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I love to spend time in my garden looking at all the different creatures: all insects, for example, seem to have a very intricate behavior. Recently I noticed h

I love to spend time in my garden looking at all the different creatures: all insects, for example, seem to have a very intricate behavior. Recently I noticed how bees, not being able to drink nectar from comfrey flowers due to their elongated form, would pierce a hole in the flower's petals in order to reach the nectar. It seems to me each creature, each species, have their own kind of intelligence. Plantes also seem to me to have an awareness of some kind. They know where the sun is, they know when to sprout, they can find water, they have such complex relationships with everything around them, the microbiome in the soil, other plants, insects. Truly I find the mechanistic view of nature so grim and pointless.

danharaj 6y ago
> Truly I find the mechanistic view of nature so grim and pointless. Would you find it ridiculous if I said that it serves an ideological purpose so deeply entrenched in our civilization at this point that we hardly notice its contingent nature?
- SuoDuanDao 6y ago
  I wouldn't call it ridiculous, but you are kind of begging the question ;-)
ebg13 6y ago
> Truly I find the mechanistic view of nature so grim and pointless. Ok, but an anthropomorphic view of nature is fanciful and _also_ pointless. This is not alive by any but the most inclusion-oriented definitions, and yet it follows light: https://www.popsci.com/make-light-following-robot-instructions/ https://www.popsci.com/make-light-following-robot-instructio... Talking about "intelligence" and "awareness" makes sense _sometimes_ because we don't understand where our consciousness comes from. For mechanisms where we have the capacity to concretely observe how and why they happen, cavalierly throwing in notions like "intelligence" and "awareness" is an emotional deception, a pathetic fallacy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathetic_fallacy#Science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathetic_fallacy#Science), that adds nothing except fantasy. You see a complex mechanical process and call it grim and pointless unless one introduces metaphysics. I see a complex mechanical process and call it fundamentally beautiful and awesome without needing the metaphysics.
- zarmin 6y ago
  What if consciousness is fundamental instead of emergent?
  - ebg13 6y ago
    > What if consciousness is fundamental instead of emergent? And what if Wolverine was Lord of the Vampires? Speculative fiction is still speculative and still fiction. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan%27s_Canon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan%27s_Canon https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Newton%27s_flaming_laser_sword https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Newton%27s_flaming_laser_swor...
    - zarmin 6y ago
      I'm reminded of this quote: > we don't understand where our consciousness comes from
      - ebg13 6y ago
        Your two options are: 1. Make something up about whether consciousness is fundamental and run with it. 2. Don't make anything up when you don't need to, because we can answer how plants follow the sun without needing to talk about consciousness, just like we can answer how an automatic door opens for me when I get close without deciding to call it conscious. > From below: Is there an option where we don't act like consciousness is solved when it's convenient for our argument? You're saying "Consciousness isn't solved, therefore we should imagine that these things are conscious." I'm saying "Consciousness isn't solved and that's irrelevant because we have purely mechanical explanations for these things that don't require imagining that they're conscious." Because a lightbulb's glow when I push a button or flip a switch _might_ be a sign of the lightbulb's consciousness, but that's 1) not necessary and 2) purely made up and deep into Russell's teapot.
        zarmin 6y ago
        Is there an option where we don't act like consciousness is solved when it's convenient for our argument? > Reply to above: If consciousness is fundamental, the "purely mechanical" explanation is not purely mechanical. I've found HackerNews to be broadly allergic to the idea of nonlocal consciousness, and worldviews that are not material reductionism. Nevertheless, I will once again point to the work of Dean Radin, among others, to demonstrate that these are not unfalsifiable claims.
softsound 6y ago
Yeah I agree with you. There is a lot of interesting stuff the more you study it. Like Physarum polycephalum, a slime that solves mazes despite not having a nervous system and is used to create better road networks. I really hope in the future we combine bio-tech as things like this already use their form of A* and pathing system. Once plants & slime are used to create logic gates and truth tables start to take off I see that as being the cleanest tech around. Then you have things like the Turritopsis dohrnii a jellyfish. They are immortal beings that decide to change between child and adult forever... or just basically once they start starving or get too old they reboot their cells and turn back into a baby jelly. It's a pretty fast process I've read. Although apparently it's really hard to rise them in captivity so studies are somewhat limited. Then you have planarian flatworms that store their memories outside their brain... I think is similar to how plants function in many regards... Although plant gnosophysiology is a bit different, their "screams" are a bit too ultrasonic for us, but other animals like mice and stuff can hear them. But yes, look up how plants respond to danger and react or warn other plants. It's really cool stuff. Heck going even smaller and just imaging cells hunting down food or working together to create an organ, or nerve or something is amazing. It's a bit mind boggling to think of all the tiny things going on in just your fingertip.
taneq 6y ago
> Truly I find the mechanistic view of nature so grim and pointless. I find the opposite: Knowing how something works just makes me appreciate it more. The fact that an insect can pull off all of these staggeringly complex behaviours (beyond what we can do with kilowatts of GPU power) with a couple of hundred neurons and a power budget of almost nothing, all the while being able to self-reproduce, it's incredible. Is a rainbow more or less amazing when you understand total internal reflection?
madaxe_again 6y ago
I also spend a lot of time watching nature - just yesterday I was marvelling at ants carrying grass seeds to their nest, each carrying the seed the same way around, so that the burrs don’t snag on anything - pretty much the same behaviour as Darwin notes with his worms and leaves. It fascinates me that something with such a limited little mind can still figure out something like “carry from this end”. I actually take a very mechanistic view of nature, and find it glorious - that mechanical processes at a minuscule scale can result in such a panoply and profusion of form is positively miraculous. Matter seems to want to be alive - what enters organic chemistry rarely leaves it, and life always tends to more forms, more individuals, more diversity - and it’s all just chemistry and physics and entropy at play. I guess one can find a spiritual beauty in the idea that living matter, thinking matter, is a preferable state of being for matter in this universe. Cosmos, know thyself.
- amelius 6y ago
  > I guess one can find a spiritual beauty in the idea that living matter, thinking matter, is a preferable state of being for matter in this universe. But it seems that the thinking species are creating all the problems on this planet ... Also, some say that the function of the brain is to stop thinking as soon as possible. We're using it in the wrong way.

danharaj 6y ago

> Truly I find the mechanistic view of nature so grim and pointless. Would you find it ridiculous if I said that it serves an ideological purpose so deeply entrenched in our civilization at this point that we hardly notice its contingent nature?

SuoDuanDao 6y ago
I wouldn't call it ridiculous, but you are kind of begging the question ;-)

ebg13 6y ago

> Truly I find the mechanistic view of nature so grim and pointless. Ok, but an anthropomorphic view of nature is fanciful and _also_ pointless. This is not alive by any but the most inclusion-oriented definitions, and yet it follows light: https://www.popsci.com/make-light-following-robot-instructions/ https://www.popsci.com/make-light-following-robot-instructio... Talking about "intelligence" and "awareness" makes sense _sometimes_ because we don't understand where our consciousness comes from. For mechanisms where we have the capacity to concretely observe how and why they happen, cavalierly throwing in notions like "intelligence" and "awareness" is an emotional deception, a pathetic fallacy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathetic_fallacy#Science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathetic_fallacy#Science), that adds nothing except fantasy. You see a complex mechanical process and call it grim and pointless unless one introduces metaphysics. I see a complex mechanical process and call it fundamentally beautiful and awesome without needing the metaphysics.

zarmin 6y ago
What if consciousness is fundamental instead of emergent?
- ebg13 6y ago
  > What if consciousness is fundamental instead of emergent? And what if Wolverine was Lord of the Vampires? Speculative fiction is still speculative and still fiction. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan%27s_Canon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan%27s_Canon https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Newton%27s_flaming_laser_sword https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Newton%27s_flaming_laser_swor...
  - zarmin 6y ago
    I'm reminded of this quote: > we don't understand where our consciousness comes from
    - ebg13 6y ago
      Your two options are: 1. Make something up about whether consciousness is fundamental and run with it. 2. Don't make anything up when you don't need to, because we can answer how plants follow the sun without needing to talk about consciousness, just like we can answer how an automatic door opens for me when I get close without deciding to call it conscious. > From below: Is there an option where we don't act like consciousness is solved when it's convenient for our argument? You're saying "Consciousness isn't solved, therefore we should imagine that these things are conscious." I'm saying "Consciousness isn't solved and that's irrelevant because we have purely mechanical explanations for these things that don't require imagining that they're conscious." Because a lightbulb's glow when I push a button or flip a switch _might_ be a sign of the lightbulb's consciousness, but that's 1) not necessary and 2) purely made up and deep into Russell's teapot.
      - zarmin 6y ago
        Is there an option where we don't act like consciousness is solved when it's convenient for our argument? > Reply to above: If consciousness is fundamental, the "purely mechanical" explanation is not purely mechanical. I've found HackerNews to be broadly allergic to the idea of nonlocal consciousness, and worldviews that are not material reductionism. Nevertheless, I will once again point to the work of Dean Radin, among others, to demonstrate that these are not unfalsifiable claims.

softsound 6y ago

Yeah I agree with you. There is a lot of interesting stuff the more you study it. Like Physarum polycephalum, a slime that solves mazes despite not having a nervous system and is used to create better road networks. I really hope in the future we combine bio-tech as things like this already use their form of A* and pathing system. Once plants & slime are used to create logic gates and truth tables start to take off I see that as being the cleanest tech around. Then you have things like the Turritopsis dohrnii a jellyfish. They are immortal beings that decide to change between child and adult forever... or just basically once they start starving or get too old they reboot their cells and turn back into a baby jelly. It's a pretty fast process I've read. Although apparently it's really hard to rise them in captivity so studies are somewhat limited. Then you have planarian flatworms that store their memories outside their brain... I think is similar to how plants function in many regards... Although plant gnosophysiology is a bit different, their "screams" are a bit too ultrasonic for us, but other animals like mice and stuff can hear them. But yes, look up how plants respond to danger and react or warn other plants. It's really cool stuff. Heck going even smaller and just imaging cells hunting down food or working together to create an organ, or nerve or something is amazing. It's a bit mind boggling to think of all the tiny things going on in just your fingertip.

taneq 6y ago

> Truly I find the mechanistic view of nature so grim and pointless. I find the opposite: Knowing how something works just makes me appreciate it more. The fact that an insect can pull off all of these staggeringly complex behaviours (beyond what we can do with kilowatts of GPU power) with a couple of hundred neurons and a power budget of almost nothing, all the while being able to self-reproduce, it's incredible. Is a rainbow more or less amazing when you understand total internal reflection?

madaxe_again 6y ago

I also spend a lot of time watching nature - just yesterday I was marvelling at ants carrying grass seeds to their nest, each carrying the seed the same way around, so that the burrs don’t snag on anything - pretty much the same behaviour as Darwin notes with his worms and leaves. It fascinates me that something with such a limited little mind can still figure out something like “carry from this end”. I actually take a very mechanistic view of nature, and find it glorious - that mechanical processes at a minuscule scale can result in such a panoply and profusion of form is positively miraculous. Matter seems to want to be alive - what enters organic chemistry rarely leaves it, and life always tends to more forms, more individuals, more diversity - and it’s all just chemistry and physics and entropy at play. I guess one can find a spiritual beauty in the idea that living matter, thinking matter, is a preferable state of being for matter in this universe. Cosmos, know thyself.

amelius 6y ago
> I guess one can find a spiritual beauty in the idea that living matter, thinking matter, is a preferable state of being for matter in this universe. But it seems that the thinking species are creating all the problems on this planet ... Also, some say that the function of the brain is to stop thinking as soon as possible. We're using it in the wrong way.