= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
CCC comments on Humans in Funny Suits - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (128)
I actually do agree that other animals, especially mammals, will probably turn out to be annoyingly similar to humans. So if we're looking for a completely alien race we might be pretty disappointed. But they might have some interesting differences we don't anticipate precisely because we haven't really tried looking yet?
Also, I bet it's pretty different to be an octopus. Even a human-raised octopus! (Although we would need textured buttons so ipads won't help there. And they might turn out to not be smart/cooperative enough.)
Very probably. Take lions, for example; how does having a tail, no hands, and a pure-meat diet change one's outlook on the world?
...now, octopi are interesting. A 2012 Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, they're very probably conscious - if a little alien in morphology. Wikipedia describes them as having keen eyesight but limited hearing, which may lead to a few practical problems with communication (nothing insoluble; their aquatic environment might cause more problems).
And octopi apparently show great problem-solving ability; especially when the problem is question is how to get out of the secure tank that it is in and into the secure tank containing crabs (or other food) that is just over there.
So the octopus learning experiment (Olex?) looks like it might have a pretty good chance of success.
I was watching this video about octopi and the lady says they "taste" stuff with their suckers? I can't tell if if she means that literally or how she knows. (Button design idea?) But it definitely looks like octopi have a lot to 'say'. =]
I did hear about octopi stealing crabs from neighboring tanks and then closing their own lids after themselves! The problem-solving skills might make it hard to design good experiments. The octopus might figure out how to maximize its food output without meaning anything it says. (It will start talking about consciousness?)
Can we get the Singularity Institute to fund Olex? I bet we can cap the cost pretty low and monetize the cute factor. Octopus friend t-shirts and autographs!
Also, this elephant randomly start saying Korean words.
There's another elephant, Batyr, who did this and was famous for it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batyr
I've heard of this one too, but I believe there's no records/footage?
Must ... upvote ... all ... elephants.
There are records and footage, but considering he died in 1993 in Kazakhstan, you'd probably have to speak Kazakh or Russian to even be able to search them down effectively. It was long enough ago that they might never have been released to the public internet. According to the Wikipedia article they're kept at Moscow State University. The listed publications might be worth pursuing if you want to investigate it further.
A bit of googling reveals several pages (including one from Scientific American) that repeat the claim that "octopi taste with their suckers". As far as I can find, the claim seems to date back to a paper by MJ Wells, published in 1963.
I haven't read that paper.
But that's exactly what makes them such interesting experimental subjects!
Ah, the Chinese Box problem. Tricky. Though technically we could apply the same question to humans...
Okay, that sounds like a totally alien experience. Imagine tasting your floor! And like ... doorknobs and things.
You've never licked a doorknob just to see what it tastes like?
I guess I figured they'd taste like cheap spoons, except with more bacteria. Am I missing out?
Nope, that's a pretty accurate description of my sensory memory of the experience. :p
I'm imagining tasting where other people have been walking, and I can see a possible market for octopus shoes. Especially if other people haven't been cleaning up after their dogs.
Of course, it might just be that I'm squeamish because I'm not used to it. (But an octopus civilisation might choose the material from which to make their paths based on the taste thereof...)
I think you're right. That squeamishness is very much a product of you having grown up as not-an-octopus.
Most creatures taste with an organ that's at the top of their digestive tract, it's fairly sensible that they have an aversion to tasting anything that they would be unhealthy for them to consume.
A species that had always had a chemical-composition-sense on all of it's limbs? Would almost certainly have a very different relationship with that sense than we have with taste.
Hmmm. Fair enough. But even if they're not squeamish about it, it would make sense for them to select the material from which they make their walkways according to flavour (among other factors, such as strength and durability).
Yup! I agree completely.
If you were modeling an octopus-based sentient species, for the purposes of writing some interesting fiction, then this would be a nice detail to add.
I think this might be the bias in action yet again.
Our idea of an alien experience is to taste with a different part of our bodies? That's certainly more different-from-human than most rubber-forehead aliens, but "taste" is still a pretty human-familiar experience. There are species with senses that we don't have at all, like a sensitivity to magnetism or electric fields.
That would certainly be a good way to maximize food output, but I think that in order to successfully do that well enough to fool even researchers looking for it, the octopus would have to have at least enough complexity in it's brain to actually be conscious. Which is, in fact, the same problem with the Chinese Room; the notecards need to be drawn up by an actual Chinese speaker.
And if we look at evolutionary history, it looks like in evolutionary terms, actually being conscious was a better strategy than pretending to be conscious... ...or it could be that we've just retroactively defined "consciousness" as the thing humans do when they try to fake consciousness. :p
I suspect that octopi are more-or-less as conscious as dolphins are, as a rough approximation.
I'm not sure it's possible to confirm or deny that question without being able to define, once and for all, exactly and precisely what consciousness is.