The Mountain in the Sea

by Ray Nayler

Let’s put forward the idea that evolution accelerates due to environmental pressures. The need to find new niches. Evolution is slow, but there are animals who adapt faster than others.

RNA editing—swapping out one RNA base for another. They can produce molecular diversity quickly, particularly in their nervous systems. It’s an alternative engine for evolution,”

When we avoid behaviors that would instigate a shark attack, we are recognizing the shark has a mind capable of reading our signs and responding to them. Like it or not, we are in communication with them. If we accidentally send out signs to a shark that indicate we are prey (if we look too much like a seal in our wet suit, or we produce vibrations in the water like a fish in distress), we know we may instigate an attack, despite the fact that the shark does not typically prey on humans. We can cause the shark to misinterpret the world’s signs and make a mistake—a mistake which may be fatal to us. How we see the world matters—but knowing how the world sees us also matters. —Dr. Ha Nguyen, How Oceans Think

The human umwelt is structured according to our species’ sensory apparatus and nervous system as well. But the octopus will have an umwelt nothing like ours. In a sense (and I use that word purposefully) we will not exist in the same world. —Dr. Ha Nguyen, How Oceans Think

“WHAT IS IT LIKe to be a bat?”

Angle! But of course.

Again and again I asked myself how humankind could transcend the limitations of our own form, the rigidity of our structures. Again and again, the solution seemed impossible. In our bodies as in society, our structures are built to replicate themselves, and themselves only. We are embedded in habit. We dread the truly new, the truly emergent. We don’t fear the end of the world—we fear the end of the world as we know it. —Dr. Arnkatla Mínervudóttir-Chan, Building Minds

We are so ashamed of what we have done as a species that we have made up a monster to destroy ourselves with. We aren’t afraid it will happen: We hope it will.

philosopher of the twentieth century, Paul Virilio, said: ‘When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane you also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution. Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress.’

“I keep thinking of the dogs,” Rustem said. “On the island. Why did you tell me about them?” “To give you something to consider. A problem to work out.” “I keep thinking of those people, rowing to the island to leave food.” “The kind ones. The ones who cared enough.” “No. They weren’t kind. They were weak. They should have acted right away. They should have resisted when the authorities came to take the dogs away. Violently, if that was what was needed. That would have been real kindness: To act. To save the animals from being taken in the first place. To protect them. But they did nothing when it counted, and then tried to make up for it later with actions that were not enough. It was useless, and cruel. It just created more suffering. Their inaction, when it really counted, was also a kind of action. It was a choice they made.”

In the end, the factors which will keep us from understanding a species as alien as the octopus are the same factors that keep us from truly understanding one another: imperfect predictions of what is “going on” in the head of another, misunderstandings compounded by assumptions, bias, and haste. And a pervasive distrust regarding the motives of the “other” as we struggle to understand and to make ourselves understood. If we fail, there will be nothing unfamiliar about that failure. Though on a different scale, it will be essentially the same as the countless times our species has failed to communicate. —Dr. Ha Nguyen, How Oceans Think

There is a “real” world, out there, but we do not perceive it directly. It is assembled by the sensory and nervous systems of each individual animal, and it is assembled differently by every one of them. What we perceive is a construct. Every animal’s perception of the world, constructed by its evolved sensory apparatus and nervous system to take best advantage of its environment, is subjective—there are no colors out there, as we perceive them, waiting for us. There is no sound—only waveforms. And perhaps the strangest fact of all: Outside our bodies, there is no pain. Pain is something we create. —Dr. Ha Nguyen, How Oceans Think

think what we fear most about finding a mind equal to our own, but of another species, is that they will truly see us—and find us lacking, and turn away from us in disgust. That contact with another mind will puncture our species’ self-satisfied feeling of worth. We will have to confront, finally, what we truly are, and the damage we have done to our home. But that confrontation, perhaps, is the only thing that will save us. The only thing that will allow us to look our short-sightedness, our brutality, and our stupidity in the face, and change. —Dr. Ha Nguyen, How Oceans Think

One of the great tragedies of science is that the increase in its complexity has made most scientists into little more than technicians, driving them into the tunnels of specialized disciplines. The further the scientist progresses down into the mine of knowledge, the less she can see the world into which that knowledge fits. I never wanted to be a specialist: I wanted to be a scientist in the heroic sense, bringing new forms into the world. From the first moment, I have wanted greatness. —Dr. Arnkatla Mínervudóttir-Chan, Building Minds