[FRIAM] something serious from something silly

[Gary Schiltz]

Cool conversation about octopus. While not scientific, I really enjoyed the
move “My Octopus Teacher”. Insightful and thought provoking.

On Sat, May 1, 2021 at 9:02 AM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm> wrote:

> Octopi probably do "see" the ground behind them. They have more neurons in
> their skin than in their brain and the chroma-cells (forgot the technical
> name) are bi-directional "camera and display." So one side "sees" and
> transmits to opposing side for display. All without entering the central
> nervous brain.
>
> davew
>
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 30, 2021, at 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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