learning how to draw a third animal?

this is possibly a dumb question and a weird one, so feel free to ignore! but i was reading one of ur analyses (on the lok anarchy article) and that was a lot of fun to read and i thought u made v salient points! i was wondering if u had any advice on how one can get better at coming up with their own analyses and stuff like that. maybe it’s a lack of brain cells or maybe it’s a part of my brain that i haven’t flexed in years, but i want to be able to do that (i think it’s called “critical thinking” lmao) but cannot fathom how to do so to the point of being able to think and organize analyses/essays like this. again this is a weird q with an answer that will vary/not exist depending on who’s asked, but i dig ur analyses so here i am

thank u sm! this is a super broad question but im just gonna assume u mean literary analysis cuz thats what this blog is about (usually)

my first piece of advice is to read nonfiction. for me nonfiction has always been the best way for me to build a Framework of critical thought (for example, learning about science and its history gives me the tools to criticize modern scientific education and pop science) aside from teaching u abt historical/scientific fact, these writers will usually have ways of thinking abt things that u will not have considered before, and as u follow them thru their argument, u will not only understand Theirs better but u will also start understanding better how to formulate ur own. u can find whatever format works best for u, like, podcasts/audiobooks or print or ebook or whatever, but find some content abt something that interests u and go for it! 

when it comes to fiction, i would say my advice is to both consume a lot of fiction AND ALSO consume a lot of analysis of it. (also remember that ur mind basically functions on You are what you eat. Dont spend too much time watching trashy dramas or reading fanfiction. read/watch/listen to a VARIETY of content) as u consume content, ask urself WHY do i like this? what specifically abt it is appealing to me? why does it ring true, or why doesn’t it? notice motifs bc thats usually the easiest way to notice symbolism (for example theres a lot of mirrors and reflections in russian doll. what does that mean?) and think abt what they could represent in the story. track character development, make mental notes of a character’s motivations and ideals, and notice how the story affects them and ask if it makes sense. give urself room to dislike things (Just because legend of korra is the sequel to a show u really liked doesnt mean u have to like lok too!), but ask urself why u disliked them, and see if u can form a convincing argument abt it.

look at other people’s analysis of fiction! watch video essays and read other people’s analysis! u dont have to agree w them, but see what patterns they’ve picked out, and see if u can pick out patterns like it next time. it’s really just practice the more u read/watch critically, the more u get better at it!

for me fiction is the most fun and creative way to Apply critical thought because like. every piece has a Point to it. Nonfiction will just come out and tell u what their point is, but fiction requires u to figure out what theirs is, and bc of that there’s a lot of flexibility in how u read it. (hint: as long as the text doesnt actually disprove ur reading, that’s a valid Point! another hint: not all Valid points are Good) also, i dont wanna sound like an asshole here but theres no way to avoid it so here it is: a lot of people dont criticize/analyze fiction properly bc of their emotional attachment to it. they’ll project things onto characters that arent supported by the text, they’ll write “fix it” fanfiction that ignores or misunderstands the important themes of a story, they’ll excuse genuinely bad writing bc theyre attached to the characters (can anyone say 2020 supernatural renaissance?). its fine to be emotionally attached to a story (and if it’s a good story u WILL be emotionally attached to it) but when u write analysis of a story set ur affection for the characters aside for the moment cuz u will always end up with much fairer and more interesting analysis when u do. 

also, find somebody to talk to abt fiction or make a blog abt it! its fun to talk about and u will find it easier to form arguments when ur actively talking abt it cuz honestly i only ever have a half formed thought when i write my long posts i just sit down and start typing and i organize my thoughts once theyre already down

so, idk. tldr: read more nonfiction, read less fanfiction, write more analysis. And pay attention in english class if ur in school

and idk if i've asked this one before, but what are some good Comfort Lps that you enjoy watching?? or just any youtube videos in general

actually i rarely watch lps when im upset?? i think like. the kind of focus that lps require from me isnt the kind of focus i have/need when im upset or need something lowkey to listen to. i usually like to watch lps in the early afternoon/right after dinner when im like, chill and not too focused but just focused enough to watch something

instead i usually like to watch video essays ive already seen as a comfort thing! okay, well. for hardcore comfort, like “i am havin a meltdown” i usually listen to music. particularly the protomen. idk why thats just one of my Comfort Bands. i think it being familiar but also rock ballads is good for quick catharsis and a pivot in emotion

but anyway. my favorite video essayist ever is lindsay ellis (formerly... well shes trying to distance herself from it because of a lot of complicated history but its basically well known, she was the nostalgia chick). her stuff is mostly film analysis, though shes been moving towards more like. explaining some concepts big in media right now? like she did a video on death of the author recently. her series on the hobbit films is like, unironically a masterpeice, she basically went full documentary in the last couple talking about the history of the production. she also has a series about the bayformers movies through various literary critism lenses as a way to actually explain those frameworks which i think is really good if youre not as familiar with them. i also like her videos on bright, the hunchback of notre dame, and pirates of the carribean -- i rewatch those ones a lot. anyway yeah shes both really good at explaining film criticism applied to more popular media while being funny/relatable but also but also professional. sorry this sounds like a glowing review, i just love her work a lot and her stuff means a lot to me! 

in a similar vein i like folding ideas (dan olson). he’s also mainly film criticism, though focused a bit more on how film functions and very film-specific theories. like lindsay will explain marxist theory or the female gaze and how it applies to a disney movie, dan will explain editing and what the kuleshov effect is and why that means suicide squad’s editing is terrible. he has a series on fifty shades of grey and its adaptation thats good, but i also like his videos on book of henry and suicide squad. he doesnt make many video essays about it but he also likes games a lot! he streams really regularly. he actually was on the last GDQ?? he played this obscure surv horror game called amy which he just like, picked up and learned the speendrun as an experiment in a few months

and then i also really like hbomberguy. hes probably the most political one ill watch when im upset (i like contrapoints and other lefttube people but i dont rewatch their stuff when i need a pick me up). hes like 50% political 50% video games (i disagree with some of his opinons, but his video essays are so good that im like. alright harris. this time). hes kind of a big deal now because of that DK64 stream he did that fucking exploded. anyway i like sherlock is garbage and here’s why, some of his videos about brexit, and um... i need to rewatch his video about lovecraft bc i remember being really moved by it, i think its like the best message about how we can talk about lovecraft in this day and age

THOSE RECOMMENDATIONS ASIDE i just really like. produced video essays. ill also watch a lot of... like top 10 lists of whichever weird niche interest i have at the moment. like for a while i watched videos of top 10 lists or reviews of roller coasters?? right now i watch a lot of pokemon stuff. i dont usually have any recommendations because i watch whatever i do less for the quality and more for just whatever. except oh i really like defunctland for theme park (mainly disney) history. i find that stuff fascinating, and defunctland has the best production values. 

anyway thats probably enough but yes. i enjoy lps but when i need something calming i like video essays because theyre scripted and designed to flow more easily and that soothes me. but i like ones that are a little bit funny, or at least are about something im interested in but not too... heavy. 

the only lps i really have ever rewatched more than once are SBFP ones, surprise surprise. usually their david cage ones -- i find those lps are just, really high quality

Man when i was a kid i always used to hate "the hero's journey" cos it was invented by a guy with the same surname as me and MAN i just hated how my primary school english teachers were all "uhuhuhu yeah EVERY STORY EVER fits PERFECTLY into this template EVERYTHING is predictable and if you point out that we're squashing stories into boxes they dont fit in and giving detention to anyone who disagrees then WHAM BAM U GET DETENTION TOO"

But apparantly the original writer didnt really agree with that stuck up "every story follows my magical tropes" nonsense and even calling it "the monomyth" was added by modern scholars instead. So ehh i feel a little bad for how much i hated this thing.

BUT STILL

Seriously

All of this stuff is so fucking vague you can claim its in every story even when it isnt! And whenever any story doesnt really have one of the steps these people find some sort of contrived thing to squash into that box cos mannn we're not even allowed to do the steps in a different order i guess??

"Hey yeah literally anything can be Crossing The Threshhold as long as its a climactic moment of a story. Ha! Gotcha! Every story DOES indeed fit my vague as fuck definitions!"

Waou u hav beginning middel and end. Someone somewhere in the story is older than our protagonist or he talks to them once, thats totally a gandalf mentor. The "call to adventure" and "taking up the sword" can totally be a dude getting a job at a bakery in a slice of life romance. I M SO SMRT!

Sorry man i just get REAL SALTY ok!!!!

Anyway i was just thinking about this cos i was noticing how most of my stories seem to skip the "establish a normalcy and do something to break that normalcy/assign the hero the destined hero role/introduce a villain/make Reason why they are The Only One who can do it" bit. Like even when my stories do contain someone who used to live any different sort of life before this life, i prefer to start the story in medias res when their new life has already become the norm and only reveal the "call to adventure" later on as backstory. And its never really a "call to adventure", ive barely ever had a single character who even has a reason why their adventure has to happen Now. Like even with Beau and Errol whose entire story is about climbing a cursed mountain there werent forced into it by any great destiny or anything, its just Errol personally wanting to confront some of his fears and find answers about himself. And there's no big dramatic reason why he decided it would be today. The closest thing to 'destiny'is just that Beau happened to come with him and it led to them confessing their feelings and dating if you get the good ending. And the recent idea i had for the lich king dads story is that you start off with no idea why the hell youre some adorable human kid being raised by monsters and then you puzzle out the backstory as you play through the plot. But with 90% of it being slice of life totally player controlled choices of different sidequests in any order you want. Like those are the main focus and the "hero's journey" is just an optional bonus thing that already ended decades ago that you can unlock in any order. And there is gonna be some current day plot and some sort of villain just cos honestly this "every story has to do the thing" pressure made me worried that people wouldnt be interested in a series of cute fluffy family stories unless there was a villain. But still there's literally nothing here that could be stretched into "establishing normalcy and something breaks it to start the plot" "the hero finds some sort of destiny" and etc. Well i guess you could say there's a mentor cos theres like fifty of them and the entire point of the game is found family??? But most of them arent even mentors its more like a "sometimes adults dont know what to do either" kind of thing and everyone just works together to conquer their various problems with each other's help. Kid protag's main role is Person Who Brings Everyone Together and they dont really have anyone training them in that. Lol i guess maybe you could stretch that into their "innate destiny power" that was "magically awakened" when they got dads...?

Anyway the point im trying to make is that those are two ideas i came up with without even trying to intentionally subvert the hero's journey. Its really not some magical universal thing that applies to every story, and you cant just brush it off as sayibg all exceptions were intentionally made to break the rules so they dont count. The only damn time i ever thought about the stupid hero's journey is when i was getting self concious about not fitting it and that stupid old primary school instinct made me wanna change my ideas to be more "normal" :/

And OH MAN dont eveb get me started on the three act structure!!! Another case where a decebt "hey this is a guideline for how to maybe start storywriting for beginners" thing turned into a weird elitist EVERYONE MUST DO THE THING just because now its old and goddamn Classical(tm) english teachers got a hold of it. "Having a beginning middle and an end is a basic framework but maybe you wanna throw in some subplots along the way?" Into NO ITEMS FOX ONLY FINAL DESTINATION levels of stupidity...

Seriously i feel so bad for these old scholar guys holy shit i never knew that EVEN THEY DONT AGREE WITH HOW THEIR WORK IS BEING TAUGHT

...lol maybe i should do some sort of meme where i try and cram my stories into these cliches and see which ones dont fit/which ones i have to really stretch for?

mistystarshine

WHEN PRIDE IS DEMOTED TO HUMAN. DOES HIS HUMAN BECOME VISIBLE AND VERBAL AND NOT-BODYHORROR?

since i don’t interpret Pride as being human by the end of fmab, no it stays the same, though probably calmer

mistystarshine

Also, I feel like Greed would know that he has a daemon, considering the sheer amount of time he spends around humans and chimeras. Likewise, I think the humans would find out about homunculus daemons /because/ of his chimera. I also think they'd stick around/reappear even after he's shoved into Ling, since where Bradley just overtook his host, Greed and Ling are very clearly two different people. This daemon looks healthier than the other homunculous daemons (because /Greed/ is a lot healthier), is shamelessly affectionate toward and protective of people Greed cares about, and likes to take advantage of not being any easily identifiable animal to make chimeras they encounter feel better about themselves. /Especially/ Nina.

no, he doesn’t know about his daemon. his chimera have their suspicions, but they’ve kind of given up hope on communicating it to him since he gets really pretty agitated when the topic of homunculi having or not having daemons is brought up- he views daemons as something he Cannot Have, and therefore the topic agitates him.

his daemon is also rarely Around him, and that applies to all the homunculi’s daemons, though it IS protective and (seemingly?) well meaning, roaming around Dublith in patterns that are almost like patrols

there have been stories of the Ghost Hound Of Dublith for years, its largely regarded as benign and depending on who you ask youll get different answers.

more cynical folks will say seeing it is an omen, most say its not good or bad luck its just kinda There, and more optimistic folks like to say its DEFINITELY good luck

 really its just kinda ppl arbitrarily associating events that happen to them with seeing it despite it having nothing to do with whats happening

even izumi and sig have seen it a few times

Greed personally thinks the superstitious nonsense, since he has never personally seen it

Greed’s daemon and how it effect’s Ling’s daemon is actually a plot relevant thing in this au, and i can’t say its nearly as sweet or cute as that

Bradley’s daemon is as functional as she is because Bradley and Wrath melded into one person, and because she was deliberately kept from settling before so

with Greedling is when they learn what actually happens to a human's daemon when a homunculus is put in their body

greed takes over, and ling’s daemon is still a maned wolf but she seems wrong, somehow, like theres something under her skin moving around, like strange moving mites under the flesh

and the most unsettling thing is that she is still clearly ling's daemon, she's aggressive and vile at greed and hisses and barks and spits at him constantly, enraged that he's trespassing in her human's body and soul like this, and will bite him and swear at him in xingese, basically just riot about it.....except for when she's suddenly just not

she wont respond to ling at all, and just seems to go empty

but when she gets like that, she suddenly becomes very frantic about trying to communicate with greed specifically, but she can't talk at all, all attempts just come out as garbled, desperate noise,and her body convulses and shakes and the ‘worms’ under her flesh get worse

like a creature thats been wait for years and years and years to be able to make some kind of contact with greed and now finally has its chance to, only to be completely unable to

and greed doesnt get it at all, b/c as far as greed knows homunculi dont have daemons, he's never seen that he has a daemon, none of them have Bradley is the Weird Exception b/c he was human

Greed just assumes that his presence in Ling's body is basically making Ling's daemon "short circuit" 

its probably ling who figures out first that Greed has some sort of daemon that's trying to communicate with Greed, through talking to his own daemon when he's fronting and she's coherent

also, whether Ling's demon is coherent or not doesnt necessarily tie into which one of them is fronting at the time

mistystarshine

To contrast, Envy's daemon is a horrifying mess, yet is actually very benevolent and apologetic - EXCEPT toward Envy (and itself). Envy's daemon /hates his guts/ and, disturbingly, is prone to lashing out at him with physical violence. (Envy doesn't say it, but he attributes the times it's successful to something being wrong with his stone) Ed figures out what his deal is /a lot/ sooner because of this.

Envy is also unaware of their daemon, though i do like the idea of their daemon being surprisingly Soft in disposition

in general i do have some  plans and framework laid out for this au, and filling in the gaps is a lot of fun for me

i dont mind suggestions, but please be mindful that i don’t intend for it to be a collaborative work

Alien intelligence: the extraordinary minds of octopuses and other cephalopods

After a startling encounter with a cuttlefish, Australian philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith set out to explore the mysterious lives of cephalopods. He was left asking: why do such smart creatures live such a short time?

Inches above the seafloor of Sydneys Cabbage Tree Bay, with the proximity made possible by several millimetres of neoprene and a scuba diving tank, Im just about eyeball to eyeball with this creature: an Australian giant cuttlefish.

Even allowing for the magnifying effects of the mask snug across my nose, it must be about 60cm (two feet) long, and the peculiarities that abound in the cephalopod family, that includes octopuses and squid, are the more striking writ so large.

Its body shaped around an internal surfboard-like shell, tailing off into a fistful of tentacles has the shifting colour of velvet in light, and its W-shaped pupils lend it a stern expression. I dont think Im imagining some recognition on its part. The question is, of what?

It was an encounter like this one at exactly the same place, actually, to the foot that first prompted Peter Godfrey-Smith to think about these most other of minds. An Australian academic philosopher, hed recently been appointed a professor at Harvard.

While snorkelling on a visit home to Sydney in about 2007, he came across a giant cuttlefish. The experience had a profound effect on him, establishing an unlikely framework for his own study of philosophy, first at Harvard and then the City University of New York.

The cuttlefish hadnt been afraid it had seemed as curious about him as he was about it. But to imagine cephalopods experience of the world as some iteration of our own may sell them short, given the many millions of years of separation between us nearly twice as many as with humans and any other vertebrate (mammal, bird or fish).

Elle Hunt with an Australian giant cuttlefish at Cabbage Tree Bay, Manly, Sydney. Photograph: Peter Godfrey-Smith

Cephalopods high-resolution camera eyes resemble our own, but we otherwise differ in every way. Octopuses in particular are peculiarly other. The majority of their 500m neurons are in their arms, which can not only touch but smell and taste they quite literally have minds of their own.

That it was possible to observe some kind of subjective experience, a sense of self, in cephalopods fascinated Godfrey-Smith. How that might differ to humans is the subject of his book Other Minds: The Octopus, The Sea and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, published this month by HarperCollins.

In it Godfrey-Smith charts his path through philosophical problems as guided by cephalopods in one case quite literally, when he recounts an octopus taking his collaborator by hand on a 10-minute tour to its den, as if he were being led across the sea floor by a very small eight-legged child.

Charming anecdotes like this abound in Godfrey-Smiths book, particularly about captive octopuses frustrating scientists attempts at observation.

A 1959 paper detailed an attempt at the Naples Zoological Station to teach three octopuses to pull and release a lever in exchange for food. Albert and Bertram performed in a reasonably consistent manner, but one named Charles tried to drag a light suspended above the water into the tank; squirted water at anyone who approached; and prematurely ended the experiment when he broke the lever.

Most aquariums that have attempted to keep octopuses have tales to tell of their great escapes even their overnight raids of neighbouring tanks for food. Godfrey-Smith writes of animals learning to turn off lights by directing jets of water at them, short-circuiting the power supply. Elsewhere octopuses have plugged their tanks outflow valves, causing them to overflow.

This apparent problem-solving ability has led cephalopods (particularly octopuses, because theyve been studied more than squid or cuttlefish) to be recognised as intelligent. Half a billion neurons put octopuses close to the range of dogs and their brains are large relative to their size, both of which offer biologists a rough guide to brainpower.

The coconut octopus is one of the few cephalopods known to exhibit the behaviour of using a tool. Photograph: Mike Veitch/Alamy

In captivity, they have learned to navigate simple mazes, solve puzzles and open screw-top jars, while wild animals have been observed stacking rocks to protect the entrances to their dens, and hiding themselves inside coconut shell halves.

But thats also reflective of their dexterity: an animal with fewer than eight legs may accomplish less but not necessarily because it is more stupid. Theres no one metric by which to measure intelligence some markers, such as tool use, were settled on simply because they were evident in humans.

I think its a mistake to look for a single, definitive thing, says Godfrey-Smith. Octopuses are pretty good at sophisticated kinds of learning, but how good its hard to say, in part because theyre so hard to experiment on. You get a small amount of animals in the lab and some of them refuse to do anything you want them to do theyre just too unruly.

He sees that curiosity and opportunism their mischief and craft, as a Roman natural historian put it in the third century AD as characteristic of octopus intelligence.

Their great escapes from captivity, too, reflect an awareness of their special circumstances and their ability to adapt to them. A 2010 experiment confirmed anecdotal reports that cephalopods are able to recognise and like or dislike individual humans, even those that are dressed identically.

It is no stretch to say they have personalities. But the inconsistencies of their behaviour, combined with their apparent intelligence, presents an obvious trap of anthropomorphism. Its tempting, admits Godfrey-Smith, to attribute their many enigmas to some clever, human-like explanation.

A paradox: octopuses have big brains and short life spans. Photograph: Peter Godfrey-Smith

Opinions of octopus intelligence consequently vary within the scientific community. A fundamental precept of animal psychology, coined by the 19th-century British psychologist C Lloyd Morgan, says no behaviour should be attributed to a sophisticated internal process if it can be explained by a simpler one.

That is indicative of a general preference for simplicity of hypotheses in science, says Godfrey-Smith, that as a philosopher he is not convinced by. But scientific research across the board has become more outcome-driven as a result of the cycle of funding and publishing, and he is in the privileged position of being able to ask open-ended questions.

Thats a great luxury, to be able to roam around year after year, putting pieces together very slowly.

That process, set in motion by his chance encounter with a cuttlefish a decade ago, is ongoing. Now back based in Australia, lecturing at the University of Sydney, Godfrey-Smith says his study of cephalopods is increasingly influencing his professional life (and his personal one: Arrival, the 2016 film about first contact with cephalopod-esque aliens, was a good, inventive film, he says, though the invaders were a bit more like jellyfish).

When philosophers ponder the mind-body problem, none poses quite such a challenge as that of the octopuss, and the study of cephalopods gives some clues to questions about the origins of our own consciousness.

Our last common ancestor existed 600m years ago and was thought to resemble a flattened worm, perhaps only millimetres long. Yet somewhere along the line, cephalopods developed high-resolution, camera eyes as did we, entirely independently.

A camera eye, with a lens that focuses an image on a retina weve got it, theyve got it, and thats it, says Godfrey-Smith. That it was arrived at twice in such vastly different animals gives pause for thought about the process of evolution, as does their inexplicably short life spans: most species of cephalopods live only about one to two years.

The study of cephalopods gives some clues to questions about the origins of our own consciousness. Photograph: Peter Godfrey-Smith

When I learned that, I was just amazed it was such a surprise, says Godfrey-Smith, somewhat sadly. Id just gotten to know the animals. I thought, Ill be visiting these guys for ages. Then I thought, No, I wont, theyll be dead in a few months.

Its perhaps the biggest paradox presented by an animal that has no shortage of contradictions: A really big brain and a really short life. From an evolutionary perspective, Godfrey-Smith explains, it does not give a good return on investment.

Its a bit like spending a vast amount of money to do a PhD, and then youve got two years to make use of it … the accounting is really weird.

One possibility is that an octopuss brain needs to be powerful just to preside over such an unwieldy form, in the same way that a computer would need a state-of-the-art processor to perform a large volume of complex tasks.

I mean, the body is so hard to control, with eight arms and every possible inch an elbow. But that explanation doesnt account for the flair, even playfulness with which they apply it.

They behave smartly, they do all these novel, inventive things that line of reasoning doesnt resolve things, by any stretch, says Godfrey-Smith. Theres still a somewhat mysterious element there.

Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life is published by William Collins. To order a copy for 17 (RRP 20) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99. It is out through Harper Collins in Australia.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us

The post Alien intelligence: the extraordinary minds of octopuses and other cephalopods appeared first on AlienVirals.com - Latest Alien & UFO News.

from AlienVirals.com – Latest Alien & UFO News http://www.alienvirals.com/alien-intelligence-the-extraordinary-minds-of-octopuses-and-other-cephalopods-2/

Alien intelligence: the extraordinary minds of octopuses and other cephalopods

After a startling encounter with a cuttlefish, Australian philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith set out to explore the mysterious lives of cephalopods. He was left asking: why do such smart creatures live such a short time?

Inches above the seafloor of Sydneys Cabbage Tree Bay, with the proximity made possible by several millimetres of neoprene and a scuba diving tank, Im just about eyeball to eyeball with this creature: an Australian giant cuttlefish.

Even allowing for the magnifying effects of the mask snug across my nose, it must be about 60cm (two feet) long, and the peculiarities that abound in the cephalopod family, that includes octopuses and squid, are the more striking writ so large.

Its body shaped around an internal surfboard-like shell, tailing off into a fistful of tentacles has the shifting colour of velvet in light, and its W-shaped pupils lend it a stern expression. I dont think Im imagining some recognition on its part. The question is, of what?

It was an encounter like this one at exactly the same place, actually, to the foot that first prompted Peter Godfrey-Smith to think about these most other of minds. An Australian academic philosopher, hed recently been appointed a professor at Harvard.

While snorkelling on a visit home to Sydney in about 2007, he came across a giant cuttlefish. The experience had a profound effect on him, establishing an unlikely framework for his own study of philosophy, first at Harvard and then the City University of New York.

The cuttlefish hadnt been afraid it had seemed as curious about him as he was about it. But to imagine cephalopods experience of the world as some iteration of our own may sell them short, given the many millions of years of separation between us nearly twice as many as with humans and any other vertebrate (mammal, bird or fish).

Elle Hunt with an Australian giant cuttlefish at Cabbage Tree Bay, Manly, Sydney. Photograph: Peter Godfrey-Smith

Cephalopods high-resolution camera eyes resemble our own, but we otherwise differ in every way. Octopuses in particular are peculiarly other. The majority of their 500m neurons are in their arms, which can not only touch but smell and taste they quite literally have minds of their own.

That it was possible to observe some kind of subjective experience, a sense of self, in cephalopods fascinated Godfrey-Smith. How that might differ to humans is the subject of his book Other Minds: The Octopus, The Sea and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, published this month by HarperCollins.

In it Godfrey-Smith charts his path through philosophical problems as guided by cephalopods in one case quite literally, when he recounts an octopus taking his collaborator by hand on a 10-minute tour to its den, as if he were being led across the sea floor by a very small eight-legged child.

Charming anecdotes like this abound in Godfrey-Smiths book, particularly about captive octopuses frustrating scientists attempts at observation.

A 1959 paper detailed an attempt at the Naples Zoological Station to teach three octopuses to pull and release a lever in exchange for food. Albert and Bertram performed in a reasonably consistent manner, but one named Charles tried to drag a light suspended above the water into the tank; squirted water at anyone who approached; and prematurely ended the experiment when he broke the lever.

Most aquariums that have attempted to keep octopuses have tales to tell of their great escapes even their overnight raids of neighbouring tanks for food. Godfrey-Smith writes of animals learning to turn off lights by directing jets of water at them, short-circuiting the power supply. Elsewhere octopuses have plugged their tanks outflow valves, causing them to overflow.

This apparent problem-solving ability has led cephalopods (particularly octopuses, because theyve been studied more than squid or cuttlefish) to be recognised as intelligent. Half a billion neurons put octopuses close to the range of dogs and their brains are large relative to their size, both of which offer biologists a rough guide to brainpower.

The coconut octopus is one of the few cephalopods known to exhibit the behaviour of using a tool. Photograph: Mike Veitch/Alamy

In captivity, they have learned to navigate simple mazes, solve puzzles and open screw-top jars, while wild animals have been observed stacking rocks to protect the entrances to their dens, and hiding themselves inside coconut shell halves.

But thats also reflective of their dexterity: an animal with fewer than eight legs may accomplish less but not necessarily because it is more stupid. Theres no one metric by which to measure intelligence some markers, such as tool use, were settled on simply because they were evident in humans.

I think its a mistake to look for a single, definitive thing, says Godfrey-Smith. Octopuses are pretty good at sophisticated kinds of learning, but how good its hard to say, in part because theyre so hard to experiment on. You get a small amount of animals in the lab and some of them refuse to do anything you want them to do theyre just too unruly.

He sees that curiosity and opportunism their mischief and craft, as a Roman natural historian put it in the third century AD as characteristic of octopus intelligence.

Their great escapes from captivity, too, reflect an awareness of their special circumstances and their ability to adapt to them. A 2010 experiment confirmed anecdotal reports that cephalopods are able to recognise and like or dislike individual humans, even those that are dressed identically.

It is no stretch to say they have personalities. But the inconsistencies of their behaviour, combined with their apparent intelligence, presents an obvious trap of anthropomorphism. Its tempting, admits Godfrey-Smith, to attribute their many enigmas to some clever, human-like explanation.

A paradox: octopuses have big brains and short life spans. Photograph: Peter Godfrey-Smith

Opinions of octopus intelligence consequently vary within the scientific community. A fundamental precept of animal psychology, coined by the 19th-century British psychologist C Lloyd Morgan, says no behaviour should be attributed to a sophisticated internal process if it can be explained by a simpler one.

That is indicative of a general preference for simplicity of hypotheses in science, says Godfrey-Smith, that as a philosopher he is not convinced by. But scientific research across the board has become more outcome-driven as a result of the cycle of funding and publishing, and he is in the privileged position of being able to ask open-ended questions.

Thats a great luxury, to be able to roam around year after year, putting pieces together very slowly.

That process, set in motion by his chance encounter with a cuttlefish a decade ago, is ongoing. Now back based in Australia, lecturing at the University of Sydney, Godfrey-Smith says his study of cephalopods is increasingly influencing his professional life (and his personal one: Arrival, the 2016 film about first contact with cephalopod-esque aliens, was a good, inventive film, he says, though the invaders were a bit more like jellyfish).

When philosophers ponder the mind-body problem, none poses quite such a challenge as that of the octopuss, and the study of cephalopods gives some clues to questions about the origins of our own consciousness.

Our last common ancestor existed 600m years ago and was thought to resemble a flattened worm, perhaps only millimetres long. Yet somewhere along the line, cephalopods developed high-resolution, camera eyes as did we, entirely independently.

A camera eye, with a lens that focuses an image on a retina weve got it, theyve got it, and thats it, says Godfrey-Smith. That it was arrived at twice in such vastly different animals gives pause for thought about the process of evolution, as does their inexplicably short life spans: most species of cephalopods live only about one to two years.

The study of cephalopods gives some clues to questions about the origins of our own consciousness. Photograph: Peter Godfrey-Smith

When I learned that, I was just amazed it was such a surprise, says Godfrey-Smith, somewhat sadly. Id just gotten to know the animals. I thought, Ill be visiting these guys for ages. Then I thought, No, I wont, theyll be dead in a few months.

Its perhaps the biggest paradox presented by an animal that has no shortage of contradictions: A really big brain and a really short life. From an evolutionary perspective, Godfrey-Smith explains, it does not give a good return on investment.

Its a bit like spending a vast amount of money to do a PhD, and then youve got two years to make use of it … the accounting is really weird.

One possibility is that an octopuss brain needs to be powerful just to preside over such an unwieldy form, in the same way that a computer would need a state-of-the-art processor to perform a large volume of complex tasks.

I mean, the body is so hard to control, with eight arms and every possible inch an elbow. But that explanation doesnt account for the flair, even playfulness with which they apply it.

They behave smartly, they do all these novel, inventive things that line of reasoning doesnt resolve things, by any stretch, says Godfrey-Smith. Theres still a somewhat mysterious element there.

Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life is published by William Collins. To order a copy for 17 (RRP 20) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99. It is out through Harper Collins in Australia.

Read more: http://ift.tt/2neC3EF

from Alien intelligence: the extraordinary minds of octopuses and other cephalopods