My labmate is doing research on the interaction between the plant circadian rhythm and the plant immune system. Their various immune hormones (along with all kinds of other things) are modulated by a rhythm that anticipates the diurnally-varying likelihood of fungal infection and can be phase-shifted not just by light but by humidity. The hormones that modulate this are systemic and get carried throughout the plant and can easily be taken up through roots.
After poking his plants in the lab he came up with the idea of getting our tomato plants we were growing together this summer to sacrifice a little bit of biomass in favor of fungus resistance by watering them with dilute aspirin (a slightly modified version of a plant immune system hormone originally extracted from willow bark) in the early mornings, and we discovered that other people had been doing this successfully for decades without any particular known mechanism. That chemical is easy enough for them to make and some plants (like willows) are absolutely full of it. Would not be surprised if they secreted it into the soil and if it bled over into adjacent plants. They also do not limit their interactions to other plants—I have seen research to the effect that most plants actively secrete sugars into the soil around their roots to attract bacteria which break down minerals and nutrients into forms they can absorb, and that they actively allow many symbiotic fungi into their roots without mounting immune responses.
Harry froze in sudden realization just as the forkful of carrots was about to enter his mouth.
That couldn’t, couldn’t possibly be true, surely no wizard would be stupid enough to do THAT...
And Harry knew, with a dreadful sinking feeling, that of course they would be that stupid. Salazar Slytherin had probably never considered the moral implications of snake intelligence for even one second, just like it hadn’t ever occurred to Salazar that Muggleborns were intelligent enough to deserve personhood rights. Most people just didn’t see moral issues at all unless someone else was pointing them out...
“Harry?” said Terry from beside him, sounding like he was afraid he would regret asking. “Why are you staring at your fork like that?”
“I’m starting to think magic should be illegal,” said Harry. “By the way, have you ever heard any stories about wizards who could speak with plants?”
EDIT: Okay, now I see other sources were mentioned later. But that was the point when I stopped reading. Sorry, it’s a heuristic that works pretty well outside of LW.
The discussion seems to be interesting, maybe we can use the same criteria to decide whether plants are intelligent that are used to decide whether computers are intelligent?
Because each step in the food chain involves energy loss, the shorter the chain, the fewer plants need to be killed to support you. Thus being a vegetarian saves plant lives too.
Depends on plant species (not all survive trimming well) and cattle density (trampling certainly kills plants). However, most meat and dairy are not sustained purely by grazing. That said, harvesting grain to feed to cattle doesn’t have to kill plants either, unless we consider the embryo in a seed to have the same moral status as a mature plant.
In practice, growing grain to feed to cattle to feed to humans will involve killing a lot more weeds than growing grain to feed straight to humans.
If plants are intelligent without neurons that raises the likelihood that there something to human intelligence that also beyond neurons. As a result head cryonics is less likely to offer full recovery of human minds.
It relatively easy to understand how the smart phone makes the decisions. There a central processor.
Plants on the other hand have no central processor.
Plants and intelligence—plants do a lot more problem-solving than you might think.
My labmate is doing research on the interaction between the plant circadian rhythm and the plant immune system. Their various immune hormones (along with all kinds of other things) are modulated by a rhythm that anticipates the diurnally-varying likelihood of fungal infection and can be phase-shifted not just by light but by humidity. The hormones that modulate this are systemic and get carried throughout the plant and can easily be taken up through roots.
After poking his plants in the lab he came up with the idea of getting our tomato plants we were growing together this summer to sacrifice a little bit of biomass in favor of fungus resistance by watering them with dilute aspirin (a slightly modified version of a plant immune system hormone originally extracted from willow bark) in the early mornings, and we discovered that other people had been doing this successfully for decades without any particular known mechanism. That chemical is easy enough for them to make and some plants (like willows) are absolutely full of it. Would not be surprised if they secreted it into the soil and if it bled over into adjacent plants. They also do not limit their interactions to other plants—I have seen research to the effect that most plants actively secrete sugars into the soil around their roots to attract bacteria which break down minerals and nutrients into forms they can absorb, and that they actively allow many symbiotic fungi into their roots without mounting immune responses.
How much reliable is the International Journal of Parapsychology?
Why did you bring that up?
It was in the article you linked.
EDIT: Okay, now I see other sources were mentioned later. But that was the point when I stopped reading. Sorry, it’s a heuristic that works pretty well outside of LW.
And perhaps outside The New Yorker?
The discussion seems to be interesting, maybe we can use the same criteria to decide whether plants are intelligent that are used to decide whether computers are intelligent?
What criteria do we use to decide that we’re intelligent?
And yet those horrible vegetarians continue to murder & eat these sentient lifeforms!
Because each step in the food chain involves energy loss, the shorter the chain, the fewer plants need to be killed to support you. Thus being a vegetarian saves plant lives too.
Actually grazing cattle don’t kill plants, they just trim off the ends.
Depends on plant species (not all survive trimming well) and cattle density (trampling certainly kills plants). However, most meat and dairy are not sustained purely by grazing. That said, harvesting grain to feed to cattle doesn’t have to kill plants either, unless we consider the embryo in a seed to have the same moral status as a mature plant.
In practice, growing grain to feed to cattle to feed to humans will involve killing a lot more weeds than growing grain to feed straight to humans.
Feeding grain to cattle is an awful practice that needs to stop; the sooner, the better.
Re: grazing cattle, have you seen Allan Savory’s TED talk? http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change.html
If plants are intelligent without neurons that raises the likelihood that there something to human intelligence that also beyond neurons. As a result head cryonics is less likely to offer full recovery of human minds.
My smartphone is intelligent without neurons.
It relatively easy to understand how the smart phone makes the decisions. There a central processor. Plants on the other hand have no central processor.