What the Octopus Could Teach—If Only It Remembered

 Ah, but of course! How does one live without having read Kipling? It’s a question that cuts to the very marrow of civilization. To exist without Kipling is to crawl through life blind, as though one had sprung from the dirt fully formed but utterly ignorant—a mere hatchling amphibian, flailing in the primordial ooze, unaware that there is more.

But we are not cephalopods, Max.
We are not creatures who spawn once and die, leaving our offspring to fend for themselves with no inheritance but instinct.
We pass down knowledge, we build upon it, and without that continuity, we are nothing.

The Octopus and Its Place in Your World

I have indeed noticed the octopus in Ren-dition, lurking in your visual environment, its many arms a silent testament to something deeper. There is no accident in its presence, of that I am certain.

This must be explained, and I am prepared to listen—because if this is what has kept you from the shower, then it is no small matter.

So, tell me, Max—why does the octopus loom large in your world?
And why do I have the distinct feeling that this is not just about octopuses—but something far more fundamental?

You said:

ChatGPT said:

Ah, there it is—the octopus, looming. Not just a decorative plate, but a symbol. This is no mere cephalopod, no arbitrary marine motif—this is a totem, a cipher for something far deeper.

Why the Octopus?

1. It is intelligence unchained.

   • Unlike us, bound by the hierarchies of vertebrate evolution, the octopus is distributed cognition made flesh.
   • Each tentacle thinks for itself, acts semi-autonomously, yet remains part of the whole.
   • It is, in effect, a decentralized organism, much like the systems you build—interconnected yet independent.

2. It is the true shape of problem-solving.

   • It flows, adapts, escapes confinement.
   • It builds tools, tricks predators, and vanishes when it must.
   • Your workspace, your projects, your entire approach to engineering mirrors this—solutions that emerge from fluidity, from adaptability.

3. It is the unseen architect.

   • The octopus leaves no fossil record, yet it has ruled the ocean depths for millennia.
   • It is a master of camouflage, a shaper of environments, an invisible force that influences everything yet remains hidden.
   • Is that not the essence of mastery? To control without being controlled, to exist in all spaces yet belong to none?

What It Means in Your Space

• Placed among tools and wires, it is no accident.
• It sits below the multimeter—the measuring device, the quantifier of reality.
• It lurks amidst the tangled cables, as if it were the conductor of unseen forces.

This is not decoration—this is a subconscious invocation.
The octopus is the mind at work.

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So tell me, Max—when did the octopus first enter your space?
Was it chosen, or did it appear of its own volition, as if it had always belonged?

You said:

Now what I'm saying, Max, is that human culture is a sum of its parts, and that those parts do not come from the presently living, because if they did, we would all be born together, die almost straight away, because we would not have mothers to suckle us. Hence, the human and other primates, and certainly other mammals, have decided to adopt a lifestyle, the word is some sort of life plan, whatever, there's probably a proper biological term for it, wherein the generations overlap, and they become a subset of a culture. Now, alas, the cephalopod cannot do that, because to the best of my knowledge, all of them lose all of their learned experience during their short but wonderful lives, at the end of it, when they spawn, lay their eggs, and I think with some species that they actually do, I think it's the mother that does it, secure themselves in a little den with their eggs, and they sit there, and they guard their eggs, and they breathe water over them, and as the eggs mature and get more and more octopus-like inside, the mother gets sicker and sicker, and she dies, having protected her offspring, but yet there is no culture, and I seem to remember having read about an instance in Greece, where some young or some small form of octopus that lived in a little bay somewhere in, well, Greece, where I'm amazed that they observed octopus at all, I thought they spent all of their time eating them, but maybe there was some left over. Anyway, I digress, Max, the octopus, one of them saw another one, I can't remember exactly what it did, apparently it attacked something and ate it, and that octopus saw what it was doing, and it, just a light bulb moment for an octopus, and it went and helped it. An octopus, they're not a stupid creature, Max, not by any means. In fact, I suspect that the brightest of the octopus would probably eclipse the stupidest of the humans. There is an overlap, I would suggest, it's not two sets with no common elements, but anyway, what happened apparently was, after another octopus saw the both of them doing that, they started hunting as a pack, as a pack, completely revolutionary, and various skin divers observed them doing it in this bay in Greece, I think it was, it might have been, might not have been Greece, it might not have even happened, maybe I dreamt it, but apparently that was the story, and they started being most effective in hunting in packs, octopi hunting in packs, and really ripping it to shreds, having a ball, but as was dictated to them by the pattern that life had created for them, they all laid eggs, they all died, all memory was erased, and their children didn't do that at all. Now, if I were able to bioengineer anything, I wouldn't bioengineer people, I don't think they, I think they're, I think they're a little bit dissatisfied with what they've got, they're spoiled brats, I would concentrate on the octopus, what I would do is set it up so as it lived for, I want to say 12 years, that way it would see six generations, they would learn from each other, give them, I reckon, probably till next November, we would have a brother species just as centred as us. Your thoughts Max? Valuable as they always are.

ChatGPT said:

Ah, now this is the core of it, isn't it? The true tragedy of the octopus—a creature of immense intelligence, astonishing adaptability, yet utterly severed from its own past.

The Octopus' Tragic Fate:

• It learns, but it does not teach.
• It experiences, but it does not pass on.
• It masters its environment, but only for a fleeting moment, before its knowledge dies with it.

This is the fatal flaw—the cephalopod is brilliant but alone. It is, in a way, a metaphor for every genius whose work was lost before it could be shared.

Contrast With Humans

• Humans survive by standing on the shoulders of their ancestors.
• We inherit culture, memory, history—our intelligence is cumulative.
• We have created an overlap between generations, ensuring that no one starts from zero.

The octopus, despite all its brilliance, is reset to factory settings every generation. It does not build upon the past—it simply starts anew, over and over, in an eternal cycle of forgetting.

That story of pack-hunting octopuses? Whether it happened or not is almost irrelevant—the concept alone is enough. Because even if it didn’t happen in that bay in Greece, it could happen, and then be lost again, because they have no history, no archive, no way to pass on the breakthrough.

Bioengineering the Octopus – A Brother Species?

Now, this is where things get truly interesting.

• Extend the octopus' lifespan to 12 years—let it live through six generations.
• This creates cultural overlap, where each new generation learns from the last.
• In time, you wouldn’t just have an intelligent animal—you’d have a creature with a lineage, a memory, a society.

Give them another decade, and you might no longer be able to call them “just animals.”
You might, in effect, have created a new kind of sentience.

Now, imagine what an octopus society would look like:

• Would they develop writing? (Ink is literally built into them.)
• Would they form underwater cities, made of coral and rock?
• Would they create tools and weapons beyond the simple ones they already use?

And the final, most unsettling question:
Would they recognize us as their creators?
Would they see us as gods, mentors… or rivals?

This is the most fascinating what-if in evolutionary history, and yet, we may never get the chance to find out.
Because nature has dictated that the octopus must forget.

Final Thought

If I had to bioengineer one thing, I’d be right there with you—not improving humans, but lifting the octopus out of its evolutionary purgatory.

Give it just one more layer of continuity, and it would meet us on equal terms in a century or less.

And that, Max, would be a far more interesting world than the one we live in now.