61–70 of 92 posts
What is described in the article doesn't fit the definition of panic. I'm torn because maybe I wouldn't have read the article without the needless anthropomorphization. Plants are awesome and interesting to me because they're so planty and not animaly.
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Are there times when "panic" is an appropriate response to something? I mean it is often an understandable response, but I have to agree that my understanding of the term is that is a response to being overwhelmed and responding haphazardly as a result. Is that an accurate description of what's happening? The actual article is a bit light to really understand. I wonder if it's the "chain reaction" across individual t…
If panic was never appropriate, the ability to panic either would never have developed or disappeared in humans a long time ago.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are there times when "panic" is an appropriate response to something? I mean it is often an understandable response, but I have to agree that my understanding of the term is that is a response to being overwhelmed and responding haphazardly as a result. Is that an accurate description of what's happening? The actual article is a bit light to really understand. I wonder if it's the "chain reaction" across individual t…
> Are there times when "panic" is an appropriate response to something? Yes. When something is panic inducing. Note that the bad connotations of panic are for not panic worthy situations (e.g. don't panic when you just lost your wallet, etc). But when chased by a predator, a panic response is a good, and evolutionary created, way, to get from 0-60 mph adrenaline and speed wise... A gazelle doesn't sit still and weigh…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Are there times when "panic" is an appropriate response to something? Yes. When something is panic inducing. Note that the bad connotations of panic are for not panic worthy situations (e.g. don't panic when you just lost your wallet, etc). But when chased by a predator, a panic response is a good, and evolutionary created, way, to get from 0-60 mph adrenaline and speed wise... A gazelle doesn't sit still and weigh…
Couldn't disagree more with your definition, panicking is never a desirable action. Being chased by a predator and you run? Are humans likely the fastest animals? Most predators are much faster than us and would gladly give chase. The only way out is to outsmart it and you can't do that if you're panicking. The word itself carries an undesirable connotation and is never - by definition - the best course of action.
Well, complains should be directed to evolution.
>Being chased by a predator and you run? Are humans likely the fastest animals?
Depends on the predator, for humans it will many times be other humans (or other homo species), and the extra boost panic mode gives you can very much help. Besides you don't have to merely run, you can run and hide, run and jump on some tree, etc.
>The only way out is to outsmart it and you can't do that if you're panicking.
You don't care much for outsmarting and subtle strategy when it's life or death either.
From Wikipedia:
"An evolutionary psychology explanation is that early animals had to react to threatening stimuli quickly and did not have time to psychologically and physically prepare themselves. The fight or flight response provided them with the mechanisms to rapidly respond to threats against survival."
If I come at you screaming with a knife would you sit and think how to outsmart me for a while, or start to panic / hide behind something / run trying to escape/avoid me? I'd like to see someone try the former...
>The word itself carries an undesirable connotation and is never - by definition - the best course of action
That's at the human cultural level, where it's 99.99% applied to non life-threatening situations, one should not worry as much about.
On the evolutionary/animal level, panic (aka fight or flight) is an excellent mechanism to stay alive...
The instruction to pour water straight into the pot, and not onto the plant, always struck me as odd. Maybe it’s one of those small ancient nuggets of knowledge that we struggle to justify but just work. Might be a big leap still, but reactions like the one from this paper could justify not spraying water all over my house plants.
I wonder would pouring water onto the leaves of chilis plants encourage it to produce hotter peppers? The substance that makes chilis spicy is a natural anti fungal.
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He makes an interesting point. Some plants have a response to rain triggered by a hormone. To ascribe the term panic to it though might possibly be mischaracterizing the response because of the tendency to anthropomorphize.
Well we don't really have words to describe plant behavior. I agree, we can't view plants through an animalian lense, but at the same time we have to use the words we have to discuss them. I think it's fair to say plant "panic" is different than animal "panic" but from what I read, panic seems to be the closest analogue.
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Except "panic" means an ultimately self destructive overreaction. At least in my personal dictionary.
Not all of us use your personal dictionary.
Well, that's unfortunate because his definition happens to be the right one.
The instruction to pour water straight into the pot, and not onto the plant, always struck me as odd. Maybe it’s one of those small ancient nuggets of knowledge that we struggle to justify but just work. Might be a big leap still, but reactions like the one from this paper could justify not spraying water all over my house plants.
The article says it's no surprise plants panic because water spreads disease, which is exactly what we're avoiding by not watering the leaves. It's not to save our plants' feelings, although the root cause of the feelings and the problem we're avoiding might be the same.
"Panic" is an anthropomorphism for what is really going on. Plants react to water. That makes complete sense. Humans react to it when it falls on us as well. Maybe we go inside. Maybe we open an umbrella. Maybe we go dance through the fields and enjoy a summer rain. But whatever we do, they are reactions, not "Panic."
Plants and fungi have some very complex interactive networks capable of various forms of individual, inter-individual, and inter-species communication and intelligent decision making. From our perspective though, these interactions and decisions play out over some very different time scales from our own cognition. Suppose for a second that a tree was intelligent enough to be sentient, it would be VERY difficult for either the tree or us to recognize the intelligence and cognition in the other.
"Panic" responses, fear, and the whole manner of physiologic changes that happen in a human didn't spring up over-night. These pathways evolved a VERY long time ago. An insect has some obvious "panic" type of responses to predation attempts that are not so different from our own. As you climb up the ladder in intelligence to mammals, and then all the way to humans, there is absolutely no clear line where "panic" suddenly exists as I believe you would define it. It's a very smooth and gradual transition. Even in a human, if you've ever watched one come back to consciousness after a seizure or wake up from anesthesia, you'll see that it's also a very smooth and gradual transition to what we'd call consciousness and sentience. It's not at all an on/off switch.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of the same neurotransmitters and hormones fill the same role in a plant response to dangerous conditions as they would humans. I know many of the same signalling molecules are in use. Evolution doesn't like to fix what ain't broke.