The line for sentience is a very low bar to hurdle. Trees may demonstrate sentience [0].

The larger problem is that people are generally thinking of sapience, but sapience tends to be defined in axiomatic terms, so we don't have a clear understanding of what it requires or means.

[0] https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1469-...

Well, the bar for sentience is actually so low I am quite sure bacteria and even individual cells in multi-cellular organisms pass it - almost every living cell detects aspects of and reacts to its environment.

It is indeed incredibly low. Slime molds [0] can pass it. There is a memory component, which would prevent single cells from passing it, but it's not a metric that is all that useful in determining the intelligence of a species.

[0] http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.15891.43041

Even some single cells maybe https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11677-w

Plastic has memory doesn't it?

Sounds like the sentience tests need to be rewritten

Plastic has memory, but not feeling/sensation nor interaction with the environment. It is also not living by other standards (self-sustaining, reproductive).

I don't see how your link supports trees potentially being sentient.

Disclaimer: i don’t have a dog in the fight…or a branch on a tree, in this context.

Sentient is defined as able to perceive or feel things.

The paper linked discusses how trees can “communicate” and “feel” based on release of specific chemicals.

An exert from the introduction: “Recent research has revealed that plants can sense their neighbours without direct physical contact; mechanisms for this include detection of a reduced ratio of red to far-red in light reflected from neighbouring foliage…”

This was also a plot of a terrible M. Night Shyamalan movie.

That’s the connection the poster suggested, as the bar for sentience is quite low.

I feel like Star Trek handled the question much better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol2WP0hc0NY

Intelligence, self-awareness, and consciousness seem like three reasonable requirements. I don't really buy the "consciousness" requirement, but it's a stab at what most people associate with sentience.

Calling trees sentient is just nonsense. And I mean that literally. I try not to dismiss people's work out of hand, but there's a certain line of philosophical thought whose best rebuttal is to ignore it.

It is very common for Science Fiction to use "sentient" where "sapient" is the correct word. Star Trek is no exception. Calling trees sentient isn't nonsense; your understanding of what the word means is simply incorrect.

In fact in Italian, which is close to Latin, "sentire", the root of sentient, means to feel. "Sapere", the root of sapient, means to know.

There's a higher level of intelligence required to "know", rather than to just "feel".

Is it really incorrect or does the term just happen to be a homonymous collision of more than one semantic concept?

I don't know (it's an actual question I ask myself, not some rhetoric vehicle), but the concept you declare as incorrect is so widespread it makes me wonder... (obviously, the meaning in the legal context we are talking about it's clearly on one side)

Incorrect in the specific context of a scientific or legal discussion which operates using a formalized definition. In normal conversation it is sort of nonsensical to say that the widespread usage of a word is incorrect, as correctness is defined by widespread usage.

The usage in SF stories stands out because often the writer was _intending_ for the word to be using the formalized definition used in science.

Traditionally, "sentience" includes consciousness, though. The OED defines it as "The condition or quality of being sentient, consciousness, susceptibility to sensation". It's actually science fiction that invented the concept of "sapient" in the sense you mean it -- the OED just refers to it as an old word for "wise" like Milton writing of "a sapient prince"

Well, that definition, like most dictionary definitions of complex philosophical or scientific concepts, is circular or too vague. The quality of being sentient is obviously circular, Consciousness is even more vague a concept than sentience, and Susceptibility to sensation is either circular (if we seek to define sensation narrowly) or too vague (if we define sensation broadly - after all, rocks are susceptible to sensation in some sense, as they immediately move when you kick them). This is not a critique of the OED: dictionaries are meant to explain to humans what other humans mean when they use a word, not give an exhaustive understanding of its deeper meanings and implications (encyclopedias aim for that).

When actually trying to rigorously define the word "sentience" we currently have settled on a very basic but measurable criterion: does the living thing we are discussing react to stimuli in its environment, and does it do so in a manner which suggests some kind of memory or other information processing power?

Conversely, consciousness has no similar even slightly rigorous definition, but it is still used as a "higher level" of sentience, sentience + some other stuff that bring you closer to how humans experience the world. Sapience seems to fit somewhere in between.

> "Sentience is the capacity to experience feelings and sensations." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience

There are many plants that clearly respond to stimuli (Mimosa pudica(shy plant) as well as the Venus flytrap). As well as almost any plant following the light to grow, as well as plants that send out tendrils to anchor.

> "The subjective awareness of experiences by a conscious individual are known as qualia in Western philosophy"

I'll agree with you that we have no knowledge of plants being conscious.

> "sentience is a minimalistic way of defining consciousness, which otherwise commonly and collectively describes sentience plus further features of the mind and consciousness, such as creativity, intelligence, sapience, self-awareness, and intentionality (the ability to have thoughts about something). These further features of consciousness may not be necessary for sentience, which is the capacity to feel sensations and emotions."

> Intelligence, self-awareness, and consciousness seem like three reasonable requirements. I don't really buy the "consciousness" requirement, but it's a stab at what most people associate with sentience.

That would be _sapience_, not _sentience_. Which is the point. Sentience is a ridiculously low bar to clear.

As I understand it, the problem is that you need to define “sentient” somehow, and whatever definition you come up with should be applied consistently to all organisms. If you want to capture all the organisms you think should be called sentient, trees are sentient according to that definition.

I can't really answer you clearly without knowing what definition of sentience you expect to be correct. Especially as I've already noted most people think of sentience as sapience, which it isn't.

Trees respond to both negative and positive stimuli, and relay that information to other plants around them, exchanging information about them. They take both reactive and proactive stances in regards to both negative and positive stimuli - which may be sentience.

Couldn't a robot be programmed to respond to stimuli, and to communicate with other robots? Would that then be a form of sentience?

Yes, they could be, though the question usually arises about whether a living thing is sentient, and it's fairly natural and easy to define life such that robots are not living beings.

Overall the point here is that sentience isn't a very useful measure of anything. If there were an explicit law recognizing the rights of all living things to a decent death, we would essentially be forced to become exclusive carnivores, as its almost impossible to euthanize a plant or fungus.

Fruits (as in from fruiting plants, not fruits in the culinary sense) I assume would still be fair game as they are designed to separate from the parent plant, often falling off without any intervention even.

Well, given that seeds inside the fruit sense their environment and start germinating only in specific conditions, even this would be debatable. Hopefully, if the cells of the fruit body itself are not sentient (if they do not react to their environment in some meaningful way), then eating the fruiting body is probably ok, provided you euthanize the seeds or let them live on.

Yes. The bar for sentience is quite low. It only means that one is capable of feeling sensations. (For example, Wikipedia gives the definition, "Sentience is the capacity to experience feelings and sensations.")

Does an arduino have sentience? It can certainly sense stuff via its gpio pins. As for "feelings", I don't know, would having a state machine that transitions between "happy" and "sad" based on gpio inputs count?

That's an interesting question, or at least it might be in the future, as it cuts right to the heart of what it means to be alive.

Right now no, an Arduino can't be sentient because it's not alive. If at some future point an Arduino could tick all the "is alive" boxes [0]: - homeostasis - organisation - metabolism - growth - adaptation - response - reproduction Then yes, there would be a good case for the Arduino being sentient.

However if you take a look at the list you'll see response is listed, that's because anything that is alive is sentient by definition.

Sentient by definition is really the point, sentient and sapient were defined specifically to codify the uniqueness of humanity.

All these other this are sentient, but only us, humans, and sapient.

The definitions although seemingly scientific are simply a re-enforcement of the biblical idea that the world was created for us, and that we can essentially do as we please, you can see this is the test for sapience, which is, is the specimen a member of the homo sapiens species.

Just for completeness, and to also touch on why this might become an important question; you'll also see organisation on that list. Organisation is usually defined as being made up of one or more cells, which suggests that an Arduino, or any machine, will always fail to pass that test.

Essentially humans have defined life in terms of itself. This makes sense, we only have a single reference and as such we can't even begin to imagine what other forms of life may exist.

However, as we create ever more complex nondeterministic machines, or if we ever get serious about finding extraterrestrial life, this definition is going to have to change to allow for other possibilities.

[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life

> The definitions although seemingly scientific are simply a re-enforcement of the biblical idea that the world was created for us, and that we can essentially do as we please . . .

That's a historic misinterpretation of biblical teaching on the place of people on the world. Genesis 1 gives humanity dominion over the creation, but given that Genesis 2 parallels that command with the twin verbs, "tend and keep" (or sometimes "guard and defend"), the idea can't permit wanton destruction[1]. Rather, humans, made in the image of God the King, have a royal calling to work for the flourishing of life in all the earth.

We're called, not to do as we please, but to do what pleases the Creator. Thus, Proverbs speaks of the tender mercy of a righteous person towards his or her animals, and contrasts it with the cruelty of the wicked. Deuteronomy's rules for warfare forbid destroying fruit trees, for they're the means of sustaining life.

Historically speaking, many of the evangelical Christians who joined Wilberforce to campaign against British slavery also started the first humaine societies, anti-child-labor groups, and the first women's rights organizations.

The Bible calls humanity to compassionate care for all life, including plants, animals and unborn humans.

[1] Lynn White's essay, The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis (1967. Science 155: 1203-1207), contributed to this idea that Christianity caused our ecological crisis. However, Francis Schaeffer's 1970 book in responce to White's essay, Pollution and the Death of Man, explains the Bible's actual teaching on humanity's calling to steward creation for God's glory.

"Aliveness" isn't anywhere in the definition of sentience. I can perfectly well imagine a sentient system that does not grow, metabolize or reproduce.

And "responds to input" isn't really the same thing at all as "capable of feeling sensations" (though, like many definitions, the line between the two is fuzzy, hard to pin down, and possibly context dependent.)

Life itself is a notoriously tricky thing to define definitively.

> Does an arduino have sentience?

Not yet..

Why are not all animals recognised as such under that law?

Unfortunately a lot of legislators lack sentience themselves...

Because at times it's convenient to maim and/or kill them.

Sometimes it is necessary. Pest control is inherent. We cannot allow mice, rats, etc to live in urban environments unchecked.

Mice are sentient, does that mean we should only use no-kill traps and then release the mice somewhere far away? Many urban pests have population numbers that are 50-100X higher per square mile in the city than they could sustain in the countryside. So if we could even theoretically capture them and release them in the countryside, most would die due lack of sufficient food, which also seems unethical. And simply releasing a pest on the other side of the city so it isn't bothering your house clearly isn't solving the problem.

Killing animals, particularly pests, seems like an inherent part of urban living. Is this unethical? I don't think so.

To make it simpler: consider the lobster. It's not a pest yet still isn't considered above being boiled alive for no reason other than "that's what paw deid".

Slipping the phrase "consider the lobster" into a place where it was germane to the conversation made me lol. Well done.

There is some thought backed neuroscience that lobsters can't feel pain in the human conception of it because of the lack of a neocortex. I don't know how well that can be tested, but it goes beyond justifying it because "that's what paw deid"

A lobster being boiled behaves the same way a cow or dog or human behaves when being boiled. Seems strange to make the cutoff for acceptable treatment based around a wishy-washy ill-defined notion of "Can this thing that is very different than me feel pain? I promise I am not biased by the fact that I have vertebrae."

I do a lot of hunting, fishing, etc....there are a lot of misconceptions in this thread. The head of a snapping turtle will still try to bite things up to an hour after it is separated from its body. Its body will still grasp and wriggle and flinch and react to stimuli 30 minutes or longer even after it is decapitated. It reacts as if it was alive and I was to poke it or stab it or scald it.

Hopefully most people can agree that when the turtle is flinching 30 minutes after death, it is not actually "feeling pain", despite reacting the same way that a cow or a dog or does. The argument that "it behaves the same as a cow/dog/human" is flawed. Anybody who's butchered a chicken or a fish can tell you that they can react as if in pain even after they are reasonably considered to be dead.

I assume lobsters are capable of suffering because that’s low cost for myself and has the potential to be correct, but “they respond to harm like a human would” is surprisingly weak evidence given my own reflexes will respond to pain well before the sensation reaches my brain, let alone passes through enough of my brain to reach the level of conscious awareness — if it was otherwise, I wouldn’t e.g. remove my hand from scalding water or stream fast enough to avoid injury.

How is being derived from current understanding of biology wishy-washy? Reaction to stimuli and pain are different phenomena. If you’re stance is “we just don’t know for certain so it’s better to be conservative” that’s fine, but that uncertainty shouldn’t be conflated with actual reason when it’s just based on wishy-washy anthropomorphism.

Your claim of lobsters not being able to feel pain is wishy-washy because it's a convenient assumption based off of an oversimplification. "Invertebrates don't feel pain because they lack the specific machinery mammals use to experience pain". If you just stop there then yes, it does seem silly to worry about a thing that doesn't exist. However, what I've seen of the models suggests that we are far away from being able to confidently say we have a complete model of a lobster's nervous system.

We can’t yet even define consciousness so of course we don’t have a “good” model. But using our current understanding of the “machinery” makes more sense to me than basing the decision on whatever it is you’re vaguely referring to, otherwise I don’t see what stops one from going to full Jainism. If our understanding of that machinery changes so will my opinion.

You haven't really given much rationale beyond "they seem to react to stimuli". At best, your position that they have consciousness or feel pain analogous to humans appears based on intuition; at worst, on dogma. Neither is a particularly reasoned stance.

It costs us nothing to admit what we don't know and reserve our judgments until we do. Are you arguing that we not?

No, I've already stated that is a completely reasonable position. It was the main reason behind my decision to become vegetarian. I don't think it's no cost to everybody though and some people's health deteriorates, particularly on vegan diets. However, being conservative in the face of uncertainty is a different stance than claiming they experiencing pain. It also doesn't address how you avoid the slippery-slope argument. For example, we haven't proved plants are not conscious so how do you reconcile a vegetarian/vegan diet with that? For me, that's why I rely on the biological argument that started this discussion. I have a feeling many people just resort to their intuition. Meaning it's just the same position of convenience you railed against masquerading as principled, reasoned stance.

My personal choices aside, there are also reasonable arguments against it that I don't think we should immediately dismiss with hand-wavy anthropomorphic arguments.

The same way an ant does as well.

Because we can only wager hazy guesses as to what it means to experience. If a line is to be drawn, than it must be drawn in seemingly inconsistent and arbitrary ways.

There is a mimosa in a garden near me that will close its leaves when you touch it. Is it experiencing the sensation of touch?

(Edit: mimosa pudica, sometimes also called the shameful plant on account of how tenderly it seems to fold itself)

The original source linked in TFA states anything with a backbone is covered.

Which would not apply to either octopuses, crabs, or lobsters

Are fetuses not sentient for most of their growth, then?

By the above definition even amoeba and flatworms are sentient.

Amoeba can feel sensations? Not a rhetorical question, genuinely want to know.

They can react to negative stimuli. The question of if that means something can "feel" in the sense we tend to mean it isn't easy to answer.

I mean, my tendon in my knee can "react" to "negative stimuli" when a doctor strikes it with a rubber hammer.

I guess the question is about how these words are being used, and whether they're referring to automatic biological reflexes or something like a conscious experience, sentience, or sapience, depending on how you use the terms.

Sentience always requires more than just reaction, but a memory component. That is, it can take a proactive response to avoid that negative stimuli in the future. However, measuring both of those is generally very difficult, and so determining if something is sentient can be difficult.

The bar for sentience is basically, "is it more than automatic". Which is fairly low and easy to clear. It doesn't even require that there be consciousness.

>However, measuring both of those is generally very difficult, and so determining if something is sentient can be difficult.

That makes sense. So then, we should probably be very cautious about statements that openly entertain such possibilities given that they may be hard to substantiate meaningfully.

>The bar for sentience is basically, "is it more than automatic". Which is fairly low and easy to clear. It doesn't even require that there be consciousness.

Huh, every definition I've seen when I read about this stuff in college, and that I currently see when I google, explicitly relates in some way to consciousness. And anything that means "reaction" "sense" "detect" in a sense pertinent to sentience meant some kind of conscious sensing, conscious reacting. Did the definition change at some point?

> Huh, every definition I've seen when I read about this stuff in college, and that I currently see when I google, explicitly relates in some way to consciousness. And anything that means "reaction" "sense" "detect" in a sense pertinent to sentience meant some kind of conscious sensing, conscious reacting. Did the definition change at some point?

You're sort of there, and sort of not. Sentience does require feeling, yes. But feeling doesn't require consciousness, no.

Sentience requires that the subject can desire pleasure, and desire to avoid pain, but neither of those things explicitly requires conscious thought. They are feeling, which you'll find in every definition of sentience, but desire doesn't have any need of a conscious mind. Collective behaviours, like in trees, can exhibit desire and can show pain, without the need for a consciousness to exist.

Claiming sentience requires mere feeling and that such cases fall into a different category than consciousness is an interesting intellectual exercise, and I'm quite familiar with that exercise, but as I said in a different comment, I don't think that's actually as consistent with normal definitions as you appear to believe.

>Sentience requires that the subject can desire pleasure, and desire to avoid pain, but neither of those things explicitly requires conscious thought.

I understand this as a recently popular argument that exists in the ether, and at best I can say I think there are numerous problems with it, although it's a legitimate and interesting idea. Whatever it is though, it's certainly not accepted mainstream usage of the term in normal circumstances, it's more a position in an argument seeking to draw distinctions between biological reflexes at one extreme and full blown consciousness at the other.

>Collective behaviours, like in trees, can exhibit desire and can show pain, without the need for a consciousness to exist.

I think that is only the case if you water down the meaning of words like desire and pain in such away that estranges them from sentience, which of course, makes it problematic to invoke the words, used in that way, to illustrate case examples of sentience.

I also have to note that I'm finding it pretty condescending of you to declare that I'm "sort of there, sort of not," and then repeating back to me some pretty bog standard material I'm perfectly familiar with as if its new information, and concluding by endorsing a fringey-at-best definition that is not, despite your protestations to the contrary, the usual or accepted meaning of the term.

I don't think the definition has changed philosophically, but using consciousness as a definition makes decision making very hard. We have no way to prove what animals are and aren't conscious, and what evidence we do have either way is extremely hazy. Using a line like "is more than automatic" to define what we think is probably sapient is pretty reasonable. Maybe it catches some things that are just complex machines with minor learning capabilities, but if you're more worried about excluding sapient beings than including non-sapient it's a reasonable heuristic for decision making.

I do personally think the line can be pulled back a bit to include creatures that's learning ability is extremely inflexible, but in the end it comes down to one's philosophical stance on what is likely to indicate a conscious creature.

Okay, I think this is entirely a different discussion than I was trying to have.

We had one person pretty confidently claiming that "sentience" meant XYZ, which was a definition I had never heard before.

Now we have this, which acknowledges that it's a non standard definition, but suggests we should proceed to use it anyway because, gee, it's hard to get evidence, and what if your objective is [insert objective] and you don't want [insert inconvenience due to strict definition] to happen, so let's use a definition that blurs the lines between speculation and evidence. I have a number of problems with that, but it's a different conversation anyway and it loses sight of what I was asking about.

About six comments up this thread, if anyone can remember that far, we had people putting octopuses, lobsters and even amoeba in the same category. At the bottom, the reason for doing that boiled down to people deciding it was okay to redefine sentience in a way that lowers the bar to include them all.

Trying to get to the end of what was driving that conversation leads to things like this, that aren't quite focused answers, but are just invitations to detour in any number of directions.

So robots programmed to learn could be considered sentient ?

Yes, basically. If they learn continuously.

I agree, my thought is less that I think an amoeba feels pain (I don't) but that I don't personally believe things with insect-level complexity feel pain. That they react to negative stimuli definitely doesn't prove sentience, and I personally find the totality of how insects interact with the world to be too extremely mechanistic to believe they feel at all. This is true of crabs as well, I've never really looked into lobsters enough to have an opinion on them.

I've enjoyed the Journey into the Microcosmos Youtube channel - This one is Titled "Making Decisions Without a Brain" (subtitled poking protists) https://youtu.be/1LyeWQZ7ZR0

Human fetuses become sentient sometime between 8-30 weeks (depending on who you ask and how they define sentience).

>depending on who you ask and how they define sentience

Natsu was assuming for the sake of argument that the definition of sentience is the one moeris gave, namely "that one is capable of feeling sensations".

That is the well established definition; no need to assume it for the sake of argument.

However, "capable of feeling sensations" is defined in different ways and thus leads to the large differences in when people say a fetus is capable of feeling pain.

Is it when the nerve cells responsible for emitting pain signals develop? When a fetus is capable of responding to pain? Is it when the circuits develop to route those pain sigbals to the part of the brain associated with conscious perception of pain?

All of those thresholds are crossed at different stages of fetal development so which threshold you use will change the answer you give for "when does a fetus become sentient?"

>the well established definition

Well, I don't think so. I like to think I've studied enough philosophy to be at least somewhat reasonably acquainted with the term, and it wasn't striking me as "well established." And I did a bit of googling yesterday that also seemed to suggest the "well established definition" being used here is not consistent with any of the normal definitions. And just now I consulted the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and now I'm convinced it's not even remotely close to well established.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I haven't seen anything cited here to back that up, or even just an appeal to any informal, working understanding of the concept that makes me think "oh, of course, that's the definition." And normally I wouldn't ask for such a thing, except for the fact that, to me at least, a lot of people seem to be confidently wrong about what it is.

>Is it when the nerve cells responsible for emitting pain signals develop? When a fetus is capable of responding to pain? Is it when the circuits develop to route those pain sigbals to the part of the brain associated with conscious perception of pain?

Pretty sure it's the last one.

I can't find a single source that doesn't align with the definition provided by moeris. It can be phrased in many ways but the underlying concept is well established. People who are unfamiliar with the words may confuse sentience with sapience, but they are quite distinct concepts and not interchangeable.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/sentient

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sentient

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/sentien...

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/sentient

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience

> Pretty sure it's the last one.

That last one makes some big assumptions given the adaptability and complexity of the brain, combined with our still limited understanding of it's inner workings. If I were to pick one, I would lean closer to the "capable of responding to pain" but really all of those criteria have flaws and serve more as heuristics than rigorous criteria. I purposly didn't take a stance in my original comment to avoid descending into uninteresting partisan bickering.

>with the definition provided by moeris

I think I agree with you that the definition provided by moeris is basically on track, and it accords with everything in the links you shared. I would also recommend you review the term as it exists in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

So that's all good. However, you said something along the lines of "doesn't even require that there be consciousness" and merely "more than automatic" which struck me as not being quite right, and that is the idea that I wanted to challenge. I think all the links you shared make some reference or another to consciousness, which to me makes them different from "not requiring consciousness." So I'm not sure how you are looking at those links and seeing something that comports with "not requiring consciousness" and I'm also not seeing how your version of sentience comports either with those or what moeris said. I'm surprised you would look up and post all those links without noticing this, especially in a conversation where that's exactly the thing at issue.

At best, I think you could say, the heartland, normal, well established definition makes reference to some amount of conscious experience, and it is certain fringe definitions could maybe be read as not requiring that. And I think even that would be an exceptionally generous interpretation of the thing you are spuriously claiming is a "well established definition."

>That last one makes some big assumptions

I really don't think it does. It's not making any assumptions about brains, it's taking a position on what sentience means. Maybe brains do a lot of stuff, some of which falls within our idea of sentience, and some of which doesn't. Again, all the definitions you link to are about sensation against the backdrop of consciousness. Meanwhile, only the last of the three of your proposed options was clearly suggesting consciousness. So I don't understand what assumption you think I am or am not making about brains. I don't think the other two options agree with the dictionary definitions you linked to, so I'm not really sure you should be in a position of confidently declaring that those are a "well established definition."

> 30 weeks

30 weeks?? Obviously these people never experienced pregnancy. It's ridiculous that we argue about lobster intelligence when most people don't even know the basic facts about their own human biology.

(Another common and ridiculous meme is the "pregnancy after having sex once" idea.)

> Another common and ridiculous meme is the "pregnancy after having sex once" idea.

Are you suggesting the odds of that are so low that they’re laughable? Because they’re not..

There's only (approximately) two days a month when a human female can get pregnant. It's not about frequency or intensity, rather it's mostly timing. (And sperm quality, but that's another thing people have no clue about.)

Sperm can hang around in the fallopian tube for almost a week. It's also possible to ovulate without a visible period, and it's possible to ovulate in-between "normal" periods.

Don't assume any hard-and-fast rules when it comes to fertility, and definitely don't assume that somebody can only get pregnant two days out of the month. Our species would never have survived if that was really true.

Biology is messy, imprecise, and very subject to external effects.

I was going to say three days, but it doesn’t matter. That’s 7% then turn it into a birthday problem (the world’s full of people having unprotected sex for the first time with someone at any given time) and there you go. Deduct points for bad form or bad sperm and it’s still a crazy number. It’s only a talking point when it’s the case, so it’s bound to sound like it’s happening to everyone.

> Obviously these people never experienced pregnancy.

It's the high end, so that's the threshold if you're using a particularly picky definition of 'sentience'. It seems like a defensible position to me, that if you stopped brain development around 30 weeks you wouldn't see much self-awareness.

Another common and ridiculous meme is the "pregnancy after having sex once"

I don't understand what your point with this.

Women's libido is heightened around ovulation (and men react to that), the menstrual cycle can be irregular (specially before the first pregnancy).

of course

Is wikipedia itself sentient?

By this logic, humans should be given only half the consideration we give to orcas, which according to the resource you posted, have twice the neurons we do.

That’s not really the argument monkeybutton is making, the point is lobsters’ neural complexity is similar to ants, and orcas are comparable to humans.

Ants are intelligent enough to form civilization. (I think the only other species than humans.)

Granted, ant intelligence is a hive mind.

It’s still a gradation, “as complex” is obviously a stretch. The whole argument is silly, soon turning off my Deep Learning algorithms because they are more complex than lobster.

500 years ago the argument that black people should have rights was just as silly.

We'll live to see some sort of AI rights protection laws.

No it wasn't, the argument was as silly as it is now, for a non-subjective definition of "silly".

500 years ago science was less mature, and unable to determine what was objectively silly, and what wasn't.

It also means that deep learning algorithms will soon deserve more rights than humans.

The ratio of neuron count to body size is the important measurement. An orca might have twice the neurons, but those extra neurons go toward motor control, not experiencing suffering and contemplating mortality.

Once sentient, extra neurons don't change the status of a sentient being.

Even something small as jumping spiders can be quite smart. They certainly deserve some respect. And live boiling is common for crustaceans. Terrible practice, sentient or not.

I don't go out of my way to kill insects, but if someone wants to boil insects for food, I'm not going to have any moral qualms with it. I don't see how crustaceans are much different.

Boiling is supposed to be painless and it’s meaning behind “boiling a frog alive”.

My small experience with being burned by hot or acidic liquid tells me exactly the opposite.

The anecdote is specific to frogs (and animals with similar sensory systems), and specific to boiling by increasing the temperature in small increments.

It's also a myth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog

Interesting that early experiments involved removing the frogs brain as well.

A steam bath was considered to be one of the most painless forms of suicide for Roman patricians.

I have just heard about Seneca dying in a stem bath, but that was more by accident (he committed suicide by cutting his wrists but that was taking too long so he wanted the heat to speed up blood extraction. He however died of suffocation)

How was that suicide supposed to work? (suffocation like Seneca did?)

It's more about how much they look like human babies.

Species with more neotenic traits get more protections: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/janimalethics.2.1.0006

Sure lobsters do not look like human babies, but more than ants.

You are saying lobsters look more like babies than ants? Do you mean in terms of size, because neither have any similarities to a baby...

Yes and no. Yes they are more of the same size. Visually ants are little dots on the ground. Lobsters also have something that looks more like hands than ants do.

From the original report [1]

There is no dramatic difference in the quality or volume of evidence regarding cephalopods as opposed to decapods. There is more evidence for sentience in octopods than in true crabs, but the difference is not vast, and the evidence for sentience in true crabs is slightly more substantial than the evidence for sentience in other, less- studied cephalopods. This leads us to recommend that, if cephalopods are to be included in the scope of animal welfare laws, decapods should also be included.

[1] https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/News-Assets/PDFs/2021/Sentience-i... (PDF)

See nociception. It’s basically the scientific study of “are we being cruel when we harm or kill X?”

If you want to stop the sale of Lobsters, yes. It’s one of those politics first arguments.

How often do you boil ants alive for food?

Octopi is not the correct plural. Octopus is of greek origin, not latin. Thus, its greek plural is octopodes. And thus, since we don't tend to use greek plurals in english, the other proper plural is octopuses.

Octopi is what's known as a hypercorrection. "A hypercorrection is non-standard use of language that results from the over-application of a perceived rule of language-usage prescription. A speaker or writer who produces a hypercorrection generally believes through a misunderstanding of such rules that the form is more "correct", standard, or otherwise preferable, often combined with a desire to appear formal."[1]

Now, you will find octopi in the dictionary, but only because so many people have engaged in this hypercorrection that it has become widespread and dictionaries reflect common usage.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection

> Octopi is not the correct plural.

Octopi is not the most common plural, true.

> Octopus is of greek origin, not latin.

Octopus entered English from scientific Latin. In which the Greek plural was not used. (Lots of words in English fron languages other than their language of origin and have irregular English forms from their immediate source rather than their remote origin.)

“Octopi” appears to be the earliest English plural of octopus.

> Thus, its greek plural is octopodes.

“Thus” is incorrect there, but, yes, that is its Greek plural.

> And thus, since we don't tend to use greek plurals in english

But we do. Just not, until comparatively recently and never dominantly, in the case of “octopodes”.

> the other proper plural is octopuses.

That is the most common English plural, and you don't really need a (false) historical narrative to support that it is “proper” except coming from a broken prescriptivist framework.

> Octopi is what's known as a hypercorrection

Since its the oldest attested English plural, its not a hypercorrection, just (arguably) dated. Though its probably the most common incorrect example of hypercorrection.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-many-plura...

> Octopus entered English from scientific Latin. In which the Greek plural was not used

The Latin (nominative) plural is octōpodēs, the Greek (nominative non-neuter) plural is ὀκτώποδες. Almost identical. octopi is not used in Latin, it only appears to occur in English texts.

Most Romance languages get their primary word for "octopus" from an alternative Latin word for it, polypus (plural polypī), which comes from Greek πολύπους (plural πολύποδα). polypus is also an alternative word for octopus in English, albeit it is rather archaic. The English plural polypi cannot be accused of being a hypercorrection, but (for octopuses) polypuses is much more common. polypus is also medical terminology for a type of blood clot, and the polypi plural is often preferred when the word is used in that medical sense.

The usual Dutch word for "octopus", octopus, is pluralised by the standard Dutch rules, octopussen. English appears to be the only language in which this hypercorrect pseudo-Latin plural has any popularity.

This is fascinating and instead of replying I've been reading about this and looking up words like cacti. For what it's worth, both plural forms for Octopus are in my phone's autocomplete dictionary.

The only real solution here is to make the official plural term be Octopises.

Seems to be missing the third plural, perhaps Octopodises

"Octopissies" doesn't exactly sound the best when said out loud...

What about "octopussies"?

> phone's autocomplete dictionary.

Snicker ... The new Webster or Oxfords ...

Is the American pronunciation of “processes” (as in, rhymes with bees) also a hypercorrection?

I’m not sure if it is real hypercorrection (or even attempted correction) or a conscious adoption of an available model pronunciation of plural nouns with similar spelling as a tool to distinguish the plural noun from the verb.

Though, in either case, it has the danger of suggesting the plural form of the hypothetical word “processee” (from processor, and by analogy to pairs like lessor/lessee), so, “things that are processed”.

The “hypercorrection” being to use the same long plural e from axis/axes with process/processes?

> American pronunciation

..since when? I don't think I've ever heard "processees" before...

I hear it maybe 20% of the time.

listen to the sentence Psaki utters at about 66s in: https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1448740969726156800

I've heard both used in the US.

What about octopus as both singular and plural?

This is English, not Latin or Greek. There’s no such thing as “correct” in language as long as you can be understood, especially for silly details like how to make a plural. You’ll find octopi in the dictionary because it is commonly used. Remember all words are made up anyway.

If you’re not the editor of a publication making local standards for how you want to use language, it’s better not to correct people when they’re perfectly well understood.

Personally I don’t believe in “plural”. If there’s more than one of something I just say it: “I went to the aquarium and saw octopus octopus octopus. I’d tell you what I saw around the anthill outside, but I’m not sure you have the time.” :)

I know this is a joke, but this is an actual thing in linguistics called reduplication. For example, hito (人) in Japanese means person, and hitobito (人人) means people, more or less. Japanese isn't the best example since they don't have "real" plurals but I think it's a fascinating phenomenon.

Same in Thai. “Child” is “dek”, children is “dek dek”.

Yes. A dictionary doesn't tell you how to use words, it tells you how words are used.

dic·tion·ar·y /ˈdikSHəˌnerē/ noun a book or electronic resource that lists the words of a language (typically in alphabetical order) and gives their meaning, or gives the equivalent words in a different language, often also providing information about pronunciation, origin, and usage.

Many dictionaries aim to be descriptive, not prescriptive, as doctor_eval said. That definition doesn't change that:

OED: "The Oxford English Dictionary is not an arbiter of proper usage, despite its widespread reputation to the contrary. The Dictionary is intended to be descriptive, not prescriptive. In other words, its content should be viewed as an objective reflection of English language usage, not a subjective collection of usage 'dos' and 'don'ts'. However, it does include information on which usages are, or have been, popularly regarded as 'incorrect'."[1]

Merriam-Webster: "Merriam-Webster is a descriptive dictionary in that it aims to describe and indicate how words are actually used by English speakers and writers. Generally, the descriptive approach to lexicography does not dictate how words should be used or set forth rules of "correctness," unlike the prescriptive approach."[2]

OUP: "All of Oxford Languages' content aims to describe, rather than prescribe, the way languages are used by people around the world."[3]

I believe your definition comes from one of the Oxford dictionaries - iOS lists it as coming from the Oxford Dictionary of English, and Lexico (a partnership with Oxford, whose About page links to [3]) includes it[4].

[1] https://www.oed.com/public/oed3guide/guide-to-the-third-edit...

[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/descriptive-vs...

[3] https://languages.oup.com/about-us/how-we-create-language-co...

[4] https://www.lexico.com/definition/dictionary

This is what it comes down to in the end. Words are memes, and the best replicating meme wins.

May the dankest words prevail

I wonder if the trend of using the 'Latinx' term falls under the hypercorrection definition or there's something else to describe it. I'm not passing judgement on the inclusiveness intention, but the English word for Latino and Latina is just Latin, which doesn't have gender. There's no need to mix linguistics with algebra and add a gender variable to the latin word.

Coming from gendered languages, most Hispanics either don’t know about Latinx at all and the ones that do, most of them think it’s inappropriate. It is a bit strange to try to remove gender from a word for people who mostly speak a gendered language. It seems mostly to be a virtue signaling thing among a rather small almost exclusively American, english as first language subculture.

A bit like the bathroom I saw in a coffee shop that listed all the different kinds of people that were acceptable to use the single occupancy one toilet one sink room. Trying too hard to be inclusive can be an insult to the actual issues at hand.

There is a Swedish expression: nobody is named, and nobody is forgotten.

Usually you hear it in a workplace setting when people (often, a subset of the correct group) are being acknowleged for an acheivement of some kind.

As soon as you try to enumerate all of those groups you will undoubtedly forget someone, who will then take offense at the omission. So the saying is a reminder to not single out anyone.

cool expression. how does it go in swedish?

ingen nämnd, ingen glömd

“something else to describe it”

The best summing-up I’ve seen is: linguistic colonialism.

“Octopi is what's known as a hypercorrection” might also be overcorrection (meta-hypercorrection?) now that octopi is an understood plural with enough usage that it’s in some dictionaries.

Like sulfur becoming an accepted spelling of sulphur from frequent misspelling? “Okay no one can get it right so just make it that too”.

Yes. That's called language.

I have a friend who says using the word “octopi” displays ignorance of three languages at once - English, Latin, and (ancient) Greek.

Eric Weinstein says some crazy stuff, but I remember hearing him once say that the best debate strategy for Republicans would be to mention the "noo-kyoo-lar" family, and let them correct you to "nuclear". Then you win because the other side looks like pedants and elitists. This "octopi" is definitely such a word.

Side note: all this off-topic pedantry about octopi vs octopuses is an old discussion already resolved. It is clouding discussion about what the full implications of what it actually means to treat octopus (ha!) as sentient.

I don't think the Democrats have cornered the market on pedantry just yet.

I realize they are being cheeky but the ironic thing is "ignorance of N languages" is one of the primary drivers of linguistic cross-pollenation and drift. Taking loanwords, shoehorning them into your phonology, writing, and grammar is just how these things work.

Octopi is certainly questionable, but Octopedes isn't as obviously correct as we'd think.

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/270/what-is-the-...

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1zx411e7VG/ (deleted from yt)

A great example of

Grays law:

"Any online discussion that mentions the word 'octopi' - regardless how tangentially - will eventually turn into a discussion on linguistics"

For that to render _"octopi"_ incorrect, you'll also have to convincingly argue that a centuries-old etymology mishap supersedes its common usage since then— the far more common measure to define correctness in English grammar. Sociolinguists aim to study and describe the effect of society and culture on the formation of grammar. They don't present their findings as rules, and we shouldn't interpret them that way.

Octopuses or octopodes are regarded as the correct pluralizations, for those who remember the HQ trivia scandal of 2017.

All three pluralizations are wrong in some ways, but acceptable. [1]

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-many-plura...

I asked an octopus and he said he prefers "octopi".

Perhaps so, but fortunately the plural of applepus is applepi. If you are lucky, it has a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.

Language is not about correct or incorrect, just about what people use. Please don’t obsess about it.

all 3 are correct

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2voh0q (Octopus - Merriam-Webster Ask the Editor)

See also the alt text for this comic: https://xkcd.com/928/

Spoiler for the bit referenced in the alt text: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/928:_Mimic_Octopu...

Today I learned about the wunderpus.

I call them octopuppers.

Winner. This is one way to cut through the Gordion knot of this endless debate. I'll be calling them octopuppers henceforth.

I've always preferred octopice...