Octopi are remarkably intelligent creatures, as any good aquarium owner will tell you.
My Octopus Teacher is a fantastic look into the life of an octopus, their intellectual capacity, and their propensity to interact with humans.
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.
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!"
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.