like i’m watching blue planet and i’m yelling at the tv!
there’s all these yimmer yammer hand-wavey scientific rigor lines where it’s like ‘we may believe that these animals do on occasion have a base brain-related impulse that allows them to experience feelings somewhat like to those of friendship’ or whatever in the script on top of footage that they then describe as ‘it seems as though these two groups [of fish, different species] are old friends…’ in an almost whimsical manner.
can’t they give them some credit! they have eyes and a face, why is it so insane to think they can’t experience friendship or love or joy just like us? ‘buhhu uhhh its only accurate science if we only observe observable behavior’ why?? you’re neglecting a whole part of any living thing’s experience! inner life can’t be hand waved away! even for a mollusk!
and people loved doing this on reddit as well – oh actually your cat doesn’t understand love or joy or humor, it is simply reacting to the physical warmth of your lap, they don’t actually care for you. don’t worry, depth and emotion does not exist!
I think this isn’t too difficult to prove for animals that dream. Emotions aren’t something only humans experience. There are limits to how intelligent certain animals can be (ants and spiders are a whole different class compared to squids and dolphins) but there’s also far more to animals than the simple behaviourisms they exhibit. Even basic animals can have a personality, no matter how crude that may be compared to the personality of a human.
It’s as hard to prove that a mollusk has a rich inner life as it is to prove you have. For all I know, you’re an LLM, and for all you know, I am. Even if we are both people, who says you’re not an “NPC” merely pretending to be an intelligent person?
Proving consciousness all comes down to “I think therefore I am”.