[FRIAM] something serious from something silly

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

Octopus ground mimicry is the thing I cannot understand.   How do you copy
what you are not looking at?

n

Nick Thompson
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Friday, April 30, 2021 8:57 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: [FRIAM] something serious from something silly

A discussion of UFOs occupied some time in FRIAM today, including the
observation that despite looking for "intelligent signals" ala SETI have
failed. 

Made me think of octopi (& other cephalopods) that communicate with
brilliant displays of rapidly changing color. We think that these displays
are more than reactive, that they are "intelligent communication." Mostly,
it seems to me, we infer this because we have a lot of context, including
interacting octopi, but if all we had was the "signal" absent the context,
would we recognize it as "intelligent?"

I am not phrasing the question very well, but if we had nothing except a
5-minute video of an octopus' surface changing color, would we be able to
detect a hidden order or structure that would allow a reasonable
determination that it originated from an intelligent species?

davew

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