[FRIAM] something serious from something silly

[Pieter Steenekamp]

My question is what is an intelligent species?

Here on earth we observe that there are two mechanisms to develop
technology: evolution and cognition. If we define an intelligent species as
one that uses cognition to develop technology, then neither octopi nor any
other species on earth are intelligent, because we don't observe them using
cognition to develop technology. Even if we decode hidden structure in
octopi's communication and even if they communicate deep emotional issues
very eloquently, according to this definition they would not be an
intelligent species.

But, of course an intelligent species could be defined differently. For
example, natural selection could evolve a species with  hidden order or
structure in their communication and they could, for argument's sake,
eloquently communicate their emotions via color.  A species having a deep
emotional discussion using this type of communication, even without the
ability to use cognition to develop technology could be defined as an
intelligent species. Why not? Let's do a thought experiment where octopi
have this and robots are doing the mundane stuff like providing food and
shelter and health care and humans have deep emotional discussions with
octopi, it would be useful to consider octopi as an intelligent species.



On Sat, 1 May 2021 at 05:18, Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Do chameleons see what's under their tails?
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
> On Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 9:12 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 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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