A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to • Hacker News Board

Re: A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to

#231

Post by perl4ever » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 7:16 PM UTC

ctrl-j wrote: post #226

koliber wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

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.

Re: A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to

#232

Post by geophile » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 7:18 PM UTC

swebs wrote: post #176

>Trees exchange chemicals with fungus, and send seeds—essentially information packets—with wind, birds, bats, and other visitors for delivery around the world. Simard specializes in the underground relationships of trees. Her research shows that below the earth are vast networks of roots working with fungi to move water, carbon, and nutrients among trees of all species. These complex, symbiotic networks mimic human n…

I keep coming across popular discussions of this research. Each time, I am struck with the emphasis on trees "speaking", scientists understanding their "language". It's gotten to the point that it seems unlikely this is a journalist getting it wrong, or trying too hard to communicate scientific ideas. It strikes me as clickbait. This looks like the creation of intentionally overwrought analogies to fool the rubes and garner attention.

Trees emitting various molecules in reaction to environmental conditions? Sure, completely believable. Other trees picking up on those molecules, and reacting to them? Very interesting, and I can see why it makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. But to use terms like "speaking" and "language" is to conjure up ideas of consciousness, intelligence, and mental states that obviously don't apply.

Re: A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to

#233

Post by mod » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 7:21 PM UTC

koliber wrote: post #188

ianai wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve had house cats ask me things plenty. They’ll ask whether they are welcome in my lap by stopping short of stepping on my leg and looking at me for feedback. There’s much more to communication than human spoken word.

Agreed. I've had dogs communicate with me by angrily running towards me and barking. This conveyed danger and told me to get out of the way. I've once had a small avalanche do the same as well. People would call me looney though if I told them that the mountains communicate with me, and I listen.

The dog conveyed to you its intent to harm you (even if it was being deceitful).

The mountain communicated nothing to you.

If you were hunted and killed by a mountain lion, it would be akin to the avalanche. It did not intend to send you any message, even if you managed to spot it before it attacked you.

The dog fully intended for you to know.

Re: A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to

#234

Post by raadore » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 12:45 AM UTC

This is to the admin and mods: it appears to me that my comment got removed from the conversation. Is that correct or am I simply not seeing the entire thread of comments? Or does the system automatically remove comments that get negative points? Please advise so I understand how the commenting system works. Thank you.

Re: A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to

#235

Post by rbosinger » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 4:03 AM UTC

fifnir wrote: post #139

rbosinger wrote: post #17

This is what alien life will be like. We will decide it is alive but not understand fully what that means.

> We will decide it is alive but not understand fully what that means. I don't understand fully what this comment means. If alien life has DNA (chemistry) like ours, we learn that life as we know it either started somewhere and spread or was re-invented. If it doesn't, but is obviously alive (move on its own will, hunts, i dont know) we learn that life can exist with different chemistries. If it's not obviously alive…

It means all of that. We find something we've never seen before. There's something about it that seems "alive". It's an instinctual feeling. We have to decide how "alive" that is. Is it alive like a human, a tree, bacteria, AI? I'm being general on purpose here. It's just neat that this conversation is still so relevant here on Earth. It's kind of like how alien the deep ocean still is to us.

Re: A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to

#236

Post by dang » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 4:48 AM UTC

petecox wrote: post #26

dang wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you keep posting unsubstantive comments, we're going to have to rate-limit your account again.

Steady on, it's mentioned in the article. "the Waorani aren’t alarmed by the notion that a tree might scream when cut"

That's not the issue.

Re: A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to

#237

Post by dang » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 4:50 AM UTC

sAbakumoff wrote: post #199

tibarion wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it definitely is. I think you should reread the welcome page: https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html "The most important principle on HN, though, is to make thoughtful comments. Thoughtful in both senses: civil and substantial. The test for substance is a lot like it is for links. Does your comment teach us anything? There are two ways to do that: by pointing out some consideration that hadn't previously b…

yeah at least people have fun on reddit and don't blow up scandals from innocent LoL comments.

The problem is more complicated and more interesting than this. You can have many innocent comments, none objectionable in its own right, that add up to a situation no one wants or enjoys. The issue isn't that the individual comments are bad; in principle they could add fun to an otherwise good and substantial site. But in practice you can't have a stable equilibrium that way: if you allow it, you end up with a snowball effect in which such comments take over and it's all downhill from there. Therefore we can't allow it. It isn't about being killjoys, but about protecting the viability of the site.

Re: A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to

#238

Post by dang » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 5:22 AM UTC

fifnir wrote: post #220

raadore wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who’s saying anything about believing? Just stating facts based on eye witness accounts from 900 years ago.

Yeah, I'm gonna need a better source than what you sent to consider this "facts".

Please don't do religious flamewar on HN. It's one of the things we most don't want here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to

#239

Post by nikki93 » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 9:04 AM UTC

koliber wrote: post #187

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…

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.

Re: A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to

#240

Post by nikki93 » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 9:09 AM UTC

phyzome wrote: post #230

koliber wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 il…

I suppose I would avoid any involvement of the terms "deliberate" or "intentional" in this discussion, for the reasons you mention. (Does the tree have free will in attracting herbivore predators? Do you have free will in deciding to go to work?) Another thing to chew on: Does communication involve a level of indirection? What if your chemical signal directly modifies a behavior pathway in the target, rather than sta…

I think what you’re looking for is that languages are more language when they are interpreted by something that looks more like a VM, and interpreters are more VMy when they have constructs that look like “if” and “load from memory” (letting you choose how to act on observing current data, based on past experience).

If it’s easier to study the language as a what you term “direct,” it seems less languagey, or whatever.

I personally think this distinction is distracting because you can always create a (large) bijection between encodings and their output when interpreted and then it looks “direct”, without actually writing the VM (just a huge lookup table).

I feel like smart languages just look nicer to use because they compress better (length to output blowup is exponential), and we think that seems more like human communication.