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The question I see is what do we define as language and communicating. Do we mean that trees can relay information to each other, as well to other species? Sur

The question I see is what do we define as language and communicating. Do we mean that trees can relay information to each other, as well to other species? Sure, that makes sense. For example, you could make a case that a large tree communicates with the saplings in the underbrush. By shading them, it is letting them know that it is the alpha individual in this area, convincing them not to grow. We can also say that trees release chemicals that have an effect on surrounding life. This could also be called communication. Finally, we could say that a loudly creaking tree is communicating to people around it that it is growing old, getting stress fractures, and could break off a branch that could pose a danger. Any of the above could be considered communications. To counter this, I could make a case that a truck tire can communicate just as effectively. It can cast a shadow which would prevent vegetation from growing. It could leach chemicals over time which would have an effect on the surrounding life. Finally, it could convey a threat by making loud bumping noises while it is bouncing towards you on a freeway. Nature is interesting and complex. We continue to discover new and exciting things about how it works. I think anthropomorphising these effects makes them exciting, but does not necessarily add to how we understand them.

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
I think the dividing line is deliberate communication - a dog barks because it "wants" to communicate. But then the counter-argument rejects the will, and comes down to "aren't all our actions because of basic chemistry?". I reject that assumption - not because there's a some sort of supernatural element, but just because a whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. There's a massive rift between "sun makes tree grow, preventing other trees from getting the light" and "I'm trying to sell my wares by expressing concepts of value, numbers, and desire".
- bobmichael 8y ago
  I think the level of complexity is so different between these two examples that we perceive them as conceptually separate, but it is still possible that in absolute terms the same laws are being applied. It could be that as humans we do not have enough intellectual power to understand the second example in terms of these laws. But then it could be argued that this is exactly what makes these two examples fundamentally different, since all human knowledge is limited by our intellectual capabilities.
- erydo 8y ago
  > There's a massive rift between "sun makes tree grow, preventing other trees from getting the light" and "I'm trying to sell my wares by expressing concepts of value, numbers, and desire". Like a tree bearing bright red, juicy-looking fruits filled with sugar and vitamins?
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    Are you arguing that's communication, or somehow driven by a tree's desires?
    - koliber 8y ago
      Arguably, you could say that it is driven by evolutionary pressure. Could you convince me that the term "evolutionary pressure" is a form of desire? I don't know. Does desire require consciousness? Are trees conscious?
abhishekjha 8y ago
One observation about communicating would be : the information transfer should be voluntary. Trees should be able to kind of shut up and speak up without threatening their own existence.
phyzome 8y ago
One way to differentiate "communication" is whether it is possible to avoid a behavior. The tree can't avoid shading the saplings. Another aspect to look at (or possibly this is two, tangled up together) is whether the behavior directly induces changes in the target in a generic fashion, rather than via a reception channel that receives the information and transmutes it into an effect. Allelopathic chemical release that kills off competitors is not communication. Tightly interconnected symbiotic associations of bacteria "communicate" chemically, but it's so optimized down and the feedback loops are so tight that it's more like they're a single organism. (Are hormone releases inside your own body communication?) Jumping at someone and waving your arms is communication, but it's similarly borderline, because you're probably invoking an instinctual reaction to move away from sudden large movements. Communication should also involve some sort of feedback loop. What does the tree "expect" the results of the sound of a creaking branch to be, either consciously, or in that anthropomorphizing way we discuss fitness and evolution? Without an answer to that, I think we can file it away as "not communication". --- All that said, many trees absolutely do communicate with chemical signals. Famously, they may release warning chemicals during herbivore activity, and surrounding trees (conspecifics, but IIRC this can cross species boundaries) will ramp up production of defense chemicals. Other plants use chemical signaling to attract predators of the herbivores that are munching on them. And I believe I recall some process by which trees advertise themselves to mycorrhizal fungi that they would like to establish partnerships with, but I could be mistaken.
- koliber 8y ago
  Some trees can avoid shading each other. See (1). Your progression of thought makes a lot of sense. The question of whether any of this is deliberate, or a behavior encoded into genes and/or physical and chemical processes that can not be avoided. That being said, some people make an argument that our consciousness is also a chain chemical reaction with lots of feedback loops, and that our consciousness is just an illusionary byproduct. I know that I presented multiple examples and all or not on the same level, no matter along which axis you evaluate them. The point is that deciding whether anyone/anything communicates is not an easy question to answer. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_shyness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_shyness
tekno45 8y ago
Doesn't communication require intent? The truck example is weird, cause it isn't trying to communicate. The person who made it may be trying to communicate something, but the truck would be a use of language, not using a language itself.
- koliber 8y ago
  I don't think so. I get angry occasionally. I don't intend to, nor do I like it. However, my anger is communicated to those around me. This is just an example off the top of my head. This is a really interesting conversation and I think we will find that the true definition will elude a simple answer with solid boundaries.
  - ctrl-j 8y ago
    > I don't think so. I get angry occasionally. I don't intend to, nor do I like it. However, my anger is communicated to those around me. You're distinguishing conscious intent and latent or subconscious intent. Your body and instinct are very much intending to communicate that you are upset.
    - perl4ever 8y ago
      Couldn't you argue that instinct doesn't "intend" anything - it's just adaptive, because evolution selected for it? Having a temper is useful, but it wasn't designed in by any conscious entity, it's just that people who get angry tend to do better than people who don't.
      - ctrl-j 8y ago
        > Couldn't you argue that instinct doesn't "intend" anything - it's just adaptive, because evolution selected for it? You can argue that if you want. I'll argue the opposite: If a dog growls at me when I reach for his steak - but doesn't bite - I take that as him intending to inform me that he doesn't want me to take his steak. It may be instinct, it may be adaptive, but it sure as hell was intended to get a message across to me. Communication is about sending and receiving messages. A car tire cannot send or receive - it cannot communicate.
pishpash 8y ago
The bar for communication isn't whether a message is decoded, but whether any given arbitrary message can be encoded, that is, you are looking for signs of encoder capability. Though I can't prove that trees do encode, I can at least prove that they can encode, and that tires cannot, because tires don't have free energy. Also disagree about the last statement, and not specifically in this case, but generally. It isn't necessarily about anthropomorphizing, but about using abstract and compact representation of what you're talking about. Humans emit sound waves, but we abstract that to segments, time-frequency descriptions, then phonemes, morphemes, ..., and finally language. You get the point. It's easier to reason about that way.
- koliber 8y ago
  I really like this discussion! I'm loving all these different points of looking at the situation. Thank you. A tire bouncing along at 65 mph seems to have a lot of free energy (kinetic), as does one stuck on an icy slanted roof (potential) :). I may be unaware of the concept of "free energy" you are using here though. Can you point me to where I can find out more? I absolutely agree that abstractions are necessary to efficiently convey concepts in a discussion. I also understand that abstractions are never perfect. What I wanted to really say is that I would be much more inclined to agree with the first and less with the second of these two statements: Trees can transfer information to each other, and we have the ability to understand these mechanisms. Trees speak to each other in a language, and we can listen in. It's a matter of phrasing, nuance, and insinuation. Different listeners may form different ideas when they read the above two statements.
nikki93 8y ago
I think it can add to behaving with them well because we can use the tools of empathy, which is natural for us, to decide how to work with things we deem capable of empathy (often to some extent by anthropomorphising). This is why we create a story of “ownership,” say, for pointers in Rust, to provide some empathizable account of how they work, by attributing names as being capable of owning references to other names, such that our intuitions of how those dynamics play out among people and the lifetimes of things they own help us intuit about lifetimes of pointers / their use concurrently. I think being clear that we are using a narrative where we empathize with something by imagining its features in terms that seem familiar to our own features (somewhat overlapping with “anthropomorphising”) is ok if done mindfully.

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago

I think the dividing line is deliberate communication - a dog barks because it "wants" to communicate. But then the counter-argument rejects the will, and comes down to "aren't all our actions because of basic chemistry?". I reject that assumption - not because there's a some sort of supernatural element, but just because a whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. There's a massive rift between "sun makes tree grow, preventing other trees from getting the light" and "I'm trying to sell my wares by expressing concepts of value, numbers, and desire".

bobmichael 8y ago
I think the level of complexity is so different between these two examples that we perceive them as conceptually separate, but it is still possible that in absolute terms the same laws are being applied. It could be that as humans we do not have enough intellectual power to understand the second example in terms of these laws. But then it could be argued that this is exactly what makes these two examples fundamentally different, since all human knowledge is limited by our intellectual capabilities.
erydo 8y ago
> There's a massive rift between "sun makes tree grow, preventing other trees from getting the light" and "I'm trying to sell my wares by expressing concepts of value, numbers, and desire". Like a tree bearing bright red, juicy-looking fruits filled with sugar and vitamins?
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  Are you arguing that's communication, or somehow driven by a tree's desires?
  - koliber 8y ago
    Arguably, you could say that it is driven by evolutionary pressure. Could you convince me that the term "evolutionary pressure" is a form of desire? I don't know. Does desire require consciousness? Are trees conscious?

abhishekjha 8y ago

One observation about communicating would be : the information transfer should be voluntary. Trees should be able to kind of shut up and speak up without threatening their own existence.

phyzome 8y ago

One way to differentiate "communication" is whether it is possible to avoid a behavior. The tree can't avoid shading the saplings. Another aspect to look at (or possibly this is two, tangled up together) is whether the behavior directly induces changes in the target in a generic fashion, rather than via a reception channel that receives the information and transmutes it into an effect. Allelopathic chemical release that kills off competitors is not communication. Tightly interconnected symbiotic associations of bacteria "communicate" chemically, but it's so optimized down and the feedback loops are so tight that it's more like they're a single organism. (Are hormone releases inside your own body communication?) Jumping at someone and waving your arms is communication, but it's similarly borderline, because you're probably invoking an instinctual reaction to move away from sudden large movements. Communication should also involve some sort of feedback loop. What does the tree "expect" the results of the sound of a creaking branch to be, either consciously, or in that anthropomorphizing way we discuss fitness and evolution? Without an answer to that, I think we can file it away as "not communication". --- All that said, many trees absolutely do communicate with chemical signals. Famously, they may release warning chemicals during herbivore activity, and surrounding trees (conspecifics, but IIRC this can cross species boundaries) will ramp up production of defense chemicals. Other plants use chemical signaling to attract predators of the herbivores that are munching on them. And I believe I recall some process by which trees advertise themselves to mycorrhizal fungi that they would like to establish partnerships with, but I could be mistaken.

koliber 8y ago
Some trees can avoid shading each other. See (1). Your progression of thought makes a lot of sense. The question of whether any of this is deliberate, or a behavior encoded into genes and/or physical and chemical processes that can not be avoided. That being said, some people make an argument that our consciousness is also a chain chemical reaction with lots of feedback loops, and that our consciousness is just an illusionary byproduct. I know that I presented multiple examples and all or not on the same level, no matter along which axis you evaluate them. The point is that deciding whether anyone/anything communicates is not an easy question to answer. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_shyness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_shyness

tekno45 8y ago

Doesn't communication require intent? The truck example is weird, cause it isn't trying to communicate. The person who made it may be trying to communicate something, but the truck would be a use of language, not using a language itself.

koliber 8y ago
I don't think so. I get angry occasionally. I don't intend to, nor do I like it. However, my anger is communicated to those around me. This is just an example off the top of my head. This is a really interesting conversation and I think we will find that the true definition will elude a simple answer with solid boundaries.
- ctrl-j 8y ago
  > I don't think so. I get angry occasionally. I don't intend to, nor do I like it. However, my anger is communicated to those around me. You're distinguishing conscious intent and latent or subconscious intent. Your body and instinct are very much intending to communicate that you are upset.
  - perl4ever 8y ago
    Couldn't you argue that instinct doesn't "intend" anything - it's just adaptive, because evolution selected for it? Having a temper is useful, but it wasn't designed in by any conscious entity, it's just that people who get angry tend to do better than people who don't.
    - ctrl-j 8y ago
      > Couldn't you argue that instinct doesn't "intend" anything - it's just adaptive, because evolution selected for it? You can argue that if you want. I'll argue the opposite: If a dog growls at me when I reach for his steak - but doesn't bite - I take that as him intending to inform me that he doesn't want me to take his steak. It may be instinct, it may be adaptive, but it sure as hell was intended to get a message across to me. Communication is about sending and receiving messages. A car tire cannot send or receive - it cannot communicate.

pishpash 8y ago

The bar for communication isn't whether a message is decoded, but whether any given arbitrary message can be encoded, that is, you are looking for signs of encoder capability. Though I can't prove that trees do encode, I can at least prove that they can encode, and that tires cannot, because tires don't have free energy. Also disagree about the last statement, and not specifically in this case, but generally. It isn't necessarily about anthropomorphizing, but about using abstract and compact representation of what you're talking about. Humans emit sound waves, but we abstract that to segments, time-frequency descriptions, then phonemes, morphemes, ..., and finally language. You get the point. It's easier to reason about that way.

koliber 8y ago
I really like this discussion! I'm loving all these different points of looking at the situation. Thank you. A tire bouncing along at 65 mph seems to have a lot of free energy (kinetic), as does one stuck on an icy slanted roof (potential) :). I may be unaware of the concept of "free energy" you are using here though. Can you point me to where I can find out more? I absolutely agree that abstractions are necessary to efficiently convey concepts in a discussion. I also understand that abstractions are never perfect. What I wanted to really say is that I would be much more inclined to agree with the first and less with the second of these two statements: Trees can transfer information to each other, and we have the ability to understand these mechanisms. Trees speak to each other in a language, and we can listen in. It's a matter of phrasing, nuance, and insinuation. Different listeners may form different ideas when they read the above two statements.

nikki93 8y ago

I think it can add to behaving with them well because we can use the tools of empathy, which is natural for us, to decide how to work with things we deem capable of empathy (often to some extent by anthropomorphising). This is why we create a story of “ownership,” say, for pointers in Rust, to provide some empathizable account of how they work, by attributing names as being capable of owning references to other names, such that our intuitions of how those dynamics play out among people and the lifetimes of things they own help us intuit about lifetimes of pointers / their use concurrently. I think being clear that we are using a narrative where we empathize with something by imagining its features in terms that seem familiar to our own features (somewhat overlapping with “anthropomorphising”) is ok if done mindfully.