“Know” is a stretch. Plants respond to attack by releasing chemicals (e.g. nettles and grasses), curling or retracting their leaves (e.g. acacia), or by changing their morphology (e.g. holly); but they have no nervous system - let alone a brain - so it’s not like you’re killing an animal.
It’s always funny to me how people eat up the concept of a distrubuted neural network in tech but scoff at the same idea applying to something like a tree or a fungus.
Pando is the largest organism by area, and the Humungous Fungus is the largest by mass. The idea that those organisms don’t “think” in some way is laughable.
“In some way” is doing A LOT of heavy lifting there. … although in the general sense, agreed.
Especially given how many outright wrong or otherwise assinine conclusions some “thinking” animals come to… Perhaps communicative consciousness is overrated on the intelligence scale.
It always seems lime some excuse in a counter response by vеgаns
The number of times I’ve responded to them telling them that plants probably process pain in a different way to us has always been shot down by them
Tell them that brains extremely simplified are just on and off responses to certain stimuli / information just like plants have specific reponsonses to stimuli and computers having 1’s and 0’s that respond to information
If you actually believe harming plants causes them pain and that that is bad, you should be vegan. Animal agriculture harms far, far more plants than any plant agriculture ever could.
But then you’re still causing plants pain by farming and eating them. Isn’t that argument no different than saying if you believe that harming animals causes them pain, you should be in favor of eating the ones that are hunted because farming them causes more pain?
I really don’t know if plants can cause pain and I think the environmental arguments for not eating meat are far more compelling than the ethical ones, but regardless, I think this is a poor argument for veganism.
But then you’re still causing plants pain by farming and eating them. Isn’t that argument no different than saying if you believe that harming animals causes them pain, you should be in favor of eating the ones that are hunted because farming them causes more pain?
If you insist on animal abuse then you should do it through hunting rather than factory farming precisely because of the diminished amount of suffering caused. But it’s still more suffering than would be caused by just eating plants so I’m not sure I understand your point
I’m talking about an argument for veganism though. If you are saying that it’s acceptable for people to eat hunted meat, you’re not saying they should be vegans. And you’re encouraging a massive increase in hunting.
What part of my reference to it as animal abuse sounds like an endorsement of the practice? I’m not sure about you, but personally I consider animal abuse to be unacceptable.
because humans invent things from scratch that nature has already created and optimzed, it’s why we’re seeing a lot of optimizations on current tech that comes from nature itself.
No. The slime mold doesn’t just solve the maze. It figures out the optimal path and grows only where it needs to reach the goal. It’s a fascinating thing to watch in time-lapse. The “water in a maze” idea is that if it fills every passage, the only drain would be the exit.
I’ll trade you. I’ll read ur book if you check out the ender quintet, or at least speaker of the dead. The hierarchy of foreignness is a concept that has REALLY stuck with me. Also pequininos are bros.
Yeah, but on the other hand I’m old enough to know that when I get excited about something I can talk about it in a way that “clobbers” so I like to disclaimer myself when I know I’m exhibiting that kind of behavior.
They have the knowledge and are doing something about it. If other plants can send out this chemical by observing it themselves, that sounds like a reaction from a communication. It may not be cognition like we expect but it is behaving like cognition would. Hard to argue that plants don’t know or care of their friends start dying.
The plants are acquiring information and making an independent change to their status with this information. Books do nothing with knowledge other than communicate it to others. Machines are unable to make independent changes to itself unless programmed to do so.
I don’t care what a plant thinks of me; it won’t change the dynamic that I’m motivated and it’s prey.
My point is that plants “think” but do so differently than meat bags. Plant cognition is more like a series of low level chemical reactions that look like thinking, but so does brain chemical squirts if we look close enough. So plants may actually be thinking using mechanisms which don’t rely on complex brain architecture because it has another method of processing that thought. Probably across the whole structure but the process is really inefficient so it takes a long time to finish compute.
Like if a super computer made the judgement of a calculator - they are both crunching numbers but there is an order of magnitude difference in how fast the answer is found. Maybe a plant has low bus speeds and crappy compute limited to simple threaded operations.
Lobsters contain 15 nerve clusters called ganglia dispersed throughout their bodies, with a main ganglion located between their eyes. So, according to the logic here whyis it wrong to boil them alive if they don’t have a brain?
For the record, imo it is wrong to boil lobster, crabs, and other crustaceans alive. There is no reason you can’t kill them directly before boiling them.
One of my exes is very strictly vegetarian and will eat oysters. Oysters lack the capacity to consciously be aware of themselves or the environment, effectively they’re a water pump made out of meat, and they’re one of the most sustainable foods we can make leading to less planetary harm than a lot of plant crops even. It’s definitely a controversial opinion though
I am not a biologist but my understanding is that largely has to do with a lack of central nervous system. It would be like asking if a heart is aware of itself. It can autonomously react to things like low oxygen but that isn’t because those signals go anywhere that makes a decision it’s more like a chemical/biological Rube Goldberg machine. If you really want to get down to it though I don’t think we can know for certain just make educated guesses, and imo oysters are even less likely to have any form of consciousness than a lot of plants or mushrooms
I did read about damaging effects of oyster farms though
Yeah no monoculture farm is without it’s damage, for sure, but oysters are real low on the list. They are filter feeders so don’t need any additional food source or fertilizer you just seed them somewhere and pull them out as needed. A single one filters something like fifty gallons of water a day, capture carbon for their shells, and they’re incredible at pulling heavy metals out of the water but that’s not something they’re utilized for at scale afaik because then humans wouldn’t want to eat those ones
If it helps give context, various … factions? (I’m not sure the best word here) consider honey OK and others do not. You can research that more if you want to get an idea of what some vegans might think.
Yeah, I couldn’t think of a better word at the moment. “schools of thought” is probably a better one for grouping overall themes that exist within the vegan movement.
by this logic do people even truly exist. Maybe you’re just the only real person in the world, maybe im the only real person in the world, we have no way of proving this.
“Know” is a stretch. Plants respond to attack by releasing chemicals (e.g. nettles and grasses), curling or retracting their leaves (e.g. acacia), or by changing their morphology (e.g. holly); but they have no nervous system - let alone a brain - so it’s not like you’re killing an animal.
Plants having no nervous system is being challenged with the idea that the plant itself is its central nervous system.
They react to stimulus, they emit sounds (different ones when in “pain”), and communicate with each other.
They don’t have consciousness in a way we understand
I dont mean this as a “dunk” but more of a how neat is that
It’s always funny to me how people eat up the concept of a distrubuted neural network in tech but scoff at the same idea applying to something like a tree or a fungus.
Pando is the largest organism by area, and the Humungous Fungus is the largest by mass. The idea that those organisms don’t “think” in some way is laughable.
“In some way” is doing A LOT of heavy lifting there. … although in the general sense, agreed.
Especially given how many outright wrong or otherwise assinine conclusions some “thinking” animals come to… Perhaps communicative consciousness is overrated on the intelligence scale.
It always seems lime some excuse in a counter response by vеgаns
The number of times I’ve responded to them telling them that plants probably process pain in a different way to us has always been shot down by them
Tell them that brains extremely simplified are just on and off responses to certain stimuli / information just like plants have specific reponsonses to stimuli and computers having 1’s and 0’s that respond to information
A mycelium network could be counted as a brain
If you actually believe harming plants causes them pain and that that is bad, you should be vegan. Animal agriculture harms far, far more plants than any plant agriculture ever could.
But then you’re still causing plants pain by farming and eating them. Isn’t that argument no different than saying if you believe that harming animals causes them pain, you should be in favor of eating the ones that are hunted because farming them causes more pain?
I really don’t know if plants can cause pain and I think the environmental arguments for not eating meat are far more compelling than the ethical ones, but regardless, I think this is a poor argument for veganism.
If you insist on animal abuse then you should do it through hunting rather than factory farming precisely because of the diminished amount of suffering caused. But it’s still more suffering than would be caused by just eating plants so I’m not sure I understand your point
I’m talking about an argument for veganism though. If you are saying that it’s acceptable for people to eat hunted meat, you’re not saying they should be vegans. And you’re encouraging a massive increase in hunting.
What part of my reference to it as animal abuse sounds like an endorsement of the practice? I’m not sure about you, but personally I consider animal abuse to be unacceptable.
because humans invent things from scratch that nature has already created and optimzed, it’s why we’re seeing a lot of optimizations on current tech that comes from nature itself.
It’s a really weird problem to have.
Go find that video of a slime mold optimizing Japan’s rail system by finding oats in a maze
isn’t this similar to or equivalent in concept to letting water pathfind through a maze for example?
No. The slime mold doesn’t just solve the maze. It figures out the optimal path and grows only where it needs to reach the goal. It’s a fascinating thing to watch in time-lapse. The “water in a maze” idea is that if it fills every passage, the only drain would be the exit.
obviously, but the flow path of the water is going to be a direct path to the end of the maze also. You just have to wait for it to fill up first lol.
You should read the book “entangled life” if you haven’t already. It’s fascinating.
I’ll trade you. I’ll read ur book if you check out the ender quintet, or at least speaker of the dead. The hierarchy of foreignness is a concept that has REALLY stuck with me. Also pequininos are bros.
Huh, neat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm3JodBR-vs
It’s truly shameful that disclaimers like these feel necessary in this age of shitting on everyone else online. Lemmy users suck too.
Yeah, but on the other hand I’m old enough to know that when I get excited about something I can talk about it in a way that “clobbers” so I like to disclaimer myself when I know I’m exhibiting that kind of behavior.
Isn’t that how we justified boiling Crayfish alive though?
Some misguided monsters, yes.
We can’t say that brains are required for a mind to exist; we have no way of knowing.
They have the knowledge and are doing something about it. If other plants can send out this chemical by observing it themselves, that sounds like a reaction from a communication. It may not be cognition like we expect but it is behaving like cognition would. Hard to argue that plants don’t know or care of their friends start dying.
I’d argue that knowledge is more than that, otherwise books or state machines could also be said to know things.
This is why I don’t eat books
The plants are acquiring information and making an independent change to their status with this information. Books do nothing with knowledge other than communicate it to others. Machines are unable to make independent changes to itself unless programmed to do so.
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I don’t care what a plant thinks of me; it won’t change the dynamic that I’m motivated and it’s prey.
My point is that plants “think” but do so differently than meat bags. Plant cognition is more like a series of low level chemical reactions that look like thinking, but so does brain chemical squirts if we look close enough. So plants may actually be thinking using mechanisms which don’t rely on complex brain architecture because it has another method of processing that thought. Probably across the whole structure but the process is really inefficient so it takes a long time to finish compute.
Like if a super computer made the judgement of a calculator - they are both crunching numbers but there is an order of magnitude difference in how fast the answer is found. Maybe a plant has low bus speeds and crappy compute limited to simple threaded operations.
Lobsters contain 15 nerve clusters called ganglia dispersed throughout their bodies, with a main ganglion located between their eyes. So, according to the logic here whyis it wrong to boil them alive if they don’t have a brain?
For the record, imo it is wrong to boil lobster, crabs, and other crustaceans alive. There is no reason you can’t kill them directly before boiling them.
Are vegans fine with fish? Seafood?
Some of them eat oysters, or so I’m told. They lack a brain and centralised nervous system.
One of my exes is very strictly vegetarian and will eat oysters. Oysters lack the capacity to consciously be aware of themselves or the environment, effectively they’re a water pump made out of meat, and they’re one of the most sustainable foods we can make leading to less planetary harm than a lot of plant crops even. It’s definitely a controversial opinion though
When talking about the capacity to consciously be aware of themselves (the oysters) how is that actually measured and what do they look for
How are we sure they are not actually self aware through some other unknown mechanism
I am not a biologist but my understanding is that largely has to do with a lack of central nervous system. It would be like asking if a heart is aware of itself. It can autonomously react to things like low oxygen but that isn’t because those signals go anywhere that makes a decision it’s more like a chemical/biological Rube Goldberg machine. If you really want to get down to it though I don’t think we can know for certain just make educated guesses, and imo oysters are even less likely to have any form of consciousness than a lot of plants or mushrooms
Fish too btw, as far as we know. Lizard brain is an evolution of fish brain, they are basically biological automata.
Makes one think, live getting on land was it getting into hard mode.
I did read about damaging effects of oyster farms though, the ones with cages, because of their poop/piss(?). But sure, because hundreds in one place.
Yeah no monoculture farm is without it’s damage, for sure, but oysters are real low on the list. They are filter feeders so don’t need any additional food source or fertilizer you just seed them somewhere and pull them out as needed. A single one filters something like fifty gallons of water a day, capture carbon for their shells, and they’re incredible at pulling heavy metals out of the water but that’s not something they’re utilized for at scale afaik because then humans wouldn’t want to eat those ones
Your fish science is wildly outdated.
Right, looks like some fish species can feel pain.
Peak ambiguity.
No, vegans aren’t eating fish or seafood.
If it helps give context, various … factions? (I’m not sure the best word here) consider honey OK and others do not. You can research that more if you want to get an idea of what some vegans might think.
Vegans don’t really have factions. Every single one is an individual with their own values.
Yeah, I couldn’t think of a better word at the moment. “schools of thought” is probably a better one for grouping overall themes that exist within the vegan movement.
by this logic do people even truly exist. Maybe you’re just the only real person in the world, maybe im the only real person in the world, we have no way of proving this.