You Probably Know That Humans Can Experience Phantom Limbs, But Did You Know That The Limbs Of An Octopus

You probably know that humans can experience “phantom limbs,” but did you know that the limbs of an octopus can have a “phantom body”? If you cut off an octopus’ tentacle, it will try to feed a mouth that is no longer there. A severed octopus tentacle also curls up when it’s exposed to negative stimuli like acid. Essentially, if an octopus dies and its tentacle is cut off, the tentacle can outlive the original animal by a whole hour. 

Octopi have as many as 130 million neurons, but the vast majority are located in their limbs, not their brains. Their mind is “distributed.” That is fundamentally unlike the human mind. We have muscle memory, but our arms can’t move completely independently of our brains.

What does this mean for octopus consciousness? Well… we don’t know. There’s no way to observe or deduce via experiment what it’s like to be a particular animal. We can see how they behave, but we won’t ever see the world through their eyes. Science can study what is outside, but not what’s inside. So, animal consciousness isn’t really the domain of science. 

As is always the case, philosophers have attempted to do what scientists cannot. The philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith has a really great way of explaining what’s at stake: “Octopuses let us ask which features of our minds can we expect to be universal whenever intelligence arises in the universe, and which are unique to us.”  There’s a decent chance you’ve seen a popular Tumblr post about Umwelt Theory—the idea that animals have access to senses that we do not. Smells too refined for our noses, pitches too high for our ears, colors outside the range of our eyes. But the inner worlds of animals might be even stranger than that. The postmortem movement of octopus limbs suggests that some animal minds might be fundamentally different from ours. Simply put, it’s not just that some animals have access to sensations that we will never feel. They might have access to types of thoughts that we will never be able to think.

I've been thinking about social media lately, namely which specific features make some platforms much worse for mental health than others. I know I am not alone in feeling like TikTok in particular has affected my inner life.

One thing I've noticed is that I feel so much more inhibited than before. I will barely begin to have an idea for anything--an art piece, a text post, a joke while talking to a friend--before another part of me criticizes it and ultimately talks me out of doing or saying anything. I think there are a few mechanisms found on many major platforms that promote this kind of self-policing.

First of all, comment section design. I know the comment section is a cesspool on most platforms, but it seems particularly bad on TikTok, Instagram reels, and Twitter. On TikTok and Instagram reels, you can view the comments while simultaneously viewing/ listening to the post. I would assume that the human brain is simply not wired to process feedback and criticism of a thing while simultaneously processing the thing itself for the first time. I think this really prevents the viewer from being able to authentically react to the content they're seeing, and also intimately links the content with the feedback in a way you don't get with books, movies, etc.

The sheer number of commenters versus the single poster also creates a weird dynamic that I'm sure we're all familiar with by now. I think a lot of us want social media to function more like a conversation, but instead it is a performance. This sucks if you don't want to perform, but simply to engage with people around you. Of course, this is all amplified by anonymity and algorithm-driven dissemination of content, where people engaging with your posts don't necessarily care about you and there are no consequences for aggression and negativety.

I think overall, these factors make it feel like the world is full of infinite, faceless critics. The part of your brain that evolved to keep you in good social standing with your community hates this. You truly can't make everyone happy, and maybe if you knew the people who can be so ruthless online you genuinely wouldn't care how they feel about you.

Anyway, we live in a society of control. Try to be yourself and have fun, even though it's apparently much harder than it sounds.

Virginia Woolf, from The Waves

counting down the days until fall break

@roach-works // Melissa Broder, "Problem Area" // Mary Oliver, "The Return" // @annavonsyfert // Koyoharu Gotouge, Demon Slayer // Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance // David Levithan, How They Met and Other Stories // Tennessee Williams, Notebooks