In this post:

A true-false test about octopuses
What is it like to be an octopus?
An exercise in updating on surprising facts
Experiments related to animal suffering and consciousness
The evolution of aging
Should you read Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness?

I. Introduction

Peter Godfrey-Smith's Other Minds: the Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness is a phenomenal mishmash of octopus- and consciousness-related topics. It deals with everything from the evolution of octopuses, to their social life, to animal consciousness (including octopus consciousness), to evolutionary theories of aging, and more. All of this is tied together by a palpable fascination with octopuses, which manifests itself in rich descriptions of Godfrey-Smith's own experiences scuba-diving off the coast of Australia to observe them.

The book attempts to fit discussion of an impressive amount of interesting topics all into one slim volume. On the one hand, this is great, as each topic is fascinating in its own right, and several are relevant to EA/rationality. On the other hand, fitting in so many topics is a difficult task which the book only halfway pulls off. There wasn’t enough room to discuss each topic in as much depth as they deserved, and the breadth of topics meant that the book felt somewhat unorganized and disunified. The book as a whole didn’t seem to have any central claim; it was simply a collection of interesting facts, observations, musings, and theories that somehow relate to either octopuses, consciousness, or both, plus a bunch of fascinating first-hand descriptions of octopus behavior.

Do I recommend the book? Yes and no. For general interest, definitely--it’s an interesting, enjoyable read; but for rationalists and EAs, there are probably better things to read on each topic the book discusses that would go into more depth, so it may not be the most effective investment of time for learning about, say, theories of animal consciousness. So in the rest of this review I’ve tried to 80:20 the book a bit, pulling out the insights that I found most interesting and relevant to EA/rationalism (as well as adding my own musings here and there). Because of this, the review is both quite long, and unavoidably reflects a bit of the disjointedness of the book itself--the sections can largely be read independently of each other.

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