We are a community of early-career researchers in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).
At the first SETI conference at Green Bank, West Virginia, the members were enthralled by John Lilly’s presentation about the potential for understanding extraterrestrial languages through studying dolphin communication. That enthusiasm led to themselves not-so-jokingly calling themselves the “Order of the Dolphin” and referring to each other as “Honorary Dolphin” in correspondence. However, we learned that the inspiration for the original Order of the Dolphin, John Lilly, was later revealed to be involved in unethical and misleading scientific practices and dolphin abuse (more on that history here and here).
When we started organizing the first iteration of this assembly of early-career SETI researchers, we wanted to adopt a name with a deep connection to the history of SETI but free from any harm that it associates with. At the same time, we wanted to retain the camaraderie and wonder for non-human intelligences that the original name meant to us. For these reasons, we named ourselves “The Order of the Octopus”, reclaiming the original structure, but divorcing ourselves from the dark history of the original name. In fact, we would argue that octopi are 1) better models for the sorts of non-human intelligences we might expect to find beyond Earth, as they share less of their evolutionary history with humans 2) just as fascinating as dolphins from an animal cognition perspective, as they display extensive tool use and problem-solving abilities, and 3) extremely cool!
The Order of the Octopus 