New paper claims that fungi may "communicate" with each other using an electrical impulse-based "language" of 50 "words"

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Mushrooms communicate with each other using up to 50 ‘words’, scientist claims | Fungi | The Guardian

WWW.THEGUARDIAN.COM

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Professor theorises electrical impulses sent by mycological organisms could be similar to human language

 

Quote

 

Buried in forest litter or sprouting from trees, fungi might give the impression of being silent and relatively self-contained organisms, but a new study suggests they may be champignon communicators.

 

Mathematical analysis of the electrical signals fungi seemingly send to one another has identified patterns that bear a striking structural similarity to human speech.

 

Previous research has suggested that fungi conduct electrical impulses through long, underground filamentous structures called hyphae – similar to how nerve cells transmit information in humans.

 

It has even shown that the firing rate of these impulses increases when the hyphae of wood-digesting fungi come into contact with wooden blocks, raising the possibility that fungi use this electrical “language” to share information about food or injury with distant parts of themselves, or with hyphae-connected partners such as trees.

 

 

[Keyser_Soze]

Take that vegans!

[skillzdadirecta]

3 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

Take that vegans!

I honestly NEVER understood vegans who took the position of "we eat plants because meat is murder" I was always like "But plants are alive too". My mother kept plants growing up and used to always talk to them because studies showed that talking to plants had a positive effect. Being a vegan or vegetarian makes more sense to me if it';s for health or cultural reasons or environmental reason. But the whole half baked moral argument NEVER made sense to me. 

[Mr.Vic20]

[self Demut] Life is murder [/Self Demut]

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

35 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

I honestly NEVER understood vegans who took the position of "we eat plants because meat is murder" I was always like "But plants are alive too". My mother kept plants growing up and used to always talk to them because studies showed that talking to plants had a positive effect. Being a vegan or vegetarian makes more sense to me if it';s for health or cultural reasons or environmental reason. But the whole half baked moral argument NEVER made sense to me. 

 

Plants and animals are both "alive", but the exact nature of what constitutes that life has very different contexts.

 

Animals have sentience and can therefore feel pain, experience fear, etc. while plants lack the physiology necessary to have those experiences.

 

The better way to phrase the moral argument "we eat plants because meat is murder" would be "we eat plants because a sentient creature shouldn't die for our sustenance".

[Mr.Vic20]

3 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

Plants and animals are both "alive", but the exact nature of what constitutes that life has very different contexts.

 

Animals have sentience and can therefore feel pain, experience fear, etc. while pants lack the physiology necessary to have those experiences.

My pants feel EVERYTHING! 

[Bacon]

Man, fuckin' shrooms know more words than I do. 

[Zaku3]

22 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

Plants and animals are both "alive", but the exact nature of what constitutes that life has very different contexts.

 

Animals have sentience and can therefore feel pain, experience fear, etc. while plants lack the physiology necessary to have those experiences.

 

The better way to phrase the moral argument "we eat plants because meat is murder" would be "we eat plants because a sentient creature shouldn't die for our sustenance".

 

It's a grim dark universe other things die so that we can live.

 

If they truly wanna break that cycle they need to give me people I can experiment on so I can help us become one with the machine. 

[Zaku3]

 

You may not like it but this is what peak performance looks like.

[skillzdadirecta]

23 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

Plants and animals are both "alive", but the exact nature of what constitutes that life has very different contexts.

 

Animals have sentience and can therefore feel pain, experience fear, etc. while plants lack the physiology necessary to have those experiences.

 

The better way to phrase the moral argument "we eat plants because meat is murder" would be "we eat plants because a sentient creature shouldn't die for our sustenance".

[Kal-El814]

Posted this in The Shower earlier, but it's the greatest shitpost of all time so it's evergreen:

 

 

"you cannot kill me in a way that matters" is some of the 21st century's greatest writing

[CitizenVectron]

While we're on the topic of sapience, etc:

 

Is the commonly held belief that sapience arises from the physical mechanics of the pattern of our brains, or the pattern itself? Basically, would the following three beings all be self-aware and conscious?

1. You right now, with a human brain, operating on chemical and electrical interactions
2. The exact same "pattern" of impulses, only made up entirely of rocks being moved in identical ways (perhaps on a galactic scale over slow time period, etc). But in all important ways, the same pattern as the brain you have over a similar experienced frame of time
3. The exact same "pattern" of impulses, only the pattern is not held in atoms/charges, but rather the gaps between them. So instead of having electrical impulses travel between synapses, it's an empty bit of space moving between "full" spaces. But the gaps in matter are exactly the same as the electrical and physical impulses in your brain over an equivalent experienced frame of time

Something I think about sometimes. Basically, though of course our consciousness exists within the universe, is the consciousness itself something that arises from and "floats" within the pattern?

[silentbob]

So when my friend does a bunch or shrooms and starts hearing voices. . . . 
 

 

OMG SAUSAGE PARTY MIGHT BE REAL!!!

[Uaarkson]

11 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

While we're on the topic of sapience, etc:

 

Is the commonly held belief that sapience arises from the physical mechanics of the pattern of our brains, or the pattern itself? Basically, would the following three beings all be self-aware and conscious?

1. You right now, with a human brain, operating on chemical and electrical interactions
2. The exact same "pattern" of impulses, only made up entirely of rocks being moved in identical ways (perhaps on a galactic scale over slow time period, etc). But in all important ways, the same pattern as the brain you have over a similar experienced frame of time
3. The exact same "pattern" of impulses, only the pattern is not held in atoms/charges, but rather the gaps between them. So instead of having electrical impulses travel between synapses, it's an empty bit of space moving between "full" spaces. But the gaps in matter are exactly the same as the electrical and physical impulses in your brain over an equivalent experienced frame of time

Something I think about sometimes. Basically, though of course our consciousness exists within the universe, is the consciousness itself something that arises from and "floats" within the pattern?

I think about this shit all the time. If our consciousness simply arises out of the amalgam of inputs/outputs in the brain, then even a calculator has a very very low level of sapience. Any system really. You could extrapolate that to argue that the universe itself has some form of consciousness. Unfortunately with no real way to test it, these theories all remain firmly in the domain of philosophy rather than science.

[Keyser_Soze]

56 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Animals have sentience and can therefore feel pain, experience fear, etc. while plants lack the physiology necessary to have those experiences.

 

Plants can respond to stimuli as well.

[legend]

43 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

While we're on the topic of sapience, etc:

 

Is the commonly held belief that sapience arises from the physical mechanics of the pattern of our brains, or the pattern itself? Basically, would the following three beings all be self-aware and conscious?

1. You right now, with a human brain, operating on chemical and electrical interactions
2. The exact same "pattern" of impulses, only made up entirely of rocks being moved in identical ways (perhaps on a galactic scale over slow time period, etc). But in all important ways, the same pattern as the brain you have over a similar experienced frame of time
3. The exact same "pattern" of impulses, only the pattern is not held in atoms/charges, but rather the gaps between them. So instead of having electrical impulses travel between synapses, it's an empty bit of space moving between "full" spaces. But the gaps in matter are exactly the same as the electrical and physical impulses in your brain over an equivalent experienced frame of time

Something I think about sometimes. Basically, though of course our consciousness exists within the universe, is the consciousness itself something that arises from and "floats" within the pattern?

 

I don't know what beliefs are commonly held, but depending on what you mean, I'd say those are all equivalent or not all equivalent  I'm hesitant to say the "pattern" is what is important; e.g., a record of information processed by some system is not the same as the information processing system itself.

 

However, it sounds like you're using "pattern" more broadly to talk about different mediums or architectures of otherwise full information processing systems. If that's what you mean, then I do think those are all equivalent, or at least see no reason to treat one more specially than another. There are well established ways to mathematically determine computational equivalence of different systems and it's incredibly trivially to have wildly different architectures that each are capable of computing all computable functions barring physical memory limitations. (This goes back to Turing and Church's seminal work on universal computation). This is similarly why in theory, there's nothing stopping conventional computer architectures from being programmed to be functionally identical to people (though in practice it's very plausible the conventional computer architecture isn't efficient in the ways necessary to function like people.)

 

 

33 minutes ago, Uaarkson said:

I think about this shit all the time. If our consciousness simply arises out of the amalgam of inputs/outputs in the brain, then even a calculator has a very very low level of sapience. Any system really. You could extrapolate that to argue that the universe itself has some form of consciousness. Unfortunately with no real way to test it, these theories all remain firmly in the domain of philosophy rather than science.

 

I wouldn't conclude that. Any meaningful definition I'd give for sentient would regard what the system is actually doing/computing. That you could potentially build computers out of arbitrary physical materials doesn't mean everything in the world is computing the things we'd define as pertinent to sentience.

[Uaarkson]

16 minutes ago, legend said:

I wouldn't conclude that. Any meaningful definition I'd give for sentient would regard what the system is actually doing/computing. That you could potentially build computers out of arbitrary physical materials doesn't mean everything in the world is computing the things we'd define as pertinent to sentience.

 

What if it's a completely different "type" of sentience? 

[legend]

8 minutes ago, Uaarkson said:

 

What if it's a completely different "type" of sentience? 

 

Like many deep philosophical questions, such as "is a hot dog in a bun a sandwich?" the answer is often rendered obvious once you operationally define the question, so you'd have to start by giving the definition you have in mind!  

[Uaarkson]

11 minutes ago, legend said:

 

Like many deep philosophical questions, such as "is a hot dog in a bun a sandwich?" the answer is often rendered obvious once you operationally define the question, so you'd have to start by giving the definition you have in mind!  

I don’t know man. I tripped on acid once and now I’m certain there’s an octopus living in the center of the earth. They don’t want us to know.

[CitizenVectron]

40 minutes ago, legend said:

 

I don't know what beliefs are commonly held, but depending on what you mean, I'd say those are all equivalent or not all equivalent  I'm hesitant to say the "pattern" is what is important; e.g., a record of information processed by some system is not the same as the information processing system itself.

 

However, it sounds like you're using "pattern" more broadly to talk about different mediums or architectures of otherwise full information processing systems. If that's what you mean, then I do think those are all equivalent, or at least see no reason to treat one more specially than another. There are well established ways to mathematically determine computational equivalence of different systems and it's incredibly trivially to have wildly different architectures that each are capable of computing all computable functions barring physical memory limitations. (This goes back to Turing and Church's seminal work on universal computation). This is similarly why in theory, there's nothing stopping conventional computer architectures from being programmed to be functionally identical to people (though in practice it's very plausible the conventional computer architecture isn't efficient in the ways necessary to function like people.)

 

 

 

I wouldn't conclude that. Any meaningful definition I'd give for sentient would regard what the system is actually doing/computing. That you could potentially build computers out of arbitrary physical materials doesn't mean everything in the world is computing the things we'd define as pertinent to sentience.

 

Yes, that is what I mean. The actual systems themselves are obviously only going to generate sapience through action/processing, the architecture itself only plays the role of running the system.

 

Whenever I try to (very simplistically) explain to people that their sapience isn't the brain itself, but rather the change in the brain over time (that creates the simulation/experience/internal rendering of the universe), I like to use the example of a record player—the song is there, but it doesn't actually exist/get experienced unless the player is turning under the needle. In the same way, sapience/experience is just the passage of time over the changing conditions/patterns/activity within the brain (or whatever system).

[Anathema-]

There's only one consciousness and our brains just tap into it like a radio.

[legend]

1 hour ago, CitizenVectron said:

 

Yes, that is what I mean. The actual systems themselves are obviously only going to generate sapience through action/processing, the architecture itself only plays the role of running the system.

 

Whenever I try to (very simplistically) explain to people that their sapience isn't the brain itself, but rather the change in the brain over time (that creates the simulation/experience/internal rendering of the universe), I like to use the example of a record player—the song is there, but it doesn't actually exist/get experienced unless the player is turning under the needle. In the same way, sapience/experience is just the passage of time over the changing conditions/patterns/activity within the brain (or whatever system).

 

To be clear, I would probably take this one step further; the whole mechanism is important itself, not just the changes in the primary processed information state. For example, it's conceivable (though not practical) to record information about the state of every neuron in the brain over time. You could then "play" that sequence of information over time and could argue that the "patterns are changing," but that doesn't make what you're playing conscious, because the most critical pieces are missing in that recording playback: the mechanisms by which the brain operates and process information.

 

I think that might be consistent with what you're saying, but I just thought I should be clear  

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

2 hours ago, legend said:

is a hot dog in a bun a sandwich?

Yes it is. It’s a hogie 

[Jason]

12 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

hogie

 

not even spelled correctly

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

22 minutes ago, Jason said:

 

not even spelled correctly

Sure dunk on the moron this is ableist 

[Jason]

2 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

Sure dunk on the moron this is ableist 

 

[Massdriver]

Panpsychism anyone? 

 

[silentbob]

1 hour ago, Massdriver said:

Panpsychism anyone? 

 

Tempted to grow some Penis Envy myself. We also have a tip jar at work that is usually spent on weed at our store for everyone to try something new. We are now waiting and buying shrooms for everyone to try instead  (shroombros is the site) Also waiting to pick up some free mushroom soil for our outdoor veg garden and maybe try some for my weed.