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this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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chapotraphouse
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Can't eat meat without feels bad. Can't eat plants without feels bad.
meat eats plants so eating meat means you hate plants too
what have plants done for me lately other than everything they do for me
No plants are stupid as shit they lack a CNS or really any nervous system. They just use fairly basic chemical signals and cool cascading sensor networks to carry out behaviors like, "release the poison now" and "it's gonna be dark soon, maybe".
How is that different from people?
People have a CNS and big fat brains that do the processing and it's extremely dynamic. Neurons are set up in dedicated patterns to carry out both instinctual and learned responses. Plants use chemical gradients across tissues to do basic things. In fact, what is cool about plants is how little processing power they need in order to do their basic little behaviors.
Example: plants establish simple things like "up", "down", "tip of primary stem", "base of primary stem", "tip of secondary stem", "base of secondary stem", and so on, mostly through simple chemical gradients. Too much of chemical X prevents another secondary stem from appearing. This is how you get spaced out branches at different angles around a tree trunk. These kinds of things are how plants do everything.
Humans do brain things. Big, dedicated processing centers that carry out our much more complex behaviors, carry our emotions, build bonds between siblings, play, problem-solving, relaxation, driving our bodies around looking for food and shelter, etc.
Just eat fruits and vegetables then. Plants might feel pain but it makes no sense for their reproductive processes to cause any feeling but pleasure. Plants make fruits so animals will pick and eat them, and disperse their seeds. At least most plants do, or more precisely, the fruits we eat are those meant to be eaten by those which eat them.
I hate to tell you this, but nature doesn't run on what makes sense. There's nothing about them feeling pain that implies they feel pleasure at having their reproductive organs ripped off.
Okay sounded like you loved telling me that though. You know what I meant
In case I need to spell it out, it is that they probably don't feel pain telling them to cease their reproductive processes. Not some abduction that they feel pleasure when I pick their fruits (not organs, more like fertilized eggs)
No, it's a common misconception about nature and evolution that I genuinely dislike having to tell people because of how often it comes up.
And no, I didn't know what you meant. Like I guess your phrasing leaves room for your clarification as an interpretation, but I definitely don't think of a complete lack of feeling when you say "cause any feeling but pleasure".
Lastly, why would they not feel pain from it? There's no particular reason they would feel pain either, but neither situation confers any obvious evolutionary advantage - indeed, it only comes up once they reproduce, so if there is a pain response it's not advantageous or disadvantageous until they've already passed their genes on.
We've just barely started grappling with the idea of that maybe plants feel pain and have some form of consciousness, only having some weird data that we're still trying to make full sense of - you have no basis by which to assert that they're capable of feeling pleasure, never mind the specific things they'd enjoy.