They're too delicious to consider how smart they are.
goatlover 58 minutes ago [-]
It's like 9 brains, one central one in the head and 8 semi-autonomous ones in the arms. Makes one wonder what an octopus consciousness is like. Is it distributed among the nine brains, or focused on the central one? If the latter then the arm-brains would be zombie minds. It's also possible the 8 arms have their own separate experiences.
We also have a nervous system distributed throughout our bodies, so we do experience the full body, but the neural signals are sent to one location, not nine. We experience ourselves as a unified hole, allowing exceptions for certain conditions.
bookofjoe 3 minutes ago [-]
Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness [excellent]
If you haven't read it, you might enjoy Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series. It's fiction which explores different intelligences, with the second novel[0] dealing specifically with octopuses.
I would imagine their intelligence is directly proportional to the so many degrees of freedom the arms have for grasping, but don't ask which one came first, chicken or egg?
throw310822 2 hours ago [-]
Pure, shameless clickbait as usual from Smithsonian magazine.
> Although there is no direct evidence that the adaptation is linked to expanded octopus brainpower,
I.e. the entire connection between this mutation and octopus intelligence is made up. Not even a shred of justification.
jjk166 2 hours ago [-]
Correlation does not imply causation and it's not even clear this qualifies as correlation.
Rendered at 21:34:09 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I didn't realize that an octopuses brain was spread out all over its body.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_intelligence
We also have a nervous system distributed throughout our bodies, so we do experience the full body, but the neural signals are sent to one location, not nine. We experience ourselves as a unified hole, allowing exceptions for certain conditions.
https://www.amazon.com/Other-Minds-Octopus-Origins-Conscious...
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Ruin
> Although there is no direct evidence that the adaptation is linked to expanded octopus brainpower,
I.e. the entire connection between this mutation and octopus intelligence is made up. Not even a shred of justification.