Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious? • Hacker News Board

Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#141

Post by filoeleven » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 3:35 PM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #57

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even funny. It's an attempt to subvert the very legitimate premise of vegetarianism in order to not face the undeniable impacts of non-vegetarian diets.

No. It is mocking the idea that the food choices of vegetarians makes them morally superior and entitled to look down their noses at everyone else and be awful to them. My dislike of the tendency for vegetarians to be all holier than thou was solidified while I was homeless and being harassed online by a holier than thou vegan* who claimed to be vegan because she couldn't tolerate the suffering of the farm raised ani…

> It is mocking the idea that the food choices of vegetarians makes them morally superior and entitled to look down their noses at everyone else and be awful to them.

These people definitely exist, as you’ve illustrated, but in my experience they are a small minority.

What’s interesting to me is that vegetarians/vegans have this reputation for being in-your-face about it, yet in reality the experience reported by my veg friends, and later what I’ve witnessed myself, is that they don’t really advertise it or comment on other people’s choices, and when it does come up (e.g. while discussing where to go for lunch) it is all the meat eaters who predictably start in with the wisecracks and the pre-emptive defense of why they eat meat and why being vegetarian is stupid/weak/unnatural/unamerican/etc. You can see it in all the responses to this article!

This is remarkably consistent here up and down the east coast anyway, I don’t know if it’s different in other parts of the country. I’m just sort of bemused by the difference between reputation and reality.

Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#142

Post by simonwalton » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 3:41 PM UTC

uoaei wrote: post #116

qznc wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, all those discussions dissolve once you use a precise definition, but there is no generally accepted one. The definition must apply to humans. It must not apply to rocks. It should probably not apply to plants, fungi, bacteria, and worms. It will probably apply to dolphins, dogs, and pigs. Will it apply to companies, robots, cities, ant swarms, chicken, or fish?

What scale of "rocks" are we talking about? I'm reminded of the xkcd comic about making a computer out of tons of rocks in the desert[1]. Sure, one rock is crystalline (enough) and has essentially no stimulus-processing power. But a pile of rocks, arranged just so, can be set up so as to respond to certain stimuli that, to an outside observer, seems like thought/consciousness. This is the Chinese room problem[2] reca…

Thanks for the Chinese Room experiment link. I had never heard of it. I don’t suppposr anyone has any good book recommendations around this train of thought?

Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#143

Post by appleflaxen » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 3:45 PM UTC

when you cut the legs of the frog and yell "jump", it does not.

could the ears of the frog be in the legs?

this article is inane.

Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#144

Post by klmr » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 3:47 PM UTC

nezzle wrote: post #74

taneq wrote: post #20

> “Plants are not just robotic, stimulus-response devices,” said Frantisek Baluska I don't see how this follows from the finding that sedatives can prevent plants from responding to stimuli. It just means that there's a shared mechanism behind plants' responses and animals' responses, which wouldn't be overly surprising. Of course, that doesn't mean that plants don't have a lot more going on than we usually realise,…

Yet this is the same type of work people are using to argue that that crabs/fish can feel/experience pain. Proving or disproving consciousness is basically impossible. E.g. I feel like a lot of people aren't conscious :) Prove me right or wrong?

> Yet this is the same type of work people are using to argue that that crabs/fish can feel/experience pain.

Not really: a fundamental requirement in the assessment of pain reception in animals is the presence and stimulation of nociceptors (pain receptors). Plants don’t have any nerves, so they fundamentally lack pain reception. It’s entirely possible that they have developed an alternative system to experience pain (e.g. via analogous action potential signalling) but at this point our conventional model of pain reception completely breaks down.

Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#145

Post by rubyfan » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 3:49 PM UTC

cjbprime wrote: post #43

rubyfan wrote: post #4

Great, they’ve ruined vegetarianism.

If hearing that choosing to eat plants can cause suffering ruins vegetarianism for you, it should already have been ruined by learning that harvesting land for e.g. wheat causes the death of some small animals. (Mice, rabbits, etc.) The idea that it's a worthy goal to minimize suffering caused through your food choices, however, is unaffected by learning about harvesting deaths or by learning that plants might be ver…

Though I love the ensuing discussion, I’ll admit it was mostly a sarcastic comment.

I can’t imagine anyone would read the whole article and draw the conclusion their click-baity title suggests.

Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#146

Post by colanderman » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 3:55 PM UTC

I can anesthetize large parts of my body, losing all responsiveness, yet remain conscious.

Moreover, if I had no head (and presumably no consciousness), I would still respond to stimuli via the spinal cord, and could still be anesthetized.

That plants become unresponsive when anesthetized in no way imples that they have some consciousness that they are losing. Why does the article make this bizarre logical leap.

Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#147

Post by colanderman » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 3:59 PM UTC

taneq wrote: post #20

> “Plants are not just robotic, stimulus-response devices,” said Frantisek Baluska I don't see how this follows from the finding that sedatives can prevent plants from responding to stimuli. It just means that there's a shared mechanism behind plants' responses and animals' responses, which wouldn't be overly surprising. Of course, that doesn't mean that plants don't have a lot more going on than we usually realise,…

Moreover, I can have say, my limbs anesthetized, yet remain conscious. I can also be unconscious (sleeping) yet respond to stimuli.

The author of the article seems to assume that loss of responsiveness implies a consciousness which is lost, which is frankly a bizarrely incorrect inference.

Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#148

Post by goblin89 » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 4:00 PM UTC

pygy_ wrote: post #130

goblin89 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“We're dissipative structures, and we can't survive (i.e. keep our inner entropy low) without raising the entropy in our surrounding, so there's gonna be some environmental disruption if we want to survive, and it's going to be at the expense of other organisms, be they cute, plain or disgusting.” My one quibble is the defeatist “it’s going to be”. Advances in lower-level physics can open up new possibilities. Even n…

Looks like we're in agreement on the fundamentals :-) My point here is that renewable energy has an ecologic footprint that goes beyond the ostensible animal deaths caused by the blades of wind turbines. It is a zero sum game, and it is disruptive in ways we can't all anticipate (especially in an economic growth context). Whether or not other organisms are conscious is not very relevant to our survival. What's releva…

Who knows, maybe we’ll find a disagreement and this will become an interesting argument :)

Sure, other organisms are not relevant to our survival.

What I thought is that if we become able to capture lots of energy from e.g. our local star to maintain a huge sphere of order and low entropy within our habitat, that’d remove the conflict between us vs. other organisms. Basically “our survival” would be expanded to the survival of the whole system of conscious lifeforms we have around.

I mean, on one hand, preserving our natural habitat might keep us humans smart and efficiently developing new cool ways of capturing & dissipating energy at larger scales.

On the other hand, perhaps preserving the whole system of organisms engaging in things like killing each other for whatever purpose within our giant low-entropy sphere will be utterly useless from the universal meaning of life point of view—as in, not at all contributing to energy capture and dissipation.

If that’ll be the case I imagine we’ll evolve quite differently… Something very cyberpunk and AI-heavy comes to mind. Simpler organisms would keep dying away as we & our technology alone skyrocket in accordance with that universal purpose all the way, all the way until the expedited heat death of the universe. Kinda scary how us meatbags too become optional in that scenario.

Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#149

Post by msarchet » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 4:04 PM UTC

colanderman wrote: post #147

taneq wrote: post #20

> “Plants are not just robotic, stimulus-response devices,” said Frantisek Baluska I don't see how this follows from the finding that sedatives can prevent plants from responding to stimuli. It just means that there's a shared mechanism behind plants' responses and animals' responses, which wouldn't be overly surprising. Of course, that doesn't mean that plants don't have a lot more going on than we usually realise,…

Moreover, I can have say, my limbs anesthetized, yet remain conscious. I can also be unconscious (sleeping) yet respond to stimuli. The author of the article seems to assume that loss of responsiveness implies a consciousness which is lost, which is frankly a bizarrely incorrect inference.

It reads to me as: Here is a list of examples of things that plants do that would imply some kind of decision making process. When we anesthetize them they lose those abilities, is that something that tells us they have consciousness.

Secondarily, one can make the argument that due to the fact that you have a nervous system in your arm and your brain loses the signals from that system, in some way you have lost part of your consciousness when you are anesthetized. Since at it's core consciousness is just an awareness of what is happening to you.

Thirdly, whose to say if plants are conscious that their roots don't function in some way as their brain.

Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#150

Post by msarchet » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 4:09 PM UTC

red75prime wrote: post #114

PinkMilkshake wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems more like a definition for intelligence or learning. My favourite definition for consciousness is the following: If it is something to be like a particular thing, then that thing is conscious. If it is something to be like a bat, then a bat is conscious. If it isn’t something to be like a bat - the “lights are off” so to speak - then it’s not conscious. Edit: clarity

You probably couldn't use this definition even if you had a magical device which transforms you into a bat and then back again. After you are yourself again you'll need to interpret the acquired memories. You remember echolocview of the room (bats have memory, it's testable), hunger, disorientation and some other sensations. Does it mean that bat is conscious? What will you remember differently if bat wasn't consciou…

I think you could still use the definition. Because your still conscious, your just something that is aware of its ability to change shape and maintain its awareness through that change.

Nothing is really static in life. So nothing ever really is always just a thing, it was one thing, now it's a slightly different thing.