[brookst]

I had a joyful experience at the octopus farm near Kona Hawaii (now sadly closed because they were even more sadly apparently not treating the animals well).

With hands in the tank, I was able to play catch with a small plastic ball and a roughly 2 month old octopus. It was definitely catch — I could scoot the ball anywhere and the octopus would grab it and throw it back.

Possibly a trained behavior, who knows? It was really charming and delightful.

[colechristensen]

One of the struggles with researching octopus intelligence is that they’re basically untrainable. They’ll do what you want them to if they’re interested but it’s quite difficult to get them to be consistently interested.

In other words, it was probably fun for the octopus too.

[diggan]

> One of the struggles with researching octopus intelligence is that they’re basically untrainable. They’ll do what you want them to if they’re interested but it’s quite difficult to get them to be consistently interested.

One of my dogs is the same. She knows exactly what you want her to do, but if there is no rewards involved, it's impossible. But as soon as you hold a snack in your hand, anything and more is possible.

Maybe the scientists haven't found a good enough snack to give them?

[jeffreygoesto]

Sounds a lot like my daughter. And me if I think about it :/

[tomaskafka]

Doing whatever she wants is a feature, not a bug :)

[inglor_cz]

Boredom is likely a very good indicator of high cognitive capabilities.

[PeterisP]

It seems quite plausible that "boredom" is a mechanism that is required (or at least useful) for building high cognitive capabilities.

[card_zero]

I don't exactly believe in it. I think one can only be bored by external forces, or some irrationality.

[inglor_cz]

External Forces of Boredom would be a nice band name.

[brookst]

Punchline: album after album filled with 12 copies of the same 8 minute drone song.

[telesilla]

>treating animals well

At any farm where animals are bred as commercial food sources we don't treat them with dignity. Another farm on the way - https://www.npr.org/2024/02/07/1229233837/octopus-farm-spain...

[zilti]

There are lots of farms where animals are treated well and with dignity. At least over here in Switzerland. Source: worked at one, and saw a lot of them (my father worked as a vet).

[sweetheart]

> There are lots of farms where animals are treated well and with dignity.

What practices are used that constitute good treatment with dignity? And what animals are you talking about, and producing what goods?

I ask because I find that most people who say stuff like this think that a dairy cow with access to open pastures is treated well, and with dignity, but then overlook the fact that the animal is routinely artificially impregnated, separated from their calf over and over and over again, and then killed at a quarter of her natural lifespan because her milk production is no longer economically beneficial to the company that "owns" her.

I'm not trying to say that that's the case here, just trying to get specific because I talk with a lot of people who say similar things as you, and I want to know if you're saying something substantially different or not.

[telesilla]

Yes, I've also visited and lived on such farms. They are for small specialist production, I wouldn't say commercial. Great that you know more of them: it proves we can treat animals very well and still have (albeit at low quantity) meat production.

[zilti]

It isn't "small specialist". It's the norm in Switzerland, because the law demands it.

[wahnfrieden]

Are they industrialized farms?

[Voultapher]

Who are you fooling here? Yourself? Imagine your children being born into one of these farms. There is no self determination. Only because we are not overtly cruel doesn't mean we don't treat them like slaves. "Look at my slave, now that I impregnated her she gets to have a couple more square meter to walk around in until her children are taken away from her." Not all farms are equally bad, but there is no farm where if you applied the same treatment to humans it would not constitute human rights violations. You might argue non human animals are different, but why does that matter? Black and white people are different, why would that difference justify enslaving one group?

[short_sells_poo]

Are there bad actors in farming even in Switzerland? Sure. But the majority of the farms I've been to have treated their animals with respect and kindness. The cows actually spend most of their time out on the pastures grazing freely. They are only taken indoors when the weather gets too cold for them in winter. It's very far from what people picture when talking about industrial farming in the US. It is true that there's an ultimate cruelty to keeping farm animals: we do it so eventually we can kill and eat them.

So if you argue against all meat consumption by humans, then it is true: no keeper of animals can be considered "fit for keeping humans". Even a small farm purely for the owner's own consumption places restrictions on the livestock's freedom and ultimately keeps them so they can be eaten. Even animals that we keep as pets could be considered to live in inhuman conditions, because we restrict their freedoms.

[sweetheart]

Treating an animal well sometimes does not mean that the animal was treated well. It's nice that the cows you're talking about are given lots of access to pastures, but that doesn't mean that anything else can be done to the animal without it qualifying as disrespectful or unkind.

I can't think of another situation in which one could choose to kill an animal for pleasure at 10% it's lifespan, and think that this was kind or respectful. Can you?

[blendergeek]

When a lion kills a gazelle on the savannah, is that "kind and respectful"?

No, it's just part of the "circle of life".

Humans also interact with their environment and eat non human life forms (plants, cows, etc).

If we prove that trees have consciousness, will we need to stop killing them as well? Where does it end?

[short_sells_poo]

Animals receive and give very little mercy or kindness in nature. In fact, nature is capable of stunning brutality - eg newly "crowned" male lions kill off the cubs of the old male.

Humans have a capacity of reasoning about their actions, which places a certain responsibility on us to do better than nature. But where do you draw the line?

Ultimately we shouldn't eat animals at all - we should eat lab grown meat. But lab grown meat is still far away. So what do we do in the mean time? Ban all meat consumption? Is that even realistic?

[bheadmaster]

If you start treating farm animals as humans, where do you draw the line?

Is growing vegetables also inhumane, since we're controlling every aspect of those plants' lives?

Is doing pest control in your own house a mass murder, because you're killing a colony of cockroaches or termites?

Is washing your hands a genocide, because you're killing millions bacteria and tiny parasites on your hands?

That kind of extremist empathy is fatal to humanity. I'd rather choose to be cruel than dead.

[Voultapher]

Respectfully, every comparison you made seems like a false equivalence to me. I'd argue extrapolating from the human perspective to a cow is much closer than to a cockroach. Personally I draw the line at "complex" emotions, somewhere between insects and fish. Yes, that line is arbitrary and I can't prove it. But so is drawing the line at, humans and nothing else that isn't cute. You can't prove the validity of that line either. So what are we left with? Is it so unreasonable to extrapolate from one mammal to another?

[bheadmaster]

The point of my comment is to point out the absurdity of the equivalences drawn in the grandparent:

> Imagine your children being born into one of these farms.

> You might argue non human animals are different, but why does that matter? Black and white people are different, why would that difference justify enslaving one group?

I don't claim to know where the exact line is, but thankfully, I don't have to, because the world doesn't run on ethical guidelines, it runs on power struggle. Grandparent was quick to draw the analogy to black slavery - I'd like to point out that black slaves were powerful enough to fight for their own freedom. Cows and chickens aren't. We're gonna eat them because that's just how the world works.

Of course, if someone very powerful becomes obsessed with animal rights, and uses political power to ban meat, I guess we'll stop eating them. I'd be very sad if that happens, but again, that's just how the world works.