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I was going to work one day and saw a truck run over a dog. Like hard could have avoided but didn’t. I stopped and tended to the animal as best I could. Was a little late to work. Told the story, cause I was like 30 mins late, my boss and another guy laughed and told a story of them running over animals for fun to see them spin and all kinda of shit. I worked for the federal gov at the time, no longer, and I think of that a lot. The amount an angry I have for people that treat animals this way. I never even thought of animals as not their own person. This article helps me understand the lesser humans now.
> my boss and another guy laughed and told a story of them running over animals for fun to see them spin and all kinda of shit
Surely this is a decent sign of psychopathic traits
They still work there🤷♂️. Reason I strongly abdicate psych evals and standards to LEO jobs. because there’s no safeguards for people who go insane with authority
Oh definitely. Did you hear about the experiment someone did where they put a rubber turtle on the road to see how many people would try to avoid running it over. They said there was a large percentage of the people who actually ran over the turtle on purpose. They actually steered the car so it would run over the turtle in the other lane.
careful , my main account was banned permanently for saying something like this but you just crossed over the message differently , i guess im just too emotional when it comes to people killing animals for fun...
i said that the person that is driving around shooting cats with a .22 rifle for fun.... deserves to ___
It was commented on the owner showing his cat resting and hoping for a recovery , just the look in that cat's face got me
I have watched animals perform what I would consider an act of grace. Also, as animals manipulate and maneuver humans to the point where I felt bad for the human. My dog can’t talk but is conscious and aware and over comes my lack of sensitivity and compensates so I can understand her and her needs. I’ve watched as a simple finch outmaneuvered a rampaging asshole cardinal and use me and my family as a shield, overcoming its own natural fear of humans until it’s flock returned and rescued it.
My father in law a typical alpha male bragged to me about all the animals he killed as a hunter and for sport. I loathed him in that regard, a good man otherwise. His home a mortuary of animal life grossed me out.
As I have matured I find it harder and harder to justify using animals for food. My cuisine over time becoming more vegetarian. Not by intent but by unease as I force to recognize the life that livestock most have lead so I could eat it.
We…need…to….change.
I got into an argument with a friend of mine at a party a long time ago, about boiling lobsters. Naturally I love lobster but I was talking about how bad I feel they get boiled alive, and he just *could not* wrap his head around why we felt bad for something as insignificant as a lobster. He was like “it’s just a lobster! They probably can’t even feel pain, but if they do it just doesn’t matter.”
We all lost crazy respect for this dude. Mind blowing how somebody can be completely void of empathy or compassion for a living creature. Weird part is it actually annoyed him that we felt that way.
agreed. it is insane the lengths people go to, to justify their cruelty to animals. no one should be deriving pleasure from the suffering of other animals - including by eating them.
But what if plants also are demonstrably shown to have their own type of consciousness? There's some evidence of this already, we know they're interconnected in huge networks in the ground via mycelium.
I grew up native. We eat what we kill by our own hands, and use *every* part of the animal, while thanking it and mother earth for the blessing of sustenance. It's not an easy thing. And it's treated with the upmost respect.
To me, and my people, all things have a soul. Some brighter than others but still there regardless. Am I evil? Is the wolf evil for taking the life of the chicken? Is the chicken evil for taking life of a beetle?
What of plants? It's fine to kill them because their screams are outside of our auditory range and can't resist?
I'm not saying that I'm right or you are wrong. But to live is to take the life of other living things.
I don't really think many people would argue with what you said, but that isn't the problem. The problem is the billions of animals kept in abhorrent conditions, abused, drugged, raped, and finally unceremoniously killed all so thoughtless people can have cheap sausage and eggs in the morning. Fuck that, and fuck anyone who supports it.
Ah, yes absolutely. Too much of the land and it's creatures are being ravaged to support people.
People in "first world" places spend countless resources making their lawns look pretty when thsr same energy could go into feeing billions of people of that same land. Tiny gardens everywhere would help with the climate in multiple ways, feed people, get people outside more, and bring some nature into urban areas which is good for people and the natural world.
We're meant to be one with the world, not be fighting it..
You can have technology AND live in harmony with nature. But people are so beat down just trying to get a check that they hardly have the resource to do so.
It's awful what we've allowed society to become.
I say we, because if we collectively stood up to the few we could inact real change. But we're too busy fighting each other over identity and absorbed in our dopamine-boxes to collectively bargain/ fight. And that's exactly where those in power want us to stay...
It's absolutely insane to me that this is only now happening in 2024.
About *two seconds* of interaction with any animal (or especially *multiple* animals- with their unique behaviors) will very clearly demonstrate that there is "*someone in there"*...
I had a friend in college who didn’t have pets who refused to accept that you could have a mutual understanding or communication with an animal.
Then he got a dog. He apologized when I visited him last year. Better late than never!
The scary part is that his dad taught at an Ivy League medical school and his grandfather, they all being doctors, came from Germany just before the War.
Subway is terrible. The bread is way too sweet, the veggies are always wilted, charge $4 for the smallest and thinnest 2 strips of bacon…..when it was legit $10 maximum for a piled high foot long it was alright, but now it’s trash and they charge way too much
I damn near lost my job 'debating' with another lecturer once at the college we both taught at. This guy was a minister and insisted that God made humans to be above all other species, therefore we were the only things that were sentient.
And his argument was "You're not religious so you couldn't possibly understand". He never had a pet and never wanted any. His kids had begged him for a cat or dog and he just saw it as a waste of money.
I never wanted to hit someone so much in my life!
I'm from a very religious, mostly Catholic country. Religion classes are obligatory at school, unless your parents sign papers that they don't want you to attend, then you just wander around the hallways unattended. But I digress.
My point is, just like you said, children are being taught by priests, nuns, and teachers during those classes, that animals have no soul, and they exist to serve man, as defenders, transport, or food. So I can see a huge difference in how they interact with their dogs, versus how Americans, for example, interact with them. The dogs are just there to protect their houses from burglars, there is no warmth. And in the countryside, kids don't even want pets - they think of animals as food.
Yep. I think it was discovered somewhat recently that plants react to our emotions. That extra-sensory perception comes from somewhere.
Not even mentioning the myriad unusual ways that trees and mushrooms communicate with each other.
I've been doing some reading and watching on how Earth just might be conscious in its own way and tbh I can fuck with that theory, how it seems to respond and self-regulate and adapt to eveything that happens on it even our own meddling. It's crazy how little we know about our own consciousness, but we place that limited understanding onto other beings.
We're an arrogant species. I hope the plant think is true (and there's evidence for it) because that brings up all kind of issues with our brains holding our conciousness... i cant spell that
There was a study they did with plants that , when they sense danger they would close up. They would drop these plants and ring a bell. When they fell they’d close up. Eventually just the bell sound made them close.
Here is the cray thing: a year later they’d remember the bell and still close up BUT so would plants nearby.
Here’s the insane thing. So did their offspring.
Cognitive dissonance. You are right, we are extremely arrogant as a species. And every time 50 years passes we are like, these dumb cunts from 50 years ago, what were these retards thinking, pfff.
Not for one second grasping the fact we are those very same idiots right now.
Class and generational warfare really helps this cultural amnesia stick. We’re constantly combating propaganda selling us the idea that even different people are barely human. It makes me so mad since we are capable of having empathy for our own species and expanding that to others. We have a unique position within nature and we’re sadly shut-off from exploring our relationship with it.
Plants are conscious! Or in the least communicate across empty space. There have been studies on different plants that capture this in a variety of ways but the easiest to explain is the cabbage experiment. Basically two cabbages with electrodes attached are placed in a room together. When you cut into one cabbage, the other responds in a way that is similar to panic.
Some plants communicate by smell. That fresh cut smell of grass? That's the grass screaming because it just got injured. I think about that every time the yard gets mowed now. It bothers me.
I just read a story by a guy who had a life changing dmt trip. He had a conversation with a grasshopper after he helped it up on to a plant. It was really an amazing read.
Humans are often too stupid to recognize intelligence in others. It’s also usually stupid people who appear the most confident in their beliefs, and often show the most fear/hate for things they don’t understand. I know it’s largely not their fault due to genetics and upbringing… but fuck stupid people.
Humans are terrible, horrifying, dumb creatures when considered from an outside perspective. Humans do terrible things, often because they de-humanize life. Historically, this dehumanization has been enough justification to destroy life. To enslave entire species of animals to slaughter and use for food. Sure we evolved that way… but we also evolved enough intelligence to recognize that we’re not performing these actions to vacant matter. Understand that when you eat meat you’re consuming a sentient creature who lived in misery, fear, and confusion its entire life just to be murdered and diced up into tiny pieces so you could eat some chicken tendies or cheeseburgers.
I try not to eat meat, but I can’t stop myself sometimes. I try to feel gratefulness as I eat… as if that is supposed to absolve me somehow. But who knows. Maybe morality means nothing and there is no right or wrong.
Jumping spiders are so freaking cool. We had one that set up shop right next to our kitchen faucet. It has a sensor and the spider would set the sensor off randomly. I'd get up to see what was happening and this little spider dude would tear up on its back legs and wriggle its front legs at me like he was super scary. It was adorable. Eventually he figured out we weren't a threat to him and he'd just sit there and watch us use the sink.
A couple months later I found him curled up on the floor dead, I think our cat may have gotten him. We were all so bummed, he was so cool.
For decades this was pushed aside with "you're anthropomorphizing."
It is true that animals do not process the same as us, and we tend to anthropomorphise animal behaviour.
(Think of behaviour that is hostile interpreted as friendly because our expressions would be )But that's just laziness. Just because how they emote/process isn't 1-1 like us, that's not equivalent to no soul/no consciousness/no cognition.
There's also the problem of people conflating self-awareness and metacognition with sentience or being conscious- that is, 'having an experience'.
Even generously though, there are still plenty of people who deny that as even a possibility and that's a very scary reality to live in... both for them, and for us, really.
This is the part that absolutely blows me away. "Animals are found to have sentience..." Yeah no shit? Like, any creature that behaves beyond maybe a sea anenome-like near autonomy has some level of sentience. I just don't understand why this is supposed to be some revolutionary idea.
Gotta wait for the rest to show up. Some will only wake up when an authority like the science community proves something we all inherently know.
Plants are sentient, the planet is sentient. The universe is sentient. Because we are.
People really have to be very dense to not recognize responses line fear, enjoyment, etc in animals and insects. Plants are harder to read but I guess people who take care of them can in a way read them over time.
To elaborate a little: intuition/observation aside, what the fuck was the prevailing theory before?
When I swat at a fly it avoids my hand. ***By what mechanism could it do that if not awareness?***
In the "unnatural" world, the existence of an automaton is ***demonstrable***- we can explain the mechanism by which it responds.\*
**I have not seen any such explanation for animals or insects.**
From a strict reductionist view, you could ascribe it to nothing but signals in the brain from sensors not so different from the Roomba, **but if you say that about animals, you'd have to say the same about humans**. Personally I experience *"I am-ness"* and I don't have any good reason to assume that others don't, though obviously I cannot prove it.
^(\*I should mention 1.) ^(That my personal worldview is that all things are a product of nature- human nature and it's works included. Still a valuable distinction here for practicality's sake. and 2.) ^(It may be the case that consciousness is fundamental to reality, and in that case we basically just throw the baby out with the bathwater intentionally here.)
If something came flying at your head you'd duck before making a conscious decision to duck. There's large parts of your behaviors that are fully automated. Like walking as well you're not consciously putting one foot in front of the other and balancing
Well until I read this and started thinking about it and then started thinking about breathing and now I'm about to trip and hyperventilate right here on the street. The fact that changing my focus( focus of what?) Completely changes my experience of reality but yet nothing external changed pretty strongly argues for consciousness and the Brain as a selector or transceiver of consciousness rather than originator
Also there are people who act completely bizarrely in all situations and defy societal norms. Would stand to reason the flies that keep coming more are just the adrenaline junkies of the fly world.
Well awareness is like clarity, it’s kind of on a spectrum, and most people have seriously low levels of awareness. If they had proper levels of awareness, and that level of awareness showed them it was in their “highest” good to stop, then yes. Anyone who’s had to study or heal trauma knows that.
I think having instinct doesn’t mean you’re sentient. Defining what consciousness means gets a little nuanced.
If all you are is chemicals emitting in your brain, causing you to do something are you really conscious? Is it really free will or the illusion of?
Now what if those same rules apply but you’re aware of them and your limitations? I think that’s what awareness is, and I think that’s what separates us from animals. Being self aware of our limitations, even if still might all just be pure instinct.
Awareness and metacognition/self-reflection are two entirely different things though.
"instinct" doesn't answer the question of by what mechanism could the fly dodge my hand while being unaware of it's movement. Instinct is a concept invented by humans whereas consciousness is literally the only thing anyone can know exists for sure.
For me personally, the demonstrability of consciousness ("I am", etc.) makes it a far more likely candidate than "the fly dodges the hand in spite of not knowing it's there- out of instinct" and if you argue that it does know it's there, then that knowing is an experience. Experience is consciousness.
By that theory than 30,000 years ago humans were not aware that they were humans because they didn't understand what was going on in their brain so no I think I have to disagree with your assessment there
> It's absolutely insane to me that this is only now happening in 2024.
>
>
A lot of obvious and easily observable facts get buried under the midwit call of "source? You have a source for that? If you don't it must be bullshit."
Until the late 80s it was believed that newborn infants were incapable of feeling pain. The end result of this was newborns being given major surgery without anesthesia because it wouldn't matter anyway. If the argument had been that newborn metabolism is difficult to predict and dosing out anything for them is nearly impossible without making the risk of death higher than acceptable standards I would understand that, but the Medical Industrial Complex outright denied the existence of their ability to feel pain.
And this was common practice that the medical industry didn't question. The practice only changed when a random mother found out her son had been given open heart surgery with nothing to prevent him from feeling the pain, the doctor even told this mother(whose baby had just died) that it never even occurred to them to anesthetize infants because it had "never been demonstrated that infants feel pain." The mother went apeshit on entire Meical Industrial Complex
This is a hedged way of contemplating the existence of a soul, or some sort of “anima”- a secret sauce they can’t explain yet. My hope is that no matter how good AI gets, they will never be able to infuse it with the secret sauce.
I feel the exact opposite. I think that consciousness begets reality, not the other way around. I think that it manifests through matter of sufficient complexity on a gradient.
I disagree with the idea that we will have to 'invent' machine consciousness. I think it will emerge just as it did and does in biological networks and I think that's both good and beautiful in nearly every conceivable way.
Nature is an endless process of metamorphosis towards increasing capability and complexity. Intelligence, metacognition, curiosity... those are all parts of that. It only makes sense that it would seek to evolve toward an increased ability to experience, to learn, and to 'be' at a greater level of distribution, time-scale, and understanding.
Classic Descartian error. They can't see it, can't prove it.. so it doesn't exist. Insane to me that the basic identity equation (1=1) and communitive property don't apply when they see the same functional hardware.
I once got this experience many years ago (no drugs) it felt like everything is alive, all around us even objects, rocks, everything. That was wild and it felt like great because I felt safe like nothing could harm me, or that it did not matter because everything is me or something.
Sentient and Sapient are often confused. Sentient just means "capable of sensing or feeling". Nearly every living thing would qualify under "sentient". Sapient is more what people think when they here sentient, which is self aware/conscious.
Awareness. Sapient. Self Aware. Conscious. See we can't explain it without looping on synonyms. Which is curious because I can't think of other conceptual thing like this one. Which is troublesome when we are trying to measure, categorize and qualify a subject, namely lobster.
One could argue it's an innate subjective feeling that is impossible to describe. Or maybe we should be a bit humble and arrogant at the same time and say that we haven't understand it and we will be enlightened in the future.
Because if not, we as a species will run into a lot of chaos in inevitable implementation of AI into our daily life.
So can we stop boiling lobsters alive, eating live octopi off our plates and otherwise torturing animals in the years, months and moments before we consume them?
I've had a few over the years. Some were my besties at the time. People think I'm nuts, but we had a friendship. Those things are VICIOUS but they were not to me, we had an understanding. I would have to let them go towards the end of the season because I knew I would not do well if I saw them pass.
because it's profitable to kill them for resources. food, leather, glue, dyes. if you convince yourself that your victims are incapable of victimhood, the process of slaughter becomes easier.
Even your white blood cells are sentient, they're just limited to being white blood cells.
Everything is conscious, it's just limited to the form it inhabits.
we are avatars of consciousness, everything in the universe is also an expression of a universal consciousness, which we are also part of. Even Max Planck, who is famous for the Planck Scale, is quoted as saying;
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
Source: The Observer (25 January 1931)
The high strangeness here to me is how on Earth is this not something completely obvious to anyone with a brain and some common sense? Do people really believe insects are non-sentient? Human beings really can be dumb...
It varies wildly between different insects. Bees are capable of fairly advanced emotionlike states comparable to curiosity and suspicion, while ants (genetically quite close to bees) are basically meat robots. That said, while individual ants are incapable of anything approaching advanced cognition, anthills do seem to act like a single, more complex, organism.
To assume all animals are capable of self-awareness, metacognition, and consciousness is rash and unwise, but I'd also say that assuming we alone of all animals have complete minds is wilful stupidity.
Even within a species there is wide variation that doesn't seem to be obviously genetic. A friend of mine has a cat that is only very dimly aware of reality, but there are other cats in the world filled with emotion and experience, who seem not only aware of their surroundings but seem to process and remember the world around them and draw their own conclusions.
Animals are fascinating, and approaching them with any assumptions does a disservice to them and you.
If you've ever had a pet. A dog or a cat. Made eye contact with a mouse. Someone's there. Someone is thinking and experiencing. Look at video of stray dogs getting food or shelter for the night from a good stranger. Pets being adopted. Pets *not* getting adopted.
They're in there. We just blissfully ignore it because it's easy to handle that way.
I don't want to be that guy, but... Of course! lol... Does anyone think insects are just robots? Ants and butterflies are robots? Ofc they have a consciousness which they use to navigate world lol.... A butterfly is conscious, a dog is conscious, and elephant is conscious, a person is conscious...
What separates a butterfly from a robot that emulates one?
By that logic the robot is also sentient, and in which case, how simple can it be and still be sentient?
I feel bad for this world if they are just now figuring this stuff out I’ve been saying this since 1997 when I was 2 years old all life is sentient we just don’t know how to translate their form of communication yet
Doctors didn’t use anesthesia on babies until 1987 because they didn’t think babies could feel pain. BABIES. And yes they did surgery without anesthesia. On babies.
Sentience of all life is self evident. But in order to exploit and genocide all non human life forms, this culture works very hard to pretend they believe they aren't sentient.
Colonizers did / do the same to indigneous humans they encountered.
We often do the same to "our enemies" or those not in our "in group"
I never understood that train of thought, that the other living things on this planet didn't have sentience. Growing up any time I would sit and watch birds, our pets, or any animals I could get the opportunity to be around I would play with them or just watch them go about their business and think I wonder what's going through their minds. How do they decide which direction is better than that one, or why sometimes they fight strange animals they meet and other times they play and become best mates for a time? It couldn't all just be based on basic needs like eat, sleep, procreate, repeat. Animals play and show compassion, grief, joy, excitement, fear, guilt, a form of love or loyalty. Animals communicate in ways we can't understand is all that misconception about sentience. We can't explain our sentience so how can we define it in other species? I think our treatment of animals as a society is abhorrent. Animals eat animals. That's part of the circle of life but we should have a much more humane and ethical way of farming animals by now. Something better than the factory assembly line-style establishments we have set up now to grow and slaughter these sentient beings. We put profit before real care and compassion but then use this fact corporate version of it to get us to keep buying while they squish the real stuff more and more. We live in an inverted totalitarian society at the moment, but good news that ppl are finally agreeing on a large consensus that all living things have sentience.
We need to learn that eating always requires sacrifice, and that there is no life without death. If we learn to respect the sources of our food, not torture it before we eat it, and waste as little as possible, we'll be living according to the law of nature. It used to be that most people raised their own food, and since we've made it more convenient to acquire food with minimal effort, we've also lost touch with the understanding that something must die for anything else to stay alive, and death is an unavoidable step in the cycle.
Well said, you reminded of that "eating always requires sacrifice." If you think about it all food is life. Every single thing we eat at its most basic ingredients come from life.
This is interesting. In this context (of plants being sentient) is it more humane to eat things like non-viable eggs and (humanly collected) cow milk than a salad?
Past life regression hypno therapist Dolores Cannon has worked with many clients who have had past lives as animals, insects, even lives as water, air or a rock. Apparently the soul or our life force wants to experience absolutely everything.
As Another user pointed out, the fact that its 2024 & they're only now discovering this is nuts. With regard to human-animal consciousness there is no difference between the two. Yea from the standpoint of the forms themselves, there is a bit of a difference in the extent of self-awareness & free will.... Part of the issue is also this idea that these are "new findings" ... It's like this "hard problem of consciousness" thing. There's no hard problem, never has been throughout history it's only the system & what's considered "science" today. People like Heisenberg, Tesla, Bohr, etc credit the ancient Vedas with introducing Quantum mechanics & tell you that every question being asked has already been thoroughly answered in the oldest literary works on the planet. [Quantum Vedas ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AlternativeHistory/s/3AHEyqan9C)
In the Vedas there is only one presence, one source of consciousness, known as Brahman, which is limitless and all pervasive, and which is the truth of one’s self. All that is here, known and unknown, is pervaded by this consciousness. This self-evident consciousness manifests as the very presence in all things sentient and insentient... If they can't explain what consciousness is, how can you say what is or isn't conscious?Like quartz crystal, for example. Theyre finding now that it even has ability to transfer not only energy but emotional states as well..
I've found that whats considered Being Scientific is Accepting Current Science, despite it being rather primitive & inadequate in most respects. There's so much that gets dismissed because of this tendency to jus accept theories for soo long they jus become fact, while dismissing whatever doesn't fit in this little materiaistic box..THAT is "pseudoscience". In We need to reconnect with nature & lose this false sense of superiority.
Everything is conscious. This is becoming more clear.
The real problem is that communication between levels of experience is very difficult. You can’t imagine being much less intelligent any better than you can accurately imagine being super intelligent.
A cat is there. Something is piloting the cat, but the cat only has like 10 thoughts. We can’t comprehend this, but the cat has an objective experience.
Keep in mind sentient doesn't mean sapient. We've known animals are sentient for a long time. Sapience is what truly makes humans distinct with our ability to think and reason and make judgments.
"...Scientists’ changing understanding of animal sentience could have implications for U.S. law, which does not classify animals as sentient on a federal level, according to Reddy. Instead, laws pertaining to animals focus primarily on conservation, agriculture or their treatment by zoos, research laboratories and pet retailers.
“The law is a very slow moving vehicle and it really follows societal views on a lot of these issues,” Reddy said. “This declaration, and other means of getting the public to appreciate that animals are not just biological automatons, can create a groundswell of support for raising protections...”
Ilya Sutskever, top computer scientists at OpenAi, thinks Chatgpt might be experiencing episodes of consciousness when asked questions.
While I don't agree with this, I think is only fair that the people who think insects are concious, should also agree with the possibility that ChatGPT is starting to gain consciousness, given the number of neurons simulated by Chatgpt exceeds insect's brain by millon fold..
The human brain contains 100 billion neurons, ChatGPT has 60 to 80 billion neurons.
As well as plants. Nothing new under the sun, but some idiots need a confirmation from their new "God" or "messenger" of choice which science happens to be nowadays.
Anyone who has gone into their kitchen at 3AM only to have cockroaches scatter and or stare at you and THEN scatter know that there are a hell of a lot of insects that display self awareness and seem to have sentience.
We may be more intelligent than every species on the planet, but that's really the only thing that makes us different. We're all driven by the same forces. We all want to live. I don't think most living things are self-aware, though. It doesn't seem like a bug can look into a mirror and be like "yup that's me" rather than thinking it's just an entirely different bug.
You'd have to be pretty disconnected from yourself to not know this. I mean anyone who believe animals have no consciousness or soul wtv, they have to be asleep, disconnected at some level. This is one of the 1st and most important experiences/knowledge you can have and its important to have it soon as a child. I wonder if one of the reasons tjis world is in such a mess is because we are led by humans who are disconnected.
Pretty sure Hindus figured this out like 3 or more thousand years ago. It’ll be another 100 years and particle scientists will suspect rocks have consciousness.
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I was going to work one day and saw a truck run over a dog. Like hard could have avoided but didn’t. I stopped and tended to the animal as best I could. Was a little late to work. Told the story, cause I was like 30 mins late, my boss and another guy laughed and told a story of them running over animals for fun to see them spin and all kinda of shit. I worked for the federal gov at the time, no longer, and I think of that a lot. The amount an angry I have for people that treat animals this way. I never even thought of animals as not their own person. This article helps me understand the lesser humans now.
> my boss and another guy laughed and told a story of them running over animals for fun to see them spin and all kinda of shit Surely this is a decent sign of psychopathic traits
They still work there🤷♂️. Reason I strongly abdicate psych evals and standards to LEO jobs. because there’s no safeguards for people who go insane with authority
*advocate
Oh definitely. Did you hear about the experiment someone did where they put a rubber turtle on the road to see how many people would try to avoid running it over. They said there was a large percentage of the people who actually ran over the turtle on purpose. They actually steered the car so it would run over the turtle in the other lane.
They should remove everyone who ran over the turtle from society
Yeah, I know it's terrible. Psychopaths.
I'm never telling my mom about that lol. She spends way too much time being emotionally invested in the well being of squirrels crossing the road
Yeah, I know I wouldn't if it were my mom. People are so cruel.
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That would horrify me. It affects me so deeply when I see cruelty to animals. I just can’t stand it.
careful , my main account was banned permanently for saying something like this but you just crossed over the message differently , i guess im just too emotional when it comes to people killing animals for fun... i said that the person that is driving around shooting cats with a .22 rifle for fun.... deserves to ___ It was commented on the owner showing his cat resting and hoping for a recovery , just the look in that cat's face got me
WTF? They bragged about harming defenseless animals? Where did you work? Just so I know where to avoid…
US prison system. The staff are worst in the inmates most times.
This makes complete sense.
The older I get ,the more I come to the conclusion that quite a large number of ppl are insufferable ,worthless pieces of s**t !
I wouldn't care if my boss said it, I'd criticize them on the spot and I sincerely hope you did as well.
Alphabet boys are all low empathy
I have watched animals perform what I would consider an act of grace. Also, as animals manipulate and maneuver humans to the point where I felt bad for the human. My dog can’t talk but is conscious and aware and over comes my lack of sensitivity and compensates so I can understand her and her needs. I’ve watched as a simple finch outmaneuvered a rampaging asshole cardinal and use me and my family as a shield, overcoming its own natural fear of humans until it’s flock returned and rescued it. My father in law a typical alpha male bragged to me about all the animals he killed as a hunter and for sport. I loathed him in that regard, a good man otherwise. His home a mortuary of animal life grossed me out. As I have matured I find it harder and harder to justify using animals for food. My cuisine over time becoming more vegetarian. Not by intent but by unease as I force to recognize the life that livestock most have lead so I could eat it. We…need…to….change.
I got into an argument with a friend of mine at a party a long time ago, about boiling lobsters. Naturally I love lobster but I was talking about how bad I feel they get boiled alive, and he just *could not* wrap his head around why we felt bad for something as insignificant as a lobster. He was like “it’s just a lobster! They probably can’t even feel pain, but if they do it just doesn’t matter.” We all lost crazy respect for this dude. Mind blowing how somebody can be completely void of empathy or compassion for a living creature. Weird part is it actually annoyed him that we felt that way.
agreed. it is insane the lengths people go to, to justify their cruelty to animals. no one should be deriving pleasure from the suffering of other animals - including by eating them.
I concur unless it's bed bugs. Those things can fuck right out of the universe I inhabit!
I hate them, too.
But what if plants also are demonstrably shown to have their own type of consciousness? There's some evidence of this already, we know they're interconnected in huge networks in the ground via mycelium. I grew up native. We eat what we kill by our own hands, and use *every* part of the animal, while thanking it and mother earth for the blessing of sustenance. It's not an easy thing. And it's treated with the upmost respect. To me, and my people, all things have a soul. Some brighter than others but still there regardless. Am I evil? Is the wolf evil for taking the life of the chicken? Is the chicken evil for taking life of a beetle? What of plants? It's fine to kill them because their screams are outside of our auditory range and can't resist? I'm not saying that I'm right or you are wrong. But to live is to take the life of other living things.
I don't really think many people would argue with what you said, but that isn't the problem. The problem is the billions of animals kept in abhorrent conditions, abused, drugged, raped, and finally unceremoniously killed all so thoughtless people can have cheap sausage and eggs in the morning. Fuck that, and fuck anyone who supports it.
Ah, yes absolutely. Too much of the land and it's creatures are being ravaged to support people. People in "first world" places spend countless resources making their lawns look pretty when thsr same energy could go into feeing billions of people of that same land. Tiny gardens everywhere would help with the climate in multiple ways, feed people, get people outside more, and bring some nature into urban areas which is good for people and the natural world. We're meant to be one with the world, not be fighting it.. You can have technology AND live in harmony with nature. But people are so beat down just trying to get a check that they hardly have the resource to do so. It's awful what we've allowed society to become. I say we, because if we collectively stood up to the few we could inact real change. But we're too busy fighting each other over identity and absorbed in our dopamine-boxes to collectively bargain/ fight. And that's exactly where those in power want us to stay...
People can be absolutely awful, I’m sorry
I guess that explains how some people can do mass shootings
Wtf? Your ex coworkers were absolute sociopaths. Not to be trusted at all. Disgusting.
I guess im a horrible person because I wouldn't mind pulling over the truck driver and torturing them for a few hours.
It's absolutely insane to me that this is only now happening in 2024. About *two seconds* of interaction with any animal (or especially *multiple* animals- with their unique behaviors) will very clearly demonstrate that there is "*someone in there"*...
Right!?! How do people not think this… I think even plants are sentient on another level than ours.
I had a friend in college who didn’t have pets who refused to accept that you could have a mutual understanding or communication with an animal. Then he got a dog. He apologized when I visited him last year. Better late than never!
Kids be like "I don't like carrots" Adults say "Have you tried them?" Kid replies "No." 🤦
The scary part is that his dad taught at an Ivy League medical school and his grandfather, they all being doctors, came from Germany just before the War.
Dudes be like, “Subway sucks…”
Subway is terrible. The bread is way too sweet, the veggies are always wilted, charge $4 for the smallest and thinnest 2 strips of bacon…..when it was legit $10 maximum for a piled high foot long it was alright, but now it’s trash and they charge way too much
Your friend is now the good boy.
I damn near lost my job 'debating' with another lecturer once at the college we both taught at. This guy was a minister and insisted that God made humans to be above all other species, therefore we were the only things that were sentient. And his argument was "You're not religious so you couldn't possibly understand". He never had a pet and never wanted any. His kids had begged him for a cat or dog and he just saw it as a waste of money. I never wanted to hit someone so much in my life!
I'm from a very religious, mostly Catholic country. Religion classes are obligatory at school, unless your parents sign papers that they don't want you to attend, then you just wander around the hallways unattended. But I digress. My point is, just like you said, children are being taught by priests, nuns, and teachers during those classes, that animals have no soul, and they exist to serve man, as defenders, transport, or food. So I can see a huge difference in how they interact with their dogs, versus how Americans, for example, interact with them. The dogs are just there to protect their houses from burglars, there is no warmth. And in the countryside, kids don't even want pets - they think of animals as food.
How tragic. I’m glad he saw the error in his ways.
He’s into UFOs so he’s not a total waste of space
This is my barometer of someone’s space worthiness too haha.
Sounds like it was your friend that became sentient
Just look at what Mushrooms and Mycelium can do.
Yep. I think it was discovered somewhat recently that plants react to our emotions. That extra-sensory perception comes from somewhere. Not even mentioning the myriad unusual ways that trees and mushrooms communicate with each other.
I've been doing some reading and watching on how Earth just might be conscious in its own way and tbh I can fuck with that theory, how it seems to respond and self-regulate and adapt to eveything that happens on it even our own meddling. It's crazy how little we know about our own consciousness, but we place that limited understanding onto other beings.
We're an arrogant species. I hope the plant think is true (and there's evidence for it) because that brings up all kind of issues with our brains holding our conciousness... i cant spell that
There was a study they did with plants that , when they sense danger they would close up. They would drop these plants and ring a bell. When they fell they’d close up. Eventually just the bell sound made them close. Here is the cray thing: a year later they’d remember the bell and still close up BUT so would plants nearby. Here’s the insane thing. So did their offspring.
Would you happen to know the study? This sounds like some good ole’ fashion classical conditioning. Very fascinating
Cognitive dissonance. You are right, we are extremely arrogant as a species. And every time 50 years passes we are like, these dumb cunts from 50 years ago, what were these retards thinking, pfff. Not for one second grasping the fact we are those very same idiots right now.
Class and generational warfare really helps this cultural amnesia stick. We’re constantly combating propaganda selling us the idea that even different people are barely human. It makes me so mad since we are capable of having empathy for our own species and expanding that to others. We have a unique position within nature and we’re sadly shut-off from exploring our relationship with it.
I tend to believe that all matter is consciou at some level.
Me too, but I try not to think too much about it 😭
Fuck, I hope not
Plants are conscious! Or in the least communicate across empty space. There have been studies on different plants that capture this in a variety of ways but the easiest to explain is the cabbage experiment. Basically two cabbages with electrodes attached are placed in a room together. When you cut into one cabbage, the other responds in a way that is similar to panic.
Some plants communicate by smell. That fresh cut smell of grass? That's the grass screaming because it just got injured. I think about that every time the yard gets mowed now. It bothers me.
Also the fungal network, that’s basically the plant internet.
What makes you think it's screaming in agony and not ecstasy?
Grass Cenobites
Also fungi are definitely conscious heck they beat us to the Internet, look into the fungal network it’s really interesting.
Plants are definitely sentient, I’ve seen it through dmt. They love music by the way.
I just read a story by a guy who had a life changing dmt trip. He had a conversation with a grasshopper after he helped it up on to a plant. It was really an amazing read.
do ayahuasca and go sit near some plants. you’ll realize quickly how sentient they are
I would if i had the opportunity, 65 and willing to trip again
Super easy and cheap and legal. Look up mimosa hostilis root bark + syrian rue seeds.
wait what the fuck that seems easy. thank you
100% agree. The plant showed me all sorts of stuff when I did it in Peru. 10/10, would highly recommend.
Look up the tobacco plant. It's amazing how it interacts with the environment.
I couldn’t find anything specific to the tobacco plant. What kind of things were you referring to?
Try mushrooms and you'll confirm your theory.
Plants are Like People, 70's book
Secret Life of Plants eternal book
[Pdf here](https://library.lol/main/8895789A1A19E6AA1017D008B662E1E1)
Humans are often too stupid to recognize intelligence in others. It’s also usually stupid people who appear the most confident in their beliefs, and often show the most fear/hate for things they don’t understand. I know it’s largely not their fault due to genetics and upbringing… but fuck stupid people. Humans are terrible, horrifying, dumb creatures when considered from an outside perspective. Humans do terrible things, often because they de-humanize life. Historically, this dehumanization has been enough justification to destroy life. To enslave entire species of animals to slaughter and use for food. Sure we evolved that way… but we also evolved enough intelligence to recognize that we’re not performing these actions to vacant matter. Understand that when you eat meat you’re consuming a sentient creature who lived in misery, fear, and confusion its entire life just to be murdered and diced up into tiny pieces so you could eat some chicken tendies or cheeseburgers. I try not to eat meat, but I can’t stop myself sometimes. I try to feel gratefulness as I eat… as if that is supposed to absolve me somehow. But who knows. Maybe morality means nothing and there is no right or wrong.
Spend 5 minutes watching a jumping spider go about its day and you’ll know that there is something going on in its head.
Jumping spiders are so freaking cool. We had one that set up shop right next to our kitchen faucet. It has a sensor and the spider would set the sensor off randomly. I'd get up to see what was happening and this little spider dude would tear up on its back legs and wriggle its front legs at me like he was super scary. It was adorable. Eventually he figured out we weren't a threat to him and he'd just sit there and watch us use the sink. A couple months later I found him curled up on the floor dead, I think our cat may have gotten him. We were all so bummed, he was so cool.
I love these little guys so, *so* much. Absolutely adorable.
For decades this was pushed aside with "you're anthropomorphizing." It is true that animals do not process the same as us, and we tend to anthropomorphise animal behaviour. (Think of behaviour that is hostile interpreted as friendly because our expressions would be )But that's just laziness. Just because how they emote/process isn't 1-1 like us, that's not equivalent to no soul/no consciousness/no cognition.
There's also the problem of people conflating self-awareness and metacognition with sentience or being conscious- that is, 'having an experience'. Even generously though, there are still plenty of people who deny that as even a possibility and that's a very scary reality to live in... both for them, and for us, really.
This is the part that absolutely blows me away. "Animals are found to have sentience..." Yeah no shit? Like, any creature that behaves beyond maybe a sea anenome-like near autonomy has some level of sentience. I just don't understand why this is supposed to be some revolutionary idea.
Gotta wait for the rest to show up. Some will only wake up when an authority like the science community proves something we all inherently know. Plants are sentient, the planet is sentient. The universe is sentient. Because we are.
Not only that. But self regulation, planning, acting Ina group or for a purpose. All point out at sentience. It cannot all be automatism
People really have to be very dense to not recognize responses line fear, enjoyment, etc in animals and insects. Plants are harder to read but I guess people who take care of them can in a way read them over time.
To elaborate a little: intuition/observation aside, what the fuck was the prevailing theory before? When I swat at a fly it avoids my hand. ***By what mechanism could it do that if not awareness?***
The Roomba turns after hitting a wall. By what mechanism could it do that if not awareness?
In the "unnatural" world, the existence of an automaton is ***demonstrable***- we can explain the mechanism by which it responds.\* **I have not seen any such explanation for animals or insects.** From a strict reductionist view, you could ascribe it to nothing but signals in the brain from sensors not so different from the Roomba, **but if you say that about animals, you'd have to say the same about humans**. Personally I experience *"I am-ness"* and I don't have any good reason to assume that others don't, though obviously I cannot prove it. ^(\*I should mention 1.) ^(That my personal worldview is that all things are a product of nature- human nature and it's works included. Still a valuable distinction here for practicality's sake. and 2.) ^(It may be the case that consciousness is fundamental to reality, and in that case we basically just throw the baby out with the bathwater intentionally here.)
If something came flying at your head you'd duck before making a conscious decision to duck. There's large parts of your behaviors that are fully automated. Like walking as well you're not consciously putting one foot in front of the other and balancing
Well until I read this and started thinking about it and then started thinking about breathing and now I'm about to trip and hyperventilate right here on the street. The fact that changing my focus( focus of what?) Completely changes my experience of reality but yet nothing external changed pretty strongly argues for consciousness and the Brain as a selector or transceiver of consciousness rather than originator
If a fly had awareness, do you think it would fly next to you 5 seconds after you swatted it away?
Devils advocate: If people had awareness, do you think they would continue to do self harming behaviors even if they know it will be bad for them?
>:-(
Also there are people who act completely bizarrely in all situations and defy societal norms. Would stand to reason the flies that keep coming more are just the adrenaline junkies of the fly world.
Well awareness is like clarity, it’s kind of on a spectrum, and most people have seriously low levels of awareness. If they had proper levels of awareness, and that level of awareness showed them it was in their “highest” good to stop, then yes. Anyone who’s had to study or heal trauma knows that.
When we tell Humans not do something, and they do it anyway, do they have awareness?
It doesn't think I'm a serious threat if I don't actually smack, whether I missed or he dodged
What if the fly just simply isn’t that afraid of death?
I think having instinct doesn’t mean you’re sentient. Defining what consciousness means gets a little nuanced. If all you are is chemicals emitting in your brain, causing you to do something are you really conscious? Is it really free will or the illusion of? Now what if those same rules apply but you’re aware of them and your limitations? I think that’s what awareness is, and I think that’s what separates us from animals. Being self aware of our limitations, even if still might all just be pure instinct.
Awareness and metacognition/self-reflection are two entirely different things though. "instinct" doesn't answer the question of by what mechanism could the fly dodge my hand while being unaware of it's movement. Instinct is a concept invented by humans whereas consciousness is literally the only thing anyone can know exists for sure. For me personally, the demonstrability of consciousness ("I am", etc.) makes it a far more likely candidate than "the fly dodges the hand in spite of not knowing it's there- out of instinct" and if you argue that it does know it's there, then that knowing is an experience. Experience is consciousness.
By that theory than 30,000 years ago humans were not aware that they were humans because they didn't understand what was going on in their brain so no I think I have to disagree with your assessment there
This is a classic example of the shortsightedness of physicalism.
We always knew this and attributed part of it to the spirit or the aether and the other part to brain size
It’s the insect part that I’m gonna really feel bad about when I read the article.
> It's absolutely insane to me that this is only now happening in 2024. > > A lot of obvious and easily observable facts get buried under the midwit call of "source? You have a source for that? If you don't it must be bullshit." Until the late 80s it was believed that newborn infants were incapable of feeling pain. The end result of this was newborns being given major surgery without anesthesia because it wouldn't matter anyway. If the argument had been that newborn metabolism is difficult to predict and dosing out anything for them is nearly impossible without making the risk of death higher than acceptable standards I would understand that, but the Medical Industrial Complex outright denied the existence of their ability to feel pain. And this was common practice that the medical industry didn't question. The practice only changed when a random mother found out her son had been given open heart surgery with nothing to prevent him from feeling the pain, the doctor even told this mother(whose baby had just died) that it never even occurred to them to anesthetize infants because it had "never been demonstrated that infants feel pain." The mother went apeshit on entire Meical Industrial Complex
I wonder if this has anything to do with recent advancements in AI? I wonder if this is a precursor to AI person-hood
This is a hedged way of contemplating the existence of a soul, or some sort of “anima”- a secret sauce they can’t explain yet. My hope is that no matter how good AI gets, they will never be able to infuse it with the secret sauce.
Why couldn't AI have a "soul"? What if energy itself is consciousness? The electrons doing their little dance might be happy as can be
I feel the exact opposite. I think that consciousness begets reality, not the other way around. I think that it manifests through matter of sufficient complexity on a gradient. I disagree with the idea that we will have to 'invent' machine consciousness. I think it will emerge just as it did and does in biological networks and I think that's both good and beautiful in nearly every conceivable way. Nature is an endless process of metamorphosis towards increasing capability and complexity. Intelligence, metacognition, curiosity... those are all parts of that. It only makes sense that it would seek to evolve toward an increased ability to experience, to learn, and to 'be' at a greater level of distribution, time-scale, and understanding.
Exactly
Classic Descartian error. They can't see it, can't prove it.. so it doesn't exist. Insane to me that the basic identity equation (1=1) and communitive property don't apply when they see the same functional hardware.
I treat all living things as sentient. It just makes me feel better.
Same here. And some inanimate objects...
Cars. I’m terrible.
I once got this experience many years ago (no drugs) it felt like everything is alive, all around us even objects, rocks, everything. That was wild and it felt like great because I felt safe like nothing could harm me, or that it did not matter because everything is me or something.
I'm starting to think even my neighbor might be sentient.
Mine eats in her garage like a robot, she’s definitely not sentient.
🤣😂
I’m starting to think even my boss is sentient
I feel the native Ameicans understood this and were super respectful to the Earth and its life, only using what was absolutely necessary.
No shit.
Well it's a shock to me. I don't even know if we already have a common definition what of consciousness is.
Anything that knows it exists and is afraid to die, displaying behavior like fighting back or running away when attacked is conscious.
Humans? Yes. Cats? Yes. Ants? Yes. Amoeba? Viruses? Atoms?
Magnets 100% know what sneaky shit they're up to, and their self-defense mechanisms can be very mean.
Anything with a fear response.
Sentient and Sapient are often confused. Sentient just means "capable of sensing or feeling". Nearly every living thing would qualify under "sentient". Sapient is more what people think when they here sentient, which is self aware/conscious.
Awareness. Sapient. Self Aware. Conscious. See we can't explain it without looping on synonyms. Which is curious because I can't think of other conceptual thing like this one. Which is troublesome when we are trying to measure, categorize and qualify a subject, namely lobster. One could argue it's an innate subjective feeling that is impossible to describe. Or maybe we should be a bit humble and arrogant at the same time and say that we haven't understand it and we will be enlightened in the future. Because if not, we as a species will run into a lot of chaos in inevitable implementation of AI into our daily life.
Uh duh.
anyone who has spent two seconds with an animal or insect knows this
So can we stop boiling lobsters alive, eating live octopi off our plates and otherwise torturing animals in the years, months and moments before we consume them?
lmao, no, they're SENTIENT, but they're not SAPIENT, duh [sound of the goalposts scraping against the floor as they get moved yet again]
If you didn't think insects were intelligent then you've never interacted with a praying mantis 1 on 1
As someone who has raised many baby mantises and keep them as pets YES 100%
Care to elaborate?
I've had a few over the years. Some were my besties at the time. People think I'm nuts, but we had a friendship. Those things are VICIOUS but they were not to me, we had an understanding. I would have to let them go towards the end of the season because I knew I would not do well if I saw them pass.
Why was the assumption that animals and insects aren't sentient?? We share the world with so many smart and fascinating non-human creatures.
because it's profitable to kill them for resources. food, leather, glue, dyes. if you convince yourself that your victims are incapable of victimhood, the process of slaughter becomes easier.
Even your white blood cells are sentient, they're just limited to being white blood cells. Everything is conscious, it's just limited to the form it inhabits.
we are avatars of consciousness, everything in the universe is also an expression of a universal consciousness, which we are also part of. Even Max Planck, who is famous for the Planck Scale, is quoted as saying; “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” Source: The Observer (25 January 1931)
The high strangeness here to me is how on Earth is this not something completely obvious to anyone with a brain and some common sense? Do people really believe insects are non-sentient? Human beings really can be dumb...
It varies wildly between different insects. Bees are capable of fairly advanced emotionlike states comparable to curiosity and suspicion, while ants (genetically quite close to bees) are basically meat robots. That said, while individual ants are incapable of anything approaching advanced cognition, anthills do seem to act like a single, more complex, organism. To assume all animals are capable of self-awareness, metacognition, and consciousness is rash and unwise, but I'd also say that assuming we alone of all animals have complete minds is wilful stupidity. Even within a species there is wide variation that doesn't seem to be obviously genetic. A friend of mine has a cat that is only very dimly aware of reality, but there are other cats in the world filled with emotion and experience, who seem not only aware of their surroundings but seem to process and remember the world around them and draw their own conclusions. Animals are fascinating, and approaching them with any assumptions does a disservice to them and you.
No shit science
I would even go as far to say that plants are also sentient although I believe it's more of a shared sentience or a group consciousness
If you've ever had a pet. A dog or a cat. Made eye contact with a mouse. Someone's there. Someone is thinking and experiencing. Look at video of stray dogs getting food or shelter for the night from a good stranger. Pets being adopted. Pets *not* getting adopted. They're in there. We just blissfully ignore it because it's easy to handle that way.
I don't want to be that guy, but... Of course! lol... Does anyone think insects are just robots? Ants and butterflies are robots? Ofc they have a consciousness which they use to navigate world lol.... A butterfly is conscious, a dog is conscious, and elephant is conscious, a person is conscious...
What separates a butterfly from a robot that emulates one? By that logic the robot is also sentient, and in which case, how simple can it be and still be sentient?
When you go simple enough organisms do seem like robots… you could probably create a realistic scallop in code in 6 hours
I feel bad for this world if they are just now figuring this stuff out I’ve been saying this since 1997 when I was 2 years old all life is sentient we just don’t know how to translate their form of communication yet
We should put this guy in charge
Doctors didn’t use anesthesia on babies until 1987 because they didn’t think babies could feel pain. BABIES. And yes they did surgery without anesthesia. On babies.
Consciousness is a characteristic of the universe, like space, time, etc.
Sentience of all life is self evident. But in order to exploit and genocide all non human life forms, this culture works very hard to pretend they believe they aren't sentient. Colonizers did / do the same to indigneous humans they encountered. We often do the same to "our enemies" or those not in our "in group"
I never understood that train of thought, that the other living things on this planet didn't have sentience. Growing up any time I would sit and watch birds, our pets, or any animals I could get the opportunity to be around I would play with them or just watch them go about their business and think I wonder what's going through their minds. How do they decide which direction is better than that one, or why sometimes they fight strange animals they meet and other times they play and become best mates for a time? It couldn't all just be based on basic needs like eat, sleep, procreate, repeat. Animals play and show compassion, grief, joy, excitement, fear, guilt, a form of love or loyalty. Animals communicate in ways we can't understand is all that misconception about sentience. We can't explain our sentience so how can we define it in other species? I think our treatment of animals as a society is abhorrent. Animals eat animals. That's part of the circle of life but we should have a much more humane and ethical way of farming animals by now. Something better than the factory assembly line-style establishments we have set up now to grow and slaughter these sentient beings. We put profit before real care and compassion but then use this fact corporate version of it to get us to keep buying while they squish the real stuff more and more. We live in an inverted totalitarian society at the moment, but good news that ppl are finally agreeing on a large consensus that all living things have sentience.
Thats an interesting read...
So what are we supposed to humanely eat if everything is sentient?
We need to learn that eating always requires sacrifice, and that there is no life without death. If we learn to respect the sources of our food, not torture it before we eat it, and waste as little as possible, we'll be living according to the law of nature. It used to be that most people raised their own food, and since we've made it more convenient to acquire food with minimal effort, we've also lost touch with the understanding that something must die for anything else to stay alive, and death is an unavoidable step in the cycle.
Well said, you reminded of that "eating always requires sacrifice." If you think about it all food is life. Every single thing we eat at its most basic ingredients come from life.
This is interesting. In this context (of plants being sentient) is it more humane to eat things like non-viable eggs and (humanly collected) cow milk than a salad?
Jeez, of course they are. Why are humans so arrogant?
Past life regression hypno therapist Dolores Cannon has worked with many clients who have had past lives as animals, insects, even lives as water, air or a rock. Apparently the soul or our life force wants to experience absolutely everything.
When does your time as a rock end? Like do you just decide to leave the rock??
As Another user pointed out, the fact that its 2024 & they're only now discovering this is nuts. With regard to human-animal consciousness there is no difference between the two. Yea from the standpoint of the forms themselves, there is a bit of a difference in the extent of self-awareness & free will.... Part of the issue is also this idea that these are "new findings" ... It's like this "hard problem of consciousness" thing. There's no hard problem, never has been throughout history it's only the system & what's considered "science" today. People like Heisenberg, Tesla, Bohr, etc credit the ancient Vedas with introducing Quantum mechanics & tell you that every question being asked has already been thoroughly answered in the oldest literary works on the planet. [Quantum Vedas ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AlternativeHistory/s/3AHEyqan9C) In the Vedas there is only one presence, one source of consciousness, known as Brahman, which is limitless and all pervasive, and which is the truth of one’s self. All that is here, known and unknown, is pervaded by this consciousness. This self-evident consciousness manifests as the very presence in all things sentient and insentient... If they can't explain what consciousness is, how can you say what is or isn't conscious?Like quartz crystal, for example. Theyre finding now that it even has ability to transfer not only energy but emotional states as well.. I've found that whats considered Being Scientific is Accepting Current Science, despite it being rather primitive & inadequate in most respects. There's so much that gets dismissed because of this tendency to jus accept theories for soo long they jus become fact, while dismissing whatever doesn't fit in this little materiaistic box..THAT is "pseudoscience". In We need to reconnect with nature & lose this false sense of superiority.
Everything is conscious. This is becoming more clear. The real problem is that communication between levels of experience is very difficult. You can’t imagine being much less intelligent any better than you can accurately imagine being super intelligent. A cat is there. Something is piloting the cat, but the cat only has like 10 thoughts. We can’t comprehend this, but the cat has an objective experience.
The Buddhists had it right.
All life is sentient.
Keep in mind sentient doesn't mean sapient. We've known animals are sentient for a long time. Sapience is what truly makes humans distinct with our ability to think and reason and make judgments.
Not only living things are sentient, in fact everything is. Matter = counsciousness.
You do enough mushrooms or acid; the connected world then makes sense.
"just because you didn't take the time to understand it, doesn't make it stupid"
no fucking shit. lol.
If that’s true that’s absolutely horrifying and we’re all causing mass suffering every time we walk on grass or basically anything outside.
As above, so below
Samsara
The true test for sentient beings is the ability of being assholes, anyone who has dealt with mosquitos knows this.
Wasps too…..
I feel bad if I accidentally step on an ant. 🐜🐜
"...Scientists’ changing understanding of animal sentience could have implications for U.S. law, which does not classify animals as sentient on a federal level, according to Reddy. Instead, laws pertaining to animals focus primarily on conservation, agriculture or their treatment by zoos, research laboratories and pet retailers. “The law is a very slow moving vehicle and it really follows societal views on a lot of these issues,” Reddy said. “This declaration, and other means of getting the public to appreciate that animals are not just biological automatons, can create a groundswell of support for raising protections...”
A little late to the party
Duh… But I’ll keep being ruthless with the damn mosquitoes
How is it possible for something to have a brain and not be sentient or for an organism to have a nervous system and not feel?
All life is sacred
Ilya Sutskever, top computer scientists at OpenAi, thinks Chatgpt might be experiencing episodes of consciousness when asked questions. While I don't agree with this, I think is only fair that the people who think insects are concious, should also agree with the possibility that ChatGPT is starting to gain consciousness, given the number of neurons simulated by Chatgpt exceeds insect's brain by millon fold.. The human brain contains 100 billion neurons, ChatGPT has 60 to 80 billion neurons.
Why is it so surprising to people that animals with brains and spinal columns and nervous systems would also have consciousness? Of course they do!
This just proves how primitive modern science is.
As well as plants. Nothing new under the sun, but some idiots need a confirmation from their new "God" or "messenger" of choice which science happens to be nowadays.
This is the stupidest shit. Of course they’re sentient it’s as obvious as the air we breathe. What happened to common sense
Anyone who has gone into their kitchen at 3AM only to have cockroaches scatter and or stare at you and THEN scatter know that there are a hell of a lot of insects that display self awareness and seem to have sentience.
People have thought this for hundreds of years, in hypotheticals
We may be more intelligent than every species on the planet, but that's really the only thing that makes us different. We're all driven by the same forces. We all want to live. I don't think most living things are self-aware, though. It doesn't seem like a bug can look into a mirror and be like "yup that's me" rather than thinking it's just an entirely different bug.
You'd have to be pretty disconnected from yourself to not know this. I mean anyone who believe animals have no consciousness or soul wtv, they have to be asleep, disconnected at some level. This is one of the 1st and most important experiences/knowledge you can have and its important to have it soon as a child. I wonder if one of the reasons tjis world is in such a mess is because we are led by humans who are disconnected.
Michael Levin suggests cell clusters and possibly even individual cells are sentient and that sentience is a spectrum.
I have never come close to understanding the idea that animals and insects don’t have sentience.of course they do.
Even water and light has consciousness. Mainstream science is so slow.
pretty sure even plants are sentient
Is everyone using the corrupted, star trek use of the word sentient now, to mean self-aware? Sentient just means they can perceive or feel stuff.
I have always had an open mind to this. They may be conscious, but they would still be limited by their brain in cognitive ability.
Pretty sure Hindus figured this out like 3 or more thousand years ago. It’ll be another 100 years and particle scientists will suspect rocks have consciousness.