[ekelsen]

Interesting to think what could be if cephalopods raised their young instead of leaving them to completely fend for themselves. It would start intergenerational knowledge transfer, i.e. culture. Maybe selection pressure then trends towards group cooperation instead of going it solo.

I still think there would be huge barriers to "civilization" as I think you mean? (Do any of the apes have "civilization"?).

[fhdkweig]

The real problem with cephalopods is their lifespan. For their age, they are almost as smart as humans, the problem is that they don't live past the age of 5 years.

[ekelsen]

I would argue that not having any overlap between generations is a bigger problem. It guarantees no accumulation of knowledge.

[fhdkweig]

Agreed. If they were social enough to form large communities of unrelated families, it would also fix the generation overlap. But they don't do that either. They seem to be in a weird evolutionary dead end for intelligence.

[sarkhan]

Orcas do this already.

I mean there might be a already a civilization that is in the building that will peak 100k years later, and we just don't know about it.

[ekelsen]

having arms is probably an advantage in developing tool-use, but who knows!