
Watch Plants Light Up When They Get Attacked - dnetesn
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/science/plant-defenses.html
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cwmoore
It seems to me that AI is more plant than animal, and the specific biological
response mechanisms that plants use have explanatory power toward
understanding and communicating about AI in a more productive way than the
popular conception of GAI as sentient.

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groestl
As our testing procedures improve, we find out more and more about the
cognitive abilities of animals, and have since found self-awareness in
chimpanzees, elephants, dolphins, magpies, and recently, through sniff tests,
dogs. I find it not far fetched that at some point, we start to recognize
(some) plants as sentinent beings, maybe on a different timescale than us.
Would be interesting to know why you think they are so different from animals
that they are better models for AI?

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justtopost
Dogs are not self aware, otherwise I would love a source. That just sounds
like some feelgood popsci.

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jaytaylor
Web sources seem to agree with justtopost:

[https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-human-
beast/2017...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-human-
beast/201705/are-dogs-self-aware)

Dogs fail the mirror test.

They are certainly quite intelligent, but technically don't meet the criteria
for self-awareness.

And the scent thing where they spend less time on their own scent, or don't
mark over their own scent, is dissmissed as a reflexive action.

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Aardwolf
So the signal passes from the attacked leave to other leaves, what do the
other leaves do with this information though? What can they defend against?

~~~
cwmoore
They can produce noxious chemicals or retrieve resources from threatened parts
among other responses.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_defense_against_herbivor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_defense_against_herbivory)

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yosito
I highly recommend that anyone concerned about causing suffering to plants by
eating them read about Kirtimukha.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirtimukha](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirtimukha)

~~~
techbio
I was unfamiliar with this. Great story. I appreciated the inclusion in the
article of the related myth of Ouruboros.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros)

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kregasaurusrex
I never realized that the chemical signals could travel so quickly through a
plant, and previously thought this process took hours instead of a few
minutes. While we as humans feel almost instantaneous pain, there's a short
delay before the spike in calcium ions are then propagated to the rest of the
plant's structure. Will be interesting to see how the related knowledge we can
learn from simpler eukaryotes could eventually be expanded to include all
sorts of more complex ones.

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spraak
Some people love to use this information as a fallacious argument of futility
against veganism, i.e. that suffering cannot be avoided because "plants suffer
too!". But this misses the point. Plants can respond to stimuli, but it
doesn't mean that they feel pain, suffer and have a consciousness and emotions
like animals do.

> Plants have no eyes, no ears, no mouth and no hands. They do not have a
> brain or a nervous system.

That again, they respond to stimuli but don't feel pain like an animal.

~~~
13415
If vegans were serious about stopping suffering, they'd create a machine that
instantly destroys earth.

 _Edit: While I 'm perfectly fine with being downvoted for this and understand
why - this was meant as a joke, and you shouldn't joke on HN - I need to point
out that this Doomsday Machine Argument is a standard argument against
Negative Utilitarianism, which was first published by R.N. Smart, and anyone
with a negative utilitarian doctrine (incl. many vegans) needs to address this
argument._

~~~
jonmrodriguez
Speaking as a vegan: The reason I am vegan is for utilitarian reasons.
Neuroscientists agree that there is firm evidence that all animals (NOT
PLANTS) are sentient to varying degrees. I believe that in the future it will
be possible to quantify exactly how sentient each species is (e.g. a dog is
1/4 of a person or a cow is 1/5 of a person). Furthermore, through technology
such as EEG, fMRI, and intravenous monitoring of hormone levels, it will be
possible to quantify whether a given species is, on average, happy more than
sad. Speaking as a living being, I believe that life is on the whole vastly
more positive than negative. The balance only tips for the worse when factors
such as slavery and torture come into play, which is why I choose not to
consume products produced in factory farms, which are the modern
implementation of slavery.

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ianai
I’m also a vegan. There wasn’t any singular reason that led me to this
resolution, but many factors. For instance, I probably wouldn’t be alive if it
weren’t for modern medicines use of animals. But that’s more of a survival
issue than killing an animal because it’s protein is preferable to a plants.
To an extent, I realized how little enjoyment I got out of eating meat
compared to the suffering animals face. I read of the health benefits of going
first vegetarian and ultimately vegan. Why eat cholesterol if I don’t have to
eat it?

Having said that, there is often a benefit to plants from human cultivation -
but it’s not an absolute benefit. Our love of fruit results in their
trees/plants being cared for by humans. Many of the plant products we eat
don’t result in the death of the plant. If those plants could speak I think
they’d thankful of their caretakers. Sure we’re not planting most of their
seeds, but they do have a maintained population.

I wish no animals ever suffered at the hands of humans. This world is full of
beauty, and it’s awful that so much of human activity results in life’s death
and extinction - including deforestation for crops.

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pg_bot
Based on the largest study currently available[0], there does not seem to be
any evidence supporting a vegan or vegetarian diet having any protective
effect on all cause mortality. There's a lot of pseudoscience in the health
and wellness community so I would remain skeptical when reading about any
alleged health benefits of a particular diet.

[0]:
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312055008_Vegetaria...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312055008_Vegetarian_diet_and_all-
cause_mortality_Evidence_from_a_large_population-based_Australian_cohort_-
_the_45_and_Up_Study)

~~~
ianai
Literature supporting a whole foods, plant based diet has already been
documented and discussed in the book “How not to die.”

