> They are probably the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien.<p>I've often thought that while we say we would want peaceful relationships with any aliens we might find, our history of interactions with "alien" life forms on Earth paints a different picture. I'm pretty sure if we meet alien life and it's not stronger than us, somebody's going to try to eat it.
You know, the Hawaiian creation myth posits that the universe is destroyed and recreated many times over. The octopus is the sole survivor of the previous, alien universe.
But humans are said to have a second brain that controls their gut. See e.g. [1]. Excerpt:<p>> The enteric nervous system has been described as a "second brain" for several reasons. The enteric nervous system can operate autonomously. It normally communicates with the central nervous system (CNS) through the parasympathetic (e.g., via the vagus nerve) and sympathetic (e.g., via the prevertebral ganglia) nervous systems. However, vertebrate studies show that when the vagus nerve is severed, the enteric nervous system continues to function.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteric_nervous_system" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteric_nervous_system</a>
There was some great discussion last week on cephalopods on this HN thread:<p>Just how smart is an octopus? (washingtonpost.com)
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13354852" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13354852</a><p>If you'll forgive me copy and pasting from my comment there:<p>I love how completely alien they are compared to us. The sort of decentralized nature of their nervous system compared to our path of evolution. (I'm no marine/evolutionary biologist so I'm probably butchering the terminology...)<p>I loved reading the two pieces Sy Montgomery wrote that are in Orion Magazine.<p><a href="https://orionmagazine.org/article/deep-intellect/" rel="nofollow">https://orionmagazine.org/article/deep-intellect/</a><p>And the follow-up:<p><a href="https://orionmagazine.org/2011/11/interviews-with-an-octopus/" rel="nofollow">https://orionmagazine.org/2011/11/interviews-with-an-octopus...</a>
I like how Octopuses are essentially a distributed system with most of the processing power in the arms. I wonder if anyone has attempted to model an octopus "brain"?
Our 'mind' is distributed across our organs too :) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteric_nervous_system" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteric_nervous_system</a>
I find it fascinating that we have very little idea how any other animal experiences the world - it's not something we can even imagine - and that seems especially true for these creatures with more of a "distributed" nervous system.<p>Also makes me wonder if I should avoid eating calamari...
Just finished the book this past weekend, highly recommend. The science is great but the philosophy behind it all was what was really interesting to me.
> Further, in an octopus, it is not clear where the brain itself begins and ends.<p>This to me is the central fallacy of the embodied versus central cognition argument. Why is there a need to define such a separation? Just view the neural network in its entirety and the "problem" is solved.
There was an octopus, Inky, who escaped from an aquarium by jumping out of his tank and sliding down a small diameter drainpipe to the sea at night.<p>I always wondered if he knew (or at least had an idea) where the drainpipe went and if he did how.