"The severing of the individual from a compact group is an operation from which the individual never fully recovers. The individual on his own remains a chronically incomplete and unbalanced entity. His creative efforts and passionate pursuits are at the bottom a blind striving for wholeness and balance. The individual striving to realize himself and prove his worth has created all that is great in literature, art, music, science and technology."
It clearly applies to many apex predators that spend most of their lives on there own.
Given how smart, versatile and dextrous the octopus is, its impressive array of senses, and its highly creative use of tools, I can only conjecture that the ocean environment is not conducive to an accretion of technology.
I.e. the corrosive ocean water makes the possibility of complex technology difficult, so the octopus hasn't been able to evolve into a longer lived, more socially cooperative creature.
Fire, chemistry, long term construction ... impossible or difficult.
Because otherwise they seem to have everything. Even latent social ability, despite their typical loner existence.
Another impediment is that hiding (their unshelled tasty soft bodies) really well is one of the hallmarks of their intelligence. That would tend to preclude tight cooperative social groups.
Yes, that's how evolution works. Some octopus is a little bit smarter than the others and is able to escape a predator by hiding in a hole. She doesn't get eaten today and so is able to reproduce tomorrow. Some of her 100,000 eggs have her genes for higher intelligence.
The octopus kids who are slightly more intelligent are also slightly more likely to survive and reproduce. And if the genes for intelligence build on each other then at some point the smart octopusses will have a kid or a few kids who are even a little bit smarter and survive a little bit better. Maybe they're smart enough to figure out they can hide under a shell.
If you're able to learn "hide under a shell" from your parents then you don't need to be that smart. But if each individual is able to figure out "hide under a shell" from first principles then that's a huge advantage. Maybe you ended up far from home and the shells look different here. Congrats, your octopus can still figure it out, but your imprinted animal is now dinner. The octopus can still reproduce and pass along his "smart" genes.
That argument makes sense, but is exactly the opposite of what we see in nature in every case except the octopus.
Intelligent animals tend to live a long time (apes, elephants, dolphins). One assumes that it's because the advantages to intelligence accrete over long periods.
If you're only going to live a few years, you want to devote all your energy to being strong and fast.
This is one of the things that makes octopuses so baffling.
I don't believe we know of any very intelligent animals that are not mammals or (maybe?) some long-lived birds or octopuses.