It seems right to rank octopuses and other cephalopods very highly, maybe near the top, in terms of how much suffering they could experience due to human farming.
Note that we now probably have some ideas for getting higher resolution information about suffering. This gives important information about the suffering inflicted on farm animals. So suffering might not be directly connected to intelligence.
In the case of octopuses:
Compared to other animals, such as chickens or carp (who suffer in their own ways), it’s possible that octopuses find the dense presence of other members of their species highly unnatural and stressful, maybe horrifically so. So a farm full of closely packed octopuses might be nightmarish to them, e.g. fear of cannibalism and other aggression might be rampant.
Though other animals may be very intelligent, it is possible octopus have far greater need for freedom and expression of their intelligence. This might be because they live in an open ocean environment so it’s dominant to have a strong, constant drive to be clever and execute complex plans. Suffering might be nightmarish in confinement.
In the same way that the above environments might be nightmarish for octopuses, many factory farm practices probably inflict unnatural and tortuous conditions on animals, often for tiny economic benefit.
Sometimes, people seem to directly draw a line between intelligence and capacity to suffer. But I don’t think a simple mapping is ideal when considering how to reduce suffering.
To get intuition, it seems that many abilities or traits that we consider to be intelligence don’t have anything to do with strength of feeling or suffering. For example, if I can do more math or write better, I doubt that this means my personal suffering from negative stimuli must be higher.
I’ve worked with people who are smart, they seem to have eidetic memory, extraordinary math theorem proving ability, e.g. things that we consider highly intelligent. From what they say and also their behavior, it seems these faculties are “disjoint” to their other experiences. Despite their abilities, they don’t exist on another plane of consciousness.
It seems right to rank octopuses and other cephalopods very highly, maybe near the top, in terms of how much suffering they could experience due to human farming.
Note that we now probably have some ideas for getting higher resolution information about suffering. This gives important information about the suffering inflicted on farm animals. So suffering might not be directly connected to intelligence.
In the case of octopuses:
Compared to other animals, such as chickens or carp (who suffer in their own ways), it’s possible that octopuses find the dense presence of other members of their species highly unnatural and stressful, maybe horrifically so. So a farm full of closely packed octopuses might be nightmarish to them, e.g. fear of cannibalism and other aggression might be rampant.
Though other animals may be very intelligent, it is possible octopus have far greater need for freedom and expression of their intelligence. This might be because they live in an open ocean environment so it’s dominant to have a strong, constant drive to be clever and execute complex plans. Suffering might be nightmarish in confinement.
In the same way that the above environments might be nightmarish for octopuses, many factory farm practices probably inflict unnatural and tortuous conditions on animals, often for tiny economic benefit.
Sometimes, people seem to directly draw a line between intelligence and capacity to suffer. But I don’t think a simple mapping is ideal when considering how to reduce suffering.
To get intuition, it seems that many abilities or traits that we consider to be intelligence don’t have anything to do with strength of feeling or suffering. For example, if I can do more math or write better, I doubt that this means my personal suffering from negative stimuli must be higher.
I’ve worked with people who are smart, they seem to have eidetic memory, extraordinary math theorem proving ability, e.g. things that we consider highly intelligent. From what they say and also their behavior, it seems these faculties are “disjoint” to their other experiences. Despite their abilities, they don’t exist on another plane of consciousness.