It is so utterly deranged and insane that NYT says plants are making "mournful cries" when the source paper doesn't support that. When I'm hungry the sounds my stomach makes on its own isn't me weeping and wailing. When I'm flatulent that sound is not a joyful scream.
And you are complaining about use of language? You might disagree with the anthromorphism (a rather common technique) used by the author, but your post is hyperbole. I hope you also realise the irony, as you also use anthromorphism.
Agreed, especially given the idea of plants feeling pain has been used to attempt to discredit or debunk vegetarian ethics—even though it's not true in that sense.
Using a poetic descriptor like "mournful" in this context seems out of place.
The New York Times is relying on their audience's ability to understand that plants are not conscious beings. "Mournful cries" is just an evocative way of describing the auditory signals plants produce under stress—which the article makes clear. I can't understand what's so "deranged and insane" about some stylistic flair.
I don't know about you, but I already feel enough guilt about how we eat animals. I even feel bad about throwing away a stuffed animal. We don't need some journo shoving another knife through our collective hearts about eating vegetables.
I don’t think we should anthropomorphize plants to the point where we feel guilty about eating them, but I do think society as a whole is missing a kind of fundamental respect for nature and discounts the complexity and interestingness of plant life.
In a world where conserving nature is simultaneously increasingly difficult and increasingly important, I don’t mind a bit of artistic license when it comes to descriptions of plant life if it leads to more awareness and more people thinking twice about plants and how we treat natural ecosystems.
Are you saying ignorance is better than knowledge? As for the guilt about eating animals, you have a personal choice to make based on your values at every meal. Aside: I don't see how a stuffed animal is related to the suffering of real animals in factory farms; perhaps you are confusing disparate ideas there.
To add insult to hypocrity, I am definitely waiting for the day when science is finally capable of deciphering plants more clearly, finding that there is actually no difference between suffering in animals and plants. That day will come, and it will be fun to watch how vegetarians react and deal with that information.
We know for a fact that for humans consciousness only exists in parts of the brain and can be turned off using drugs, sleep and accidents.
It is almost certainly the same for all animals with a brain.
Given the fact that plants have no brain it is a reasonable assumption they have no consciousness. It may be wrong, but given all evidence it is, so far, the best assumption.
We usually call assumptions based on our best current understanding scientific facts.
Alternative hypothesis: Given that plants do not have a central nervous system, it is reasonable to expect they have a distributed consciousness.
Recall that most plants avoid building single-purpose organs, as the odds that 70-80% of the plant gets eaten are high. Plants have evolved to survive massive loss of body parts.
I've read some studies on plant consciousness which shows that plant awareness can be turned off with anesthetics
> it is reasonable to expect they have a distributed consciousness.
Why would it be reasonable to expect they have any consciousness? What would plants do with such a consciousness that they’re wasting scarce energy on both operating and building the biological structures to maintain consciousness? They can’t move. They can’t take active actions. Why would they develop a consciousness that does nothing but makes them aware of their implementing doom without allowing them to act on it?
> Recall that most plants avoid building single-purpose organs, as the odds that 70-80% of the plant gets eaten are high. Plants have evolved to survive massive loss of body parts.
You know what would be really useful to evolve to survive the loss of body parts? Not suffering and feeling pain when you do, or even being aware that you just did. Especially when not being mobile in anyways you can’t do anything about it.
> I've read some studies on plant consciousness which shows that plant awareness can be turned off with anesthetics
Citation needed.
Actually I’ll make it even easier. Start with studies that show plant awareness in the first place, before you show studies showing it can be switched off.
Plants do move and respond to their environment. A lot. They even are social. They've been shown to communicate with each other to signal that pests are attacking and their peers will increase production of pest repelling chemicals and stuff.
They just do all that at a much slower time scale than you're used to in your consciousness. I wouldn't totally discount plants having some form of consciousness at lower frequency.
Yes, there is no evidence to believe they are “conscious” (well, not exactly sure what is meant by conscious here since that word is closely related to religious beliefs in many cases, but assuming it means sentient), they lack all known biological features that could possibly lead to sentience, and there has been no evidence found so far to suggest there is any sentience among plants.
Also, considering they’re rooted to the ground and cannot move there is no evolutionary advantage to sentience (and actually there are massive disadvantages since it will use energy for sentience which serves no purpose). Now, just because there isn’t an evolutionary advantage, or even if it’s an evolutionary disadvantage to a property doesn’t automatically mean it doesn’t exist, but given that there’s no other reason to believe it does exist this is just another piece of the puzzle that shows it doesn’t even need to exist.
I feel like a view that sentience requires something to be motile is pretty narrow-minded. A plant is honestly a better human in the sense that it gets all day to sit and think about things, something which only some Hacker News commenters can compare to :)
It’s a fair assumption because there’s no genetic benefit to being a smart plant. Why would nature make that?
Opposable thumbs mean we have the ability to use smarts, so genetics walked the path to consciousness over many generations. A smarter horse is fine and all but not that beneficial. Being faster or stronger or sexier is probably better. Same with a plant: get more nutrients or sunlight. There are cheaper ways than being smart to do that.
Define "smart". And explain how "smart"=="conscious"
I can agree that there is no genetic benefit to being able to move at the speed animals move, because that's not how plants obtain food or avoid being eaten. Thus no need for nerves or a CNS to coordinate movement.
Take either of them and tell me why nature would have optimised for that rather than other features, like leaves. Energy isn't infinite so genetic changes optimise for easier-to-achieve ends rather than somehow jumping past all animals to evolve smarts or consciousness without evidence of many precursor adaptations.
Also why would a smart (or conscious) plant not have eventually learned to use some of that to do something that improves survivability. Like strike out, or hide down, or anything more than "somewhat grow towards the light or nutrients over time".
It's a nice fun exercise to argue with people while imbibing your drug of choice, but it's utterly unlinked to anything else we see in nature. We're not idiots, we would have seen evidence by now.
The scientific consensus is that, given that plants don’t have a nervous system, that they can’t process sensory input that is integrated and that produces some experience, coupled with the lack of subjective experience and the chemistry-based explanations for observed behaviors (such as following light etc), under the current definition of “consciousness”, plants are not conscious.
> It is so utterly deranged and insane that NYT says plants are making "mournful cries" when the source paper doesn't support that. When I'm hungry the sounds my stomach makes on its own isn't me weeping and wailing. When I'm flatulent that sound is not a joyful scream.
