4 ms·

I’m glad we’re doing this research. It makes me wonder how much time and potential we’ve wasted over the years actively assuming non-human animals were just rot

I’m glad we’re doing this research. It makes me wonder how much time and potential we’ve wasted over the years actively assuming non-human animals were just rote automatons. It seems like a meaningful amount of science has been spent on systematically dismantling pre-existing prejudice over the last hundreds of years (and thousands in some cases and cultures). All humans are human. Babies can feel pain. Plants feel. Animals think. Just … So much wasted time on what should have always been seen as true. I get that some cultures already thought some of these things, but many of these were sadly not prevailing.

adjejmxbdjdn 3mo ago
I don’t believe there’s any evidence behind plant’s feeling or thinking. Other than that you’re right.
- why_at 3mo ago
  Yeah I think there's a lot of science news about how plants are capable of more than the average person thinks, but people tend to conflate that with some kind of conscious experience.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  - SapporoChris 3mo ago
    What the average person thinks is a very low barrier but I do not think plants have crossed that yet.
    - t-writescode 3mo ago
      Some variety of learnings over the last several years. Many of them are sensationalized; but my simple statement was "plants feel"; and many of these values imply some level of "feeling": Plants scream when harmed: [0] https://www.sciencealert.com/plants-really-do-scream-out-loud-we-just-never-heard-it-until-now https://www.sciencealert.com/plants-really-do-scream-out-lou... [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stressed-plants-cry-and-some-animals-can-probably-hear-them/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stressed-plants-c... Plants release VOCs when harmed: [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1lzg4x9/when_a_plant_is_attacked_by_herbivores_it_can/ https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1lzg4x9/... (OP's main comment has several sources) Plants respond to audio stimuli (hearing, sorta): [3] https://loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=24-P13-00035&segmentID=4 https://loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=24-P13-00035&s... [4] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4102826/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4102826/ A quick search reveals several other incidences of other "huh"-worthy thoughts; but my goal was "plants feel" and I would argue these are close enough to shorthand to "feel"
      - glenstein 3mo ago
        I think this is a huge error which collapses the most urgently important distinction at the heart of the entire issue. Plants do complex, interesting things, and we borrow from an already existing vocabulary to make analogies. So people will say plants "feel" or "communicate" or "see". But those are automatic biological reflexes, and using words with connotations to conscious awareness to describe them makes people think they're the same thing. But a plant "feeling pain" is repurposing words about consciousness to mean new and different things. And I think people are seduced by it because it feels like being open-minded to new possibilities.
        t-writescode 3mo ago
        I think that there was a relatively recent panic to stop anthropomorphizing the rest of creation and that that rebellion against anthropomorphism clings so hard to "that's not how humans do it and stop thinking it is" that we commit the sin in the opposite direction - and declare everything as "definitely not a lived experience of another being" and "just rote programming" too early.
        lioeters 3mo ago
        Of course plants have feelings and conscious experience, it's obvious to anyone who has spent time living with them. Plants literally think and solve problems, too. But you won't succeed in convincing anyone who doesn't understand such basic truths. Reducing a living being to a mere machine is so 19th century, but just as religions still influence how people see the world, it's going to take generations for science to "prove" it to satisfaction, and for the general public to accept it. We're still missing fundamental concepts, much less ability to measure and quantify it. You'll probably like the biologist Michael Levin and his research, exploring what a mind actually is and seeing beyond what he calls our "mind blindness". https://www.drmichaellevin.org/ https://www.drmichaellevin.org/
        Exoristos 3mo ago
        Interesting to me that you employ religion as the pejorative comparison here, when it's the inherent human religions that have perceived in plants gods and spirits since before the beginning of recorded time.
- forlorn_mammoth 3mo ago
  fortunately, there is a lot of evidence behind plant's feeling and thinking; enough so that if you were to expose yourself to it, and if you were willing to update your beliefs based on strong scientific evidence, I believe you'd change your view.
  - glenstein 3mo ago
    There's evidence for stunningly intricate, marvelously impressive biological function, but there's no evidence whatsoever for internal mental states. What's happening is we borrow from a pre-existing vocabulary with connotations to conscious activity and we use it to describe automatic biological reflexes, and then some people lose track of whether it was an analogy or whether it was literal and start claiming plants can "feel."
    - t-writescode 3mo ago
      It's funny you bring up "have no mental state", because there is a plant that scientists find seems to have some sort of memory: https://www.sci.news/biology/science-mimosa-plants-memory-01695.html https://www.sci.news/biology/science-mimosa-plants-memory-01... > The scientists show how Mimosa plants stopped closing their leaves when they learnt that the repeated disturbance had no real damaging consequence. ... > Astonishingly, Mimosa can display the learned response even when left undisturbed in a more favorable environment for a month.
mcswell 3mo ago
11 distinct calls is something a rote automaton could easily cope with. So I don't think this study proves much of anything about birds' cognitive abilities.
chickensong 3mo ago
> It makes me wonder how much time and potential we’ve wasted over the years actively assuming non-human animals were just rote automatons. It's pretty easy to see that most things above plankton aren't rote automatons. Anyone claiming otherwise just has an agenda to sell.

adjejmxbdjdn 3mo ago

I don’t believe there’s any evidence behind plant’s feeling or thinking. Other than that you’re right.

why_at 3mo ago
Yeah I think there's a lot of science news about how plants are capable of more than the average person thinks, but people tend to conflate that with some kind of conscious experience.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- SapporoChris 3mo ago
  What the average person thinks is a very low barrier but I do not think plants have crossed that yet.
  - t-writescode 3mo ago
    Some variety of learnings over the last several years. Many of them are sensationalized; but my simple statement was "plants feel"; and many of these values imply some level of "feeling": Plants scream when harmed: [0] https://www.sciencealert.com/plants-really-do-scream-out-loud-we-just-never-heard-it-until-now https://www.sciencealert.com/plants-really-do-scream-out-lou... [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stressed-plants-cry-and-some-animals-can-probably-hear-them/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stressed-plants-c... Plants release VOCs when harmed: [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1lzg4x9/when_a_plant_is_attacked_by_herbivores_it_can/ https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1lzg4x9/... (OP's main comment has several sources) Plants respond to audio stimuli (hearing, sorta): [3] https://loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=24-P13-00035&segmentID=4 https://loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=24-P13-00035&s... [4] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4102826/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4102826/ A quick search reveals several other incidences of other "huh"-worthy thoughts; but my goal was "plants feel" and I would argue these are close enough to shorthand to "feel"
    - glenstein 3mo ago
      I think this is a huge error which collapses the most urgently important distinction at the heart of the entire issue. Plants do complex, interesting things, and we borrow from an already existing vocabulary to make analogies. So people will say plants "feel" or "communicate" or "see". But those are automatic biological reflexes, and using words with connotations to conscious awareness to describe them makes people think they're the same thing. But a plant "feeling pain" is repurposing words about consciousness to mean new and different things. And I think people are seduced by it because it feels like being open-minded to new possibilities.
      - t-writescode 3mo ago
        I think that there was a relatively recent panic to stop anthropomorphizing the rest of creation and that that rebellion against anthropomorphism clings so hard to "that's not how humans do it and stop thinking it is" that we commit the sin in the opposite direction - and declare everything as "definitely not a lived experience of another being" and "just rote programming" too early.
        lioeters 3mo ago
        Of course plants have feelings and conscious experience, it's obvious to anyone who has spent time living with them. Plants literally think and solve problems, too. But you won't succeed in convincing anyone who doesn't understand such basic truths. Reducing a living being to a mere machine is so 19th century, but just as religions still influence how people see the world, it's going to take generations for science to "prove" it to satisfaction, and for the general public to accept it. We're still missing fundamental concepts, much less ability to measure and quantify it. You'll probably like the biologist Michael Levin and his research, exploring what a mind actually is and seeing beyond what he calls our "mind blindness". https://www.drmichaellevin.org/ https://www.drmichaellevin.org/
        Exoristos 3mo ago
        Interesting to me that you employ religion as the pejorative comparison here, when it's the inherent human religions that have perceived in plants gods and spirits since before the beginning of recorded time.
forlorn_mammoth 3mo ago
fortunately, there is a lot of evidence behind plant's feeling and thinking; enough so that if you were to expose yourself to it, and if you were willing to update your beliefs based on strong scientific evidence, I believe you'd change your view.
- glenstein 3mo ago
  There's evidence for stunningly intricate, marvelously impressive biological function, but there's no evidence whatsoever for internal mental states. What's happening is we borrow from a pre-existing vocabulary with connotations to conscious activity and we use it to describe automatic biological reflexes, and then some people lose track of whether it was an analogy or whether it was literal and start claiming plants can "feel."
  - t-writescode 3mo ago
    It's funny you bring up "have no mental state", because there is a plant that scientists find seems to have some sort of memory: https://www.sci.news/biology/science-mimosa-plants-memory-01695.html https://www.sci.news/biology/science-mimosa-plants-memory-01... > The scientists show how Mimosa plants stopped closing their leaves when they learnt that the repeated disturbance had no real damaging consequence. ... > Astonishingly, Mimosa can display the learned response even when left undisturbed in a more favorable environment for a month.

mcswell 3mo ago

11 distinct calls is something a rote automaton could easily cope with. So I don't think this study proves much of anything about birds' cognitive abilities.

chickensong 3mo ago

> It makes me wonder how much time and potential we’ve wasted over the years actively assuming non-human animals were just rote automatons. It's pretty easy to see that most things above plankton aren't rote automatons. Anyone claiming otherwise just has an agenda to sell.