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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[scrdest]

That makes sense, but it could also be that pain is a signal for an organism that something is wrong and it needs to react. Mobile organisms move away because that's the easiest response for them, but plants don't have that option so they react differently.

So itching is a form of pain? What about the feeling of cold?

Frostbite is a thing. That hurts. You cannot really escape from the cold, strictly speaking.

Sure, but the feeling of cold that I get when running through the streets of my city naked on a crisp January night is very much distinct from the feeling of pain, but still is signalling me that something is wrong.

Come to think of it, the same is true for emotional distress.

Should have clarified - quite clearly, some kinds of pain, like, say, random headaches, do not fit into the model of pain as a cue for flight. As they cannot be escaped, they seem to be an organism's red flag for physiological disturbance - and the same kinda deal could be said of plant damage response signalling.

[wierd]

That makes sense, but it could also be that pain is a signal for an organism that something is wrong and it needs to react. Mobile organisms move away because that's the easiest response for them, but plants don't have that option so they react differently.

So itching is a form of pain? What about the feeling of cold?

Bad analog there helgo.

Itching really IS related to pain. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2014/10/30/scratching-an-itch-really-does-make-it-worse-and-now-we-know-why/

Both of your interjections there use the same basic pathways to get to the brain, but originate in different cell site receptor proteins on the sensory nerve cell itself. It's just specialization for a kind of stimulous.

Also, plants move to avoid or approach sources of stimulus all the time.  So do slime molds.

[Helgoland]

Bad analog there helgo.

Itching really IS related to pain.

Yeah, I know - they're still distinct though.

[Sheb]

Even the existence of headache is not proof against the "pain as flight signal". Once the nociceptions mechanisms are in place, it makes sense for evolution to use them for other things.

[wierd]

Let's liven this up with some really bad source material!!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2677858/Bad-news-vegetarians-Plants-hear-eaten.html

It's both daily fail, AND on topic!

[Adragis]

daily mail best newspaper
it's not biased in any way

[Bohandas]

Or if your reasons for being a vegetarian are moral ones.

Personally, I'm a vegetarian because meat's freaking gross.

All foods are gross if you think about them too hard. That's how I stopped eating mushrooms.

Let's liven this up with some really bad source material!!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2677858/Bad-news-vegetarians-Plants-hear-eaten.html

It's both daily fail, AND on topic!

I'm surprised. When I saw that headline I thought it was gonna be something about that polygraph crackpot from the 60's

So what happens when we can 3D-print meat efficiently?

Hypothetically it should result in both vegetarianism and the consumption of normal meat being abandoned by everyone but natural-living cranks and possibly, depending on the relative cost of production, the very poor. This will not happen anything even close to immediately after the technology is perfected however, due to ludditeism in the general population and sabotage by the now-obsolete ranching industry.

Also, plants move to avoid or approach sources of stimulus all the time.

Yes, but snapping leaves shut around a hapless insect or rotating to face the sun is a long way off from dodging or fleeing.

[penguinofhonor]

This is pretty similar to flinching or wincing though:

[Grim Portent]

This is pretty similar to flinching or wincing though:

It's essentially a mechanical response to danger. But then that's all our responses to pain really are as well, ours are just more complex.

[Sheb]

He, we used to have one of those in the greenhouses, but they tucked it somewhere else because all the students playing with it were exhausting the plant.

[Orange Wizard]

Personally, I'm a vegetarian because meat's freaking gross.

All foods are gross if you think about them too hard. That's how I stopped eating mushrooms.

If you don't eat mushrooms for that reason, I'd be amazed if you still ate cheese. Half-digested sugars by bacteria where the flavour comes from their faecal matter; very appetizing.

Blasphemy! All of those foods are delicious! And even more so when they're together...

[Askot Bokbondeler]

i guess pain in the ethical sense relates more to mental states and "unhappiness". for the same reason that the loss of a loved one is considered a form of pain, it's the mental trauma rather than the biological mechanism that matters. you'd have to argue for a plant collective consciousness to make me take the thing seriously.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

This is pretty similar to flinching or wincing though:

There's a plant like that in Hawaii. Don't step on them.
The leaves fold up like that accept faster and a small needle like thing pops out of the middle. Hurts quite a bit when stepped on

[TempAcc]

Personally, I'm a vegetarian because meat's freaking gross.

All foods are gross if you think about them too hard. That's how I stopped eating mushrooms.

If you don't eat mushrooms for that reason, I'd be amazed if you still ate cheese. Half-digested sugars by bacteria where the flavour comes from their faecal matter; very appetizing.

Blasphemy! All of those foods are delicious! And even more so when they're together...

I personally love me some cured meats, which are basically lean pieces of flesh that has been dried by adding tons of salt or other chemical substances to draw the moisture out of it, including bacteria, which slows their growth. Its basically old dried flesh with immature and dead bacteria on it, that happens to be delishus :v

[Rolan7]

Alcohol is just sugar some fungi excreted in until they died, floating in piss-equivalent