Breaking the Bird Barrier: Scientist Decodes Zebra Finch Language

Post by glenstein » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 8:47 PM UTC

t-writescode wrote: post #21

SapporoChris wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the average person thinks is a very low barrier but I do not think plants have crossed that yet.

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-lou... [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stressed-plants-c... Plants release VOCs when harmed: [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/interes…

Post by Modified3019 » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 8:55 PM UTC

t-writescode wrote: post #21

SapporoChris wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the average person thinks is a very low barrier but I do not think plants have crossed that yet.

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-lou... [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stressed-plants-c... Plants release VOCs when harmed: [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/interes…

Post by t-writescode » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 9:06 PM UTC

glenstein wrote: post #23

forlorn_mammoth wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

Post by chickensong » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 11:36 PM UTC

t-writescode wrote: post #7

technothrasher wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title doesn't match the paper though. People had already decoded the bird calls. What the paper was giving evidence to was that the birds themselves are cognitively decoding the calls.

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.…

Post by lioeters » Sun, Jul 05, 2026, 12:10 AM UTC

t-writescode wrote: post #25

glenstein wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

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.