> 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-...

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Sharlin 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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andrewflnr 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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

	▲	Folcon 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I've never heard of these before, that's fascinating, thank you!

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rob74 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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wazoox 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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. :)

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rob74 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

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delis-thumbs-7e 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Well in a sense that monkeys and Great Condor inhabit the exact same environment.

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rob74 an hour ago | parent [-]

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...

	▲	burnte an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		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.
	▲	delis-thumbs-7e an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		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.

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genxy 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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)