Sentient plants!

[Ben Iscatus]

I knew it!

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/08/food-for-thought-french-bean-plants-show-signs-of-intent-say-scientists

[Dana Lomas]

Next growing season, I may try this experiment: a race between some scarlet runner beans and some french ones to see if the reds run faster if I enthusiastically cheer them on. If they then journey their way to end of the dripping garden hose looped around the birdfeeder hanger extending high above the deck railing, seemingly in a spiritual search of their source of water, that might be conclusive.

[Ben Iscatus]

Ah, yes Dana, but how will you really know the reason for the winner? More sentient (want to be eaten) or Less sentient (didn't realise they would be eaten)? Then you could also lie to them ("I'm only growing you so I can save your seed and plant it everywhere")...

[Dana Lomas]

How about some human bean race theme music 

[David Sundaram]

Dana Lomas wrote:

Next growing season, I may try this experiment: a race between some scarlet runner beans and some french ones to see if the reds run faster if I enthusiastically cheer them on. If they then journey their way to end of the dripping garden hose looped around the birdfeeder hanger extending high above the deck railing, seemingly in a spiritual search of their source of water, that might be conclusive.

Another demonstration of your penchant for 'humorously' (enterainingly?) blurring/diverting attention from meaningful significances, IMO Dana, for what soul-embedded 'reason' - maybe you find said significances unbearably implicative or maybe you just want to impress othrs with your 'smarts'? -  I can't even begin to fathom. 🤔

[David Sundaram]

On Friday, January 8, 2021 at 8:16:03 AM UTC-7 Dana Lomas wrote:

How about some human bean race theme music 

There you 'cutely' go again.

[Dana Lomas]

I can't even begin to fathom

Fathom thyself psychoanalyst, for I could not care less about your fathoming of this psyche.

[Ben Iscatus]

"Above all, have fun!" we're told. Might as well, since we're never going to get to the final truth (which might, for all we know,  be a big joke).

[David Sundaram]

On Friday, January 8, 2021 at 9:22:07 AM UTC-7 Dana Lomas wrote:

I can't even begin to fathom

Fathom thyself psychoanalyst, for I could not care less about your fathoming of this psyche.

I didn't think you would 'care', self-satisfied one.

[David Sundaram]

On Friday, January 8, 2021 at 9:29:21 AM UTC-7 isc...@gmail.com wrote:

"Above all, have fun!" we're told. Might as well, since we're never going to get to the final truth (which might, for all we know,  be a big joke).

Seeing it all as a 'big' 'joke' certainly 'relieves' one of the any sense that it might be worth doing the 'work' necessary to take Life 'seriously' - not that 'workers' can have 'fun' with the process. mind you.

[Lou Gold]

Seeing it all as a 'big' 'joke' certainly 'relieves' one of the any sense that it might be worth doing the 'work' necessary to take Life 'seriously' - not that 'workers' can have 'fun' with the process. mind you.

A Serious Man

[Dana Lomas]

Sunny Dave ... I'm not sure why you care to fathom this psyche, since it makes no difference whatsoever to its own limitless exploration. Perhaps you could explain your penchant for such? What significant difference does it make for you?

[Santeri Satama]

Serious man in the sense of... driven by some deep passion, which comes from all the blessings life and whole of being has bestowed upon him. Trying to do the right thing, not because of complying with everyday norms and expectations of society, but because the blessings keep telling he can. So the Serious man kicks out Jesus and Buddha and all the old farts ruined by religion, and gives his passion permission to fuck up the world in novel and interesting way. And that's the cosmic joke, now and then fucking up instead of only down.

[Dana Lomas]

Fathoming Santeri ... 

[Santeri Satama]

Dana, I remember reading a scifi novel, where communicating with aliens required dancing, because supposedly you can't dance dishonestly.

I've wondered how well can you lie in sign languages... game of learning poker face vs learning to read tells is not so easy. Easiest to be dishonest in written language, I suppose. Wanna read my job application and resume? 

[Brad Walker]

David, I find your abuse of all emphasis forms condescending.

[Brad Walker]

RHC, I'm just sharing my feelings with a psychoanalyst.

[Lou Gold]

I'm just sharing my feelings with a psychoanalyst.

Brilliant!

[Matthew Brett]

"I remember reading a scifi novel, where communicating with aliens required dancing, because supposedly you can't dance dishonestly."

That doesn't ring true. I've quite honestly never found myself dancing quite honestly. It's always a performance. Well, except when I'm alone, when there's nobody to pick up what I'm laying down anyway.

[Dana Lomas]

Wanna read my job application and resume? 

You mean for the dancing role? No need, for you already have the role, as does everyOne ~ for to quote T S Eliot, there is only the Dance.

[martin...@gmail.com]

David, your comment has proven way more attention-diverting than Dana's original comment. 

Regarding the Original Topic; I agree with the sentiment that this result doesn't really prove intent. 

To me , this behaviour is fundamentally the same as sunflowers growing towards the sun.

I agree; it's really amazing how the beans can sense the pole, but given that they do, they're 'just' sunflowers.

So, how do they sense the pole? No idea. But at least with idealism, you could start with something like "organisms have evolved into being aware of what's beneficial for them to be aware of".

The fact that we can't (at the moment) correlate a material process/structure with this specific awareness is not a super big problem. 

[Santeri Satama]

How does a tree sense you?

Bodily awareness does not end at skin or bark level. Physics would prolly go "electromagnetic fields something quantum something...", if it could first admit that senses are not limited to the 5 or so external senses, and that it's possible even for metacognition to introspect and empirically study bodily awareness.

The "magnetic" body of a tree can be sensed e.g. with the palm of your hand, not unlike as electricity can be felt. Hugging a tree you can feel hugged back. Bodily awareness, feels, moods, emotions... no clear borders between what is/are referred, more like continuum, tapestry of continua. Morphic fields not just as abstract thought-hypothesis, but actually sensing/sensed bodily awareness.

[Ben Iscatus]

The Stoic

This great tree has now ripened its last fruit.

It is marked to be felled. If it used words,

It might say that it is nobler to stay mute,

Make fresh air and give shelter to the birds

Than protest at what it must become - fuel,

Or beams for a roof, or boards for a floor,

Even when some of those uses seem cruel:

The haft of an axe; the handle of a saw.

It somehow knows we vain, unheeding brutes

Are driven by a cold psychology;

That we've been disconnected at the roots

And deafened by our own technology.

    Sentient, yes, to the tips of its leaves,

    It freely gives, but neither hopes, nor grieves.

[Santeri Satama]

We have an old custom to knock a tree to be felled with the blunt edge first, so that the pain feeling aspect of the tree can leave the wood before the sharp edge of the axe starts it's work. Another possible custom is to listen carefully, which plants agree to gift their matter. Perhaps something similar goes on when the mushroom aspect or what ever of mycorrhiza decides which trees to feed, which not, as mycorrhiza are growing a forest to harvest light into sugar to feed mycorrhiza.   

[Dana Lomas]

The way the bean vine grows is via the spiral of so-called sacred geometry. Yet a seashell grows this way too. Indeed, so do entire galaxies. Are they aware? Or is it primal ideation of the only Awareness there is, now imagined as the apparency of its immanent nature phenomenally manifest 'out there', as that Awareness falls under the 'self'-induced spell of being apart from the dance of Its idea constructions?

[Santeri Satama]

Golden ratio, continued fraction of one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj8Sg8qnjOg

[Dana Lomas]

Mathematician at large seeming irrationally rational

[Dana Lomas]

This is fascinating too, as if Mathematician at large seeming unstable><stable ... What's so special about the Mandelbrot set?

[Santeri Satama]

M@λ gets bloody awfully stable><unstable with it's horribly nagging Riemann Hypothesis... absolutely unforgivable for any nice and orderly mind.

[David Sundaram]

On Friday, January 8, 2021 at 10:22:17 AM UTC-7 Dana Lomas wrote:

Sunny Dave ... I'm not sure why you care to fathom this psyche, since it makes no difference whatsoever to its own limitless exploration. Perhaps you could explain your penchant for such? What significant difference does it make for you?

I 'care' because I 'believe/think/feel what I observe and experience to be Life to be of positive value - so what optimizes and/or augments IT (i.e. makes it qualitatively 'better') and what degrades and/or wastes IT are matters of 'moral' (meaning practical-value) concern to me. I was (past tense) hoping to provoke you to explore your 'motive' and 'practices' in relation to your own "limitless exploration" ( as you put it)  of Life by sharing my (inconclusive) 'speculations' in regards why you shared what you shared in relation to the subject of 'plants', which as I said struck me as basically disrespecting said "communal exploration" by (as I saw it) simply 'joking' about it.

I hope that helps you to grok why it would 'matter' to me (at least) if, after such self-examination, you elected to interpersonally relate differently.

[Dana Lomas]

David ... with respect, Ben and I have been participating, communicating, and indeed joking with each other long before you joined in, so I feel I have a good grasp of what he and I feel is mutually respectful, and as such I have no concern that he would have felt somehow offended, or that I wasn't taking the article he shared seriously. Indeed, as expected, he replied with some joking of his own, as he is wont to do. Aside from that, my comment was still quite relevant to the linked article, and intended to query the implication that plants have some kind of purposeful awareness, even if not as pedantically obvious as you prefer. But hey, if you feel compelled to doubt my seriousness as a contributor here, it really makes no difference to me whatsoever, and I can accept you nonetheless, despite your own idiosyncrasies, and carry on interacting with whoever cares to accept what I care to offer ~ within forum guidelines of course.

[Ben Iscatus]

If everyone were like Dana, the world would be a lovely place. May his beans always be pretty in flower and productive in pods.

[Dana Lomas]

Thanks Ben for not expecting me to live up to someone else's expectation of what caring looks like. Mind you, even my beans when baked have been known to produce gas :)

[Lou Gold]

You guy are delightful. Better to be gaseous than inflated. Indeed!

[martin...@gmail.com]

nailed it. 

[Santeri Satama]

Speaking of dana01, excuse my l33t, cult of Pythagoras was strictly against beans, because 1+bean=0.

Sorry for this wokely swollen tummy rumble from Kingdomina.

[Ben Iscatus]

Well, Pythagoras (whose theorem I tested when I prepared my greenhouse base, and it was at least 2 inches out) can look down with disdain when this year I plant Runner Bean 'Firestorm', French Bean 'Delinel' and Broad Bean 'Masterpiece'. Can't wait.

[Dana Lomas]

So apparently Finns love their favas  ... as a source of endless inspiration no less !

[Santeri Satama]

We call it Ox bean (härkäpapu). It's a weird love-hate relation. The previous generations share their nightmare stories of culinary experiences of the olden with the younger. On the other hand the militant ecovillage front of otherwise easy going hippies maintain ability to feed the whole world population with couple acres of Ox bean, in case sky falls down. On the other hand, the new vegan market for various pretend meat-eats made from it.

Normies eat nowadays green goo called "Pea soup" every Thor's day for our daily inspiration. That's why the hammer dude is the god of thunder.

[Santeri Satama]

PS: to make the green goo edible, they mix it with strong mustard, about 50-50.

[Santeri Satama]

So, we've proceeded to lambda calculus of sentient pants. Good progress!

[Ben Iscatus]

I hear the Danes have something to say about "sentient pants" 

[Dana Lomas]

The previous generations share their nightmare stories of culinary experiences ...

 Limitless source of expiration from nether places ?

[Dana Lomas]

So, we've proceeded to lambda calculus of sentient pants 

Santeri, you've left me behind in the wake of these lambda waves. You've got some splainin' to do !

[Santeri Satama]

sunnuntai 10. tammikuuta 2021 klo 19.07.24 UTC+2 Dana Lomas kirjoitti:

Santeri, you've left me behind in the wake of these lambda waves. You've got some splainin' to do !

Dunno much, understand less. The letter looks nice, like standing under and bending in the wind, or bending to release wind:  λ

Standing under what? Small lambda under big lambda, A without the floor, which is how I first imagined the p-adic Absolute in the very early stage of my math tripping?

Λ
   λ

Haskell, programming language based on lambda calculus, is named after the first name of a guy called Curry. It is Turing complete (ie. a form of Turing machine) and is supposed to force writing code that is relatively clear and bug free. Cardano, a blockchain ecosystem I don't know much about, is based on Haskell. Category Theory, a highly abstract foundational theory of math, is also based on lambda calculus.

If I bothered to read the SEP article, maybe it would provide an answer. But often I prefer to enjoy keeping a question open. If I understood correctly (a big if), the  λ-symbol binds a mathematical identity or equivalence relation to a certain context. My question that perhaps brings it closer to the topic of this forum: is the context a Markov Blanket?

[David Sundaram]

Dana Lomas wrote:

David ... with respect, Ben and I have been participating, communicating, and indeed joking with each other long before you joined in, so I feel I have a good grasp of what he and I feel is mutually respectful, and as such I have no concern that he would have felt somehow offended, or that I wasn't taking the article he shared seriously. Indeed, as expected, he replied with some joking of his own, as he is wont to do. Aside from that, my comment was still quite relevant to the linked article, and intended to query the implication that plants have some kind of purposeful awareness, even if not as pedantically obvious as you prefer. But hey, if you feel compelled to doubt my seriousness as a contributor here, it really makes no difference to me whatsoever, and I can accept you nonetheless, despite your own idiosyncrasies, and carry on interacting with whoever cares to accept what I care to offer ~ within forum guidelines of course.

Great, very erudite explanation, Dana! Doesn't mean that that's the only possibly pertinent one. Just so someone here (at least) gets the 'thrust' of my 'point' about your joking in the context of this thread:

https://scontent.fden3-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-0/p526x296/137681377_10158924273710498_2932267333821812276_n.jpg?_nc_cat=104&ccb=2&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=Z5t_PDhWiHYAX8ZMh-I&_nc_ht=scontent.fden3-1.fna&tp=6&oh=e9bfc679838e9ef7347c25fa5b261cbb&oe=6023DCDD

[Dana Lomas]

David ... out of all the participants in this thread you're the only one who has shown disrespect by implying that their participation in the 'stupid' joking implies that they too are behaving stupidly, unlike yourself who is clearly above such stupidity. I'll leave it up to the others if they want to take your bait, and be mistaken for someone who cares about your value judgments, but again, I could not care less about living up to your expectations of how I should be interacting here.