The mystery of social behavior in octopuses
hakaimagazine.com
hakaimagazine.com
https://books.google.com/books?id=Tun_DwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA61&dq=O...
Eating your tentacle is a net negative in "calories" long term, and there is probably the opportunity cost of not having said tentacle (for some time?)
I guess maybe they want a quick snack for the high energy jet propulsion predator escape that they are preparing for when stressed.
But then Hesoid is kid of right, they do eat it because they need more energy.
Evolution predicts that self-harming behaviour will be observed less frequently compared to self benefitting behaviours.
So whenever an apparently self-harming behaviour is observed it is quite useful to ask: "is it really self-harm or secretly useful somehow?". And also: "how often does that really happen?"
I don't see why this is a surprise.
But more to the point, if somebody from a coastal, extensively seafaring culture 2700 years ago says octopi sometimes eat their own tentacles, there is every reason to believe he's saying it because it's true. The options are (I) octopi sometimes eat their own tentacles, as advertised; (II) octopi sometimes engage in a behavior that looks very similar to eating their own tentacles, but is subtly different; or (III) someone made it up and nobody in a culture with extensive exposure to octopi ever noticed that it never happened.
Incidents of type III are far from unheard of -- I have a dictionary with the Tongue Map printed in it -- but they're not the way to bet.
"Maybe octopuses don’t regard us so much as friends or associates as giant, elaborate levers they can manipulate for their own benefit. "
Both these statements read as if it's a settled question that human aren't doing the same thing.
While there's not a single well-agreed on definition, there are different things like ability to see and project oneself into the future and to assign value to those projections, the ability to empathize, the ability to miss things that are no longer there, etc. are often metrics used for higher levels of sentience.
We know that humans and some other mammals do these things. I believe I remember that there's some debate about crows and some other birds. While octopuses are the only invertebrate that has passed the "mirror-test", part of what this article is getting at is that we don't know much about their emotions and extended sense of self, and assigning them to a high category of sentience may be premature. (Or not; asking that question is what this article is about.) But human sentience isn't trivial.
Your argument is basically, "We're all chemical systems, eh?" And sure, at some level that's true, but it's not really enlightening to the discussion.
I'll say it again - whether or not we are deterministic is not a settled question.
I didn't take a position on that either way. My point was that because of our present (poor) understanding there's no reason to assume a human and an octopus have different degrees of agency, so questioning whether or not an octopus is deterministic is inconsequential to whether we can relate emotionally with one:
- If we both are then friendship, bonding, emotions etc. are just an illusion that our wiring compels us to entertain, and so we will proceed to do so.
- If we both aren't then friendship may be just as real for both of us and we'll proceed the same way.
An answer to this would have consequences for moral choice, and as long as it's open we should act ethically, even if only as a precaution. But the outcome here is the same. This isn't about ethical ramifications.
But we still find it useful to talk about different strata of intelligence and to make predictions based on that. Like I said, your argument is basically, "It's all just chemicals." And that's true, but just doesn't move the conversation in any interesting direction. There is utility in reasoning about these things at the macro level, and that's what this article is about.
It's kind of like saying, "Is this apple red or blue?" And you object, "Red and blue are just labels on an infinite spectrum and don't exist as specific wavelengths!" That's true. But you can still, with high utility and reasonableness, talk about things being red and blue, despite those terms not being perfectly well defined.
Again, I am not taking an existential position - whether it's all just chemicals or otherwise is NOT relevant or useful. It's that it's also useless for analysing animal behaviour and it's similarity and compatibility to our own, since the case for humans is not settled either. I don't know how else to say it.
For example, I caught my dog looking at me through the mirror in the room when she didn’t have direct line of sight and we were the only two in the room and I was talking in ways that would get her attention. That indicates some level of recognition of the role a mirror plays and that the image in the mirror is a reflection and not a mystery animal. That animals utilize their senses differently and find different things interesting to them says more about the limitations of our ability to evaluate other animals than it does about their actual sentience and intelligence I think. Eg maybe the MSR test is simply a test that works well on animals that have a similar working sensory model to us (or at least vision is important enough and interest in mirrors is aligned).
> there are different things like ability to see and project oneself into the future and to assign value to those projections, the ability to empathize, the ability to miss things that are no longer there, etc. are often metrics used for higher levels of sentience.
That’s a bold claim. I’d say at most we have a sample size of one species because we’re able to communicate and compare notes with each other + within a species animals work fairly similarly enough for the most part. We have absolutely no knowledge of whether the things you said are important for sentience/intelligence. Not if candidates we think are likely closest in intelligence (elephants, dolphins, crows) demonstrate these traits as it requires a degree of insight and communication we don’t have. - we have to do convoluted experiments to try to tease out effects but we don’t actually know what the experiments are telling us.
Maybe if our brain imaging technology gets better some of these questions will become more answerable.
Are there MSR tests that used windows to other animals instead mirrors as a control?
Humans fail the PSR, the pee self-recognition test, are they even conscious?
Put another way, your counterargument applies equally to genocide as it does to octopus intelligence. That doesn't mean we should proceed as if genocide is ethically neutral.
(i wrote about this development here: https://www.erichgrunewald.com/posts/against-octopus-farming...)
My Octopus Teacher is a fantastic look into the life of an octopus, their intellectual capacity, and their propensity to interact with humans.
Self-centered? I'm assuming you're basing that off of an edited film designed to entertain people and not because you actually know the man.
> who projects his issues onto an unsuspecting wild animal
Humans tend to project their issues onto unsuspecting things all the time in my experience: partners, co-workers, strangers, pets, etc. And inanimate objects too, if you've ever seen someone slam a door, pound a table or seek guidance from nature. We seem to be driven to share our experience with others.
In the film the octopus has no trouble hiding, running away or disappearing when it wants. And likewise, no trouble approaching after it became comfortable with him. And he refuses to intervene when its life is in danger.
After these quips, I usually hear the criticism that he was a rich white guy of privilege telling a "woe is me" storyline. If you don't like what the guy represents, fine, but his actions are not that different from many other naturalists who loves to observe animals in the wild.
Another example, is it bad to watch Birth of a Nation? Does it depend on the creator's intent or the broadcaster's intent or the consumer's intent?
In a similar way, we can't help but view other beings from within our own subjective frame. The levels of abstractive difference from that octopus to my comment are dizzying. Each individual applies another coat of paint to the canvas.
I find research papers bland sometimes, but that is the point. Researchers try to hide their perspective and take on some sort of apreferential objective God view. In that attempt, we get a nutritious, unseasoned chunk of raw tofu. I can eat that sometimes. A lot of the times I want a flavorful, multi-modal umami dish. The person who concocts that sort of meal will inevitably "season to taste". I would be remiss to spit out my first bite, "This is not raw tofu!"
Logical statements just by themselves are for Logicians and/or theorem provers.
But they're also useless by themselves (just an axiomatic rule sustitution game).
To have any value in human life they are combined with utility functions, morality, and other such things.
I was watching Clint's Reptiles on Youtube where he's reviewing an octopus staying at an aquarium. It gets all the food it needs, entertainment via puzzles, interaction with the keepers etc. For an octopus it seemed like a very safe and easy life as compared to the wild.
Now the real questions would be if whether they prefer to migrate around or stay in one place. If they prefer one safe place, then perhaps given this safe aquarium space they'd choose to stay in it?
I think it would fall on being able to empirically test whether the animal is content or perhaps even happy. It seems possible to satiate most needs and basic desires but you bring up a good point as to whether we can truly replicate the audiovisual and tactile richness of their usual habitat.
Got to thinking about VR for aquatic animals...
I personally settle for nothing less than "octopodes," with the accent on the second of its four syllables.
But in any case, it's English, not Latin or misspelled Greek, and octopi seems to at least be the oldest evident English plural of octopus, AFAIK, though octopuses seems to be experiencing current popularity, and octopodes is just...no, though the suggestion once made that English ought to adopt octopods, wasn't bad, but never caught on.
Since that didn't work, I guess it's time to look for some more representative phrase from the article text.
Edit: ok, I've combined two phrases from the article to try to that. Commenters: please discuss the actual material now.
Shallow? It’s profound.
Have you tried to respond to the question, in the human context?
Were a comment to contain new and interesting information about a profound, i.e. generic, question, that would be fine. But this is precisely what internet comments bringing up generic questions don't usually do. It's not a good fit for the genre. Someone who really has something original to say about a profound question would be better off writing an essay, or a book. Certainly not a one-liner to an internet forum.
This is so much the case, in fact, that changing the subject from a concrete topic to a more generic one is a frequent form of trolling.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Bringing this question to conscious awareness is a different category of social discourse to “What is the meaning of life”, which is not really a social question at all.
p.s. Please don't use multiple accounts to comment in the same thread. That's abusive, and will eventually get your main account banned as well.
It then goes on to complicate that narrative, claiming that more recent discoveries indicate many species of octopus are, in fact, social creatures, and older understanding of them was likely due to insufficient observation and the fact they hide themselves so well.
It's quite an in-depth essay with a lot of information in it that addresses this exact question with nuance, research, anecdotes, from every side of every possible answer. It deserves better than a pithy response implying the author never thought to just ask the reverse question. He definitely already thought of this.
I don't believe humans are nearly as "special" as historically seen in comparison to animals, but the rephrasing as performed in the comment here doesn't add anything to support that case.
For example, the article correctly claims that we don't really know how an octopus perceives these interactions with humans, as they're of an entirely different non-mammalian intelligence and social behavior. Next, the article strongly affirms they're about as intelligent as a racoon.
These two things directly contradict each other and show shallowness on our behalf. The real answer is that we have no idea at all.
The article continues to state that things like deceit and learning ability are rarely found in invertebrates. Which is plain wrong. They are found in creatures a thousand times smaller than an octopus.
Weak scorpionfly males pretend to be a female so that they get a food gift from a strong male, which they can carry to the actual female. Deceit. Some butterflies strategically place their eggs near ants after which the ants take the pupa (which is evolved to look like an ant pupa) and nourish it to an adult. After which the young adult butterfly goes: thanks for everything, bye now. Deceit. Camouflage. Deceit. Traps. Deceit. Mimicry. Deceit.
Beewolfs (which are wasps) navigate by beacons. Move the beacons and they re-learn the path. Learning ability. The absolute "dumbest" creature showing learning ability: earth worms. We're talking a handful of neurons. They drag leaves into their dens to feed on. By giving them lots of different leafs, they learn which types they want. They also learn to drag them in the right direction, as the other way blocks the den. It actually remembers this and gets better at it over time.
We are incredibly shallow in misunderstanding but above all underestimating the capabilities of animals and overestimating the value of our own definitions.
So the challenge is warranted. Perhaps another species is studying us and concluding that we're not a social species, because we all seem to sit by ourselves looking at some weird bar of bright light all day. Even in mass gatherings (cities) of millions, this weird species does not show actual social behavior. Nobody knows each other and actively ignores others.
Haha... I think it depends on the current situation of the human is in... Sometimes human just wants to have a meaningful conversation, sometimes just reacting aptly to prevent social awkwardness or being tagged rude...
The octopus regarded the research as "safe" and "interesting". It didn't integrate the researcher into octopus society because such a thing doesn't exist. But octopuses had a society, would it have to be more than a mutual regarding of a group as safe and interesting? Especially, since many other complex behaviors can be created from this start (just as the octopus created all sort of interesting things in the world).
"Maybe octopuses don’t regard us so much as friends or associates as giant, elaborate levers they can manipulate for their own benefit"
Maybe the difference between these kinds of relationships is less than we think.
We have the ability to thrive without meat (or at least, animal meat). It's time we took the next step in our evolution and eschewed killing other animals.
I've heard of vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, etc., but it would be interesting if there was another eating style based on some (admittedly challenging) evaluation of the animal's cognition or social behavior.
Wait, can't do that? But you were about to do it anyway?
That's why you can't be friends.
All I can say is: I felt triggered by my recollection all of of the cruel and nonconsensual things our species has enacted upon theirs, since the dawn of time.
You can't be [friends in the same way you are friends with humans] an octopus because they are not human. I'm friends with my cat. We have a mutual social relationship and he doesn't speak a lick of English.
They are highly intelligent, but have one big problem: their max. life expectation is about 5 years. Usually the mother dies at birth and they grow up alone from an early age, hence no social development (even to a degree where they are very hostile to other octopus).
So they have not a way of building culture like humans, like thr passing on knowledge to the younger generations. Though they kind of have 8 brains.
If they didn‘t have these problems, we might be talking differently about them.
One day I will open a training area with octopus & invest millions in trying to extend life expectancy & social behaviour of octopuses and train them to take over the world.
I can't imagine they're the only animals capable of that. It certainly feels like we're friends with a mutual understanding.
Octopuses, by comparison, are aliens. In fact, someone said that if we want to have an idea of what alien intelligence could look like, look at octopuses. They are intelligent in a very non-human way.
I love this phrasing, as I think it sums up the difference between dogs and other animals with regards to human communication. It's possible to communicate with other animals if you put in the effort, but dogs on the other hand are often willing to put in the effort to communicate with you!
Some people have even in this universe, but not so many, because they are not easy to handle. And back then having pets, was not so much a hobby - but the dogs were useful for survival. (guarding and hunting)
Bears not so much and therefore much harder to control. Same with cats, which is why they have been kept around to hunt the mice and rats - but only small cats.
Also I believe the first dogs did not came from wolves, but other wild dog breeds.
Nicely done.