instance, infer that they don’t want more cognitive power. Octopi have unusually high cognitive powers already—arguably that would suggest an implicit desire?
In this case consent, should it be possible, would also be a questionable approach. See: the vampire problem.
The trouble is, in this situation, how could you possibly make an informed choice? For, after all, you cannot know what it is like to be a vampire until you are one. And if you can’t know what it’s like to be a vampire without becoming one, you can’t compare the character of the lived experience of what it is like to be you, right now, a mere human, to the character of the lived experience of what it would be like to be a vampire. This means that, if you want to make this choice by considering what you want your lived experience to be like in the future, you can’t do it rationally. At least, you can’t do it by weighing the competing options concerning what it would be like and choosing on this basis. And it seems awfully suspect to rely solely on the testimony of your vampire friends to make your choice, because, after all, they aren’t human any more, so their preferences are the ones vampires have, not the ones humans have. -- L.A. Paul
You don't follow because...why exactly. Do you believe we should pull animals out of the ocean, inject them with Neuralink-equivalents and force higher order intelligence upon them? If so, state why you believe this is not an arrogant endeavor.
Well, their ecosystems are getting wrecked and we don’t seem to be able to stop it collectively. So, maybe if a scientist was able to cognitively enhance a few marine creatures, then perhaps they could better adapt and/or advocate for themselves. A cute little octopus directly pleading for its ecosystem on TikTok might accomplish more than a UN report. Why not?
A near-human level intelligent animal, or group of them, is almost assuredly going to use a LOT more resources of their environment than the dumb versions of themselves.
If a country is ruled by a group of tyrants who drain and extract that country's wealth dry, you can't blame the people of that country for not having the power to fight that.
If humanity has the means to do something, after deliberations of various duration, humanity will always choose to do it, whether it’s moral or not. If it will continue doing it, that is a whole different question and we may or may not do that.
We have the technological capability of giving more humans enhanced cognitive ability through better investment in education, but do not, due to other constraints regarding those cases.
I just finished "Other Minds" by Godfrey-Smith which reference one of these "Octopolises". For anybody interested in either octopuses or how nature evolves different forms of consciousness its a really interesting read.
What most struck me was how incredibly short lived octopuses are. I guess some deep-sea variants may have longer life spans, but i was surprised that the variants we usually encounter only live for approximately two years before they wither and die.
Now as for what an octopus could be able to do with its body-distributed form of consciousness given a longer lifespan is a rather interesting question.
Right, and I think that exposes a bit of an unconscious assumption that many people (or perhaps just me) probably have, namely that intelligence seems to accompany longevity, but that is clearly not always the case.
Yeah longevity seems to be good so far as I can tell, from just about any perspective. That is, if life is good, then life plus longevity is also good.
I think it feels like progress to discover counterintuitive thoughts, and so thought experiments or explorations tend to to incentivize the seeking out of counterintuitive thoughts, which I think sometimes has the effect of endorsing strange conclusions, because their counterintuitive nature is what makes them seductive. I find the phrase "it's not a trick question" to be a healthy antidote, and I think when it comes to longevity it's in the "not a trick question" category, and, is fair to put in the good column, with usual caveats about all else being equal and except for unusual circumstances etc.
There was a large group of octopus homes on the sea floor shelf north of Bogangar Headland (east coast Australia) in the late 70s/early 80s. I used to play with the octopuses as a teen.
I had no idea it was a scientifically significant thing though. I wonder if they're still there, as there's been a lot of development nearby.
The first time I've read about their mating practices. So interesting.
> Typically, octopuses mate when the male shoots a package of sperm called a spermatophore at the female through the water. The barbed package burrows into her skin and releases the sperm. No touching is required.
I'm wondering if Octopuses are more social creatures than we thought before. In My Octopus Teacher, the octopus seemed really friendly and social with the human.
But I also read that they don't get along with other octopuses most of the time. And in this article too they fight over territory. But Humans do that too, and we're social.
If forming social relations are evolutionary advantages, then I wonder would perhaps Octopuses start developing more social tendencies as a means of adapting to these new environmental changes. As noted in the article, the areas contained surplus food. Which is also interesting, but maybe this is just a local phenomenon, because there were many headlines in recent years about overfishing.
I guess the evolutionary advantages don't exist as their prey are usually small and a single octopus wouldn't have trouble hunting by themselves.
And outside of teaming up to thwart predators, but I don't think that would help against sharks unless they have a much higher intelligence and can outsmart them like how humans have evolved to do. So not really clear to me why they are living nearby, aside from abundant food and no pressure to explore new areas. So it comes back to maybe they are social. Next thing you know, they'll playing underwater pickleball with each other.
I’m begging everyone in this thread to stop eating octopus. There’s a very good chance they’re sentient, and stopping once you know that is a moral imperative.
At the risk of sounding like a fad/new-age-influenced person, I have stopped eating Octopus after seeing "My Octopus Teacher"[0]. Just can't bring myself to do it.
Many animals are probably sentient, but personally I see no moral imperative to not eat them. If anyone in this thread is wondering what octopus meat tastes like, I encourage them to try Takoyaki at any Japanese restaurant or Boba tea shop: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takoyaki
Not seeing the moral imperative is not the same as there not being a moral imperative. The attitude that motivated your comment is astonishingly cruel.
I think there's a moral imperative not to kill animals for food that are above a certain level of intelligence; we can use intelligence level as a proxy for capability for suffering.
To take an example ranking of potential food animals: fish, chickens, cows, pigs, great apes, humans.
There's a question about where you draw the line, but most people agree there is one. Few people think it's OK to eat chimps.
It's not clear on this hierarchy where octopuses fit in.
It’s not clear where in the hierarchy any of those animals fit, because we can’t ask them how much they are suffering, and they can’t conceptualise their experience as
Suffering, because we invented that concept to describe a certain state we experience.
No, intuitively, most people do not agree there is a line… people just buy meat and eat it, and the main consideration is taste. Can you provide any evidence suffering factors into the majority of peoples food decisions?
There’s research to try to get closer to an objective demarcation of suffering. The latest measures place even shrimp at some level of intolerable suffering, due to some of the farming techniques, eg removing they eyeballs of females to make them more fertile.
Is this what the whole argument about intelligence is about? That you don't want to cause suffering and only species of certain intelligence can suffer and others can't, thus you are not feeling guilt when killing and eating things that are not intelligent?
That just seems so bizarrely naive to me. Every living thing suffers when hurt. Suffering is a feeling of not wanting to die, or to be hurt. I'm pretty sure that it is one of the primary mechanisms of evolution of living things, it is a strive for self preservation. Human suffering is fundamentally the same as that of an octopus, an insect or a tree.
No my argument is the definition of a moral imperative…
Kant sort to solve moral questions using pure reason. Culminating in his famous categorical imperative, also known as the universality principle: “It is our duty to act in such a manner that we would want everyone else to act in a similar manner in similar circumstances towards all other people”
You have some how confused this with pragmatism, and while Kant could be viewed as quite pragmatic, taken to its extreme, a pragmatic position would be: if you are hungry and human meat is available, then eat it.
Just to play devil's advocate for fun... what follows is not a sincerely held position on my part, just enjoying the dialogue—
I don't want a lion to eat me. But I don't have a moral complaint against the lion for wanting to, trying to, or even succeeding. I'd be pissed, of course, but my objection is purely that I don't want to be eaten at all, period. There's not a moral dimension to it at all.
I also don't want YOU to eat me. But unlike the lion, I DO have a moral objection against you, on top of the simple not-wanting-to-be-eaten-at-all thing.
In conjunction with that, I find that I also have a moral objection against MYSELF, when it comes to the thought of ME eating YOU. So, although I don't know for sure yet what the basis of that moral objection is, I have learned that there does exist one. And, I can conjecture that whatever the foundation of that objection is, that's the same basis for my moral objection against you eating me.
But, whatever that basis is, it doesn't seem to apply to a lion who wants to eat me, because I don't morally object against the lion. So, although that doesn't guarantee anything one way out the other just yet, perhaps it's justified that I don't feel any moral discomfort with me eating the lion[0], while absolutely having immense moral discomfort with you doing so, or even really wanting to. The situation, morally, with the lion seems to be a different thing, morally, than you eating me or vice-versa.
([0] This is speaking in the moral abstract, anyway—as it happens, there's not really enough lions left in the world to waste eating them, but that's separate from the question of whether it's moral to do so in general, if situational stuff like species extinction and other ($n)th-order effects weren't a factor).
There is no moral imperative, outside of general moral prohibitions that guide you to do your best to avoid killing the same species.
Medically, there is the risk of Prion disease. This is a major threat to yourself, and in a few cases it is contagious. So you would have the medical imperative to avoid it to keep the people around you safe.
> There is no moral imperative, outside of general moral prohibitions that guide you to do your best to avoid killing the same species.
We don't want our future AI overlords to kill us because we're 1000x dumber than them and also not the same species. I think it's only fair for us to extend the same morals to animals.
As someone enjoying a vegan lifestyle, I am living proof that humans do not need to eat other animals. Also if we would stop the cruel practice of factory farming, it’s common knowledge that we would have more calories available for us humans. In terms of sustenance, we are going out of our way to hurt humans and other animals to uphold the entrenched consumption patterns of a select few.
I think for AI overlords the question will be quite similar… how should we use the resources which we have available? Who is worthy of consideration and who is not? At the moment, we are truly not making a great case for keeping us around because anything we can do, they can do better. So why keep us around if not for some ethical insight?
I'm more alluding to what the other comment did - it's about resources. The AGI has its own goals and values and it'd accomplish them a lot faster without 6 billion humans using all the electricity and natural resources and space and asking it stupid questions about how to write their term papers.
You can sustain yourself perfectly without eating any animal or animal byproduct. In rich developed countries where alternatives are findable, there is just no need for animal products. In less developed countries, it would also be achievable if priorities were set to do so. There is nothing inherently difficult about not eating animal products except access to the alternatives.
I think there isn't a moral imperative for you not to eat me (or vice versa), but it would not be very sensible for you to come here all the way (if you do not live here) just to do that, and anyways I should have the right to defend myself (and if you want to catch a octopus to eat then the octopus should have the right to defend themself, too). Everyone (humans or not) must have the right to defend themself. I think you shouldn't try to eat endangered species so much, but I am not a endangered species, isn't it? I also think eating some kind of animal is not a valid excuse to treat them so badly, and that they should not mass kill everyone just to eat it (or for any other purpose). And, plants should not be treated so badly either. But, if you are omnivore then you can eat animals and plants. (And, I don't want you to eat me at this time anyways, but that isn't a moral imperative; it is just an opinion. And I have no intention to eat you; I have other stuff to eat.)
Responding to a plea not to eat octopuses with a recipe suggestion seems designed to just cause suffering, and I'm not talking about the octopuses. At least present an argument if you have a different viewpoint.
There's nothing for me argue against. GP said "stopping once you know that is a moral imperative" as if that didn't need any arguments in favor.
If you want a counterexample, languages models are intelligent enough to write essays asking for asylum but that doesn't mean any sane person would give a language model rights. There's no moral imperative to not kill something just because it's intelligent.
I also think Takoyaki is highly relevant because if octopus wasn't delicious, nobody would want to eat it in the first place and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
> Takoyaki (たこ焼き or 蛸焼) is a ball-shaped Japanese snack made of a wheat flour-based batter and cooked in a special molded pan. It is typically filled with minced or diced octopus (tako), tempura scraps (tenkasu), pickled ginger (beni shoga), and green onion (negi).[1][2] The balls are brushed with takoyaki sauce (similar to Worcestershire sauce) and mayonnaise, and then sprinkled with green laver (aonori) and shavings of dried bonito (katsuobushi).
Most things would taste delicious with those ingredients. Probably even Tofu :)
If hearing an opposing view causes you suffering, then the onus is on you to either accept the suffering, or leave the public space so as to avoid additional suffering.
I found the parent comment more offensive than the reply - proselytising morality rather than framing it as an open question. I find it very patronising.
I feel awful about eating octopus, but I’m not veg and I don’t know why I’m more morally sensitive to eating it vs cow.
I was once walking through the Tokyo fish market at 5am and marveled at some enormous tentacles hanging out of a bucket. The man smiled and walked over to me and placed a chuck of octopus in my mouth. I remember this as semi-consensual.
What was astonishing was that I chewed that chunk for about a half hour before it dissolved and the whole time, every single chew, it tasted fresh (and very delicious).
Part of my moral reaction is the knowledge that the octopus tentacle would be still alive in a meaningful way. Sigh.
What do you mean by sentient? Aren't most animals we commonly eat sentient? In that the there is an experience of "being" that animal? At least, insofar as we can tell?
If awareness of the environment ... is the criterion of consciousness, then even the protozoans are conscious. If awareness of awareness is required, then it is doubtful whether the great apes and human infants are conscious.
- Thomas, Garth J. (1967). 'Consciousness', Encyclopaedia Britannica. Vol. 6. p. 366.
Indeed, even human adults drift in and out of levels of self-awareness. We spend much of our days in automatic.
I remember highlighting the line "Consciousness is consciousness of being conscious" in a Sartre essay when I was 16. It seemed profound then, but obvious now.
I don't like eating octopus or squid, mostly because I don't like the texture, but whenever I am out I say it's because I don't eat sentient beings, which usually provokes some interesting discussion.
My neighbours are small herds of cows. They show more social intelligence than most people think. Not only are they closely and interested watching whatever I do in the garden but they also have a very complex social structure between them and communicate with neighbours herd's.
Most meat people eat is from sentient beings. Cows, pigs, yes, even chickens are sentient. I'd urge people to consider the capability to suffer and not mainly the level of intelligence.
I used to be okay eating chicken (and beef) because I was like, they're dumb birds and don't have any real meaningful life experience. Then I saw this youtube documentary about two kestrels starting a "family" (along with his owl one) and it completely changed my mind:
He doesn't mention anything about vegetarianism, I made my own connection there. But even something as dumb as birds have connections to one another, they have a mating and courtship process that feels very similar to humans, they care about their young and will defend them to the death, and the male partner understands the importance of providing for his mate and younglings and does so both by finding and building a nest, but also tirelessly providing food for months
I think there is a certain moral code we should abide by when it comes to harvesting animals in general. Taking a life to sustain your own is part of the natural order however.
Given an octopus can regrow a limb can we farm them more ethically than we do mammals?
Almost all animals that don't have an economic basis in human politics are going to go extinct so we better find something meaningful to justify their protection.
Of course there are some truly resilient ones like rats and roaches that seem to have actually adapted favorably but the vast majority haven't.
Don't most vegans just want livestock to go extinct too?
words mean whatever
we want them to mean. dictionaries revise themselves every year to add a new/changed definition based on what appears to be recent popular usage
if we want octopi to be the "correct" plural form then it will be declared
English is riddled with inconsistencies and hip slang anyway
Sure, your current reasoning has convinced me to accept octopi. But by this reasoning, you're the one suggesting, against your present justification, that octopuses is not a "correct" plural (and should be corrected to "octopi"), when its in "recent popular usage". In which case there is no use for the comment I had replied to.
While AI is accelerating the demise of humans, the evolution of octopuses is on track, will the species that rules the earth after humans be octopuses?
Those witty little buggers are also serious cannibals.
They even use to torture and eat themselves after mating.
Early death after reproduction probabbly increases the chances of survival for the offspring.
Neither intelligence nor consciousness are goals of evolution, only some possible ways.Their way of life is the behavior that ensures the temporary optimum for passing on their genetic information.
175 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 235 ms ] threadAnd also get out of the water given it's pretty hard to make chemistry in there.
https://www.theonion.com/dolphins-evolve-opposable-thumbs-18...
Back in the day, it used to have a subheading too:
“‘Oh shit,’ says humanity.”
Something just a bit beyond this plus some significant AI developments is the bulk of milieu for _The Mountain In The Sea_:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374605957/themountaininth...
I enjoy the genre of 'marine biologist writes sci-fi about the nature of consciousness', but I can only take so much Peter Watts before I feel the need to read something with at least a dreg of hope, you know?
In the second or third book, amongst other things, a planet is seeded with octopuses and an "uplift virus" that dramatically boosts their sentience. It's a brilliant trilogy in its own right, but the sentient squids were my favorite species by far. Each having 8 independent minds to gather data and execute, plus a central vague philosophically minded intellect that holds their volition and long term planning.
[] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Time_(novel)
I think that's basically justified. He gives the foundation of their tech with a good amount of rigour and plausibility, and then as their civilisation develops and becomes equivalent to human civilisation and then significantly higher tech he obviously can't go into full detail on every piece of technology any more than you could write a story about modern human society while including a description of how every piece of our technology that is mentioned works, from first principles - the resulting book would be beyond the capability of any individual to write and would include far, far more descriptions of technological principles than actual plot. Just imagine if you wanted to tell a story about an interpersonal relationship between two people, but one of them uses a chat program on their phone and even though you've previously explained how our computation basically worked, now you have to explain neural networks and then LLMs - I think it's reasonable to just expect the viewer to imagine the things that aren't directly explained as being approximately as well explained and justified as everything else was.
He does definitely go beyond hard sci-fi at the end of book two though. The idea that c as a limit is simply a result of our brains thinking too linearly is silly, and in general going beyond the hard laws of physics is where I draw the line.
Within the article, there is this quote that further hints at the click-baity idea that this is some new behavior: “ Researchers now suspect octopuses have been building group habitats for a long time.”
Would one say that squirrels have been hiding nuts for a “long time”?
Phrasing it this way, in my opinion, misleads the reader it I thinking this is some new behavior which has been going on for a “long time” — perhaps for several decades!
When, in reality, it’s probably normal octopus behavior thst had been occuring for as long as there have been octopuses.
I picture s 18th century naturalist breathlessly writing to the Royal Society: “you know the beavers we heard about? Well, you’re not going to believe this, but they are now building dams! And I think they’ve been up to this for quite some time! What will they come up with next?!”
> "Congregations such as these probably occur wherever shelter is limited to small patches of habitat, and food is plentiful," Scheel told Quartz.
They don't decide to live nearby others, but there simply is no other place.
The headline should be: Octopuses cannot live everywhere and may settle close to eachother if there is no other space available.
"Octopuses observed engaging in light manufacturing"
"Octopuses experimenting with novel propulsion methods"
"Octopuses clearing out a large, flat space and assembling assorted metallic objects"
"Octopuses targeting Sydney, Brisbane"
Sounds more like a village than a city or even a town
It's a one-seahorse town.
The book features, among other things, an octopus civilization.
It's the second book in the series; the first features a spider civilization.
I highly recommend both; they explore concepts of what civilizations would look like with intelligences very different from our own.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Children-Ruin-Time-Adrian-Tchaikovsky...
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-many-plura...
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-many-plura...
tl;dr there’s no right answer, and consequently no way to say “more than one octopus” on the internet without yours being the first response :-)
Hi, OctoPi!
Especially since the dialog can be a bit boring imo (each character has some quirk and all their lines / actions tend to be predictable when taking this into account). IIRC, the Children of Time books aren't so bad in this regard (less drama, more reverse-engineering alien tech), but I definitely think the newest book for The Final Architecture kinda suffers from this.
But yeah nonetheless I really enjoy how creative the world building / overall plots are and would definitely recommend his stuff to anyone who likes sci-fi.
Nothing turns me off an author who can write prose well faster than switching perspectives every chapter - you're throwing out one of, if not _the_ biggest advantage of long-form narrative : the ability to get deeply into the head of a character.
I had to stop reading Cloud Cuckoo Land because of this. And while I'm shouting into the void, this goes for you too, TV/movie producers:
Just tell the damn story straight. If you can't do that and make it interesting, you need a better story.
https://podcasts.apple.com/br/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show/id...
https://overcast.fm/+oiPVWKYM0
Couldn’t get a direct link to the show at the NYT that didn’t involve a paywall.
I knew it was a series but everyone said the others weren't as good, so I just never bothered. But that sounds interesting enough that I just placed a hold on it in my library app (81st in line?! Children of Ruin is that popular? shh I also placed it on hold in a different library app).
Edit: missed the "if". Assuming you put that there because we currently do not have this tech. Speculatively: like most society wide moral choices, it'd probably be made in such a way as to serve the short term interests of whoever had the power to enact the policy.
Alternatively: Would octopus uplift increase the quarterly profits? If so, say hello to your new eight-legged neighbors.
But then, perhaps they would learn to give each other nub rubs and then we’d have this runaway hedonic biological phenomena underseas. My god.
Kind of your moral question but in reverse.
Becoming sentient on an already developed industrialized world seems like it would be awful, though . I like to think there are many paths where a species could be welcomed & supported well, but it's hard to imagine that happening on our present earth.
We should be careful in case someone decides to try to uplift us.
So that may not be an argument in favor of it being the moral choice.
A lot of discussion on the problem of evil is quite obscure but worth reading if you're in any doubt about all of creation being a fundamentally excellent thing.
As it happens, I am perfectly comfortable with the idea of intervening to help animals in more cases than we currently do, and if I had to guess what one belief we have now that will be regarded as appalling by some future generation, I think this (letting nature run its course when it leads to animals suffering) could be one of them.
We shouldn’t just leave them as-is after doing so though—we should build a super massive aquarium, and if we actually succeeded in making them smarter — be there to teach them science, math, physics, biology, medicine, computer science, etc.
But the first time? Absolutely.
> The first time that divers discovered a "city" of octopuses off the coast of Australia, it seemed like a fluke.
I learned from Kevin Malone what 'fluke' means: https://youtu.be/b8KbWAMJk1g?t=275.
What most struck me was how incredibly short lived octopuses are. I guess some deep-sea variants may have longer life spans, but i was surprised that the variants we usually encounter only live for approximately two years before they wither and die.
Now as for what an octopus could be able to do with its body-distributed form of consciousness given a longer lifespan is a rather interesting question.
See Steve Jobs' commencement speech at Stanford, 2005, where, among other things, he points out that we will all be recycled some day.
https://youtu.be/UF8uR6Z6KLc
I think it feels like progress to discover counterintuitive thoughts, and so thought experiments or explorations tend to to incentivize the seeking out of counterintuitive thoughts, which I think sometimes has the effect of endorsing strange conclusions, because their counterintuitive nature is what makes them seductive. I find the phrase "it's not a trick question" to be a healthy antidote, and I think when it comes to longevity it's in the "not a trick question" category, and, is fair to put in the good column, with usual caveats about all else being equal and except for unusual circumstances etc.
I had no idea it was a scientifically significant thing though. I wonder if they're still there, as there's been a lot of development nearby.
> Typically, octopuses mate when the male shoots a package of sperm called a spermatophore at the female through the water. The barbed package burrows into her skin and releases the sperm. No touching is required.
But I also read that they don't get along with other octopuses most of the time. And in this article too they fight over territory. But Humans do that too, and we're social.
If forming social relations are evolutionary advantages, then I wonder would perhaps Octopuses start developing more social tendencies as a means of adapting to these new environmental changes. As noted in the article, the areas contained surplus food. Which is also interesting, but maybe this is just a local phenomenon, because there were many headlines in recent years about overfishing.
And outside of teaming up to thwart predators, but I don't think that would help against sharks unless they have a much higher intelligence and can outsmart them like how humans have evolved to do. So not really clear to me why they are living nearby, aside from abundant food and no pressure to explore new areas. So it comes back to maybe they are social. Next thing you know, they'll playing underwater pickleball with each other.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Octopus_Teacher
To take an example ranking of potential food animals: fish, chickens, cows, pigs, great apes, humans.
There's a question about where you draw the line, but most people agree there is one. Few people think it's OK to eat chimps.
It's not clear on this hierarchy where octopuses fit in.
No, intuitively, most people do not agree there is a line… people just buy meat and eat it, and the main consideration is taste. Can you provide any evidence suffering factors into the majority of peoples food decisions?
That just seems so bizarrely naive to me. Every living thing suffers when hurt. Suffering is a feeling of not wanting to die, or to be hurt. I'm pretty sure that it is one of the primary mechanisms of evolution of living things, it is a strive for self preservation. Human suffering is fundamentally the same as that of an octopus, an insect or a tree.
>Many animals are probably sentient, but personally I see no moral imperative to not eat them
In that case, what moral imperative is there for me not to eat you?
This doesn’t apply to other animals.
Kant sort to solve moral questions using pure reason. Culminating in his famous categorical imperative, also known as the universality principle: “It is our duty to act in such a manner that we would want everyone else to act in a similar manner in similar circumstances towards all other people”
You have some how confused this with pragmatism, and while Kant could be viewed as quite pragmatic, taken to its extreme, a pragmatic position would be: if you are hungry and human meat is available, then eat it.
> Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
Other hominids? Neanderthals?
Funny where empathy ends, isn't it. It seems to be subject to individual variation.
For instance, don‘t inflict unnecessary harm on living animals if it can be reasonably avoided.
At least to me this sounds like a pretty reasonable rule that I would be willing to follow and could prevent a lot of suffering in the world.
I don't want a lion to eat me. But I don't have a moral complaint against the lion for wanting to, trying to, or even succeeding. I'd be pissed, of course, but my objection is purely that I don't want to be eaten at all, period. There's not a moral dimension to it at all.
I also don't want YOU to eat me. But unlike the lion, I DO have a moral objection against you, on top of the simple not-wanting-to-be-eaten-at-all thing.
In conjunction with that, I find that I also have a moral objection against MYSELF, when it comes to the thought of ME eating YOU. So, although I don't know for sure yet what the basis of that moral objection is, I have learned that there does exist one. And, I can conjecture that whatever the foundation of that objection is, that's the same basis for my moral objection against you eating me.
But, whatever that basis is, it doesn't seem to apply to a lion who wants to eat me, because I don't morally object against the lion. So, although that doesn't guarantee anything one way out the other just yet, perhaps it's justified that I don't feel any moral discomfort with me eating the lion[0], while absolutely having immense moral discomfort with you doing so, or even really wanting to. The situation, morally, with the lion seems to be a different thing, morally, than you eating me or vice-versa.
([0] This is speaking in the moral abstract, anyway—as it happens, there's not really enough lions left in the world to waste eating them, but that's separate from the question of whether it's moral to do so in general, if situational stuff like species extinction and other ($n)th-order effects weren't a factor).
Medically, there is the risk of Prion disease. This is a major threat to yourself, and in a few cases it is contagious. So you would have the medical imperative to avoid it to keep the people around you safe.
We don't want our future AI overlords to kill us because we're 1000x dumber than them and also not the same species. I think it's only fair for us to extend the same morals to animals.
That depends on whether our future AI overlords need to eat us or not. The issue, at least for eating animals or humans is a need for sustenance.
As someone enjoying a vegan lifestyle, I am living proof that humans do not need to eat other animals. Also if we would stop the cruel practice of factory farming, it’s common knowledge that we would have more calories available for us humans. In terms of sustenance, we are going out of our way to hurt humans and other animals to uphold the entrenched consumption patterns of a select few.
I think for AI overlords the question will be quite similar… how should we use the resources which we have available? Who is worthy of consideration and who is not? At the moment, we are truly not making a great case for keeping us around because anything we can do, they can do better. So why keep us around if not for some ethical insight?
If you want a counterexample, languages models are intelligent enough to write essays asking for asylum but that doesn't mean any sane person would give a language model rights. There's no moral imperative to not kill something just because it's intelligent.
I also think Takoyaki is highly relevant because if octopus wasn't delicious, nobody would want to eat it in the first place and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Most things would taste delicious with those ingredients. Probably even Tofu :)
I found the parent comment more offensive than the reply - proselytising morality rather than framing it as an open question. I find it very patronising.
I was once walking through the Tokyo fish market at 5am and marveled at some enormous tentacles hanging out of a bucket. The man smiled and walked over to me and placed a chuck of octopus in my mouth. I remember this as semi-consensual.
What was astonishing was that I chewed that chunk for about a half hour before it dissolved and the whole time, every single chew, it tasted fresh (and very delicious).
Part of my moral reaction is the knowledge that the octopus tentacle would be still alive in a meaningful way. Sigh.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruitarianism
- Thomas, Garth J. (1967). 'Consciousness', Encyclopaedia Britannica. Vol. 6. p. 366.
I remember highlighting the line "Consciousness is consciousness of being conscious" in a Sartre essay when I was 16. It seemed profound then, but obvious now.
The mind of a chicken is neatly captured by Herzog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhMo4WlBmGM
Octopi are not like that. Octopi are something else, and I do believe they are not so far from us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kQb-badp1s
He doesn't mention anything about vegetarianism, I made my own connection there. But even something as dumb as birds have connections to one another, they have a mating and courtship process that feels very similar to humans, they care about their young and will defend them to the death, and the male partner understands the importance of providing for his mate and younglings and does so both by finding and building a nest, but also tirelessly providing food for months
Given an octopus can regrow a limb can we farm them more ethically than we do mammals?
Almost all animals that don't have an economic basis in human politics are going to go extinct so we better find something meaningful to justify their protection.
Of course there are some truly resilient ones like rats and roaches that seem to have actually adapted favorably but the vast majority haven't.
Don't most vegans just want livestock to go extinct too?
source? Wiktionary gives me this: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/octopus#Usage_notes
words mean whatever we want them to mean. dictionaries revise themselves every year to add a new/changed definition based on what appears to be recent popular usage
if we want octopi to be the "correct" plural form then it will be declared
English is riddled with inconsistencies and hip slang anyway
octopi: I'm +1 on it
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your head
;-)
please dont troll in the future. makes social media worse for the rest of us. HN has a bad rep in this regard already
They even use to torture and eat themselves after mating.
Early death after reproduction probabbly increases the chances of survival for the offspring.
Neither intelligence nor consciousness are goals of evolution, only some possible ways.Their way of life is the behavior that ensures the temporary optimum for passing on their genetic information.