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

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

#101

Post by mullikine »

vinchuco wrote: post #77
mullikine wrote: post #24

Language is found everywhere in nature. Personally, I'm looking forward to when google translate can do cat language

"My hovercraft is full of eels"

If you were to ask what is human language, it would be the superset of sign language, spoken language, body language, etc. If you take that kind of approach when deciphering the language of cats, just as convnets can decipher the hidden logic of recognising faces, I'd imagine a rudimentary form would be a mixture of visual and auditory signals designed to "trick" the cat into responding.

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

#102

Post by sAbakumoff »

sydd wrote: post #93
sAbakumoff wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

could you please mind your own business? what are you, unsubstantive police or something?

No, he is one of the admins. And this is not the place for low-effort comments like "me too" or "first!" or "lol"

I found the title funny, it's not a low effort to share this reaction with everyone.

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

#103

Post by Tehnix »

mamon wrote: post #84
sametmax wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you seen a pack of animals or plants jointly deciding to voluntarily forgo extra food Actually, the only animals I know to become obese are humans, and animals that are attached to humans. You may say it's because they don't have an unlimited supply of food, but actually, many animals do, or used to have before we destroyed it. Of course, they don't really forgo extra food, they use it to multiply their number…

Obesity comes from the type of food you eat, not just quantity. Humans are the only species that invented glucose-fructose syrup and other highly processed foods. Feed that to any wild animal an they will become obese as well.

Not. At. All.

Obesity simply comes from consuming more calories than you need. You can (and people have) loose weight by eating McDonalds if you wanted—you just have to make sure the amount of calories you get from it is less than what you actually need.

As the other commentator mentions, the only thing processed foods might bring, is trying to break our self-restraint by being delicious in certain ways.

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

#104

Post by mockingbirdy »

some_account wrote: post #23

Humans can't perceive a lot of things, and on top of that, we have egos that makes us feel superior even though in reality, we are the only ones on the planet who can't live in harmony with other species. If you ever had a cat and really observed it and communicated with it, you know it has feelings and emotions. Birds have it also, so does pigs, horses... But we just ignore all that when it's convenient for us to ea…

> But we just ignore all that when it's convenient for us to eat them.

I don't necessarily agree with your misanthropy (I don't see the broader point of it - "my plan for humanity: let's self-annihilate, we suck"?).

But I'm interested in psychology. And there are studies that show that people perceive cows as dumb while eating them. When they get asked before and after eating meat, the same people said that cows are intelligent beings.

So there are cognitive processes in place to make it possible that we eat meat despite the fact that we normally know about the human-like qualities of the animals we eat.

I think we can learn a lot about the difference between humans and other animals when we focus our efforts on understanding the excuses and biases that we develop using our cerebral parts of our brains and the prefrontal neocortex.

> I'm not a big fan of humanity. We are pretty awful.

Bear with us and have a little bit of compassion. I'm glad every time a human being is able to be positive despite the fact that every human has the potential to destroy other lives.

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

#105

Post by usrusr »

dumb2223 wrote: post #52
close04 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he mean the main difference would be that animals mostly kill (probably applies to most of their other actions) out of need (protection, food). Humans destroy things because they can many times. Sometimes it's not about needs ... unless for example you consider greed to be a need.

Learning English: They kill out of need, out of seems to me more like without. They kill without need. In Spanish we should say they kill because of need. How "out of" became because? Anyway, if you are out of luck I hope it is not because you are lucky.

If you want a rationalization for that idiom, think of a state machine: they are in a state of need, therefore they kill. Note also how acting "out of" does not necessarily imply transitioning away, e.g. company x operating out of city y.

The grammatical nuance between out of need and out of luck (nice find btw) would be doing (out of need) vs being (out of luck): you might win out of luck, and later lose because you are out of luck. Wastefully spend out of wealth, then be out of wealth, and so on.

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

#106

Post by Pamar »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #42
some_account wrote: post #23

Humans can't perceive a lot of things, and on top of that, we have egos that makes us feel superior even though in reality, we are the only ones on the planet who can't live in harmony with other species. If you ever had a cat and really observed it and communicated with it, you know it has feelings and emotions. Birds have it also, so does pigs, horses... But we just ignore all that when it's convenient for us to ea…

> we are the only ones on the planet who can't live in harmony with other species. This "harmony" is really just interlocking loops of unconstrained growth, followed by running out of resources, and starvation while the food supply regenerates. It only looks pretty if you ain't looking very carefully. In fact, human beings seem to be the only ones observed with a capability for restraint . We're not very good at prac…

Maybe you should qualify this as "planned restraint" o "deliberate restraint". In most animals "restraint" is a largely automated mechanism. E.g.: if the food is scarce, fertility decreases (and/or post-birth mortality increases).

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

#107

Post by vinchuco »

mullikine wrote: post #101
vinchuco wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"My hovercraft is full of eels"

If you were to ask what is human language, it would be the superset of sign language, spoken language, body language, etc. If you take that kind of approach when deciphering the language of cats, just as convnets can decipher the hidden logic of recognising faces, I'd imagine a rudimentary form would be a mixture of visual and auditory signals designed to "trick" the cat into responding.

Cats are smart enough to communicate with humans, I have no doubt of that. N=2, but once I had a cat that woke me up at night to point out a possum had entered the house and was hiding under a piece of furniture, and once I had one which (different house) gestured me to follow him in the chase after shooing away the intruder cat that kept stealing its food.

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

#108

Post by Confusion »

some_account wrote: post #23

Humans can't perceive a lot of things, and on top of that, we have egos that makes us feel superior even though in reality, we are the only ones on the planet who can't live in harmony with other species. If you ever had a cat and really observed it and communicated with it, you know it has feelings and emotions. Birds have it also, so does pigs, horses... But we just ignore all that when it's convenient for us to ea…

  Humans can't perceive a lot of things
More things than any other organism. Already more than most organisms using our biological sense organs. Our sight and hearing are pretty good, even by animal standards. But then we developed tools to transcode signals not directly observable by our biological sense organs. We perceive more than all other organisms combined.

  we are the only ones on the planet who can't live in harmony with other species.
We are the only ones that partially attempt to live in harmony with other species and partially succeed. All others care nothing for any other species than their own. And often not even that.

  We are pretty awful.
We are awesome and can become even more amazing.

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

#109

Post by mullikine »

vinchuco wrote: post #107
mullikine wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were to ask what is human language, it would be the superset of sign language, spoken language, body language, etc. If you take that kind of approach when deciphering the language of cats, just as convnets can decipher the hidden logic of recognising faces, I'd imagine a rudimentary form would be a mixture of visual and auditory signals designed to "trick" the cat into responding.

Cats are smart enough to communicate with humans, I have no doubt of that. N=2, but once I had a cat that woke me up at night to point out a possum had entered the house and was hiding under a piece of furniture, and once I had one which (different house) gestured me to follow him in the chase after shooing away the intruder cat that kept stealing its food.

touche. ah yes, the mind of a cat no doubt is a very strange place

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

#110

Post by adwn »

fao_ wrote: post #35
kpnbg wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, you're right. Although another huge difference is that lions didn't evolve to be intelligent enough to learn to farm, invent mathematics, leave the planet etc. We are hunters, and what is going on now is a logical progression of what hunters who got smarter and more powerful would do. It sounds silly but I think that if any other hunter animal evolved like us, it would lead to very similar results. I am not a fa…

How many people do you know have left the planet, or could solve a mathematical theorem, eh? The difference is that before, we hunted enough to eat, but not so much that the species died, whereas now we are willing to exterminate a species if it means we can get rid of other versions of us ('Every buffalo dead, is a dead indian'). Seems like we've got more callous and stupid the more this 'intelligence' was displayed…

> How many people do you know have left the planet, or could solve a mathematical theorem, eh?

Infinitely times as many as there are lions which can do these things – namely, more than zero people vs. zero lions.

Eh.

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