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the sensory biology of plants
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this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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Consider that human neuron makes around 7000 connections, while plant cells via plasmodesma may make from 1k to 100k connections.
We have such a human-centric and focused interpretation of knowing, and what qualifies as intelligence. Something that these recent series of advances should impress upon you is that maybe, complexity alone is enough. Obviously whatever we've built out of silicon isn't something we'd describe as intelligence. But the hint that maybe just 'having a preposterous number of connections' might be sufficient for emergent properties like reason and memory and identity.
So then what about plants? Discount the incredible relationships they make with fungi. Just plants are foreign enough to us to maybe give you a bit of caution. They are easy to take for granted because they are so ubiquitous. Internally they're as networked as you or I. They're constantly gathering information about the world around them. What does a plant know of the wind or the sun? Where would a plant put its 'self' if it had one?
Probably not in my butt, but that's where it's going! ;)
If complexity alone is enough, then why wouldn't silicon brains connected to multiple external sensors be enough? The computer scientist are even starting to experiment with bio fuel cells that convert light to energy, and using fuzzy logic for AI networks. Our brains are giant fuzzy logic processors.
This has been my response to all of the bullshit alien claims recently. It's always some kind of very human-centric idea of a bipedal being using a second thing as a vehicle. Just that entire concept is so human-centric.
If extraterrestrial ilfe exists, it's not going to resemble humans. Unless it's literally our cosmic ancestors or some shit.
Vegan diets require less plants to be killed then an omnivorous diet, so if you're right then that's a stronger argument to be vegan.
Their point is that if plants can suffer, and assuming we still want to eat, less plants die or are maimed on a vegan diet than on an omnivorous diet because livestock eats plants too and the conversion to meat is inefficient.
That means vegan diet is the way for less plant suffering even though you eat them directly. In fact it is because you would eat them directly.
Then vegans are worse, they make plants suffer more,since they're not as adapted as herbivores for plant consumption.
They don't really suffer though because of their lack of agency. Once you've done everything you can to alleviate a pain, it goes away.
It's a start: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-13-8922-1
Honestly I've come to the conclusion that most "things" are more intelligent ( or even just worthy of moral worth ) than we usually give them credit for.
This is partially why most veganism arguments that try and say that we shouldn't kill and eat animals and instead we should kill and eat plants usually fall on deaf ears for me just because it makes an implicit assumption that plant life is worth less than animal life ( I'm not saying this is not true but that is the exact same argument meat eaters make with animals. )
There are other reasons why veganism is good for the planet however ( like it being easier to sustain and lower carbon emissions ) but I think that it is better to come at this whole situation with the attitude of how do we live in harmony with the life around us whether that be human, animal, plant, etc.
Animals don't create biomass from thin air though. They have to eat a lot of plants to grow.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Amount-of-feed-and-water-necessary-to-produce-1-kg-of-meat_tbl2_359929829#:~:text=Table%202%20shows%20that%20the,only%201.1%2D1.2%20...
Eating plants directly instead of feeding them to animals is clearly much more efficient, requiring much fewer animal deaths as well as plant deaths to sustain a human.
If plants are sentient, the moral argument for veganism is even stronger.
That is why in my third paragraph I mentioned that it was easier to sustain in the long term.
In my view this just feels like justifying a less deadly mass killing for a more deadly mass killing. They both have their consequences.
For example I think it is just as bad that due to our consumerist society we have to over harvest the land that we work on and grow plants in ways that make them more vulnerable to disease and other things that they would be less susceptible to if we didn't try to optimize their production. This is something that wouldn't change if we all suddenly became vegan we would also need to change our culture of consumption.
And this is why again my argument is not that we should just try and find an optimal utilitarian equation of how many lives are worth killing to sustain society but instead find a way to live that doesn't over exploit the ecosystem that we live in and doesn't go out of its way to do unnecessary harm to life.