Deep Intellect
orionmagazine.org
orionmagazine.org
> Some would let themselves be captured, only to use the net as a trampoline. They’d leap off the mesh and onto the floor — and then run for it. Yes, run. “You’d chase them under the tank, back and forth, like you were chasing a cat,” Warburton said. “It’s so weird!”
> [..] “Catching her for the maze always took twenty minutes,” Warburton said. “She’d grip onto something and not let go. Once she got stuck in a filter and we couldn’t get her out. It was awful!”
What seems far more awful is using these apparently-highly-intelligent animals for laboratory experiments, against their will.
This isn't the usual argument of animal rights. Here we have a highly intelligent and inventive creature repeatedly trying its best to escape - it's hard not to identify with it! - and the scientists just recapture it by force. They actively oppose the animal's attempts to liberate itself, again and again.
The intelligence of some cephalopods is a controversial topic, as their limb dexterity and brain-to-mass ratios makes them unique, and they have some protection from research in the E.U.
What's the difference? They're both instinctual responses to a perceived threat.
Now, I'm not saying we should be killing animals indiscriminately. I'm saying that decision has nothing to do with whether the animal knows which direction to flee or how to hide. That's like trying to decide whether to buy a house based on the number in the ones place of its price.
This is all a part of being human. Its the way we are and most of us don't even think its something wrong. I doubt this will change so you need to deal with it.
It is the argument for animal rights (as opposed to animal welfare).
For example the "Nonhuman Rights Project" works for the bodily liberty and integrity of great apes, dolphins, and elephants within the US legal framework.
So I take it you would have released Ava in Ex Machina?
I guess you subscribe to deontological ethics? I wonder how would you reconcile it with the following questions.
What's your stance on police actively opposing the [offending] human's attempts to liberate itself?
What's your stance on doctors actively opposing the [considered mentally ill] attempts to liberate itself?
Obviously humans are highly intelligent and inventive creatures. Prison torture, rape and humiliation may not be on the same level of cruelty as laboratory experiments but mental institutions procedures are definitely comparable.
In essence, humans have agreed to do these things to themselves. Animals do not have that opportunity.
Care to elaborate how exactly humans agreed to do these things to themselves?
> They actively oppose the animal's attempts to liberate itself, again and again.
That makes me think about the Rat Park experiments. Treatment of the animal's may play a bigger role in the results of experiments than anyone suspects. Especially as the intelligence of the animal increases.
and I just found this...: http://danielkeating.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/could-we-breed-...
Not cephalopods specifically, but the idea of breeding smarter animals is touched on by David Brin in his "Uplift" novels.
I've often thought about how fascinating it would be if some organization took on the long-term task of breeding for intelligence. Perhaps it would require a well-funded non-profit to provide the resources. Could it be done more open-source styled, with standardized tests, individuals breeding animals and submitting gene sequences for analysis (is there a 23andme for animals)?
How interesting would it be to (ultimately) talk to a gorilla or octopus philosopher?
Being bred for human style intelligence, it would have similar capabilities to our own in terms of cognitive capacities. Yet its metaphors for interacting with the world would all be based on the body of an octopus. It would have a tenticle in both worlds.
Some things would overlap, like big meaning important, sharp meaning dangerous or cutting. Others might not, for instance any metaphor having to do with wetness would probably have a different meaning for the octopus whose home is the water than it does for those of us on land.
It's hard to measure IQ without a social context.
Humans are unique in that most of our collective learning is shareable and externalised. If you took a human child and kept it completely isolated from all external teaching and human contact until after puberty, it's not obvious that it would appear that much more intelligent than an octopus.
Conversely, if you could give an octopus the genes for a much longer lifespan and less need to be solitary, I don't know what you'd get - but it might be scary smart.
Obviously we cannot deliberately test this hypothesis, but there have been a few cases of children raised in isolation who failed to ever attain an adult level of language [0]. In fact, if you measure by number of acquired words alone (a dubious metric), their capacity for learning language was at the same order of magnitude as gorillas [1] (the validity of gorilla language studies remains controversial).
To be taken with a rock of salt, of course, but it shows that development is far from guaranteed. This makes determining the intelligence potential of a species very difficult: what is the optimal environment for baby octopi to learn to communicate?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_deprivation#Cases_of_...
Who has time to wait 100 years? Intelligence is not really correlated with brain size, but I'd start by breeding octopodes and then selecting the octopus eggs that seem to be inhabited by octopus with larger-than-average brains. Their eggs are transparent and you can just look, while tossing the ones that you don't want to hatch. Next I would iterate on this for a few generations, meanwhile selecting for octopus problem solving and communication.
I wouldn't worry about that; their limbs are welcome along for the ride.
Oh certainly, agreed. But larger brains can be easier to work with, such as for slicing studies where you examine the different areas of the brain to look for evidence of changes that you might want to keep for the next generation. Smaller brains have less matter to work with, and therefore have less of a chance of developing novel features that strike your fancy while you attempt to select the ones that might have a higher probability of developing impressive cognitive ability. Having said this, I am very interested in trying to take something already rather clever (like a dog) and seeing how small we can get the brain before it loses all of its interesting behavior. For whatever reason society has already developed a fascination with really small dogs with small heads anyway.....
[1] S. Montgomery. The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness. Atria Books, 2015.
This story made my day, and it's not even noon yet! 😊 Looking forward to learn more about octopuses tonight.
Maybe I'm too used to reading technical stuff :/
In this case... the author wants to help the reader understand that these animals are intelligent. He personifies them through a series of anecdotes and approaches encounters from an octopus-first perspective, to help the reader "get in the headspace" of the various octopuses.
This passage stuck out to me and I had to include it:
> Perhaps I had understood something basic about what it felt like to be Athena at that moment: she was hungry. I handed a fish to one of her larger suckers, and she began to move it toward her mouth. But soon she brought more arms to the task, and covered the fish with many suckers — as if she were licking her fingers, savoring the meal.
A lot of people are now in their own bodies as well as Athena the Octopus', thinking about food they love to eat.
In the end, many readers will come away feeling like, in a little way, they "were" the octopus, and appreciating them more.