I am astounded that no one has mentioned "The Sound Machine" by Roald Dahl (1949), in which a scientist invents a machine that makes ultrasonic sounds audible to humans. He discovers that plants scream when cut. You can read it at https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1949/09/17/the-sound-mach...
I wonder if this is the source of a Jack Handey joke: "If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason."
This reminds me of an Upton Sinclair quote: “was one to believe that there was nowhere a god of hogs, to whine this hog personality was precious. To whome these hog squeals and agonies had meaning?”
> The BFG could hear the tread of a ladybird's footsteps as she walks across a leaf, the whispering of ants as they carry around in the soil talking to one another, and the sudden shrill cry of pain a tree gives out when a woodman cuts into it with an axe.
Informative here meaning that you can deduce something about a plant's condition from faint sounds emitted by it. It's not implying that the plants use those sounds for the purpose of transmitting information. From the article:
"These results demonstrate the potential in studying plant bioacoustics, suggest that plant acoustic emissions may play an important role in ecology and evolution, and may have direct implications for plant monitoring in agriculture"
To me even the "suggests..." part is wild overselling. IMO this should have been in such a high impact journal only if they had actually succeeded in demonstrating the ecological relevance, by showing that the sounds are detected and acted upon by other organisms.
If the signal is being sent, you can be pretty sure that due to the intrinsic efficiency-maximization that biological systems perform then most likely the mechanism for detecting and acting upon it has been evolved by other organisms, especially for something as fitness-critical as stress.
If you hit your tissue hard enough, it becomes blueish for a while (a bruise, a hemorrhage). It may benefit something by accident, but a bruise just can’t stay as pink as the rest of you, due to the physics of the process.
(From tfa) Plants exposed to drought stress have been shown to experience cavitation – a process where air bubbles form, expand and collapse in the xylem, causing vibrations
The person you’re responding to is talking about other organisms (ie not the tree), which seems compatible with your observation here.
Trees might be screaming/bubble-popping into the abyss for simple physical reasons, but if cavitation is very important to some creature, there’s a decent chance that creature has evolved to sense these vibrations.
Random guess: woodpeckers might, as for them this may be a way to detect which trees offer most food for least effort.
Ironically, something I didn't realize until now, and what also confirms the original point: apparently[0] the drumming itself turned into form of communication for woodpeckers.
Maybe this bruise evolved with our social behaviour : most animals skin don't show this, or for higher stress. The bruise is very important in a social envirronment and is a good optimisation for mutual Care.
>> (From tfa) Plants exposed to drought stress have been shown to experience cavitation – a process where air bubbles form, expand and collapse in the xylem, causing vibrations
Interesting. Seems like the authors main contention is with the popularization of the concept that trees might be cooperating with each other instead of hyper competing as we historicallly assume via just natural selection pressures.
I’m sympathetic to their argument that we need to be careful how far we take the cooperation argument but I think they’re also throwing out the baby with the bath water. These authors are highly focused on showing the validity of the opposite point of view and so have conducted a meta analysis of the literature that is very, I would say, biased towards the exclusion of studies that show communication and transfers of chemicals between trees using mycorrhizal networks. I still find their meta analysis interesting but would caution people to also take their cutting down of the idea of transfers between plants using mycorrhizal networks with large grains of salt. They, as researchers, are also incentivized to kind of go a bit too far the other way from what they were arguing against (transfers between plants using mycorrhizal networks)
By now, there is at least one other organism that can detect and act upon the signal. If farmers applies knowledge about this signal to improve their yields, plants may be selected for their ability to emit sounds under stress.
Not entirely. Efficiency maximization can also result in a state where a feature is interesting to us but neutral, or just not harmful enough to be worth the energy to change. Remember that the watchmaker is completely blind.
I like that line of thinking. But I still fail at giving a good explanation of that concept. Maybe it's intuitive for me due to having learned about cellular automata during my youth. I know I'm entering esoteric and new age territory but something tells me this can even be applied to phenomena like quantum entanglement. My idea is that if there is an information receivable and possibly even emittable by a biological system then that system will through evolutionary pressure begin to incorporate this transmission in a way that improves fitness. Telepathy maybe even. That's also why I don't "believe" anymore in this compartmentalization of the human body into separate organs. Tissue can isolate an organ to some extent but even then there will be hormonal or mechanic exchange. Example would be relevance of belly breathing for intestinal function. At the extreme we reach this sense of connectedness between all or most or some living beings. It just appears to me that this would make sense.
The rule of thumb in evolutionary biology is if it has a cost and lasts through evolutionary time, it is beneficial. Because otherwise a similar organism that doesn't waste that time/energy on the useless thing/behavior will outcompete. Here's some odd and obvious examples.
Religion has a cost (lots of resources and time are spent on them) and they have lasted through time, therefore it is evolutionarily beneficial.
A small percentage of the population is psychopaths, this has an obvious cost to communities, but the pattern has lasted through time, therefore has a benefit. Likely it's for war/fighting/hunting.
Growing light sensitive cells has a cost in energy and materials, and has lasted through time, therefore it must have a benefit (sight).
This strongly suggests that SOMETHING is listening to that plant make noise and it either directly or indirectly benefits the plant.
By a trait being "beneficial" you mean that it prolongs the existence of some gene specifically, right? My understanding of evolution is that traits aren't necessarily beneficial to those who posses it in the colloquial sense. For example, animals that perish due to reproduction.
Also, isn't saying a trait exists so it must be beneficial a bit of an over simplification? Couldn't a relatively useless trait hypothetically exist due to genes that are also related to some other relatively useful trait? It seems like a stretch to say any lasting trait must be beneficial, unless you can isolate it from other traits on the genetic level or otherwise through analysis. Traits can also cease being beneficial as we can see from the countless species that have gone extinct.
Sorry if this seems like I'm ranting, but I just need more convincing that this rule of thumb makes sense, and would appreciate being pointed in the right direction if I'm off-base.
Yes, beneficial refers to those genes continuing on into the future.
The operative descriptive word describing those "useless traits" is cost. If nothing else, they have a cost of the energy and resources required to produce the relevant cells or whatever. Another organism that does not waste that energy and resources will out-compete the one building the useless trait. Natural selection will make it go away.
That assumes that natural selection is a perfect process, and that we are at some "end" of it. In truth, the cost of generating useless noise could be small enough that it just doesn't matter and it hangs around. Maybe it will disappear in a few more billion years.
Any organism we see today may very well have unnecessary traits that evolution is in the process of removing.
Though that might just be the case for most things, I don't think it would be fair to say that for all things. Two traits could develop in conjunction with another, and trait 1 gives an advantage, while trait 2 is a disadvantage. The most in-your-face example I think is the stereotype of nerds and glasses. In short, a good enough trait could get you laid and fed even though you have a crappy trait that came with it.
edit: alternatively, a bad enough trait could completely derail the development of a good train. Maybe dolphins born with 200iq brains develop some other kind of bad trait as a result of the same mutation that doesn't allow for the 200iq trait to permeate.
The characteristic one for this in humans is sickle cell anemia. It really sucks for the people who have it but it sucks less than malaria, so it’s persisted in the gene pool… in regions with endemic malaria.
The poor eyesight you're referring to comes with age, generally after the primary ages of procreation. That's why, on an evolutionary timescale, there wasn't much benefit to weeding out the need for glasses. Maybe into the future we will see that. Conditions which cause poor eyesight from birth get weeded out.
The argument is flawed.
You defend. "if it has a cost and lasts through evolutionary time, it is beneficial."
But to conclude your conclusion, you must also show that:
- emitting noise has cost (fairly believable)
- and that something listening to it is the only way to make it beneficial, which is far from obvious. (Could just be a way to dissipate energy, or to send signal within the plant, or to get rid of some chemicals, or many other beneficial things that doesn't involve something listening)
I mostly agree with your point however IMO the psychopath thing is not a great example because it could be explained as the incomplete or nonexistent development of something that is complex that is beneficial. I think the error is that we can’t necessarily know what the cost was. And the benefit doesnt necessarily have to be that big relative to the cost. I mean I’m replying to you and that me costs something, and what’s the benefit?
While the sounds don’t make themselves, they could be a side effect of something else… instabilities in the structural tissue, the plant straining to increase the movement internal fluids… who knows?
That said, I personally think there is communication between plants, or that at the very least it’s something like trying to mimic predator insect sounds. But could be that the vibrations themselves help move fluids around (as opposed to being a byproduct of something else that does)
This isn't "my point," this is how the field of evolutionary biologists look at traits. If what I said was false it would mean there's no such thing as natural selection. We may not understand how a trait is beneficial, and we may be incorrect about why a trait is beneficial, but if it has a cost and lasts through evolutionary time then by definition it has a benefit.
>it could be explained as the incomplete or nonexistent development of something that is complex that is beneficial.
If it has a cost but doesn't have a benefit right now, it's going to get weeded out via natural selection in favor of variants of the organism that are not wasting the time and resources on that trait.
> A small percentage of the population is psychopaths, this has an obvious cost to communities, but the pattern has lasted through time, therefore has a benefit.
It has a benefit to individuals. A benefit to the community is not necessary.
> Likely it's for war/fighting/hunting.
This is a non sequitur.
Nothing is all cost and no benefit, and nothing is all benefit and no cost either. You don't see people arguing that vulnerability to cuckoos is beneficial to the birds they parasitize. The benefit is real (you don't need to bother recognizing your offspring, because recognizing your nest is sufficient) but the cost is so much larger (your children all die) that it's obvious the birds would be better off with the ability to recognize their own young (and/or eggs). They don't have that ability... yet.
Only applies to genetic traits though. If psychopathy, for example, turned out to be epigenetic, environmental, or entirely psychological, it would potentially defy that pattern.
Unempathic people can make hard decisions; Such as choosing between spending a hospital budget on fuel for the generators, building upkeep, restocking, and employee wages –v.s. the life of one child.
A lot of people can't make such a decision.
there's a line of thinking that it's strange how many of our leaders are psychopaths. But for all we know, it's strange how few of our leaders are psychopaths relative to other cultures throughout history.
Life is an infinite unfolding of undefinably rich and interconnected phenomena, and we only have labels for a small subset of phenomena.
As a thought experiment, reverse the question: how could we assume that there aren’t interconnected phenomena after discovering evidence that this phenomena exists?
Even if we never discover what those interconnections are or establish labels for them, interconnection/interdependence is the continuing unfolding of everything, and so I tend to think a more helpful default is to wonder what those interactions are instead of if they exist.
At a minimum, Newton’s 3rd law applies, and however subtle the effects, they are almost certainly there. Where or not they’re particularly interesting to us or “useful” to human inquiry is another question entirely.
> As a thought experiment, reverse the question: how could we assume that there aren’t interconnected phenomena after discovering evidence that this phenomena exists?
The opposite of assuming a thing without direct evidence isn't to assume the negation of that thing without direct evidence. They're two examples of the same mistake.
That’s not quite what I’m getting at here. I’m not claiming that something specific exists without evidence, or making any claims about some particular phenomena that I believe exists and must do <x>.
Rather I’m pointing out that the existence of this phenomena is a form of evidence that opens the door to interrelated phenomena. And based on our understanding of the laws of nature, we can be certain that there is at minimum, some interrelation. Whether that interrelation is interesting or worth labeling as some unique phenomena to humans is what cannot be determined without further discovery/evidence.
I’d agree with your comment if the described phenomena itself was just speculation, but that’s not the case here.
It's known that plants respond to chemical cues sent by another plant that has just been eaten or lawnmowed.
From this article:
> Recently, plants were also demonstrated to respond to sounds,13,28,29,30 e.g., by changing the expression of specific genes,29,30 or by increasing sugar concentration in their nectar.31
So there is enough indirect evidence for hypothesis formation.
The sound emission frequencies are also within the hearing ranges of various animals, some of which are herbivores, and some of which eat herbivores. It would be to their benefit to decode the meaning of plant sounds.
Like the xkcd about emacs control key spiking cpu[0], I think its a generally safe assumption that if a behavior exists consistently, then somebody likely depends on it for their workflow
They're saying it's in the realm of possibilities, plants *may* be communicating via sound, and this is in the context of a study that shows plants are making noises that can be used to convey information.
They're saying it merits further investigation, not presenting it as a hard fact. To claim that's "wild overselling" and that it doesn't belong in a "high impact" journal is wildly underselling the study. They make sure to use the word "may" in everything they suggest that's not directly backed up by the study.
Imagine how will it be if deaf aliens, 50 metres high, were to encounter a human being. Our expressions would mean nothing to them, nor our screams. They could break us into pieces, or munch on us, never wondering what “these little things” are doing.
"... majority view of the quantum mechanics community then and arguably to this day is that existence in the absence of an observer is at best a conjecture"
"Observer" is the most unfortunate word physicists could have chosen, though. It gets people all confused about observation mistakenly having something to do with thinking or perception. "Interacter" would have been a more accurate term, but it doesn't sound as sexy.
To wit, yes, the tree makes a sound because the tree is there to hear it.
Like breaking bones and speech are both informative sounds emitted by a human from which you can learn something about that human condition. The difference between those sounds is more subtle than might appear at first
> Recently, plants were also demonstrated to respond to sounds,13,28,29,30 e.g., by changing the expression of specific genes,29,30 or by increasing sugar concentration in their nectar.31 Thus, if plants emit airborne sounds, these sounds can potentially trigger a rapid response in nearby organisms, including both animals and plants.
The sounds emitted by the plants are between 20 and 80 kHz, which is within the auditory range of some mammal, such as mice. Although the normal range of hearing in humans is said to be 100 Hz to 20 kHz, when I was a grad student in my early 20s I could detect sounds up to 28 kHz in the sound booth.
I wonder whether there are people who can hear these sounds, even faintly.
> Informative here meaning that you can deduce something about a plant's condition from faint sounds emitted by it. It's not implying that the plants use those sounds for the purpose of transmitting information.
We already know that plants transmit information to each other through the air by emitting chemicals. It doesn't seem hugely significant whether or not they also do it by emitting sounds.
How about this claim: pieces of string when stressed emit sounds that are picked up by nearby strings. Should be investigate this claim? What does it mean that the world of string acts this way.
For those that haven't witnessed it, I will describe a very easily constructed experiment to demonstrate this phenomena that I have discovered: first stretch a string tightly and then quickly flick it with your finger, stressing it even more. If you listen, you will hears a sound emitted by the stressed string that gradually dies off as the string recovers. Nearby strings will start vibrating in sympathy (if they are tuned properly). Could one string be communicating with the other strings?
Common objects may be used to make the experiment easier to perform: banjos, guitars, violins, etc.
I don't know if your being obtuse but it sounds that way. Presumably the plant is emitting sound from energy it gathered via photosynthesis and triggered via its nervous system. Not simply resonating due to the energy used to cause the damage.
Plants are incredibly complex yet people roll their eyes at the idea of them doing anything besides nothing. Maybe because it undermines the idea of veganism. idk, sorry lesser beings i'm hungry.
When I used to live in a small room, one day I put my guitar kind of half-way into my closet by the corner of the room. A few mins later I yelled something (I forget what) and it was as though my guitar strummed the A string on its own. It freaked me out for a sec but then I started belting different notes, and as soon as I got back to a certain note the guitar would strum itself again!
My very unscientific take is the noises are the result of a mundane mechanical process that is a consequence of the plant not having enough water or loss of water due to cutting, which leads to some cavitation bubbles forming. So it may only be as interesting as saying that your water starts "screaming" when it is being boiled.
You could also describe a human having an appendage chopped off in the same "mundane" mechanical way: loss of fluids, mechanical damage to nerves sending electrical pulses, etc. To some external observer, it's "just" a purely physical process. I'm not sure it's a useful description or perspective.
The point here is that although maybe the mechanism here is just a mechanical process (although, what isn't?), the important thing are the responses to this, by the plant, other plants, and other organisms. Boiling water isn't going to take some action based upon it boiling nor are other organisms.
When you cut off a human's appendage, the screaming comes from a voice. The voice comes from a sort of... consciousness. Which while we haven't exactly nailed down what makes one up, we are reasonably certain that it involves a nervous system.
Making this absurd for a sec to make my point, I think they’re just saying if the physical sound of an arm being cut off just happened to mimic a human voice crying out, that wouldn’t make it a sign of consciousness like an actual “Ow!” from the speech center.
There’s a difference between a creature’s higher level response to a stimulus and just stuff that happens as a direct physical consequence of the stimulus.
It’s the same deal as boiling live lobsters. They aren’t actually screaming, even if you would be. That’s steam escaping. What the plant sound actually is, no clue. But I think the lobster scenario is what was being suggested upthread.
Literally the only difference between the two scenarios are the amount of complexity of the systems involved. You can describe either one in purely mechanistic terms.
It's still just physics and chemistry all the way down though. It's not clear that plants couldn't evolve something similar through a mechanism other than a nervous system.
There's already a bunch of new age types getting into the idea that water holds "emotional" values. IE, they claim that if you scream and have negative conversations at a glass of water, you can analyze the water and see changes to it that are negative, and doing the inverse (happy, positive conversations) makes the water "happier" and has positive changes.
I remember hearing this at a seminar of new age things (I was doing an investigative thing at the time, which is why I was there)
> This might be very helpful for agriculture. For instance, tomato plants emit sounds of stress before they started looking dehydrated
We can now process it, so, as proactive evolution, it worked.
Before that,
> We know that certain animals are capable of hearing these sounds ... We still need to understand who is using this sound, what role does it play in the world, but it suggests many many possibilities // It's also possible plants themselves could react to these sounds, Hadany said. The same team found in a paper published in 2019 that plants can respond to the sounds of pollinators like bees. "They respond within three minutes by making sweeter nectar"
"Scream" is a sensationalist word, it anthromorphizes plants. You might as well say you can hear them sing Chop Suey's lyrics when they get cut down:
Father, into your hands I commend my spirit
Father, into your hands
Why have you forsaken me?
In your eyes forsaken me
In your thoughts forsaken me
In your heart forsaken me, oh
It's not quite clear yet how the plants make these sounds, but the scientists suspect it is a passive process linked to cavitation. This is when plants that are stressed pop air bubbles in their circulation system causing vibrations in the plant.
That article didn’t, there are others that suggest there are signals to stressors that nearby plants react to.
Even so, I can’t fly away from a tiger or bear. That analogy coupled with seeing that everything that can move, tries to move, makes me think plants would if they could. Sea anemones are very rudimentary and blind systems, and even they uproot themselves and “swim” away in the sloppiest way imaginable when a starfish is detected. Plenty of plants were able to select for defense mechanisms before reproduction. I think all would given the option.
You can't fly away from a tiger or a bear, but a human screaming as they are eaten by that one night inspire you to run or hide from something you see as a predator. Your feet are not literally rooted in the ground. Also you have ears capable of hearing the noise created by another human.
How do you mentally frame it. Like "ignorance is acceptable" or "we are limited beings"
I think as long as we are within the realm of reality, no single person or species can know everything so we need to accept contextual knowledge will be out limitation.
I often wonder to what level will we need to know someone to be able to satisfy abstract statements.
Mostly that life is wondrous and infinite, and if you're miserable or angry there's probably something you can learn to help with it, and this probably also works on a species level too.
It can also give perspective. "Argh my coworker reformatted all my multiline list comprehensions" can become "what if reincarnation is real but it works in reverse with humanity somewhere near the bottom and bees somewhere near the top". Etc.
The intriguing sound produced by my guitar can be quite revealing, particularly when it’s out of tune. All physical objects have a resonant characteristic that conveys information. When an object, such as a sphere, undergoes a transformation, its resonance changes as well. Additionally, in systems with flowing components, specific flow rates can yield a wide range of patterns. Some might be chaotic, while others, like those arising from DNA replication, result in recognizable and recurring patterns.
To delve deeper into this idea, ponder the question, “Can AI bridge the gap between human consciousness and that of other animals, like whales?” Investigating the inherent intelligence within these patterns can provide us with valuable insights.
As we embark on an era where humanity sets an example for our behavior towards less powerful beings, it’s crucial to acknowledge that artificial general intelligence (AGI) might replicate our actions. The time has come for us to establish a benchmark and pave the way for a more ethical and harmonious world.
Additionally, many have heard of animals that feast on fallen fruit. Embracing a similar approach could prove beneficial for humans before we contemplate altering our DNA to incorporate photosynthesis in the quest for ideal ethics. So, let’s keep an open mind and explore the possibilities! ;)
Do we know of any special type of sound unable to travel by the air that could be recorded by a microphone separated by several cm of air?
>"this sound is informative"
Not different than saying "Plants had evolved a plant telephone to be informed from other plants or inform animals that they need a pee, right now"
Why a plant in a humid spot at the valley should suffer and react as its neighbors in a dry spot on the top of the hill? That would be inefficient and negative for their survival. Does not add much to the info that they have yet (collected with their own roots) and can be deceptive.
I noticed that forks emit a sound when they are drop and hit the soil. So this means that is a mechanism to alert other forks of the danger. So forks must have ears. Pure logic.
"We assume a link between many things that could be unrelated in order to sell animism 2.0 and grab eyeballs" would be a better title
I recommend Overstory for a nice Pulitzer-winning books about how plants are similar to us but on a longer timeframe. It is full of beautiful stories too.
What's wild about it? Plants shrink when drying up and that collapses tiny cavities in their stems. It's only surprising that this sound can be detected so easily.
I've heard the buds on the end of a branch busting their way out of the dryer outer layer. It was calm. At first I thought bugs, but finally realized what it was. It was much harder to hear than beetles boring their way into a tree.
In my experience they have been distinct sounds of pressure and movement between plant fibres, in ways that the wind or insects wouldn’t or couldn’t cause in that setting.
If you lay still on a warm, quiet, still day in spring in a field or meadow, you might hear a lot of sounds you otherwise haven’t and wouldn’t expect. There’s a lot of activity. Sometimes plants will let some leaves or blades free after a seed husk finally breaks under their weight. It’s just gravity and pressure at work, but you’ll hear these things frequently.
This sort of thing reminds me of learning to find mushrooms. I had no idea mushrooms are everywhere until I started looking. They occupy all kinds of spaces in various seasons, dependent on a rain, a species of tree, or a sudden warmth after a cool period. Once you see them, they’re everywhere.
Similarly, plants and their myriad processes kind of jump out at you once you observe them closely. Before then they may seem relatively inert.
this is the sub-conscious contra-positive of the news that many intelligent red meat eaters know and do not want to hear "You" group-not-me "must" getting-orders-or-else "eat" what is on everyone's mind most of the waking hours of life "now" no choices
Vegans are a portion of a percent of the human population, maybe a bit more around YNews.. meanwhile how many red meat eaters out there? reading now?
I don’t think we’re all that murderous at all unless we’re subjected to acute, severe stresses and/or maladaptive processes (usually early in life). I genuinely care about the well being of other living things and would hate to be in a position where I felt murder was necessary. I know I’m not alone.
Seeing how war affects soldiers, I suspect the experience of killing and witnessing death is typically very traumatic to humans. It appears that animal processing facilities also inflict trauma on many workers, so it isn’t only killing humans that can harm us.
We’re very good at killing, but I don’t think we innately like it or tend towards it outside of procuring food. Even then, not all of us eat animals.
Look at the lengths we go to hide death and murder when we do it. From war to agricultural systems, we go to great lengths to pretend it’s something it’s not so we can stomach what we’re doing or buying into. The closer we get to the individuals effected, the more reprehensible I think we tend to find it.
If we were truly murderous I suspect we wouldn’t behave in that way. I could be wrong — I’m very biased.
Without modern agriculture + nutrition, I don’t think you could survive without eating meat (if I’m wrong, feel free to ignore the rest of this). That means you have to murder an animal to live and don’t really get a choice in the matter. This why we are inherently murderous. Sure, these days we pay other people to do it, but when you pick up a burger; that cow was murdered — hopefully humanly.
People can live without eating animals (at least without seeking them out; getting small animals in your food is practically inevitable). However you’re right, it’s very difficult and impractical without modern agriculture. Apart from a good understanding of macros and vitamin B12, there’s not much else a vegan needs from modernity. B12 should be present in all foods too, but in modernity it’s simply too clean to get enough without supplementing. Even livestock are supplemented with it in feed lots where they aren’t exposed to much outdoor microbe-laden plant matter and water. I’m not sure how well a vegan would do if they just ate plants from a relatively “clean” field without washing the food too much; maybe they’d actually be just fine.
Bizarrely enough, even meat eaters can be somewhat low in B12 in the USA. It’s a vitamin that’s generally not in excess in a lot of diets, omnivore or otherwise.
Certainly not. Some is merciful and – in the case of dignified deaths – by old and modern laws, totally consensual as well. Sometimes death is appropriate even if it’s not what was hoped for.
It’s not an easy distinction to make by any means, but it’s a distinction that humans have believed to exist for millennia at least.
I think our current culture is biased to feel weird about killing. Historically, killing was often a form of entertainment for the public, and a matter of course for getting the nutrients for life.
I agree that we’re biased to feel weird about it. But I think that’s for good reason. In a lot of modern cultures, the necessity of killing is less present all the time. In cultures or circumstances where it’s still essential for survival, I’d say go for it; there’s no sense in dying because Fred in Wisconsin feels good about eating lentils instead of beef, and you’re worried about being immoral by killing a goat. There are still moments of necessity where two lives can compete for survival.
We will all eventually be dust, but I believe there’s good reason to strive for the pre-dust period of existence to involve as little killing as practicable.
In situations where I can pick plants over animals I will every time. I have no real need to kill or pay for killing. It’s an incredible luxury that hasn’t been afforded to people until relatively recently in history though, and I don’t expect others to follow suit when they’re less fortunate or living with wildly different opportunities and resources.
So, overall I think the bias makes sense. At the same time, I won’t deny that killing to survive is a reality for many and will continue to be – I suspect you aren’t immoral or depraved if your situation demands killing to live.
But that’s all my insular little take on things and I know many (most?) disagree!
In the past people weren't able to voice their concerns and demand better things. Violence as entertainment was used as a tool by the ruling classes as a way to enforce their power.
The effects of the trauma of violence are clear and well studied. Just because something happened in the past doesn't mean we can assume it had true support from the people who had no choice.
Maybe people in the future will say that the people today found it entertaining to pollute the world, while we know many of us find it upsetting and wish in vain for alternatives against the strong tide of the power system in place.
Another thing to consider is the old taboo around left handedness. As the taboo lifted the actually recorded rate of left handedness increased dramatically! Turns out social systems can lead to people acting in ways that are personally uncomfortable for them rather than going against the tide.
This sounds like the response of someone steeped in modern culture, safe from the influence of having to kill things as part of day-to-day life.
What is missing from the discussion is likely (if I'm not projecting too much here... I feel this way about myself as well) that you have a relatively detached relationship from death compared to people in times past and are disconnected from the experience of what it is actually like to be steeped in such experience.
I have no idea what it would be like to live in such a life, but to assume it's inherently bad is a prejudiced outlook based only on your own limited experience. If you were raised watching public executions every week, you might be singing a different tune, and casting doubt in the opposite direction.
I'm not claiming that the opposite from the original claim was the truth, I'm doing the same as you and saying be careful not to project your current feelings onto a past that we can never truly know.
No one can say the people of the past felt one way or not, that's my main point. The other point I'm adding on is that people are inherently varied in their mindsets and it's only very recently in history we've had such an equal opportunity to share our feelings and hope to have them heard.
I would add one thing as well: In many societies there's been a great reverence given to animals and their slaughter ritualized or governed by cultural rules. To me this suggests at the very least that people have always had some sense of the gravity of their actions and felt a need to make sense of and tame their feelings by externalizing or controlling them.
There was an article I read like a decade ago about some research that when bugs eat a particular tree, the tree would react in two ways: Emit some sort of chemical that hurt or resisted the bug, and emit something (can't remember if it was sound or something pheremone-like) that caused nearby trees of the same species to emit the same chemical, allowing them to proactively protect themselves.
I remember hearing this back in the late 90s and I came into my high school biology class and mentioned it. The teacher was kind enough not to call me a moron but he made clear he didn't believe it, and I didn't (and don't) remember where I had heard it back then. Glad to know I wasn't completely wrong for regurgitating that factoid then.
Didn't the founder of scientology claim plants scream when they are in pain and even "invented" a machine to measure their pain? I wonder how they interpret this finding.
The Lex Fridman podcast[1] with Aaron Smith-Levin, a former scientology insider (who grew out of it), made me believe that Scientology has been overly vilified, most likely because it threatens power of specific people, just what the scientologists claim.
Interestingly L. Ron Hubbard was laughed at for saying tomatoes scream when [sliced](https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2012/06/16/meet-your-veget...). I don't know enough about this to know how important it is or whether it's actually some kind of signalling.
> And as we descended, cries of impending doom rose from the soil.
> One thousand, nay a million voices full of fear. And terror possessed me then
> And I begged, "Angel of the Lord, what are these tortured screams?"
> And the angel said unto me, "These are the cries of the carrots, the cries of the carrots!
> You see, Reverend Maynard, tomorrow is harvest day and to them it is the holocaust."
Does this throw out the whole moral panic about animal welfare? If plants suffer too, isn't it wrong to eat them as well? Or there should be real focus in humane treatment and harvesting them?
> Does this throw out the whole moral panic about animal welfare?
Whether or not plants suffer has no bearing on whether we should cause animals to suffer. Animal agriculture requires the use of more plants as animal feed than eating plants directly, so even if plants feel pain, we'd cause less harm by eating them than eating animals.
> If plants suffer too, isn't it wrong to eat them as well?
This says nothing about plant sentience and whether or not they suffer. You shouldn't conclude that plants suffer simply because cutting their leaves results in a sound. We know animals are sentient, we don't have currently beleive that plants are.
Also, strict Jains are only supposed to eat anything other than fruit that has fallen from the tree, taking into account the suffering of plants as living beings.
> It might be much more cruel to harvest a field of soybeans than it is to kill a cow.
How? Unlike cows, soybeans are harvested at the end or near to the end of it's lifecycle.
Also huge amount of cows now require vast amounts of soybeans. So if you want to decrease harvesting of soybeans you need to first decrease farming of cows. So vegans are already in favor of decreasing soybean production.
Cavitation in a plant doesn’t mean it’s having a subjective experience much less one that I should care about more than, say, the experience of a dog being stepped on.
this comment says more about your confirmation bias and your ability to understand the information in the article than it does about the life choices of vegans
(via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35396901, but we merged that thread hither)