Comments on: The decentralized intelligence of plants

By: Delton

Delton — Wed, 14 Sep 2016 10:35:02 +0000

Given that plants (autotrophs) have evolved with a biological model that is different to animals (heterotrophs), based on the need to bio-sequester carbon for food- it follows that the and thermodynamic model of plants is the complementary opposite of animals. Plants have a decentralised intelligence, as a requirement to reduce the entropy of carbon by absorbing diffuse solar radiation (trapping photons in chloroplast) in a reward-for-risk reduction model – whereas animals reverse the process. Animals take the opposite pathway, in terms of the entropic release of carbon, and hence animals must follow the risk-for-reward model – thus requiring centralised intelligence to make the decision for which choices to make to maximise efficiency. The answers are tied to the thermodynamics of energy flow – and the intelligence component is needed in different dimensions – decentralised versus centralised.
D.

By: James Jones

James Jones — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:46:34 +0000

I would contend that any plant response to a single change in environment can be reduced to a mechanistic expression of genetically defined boundaries constantly altering the cellular chemistry in response to external factors, and internal chemical signals. This would discount this “Intelligence” as being anything beyond multitudes of feedback loops in action.

No “god” or “spirit” is needed to cloud the issue.

Emergent behavior is complex even in robots with 4 or 5 rules at play. In a plant how many hundred or thousand rules for homeostasis are simultaneously in play? While this can be labeled as intelligence, I feel that it is simply a threshold of sophistication several orders of magnitude above our current capabilities. the “knowledge” in the process is the accumulation of BILLIONS of years of refinement.

That we have gone from no (practical) awareness of this 5 to 4 hundred years ago, to an ability to intervene in the process is rather more rapid.

Our systems are much simpler, but like a group of children who’ve just learned their alphabet, it would be unfair to judge their abilities by handing them Dostoevsky in the original Russian, which I feel is an apt analogy to our comprehension of the collective complexity present in even simple plants. A human brain is a sharp instrument, but just as you wouldn’t cut down a tree with a scalpel, some problems (Rain-forest ecology?, unintended consequences?) are too big to comprehend in their totality.

By: Lytton

Lytton — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 22:49:19 +0000

I had a theory that potentially prove the fact that intelligence, or consciousness, does not come from the brain. Seing as plants do not have a brain but are intelligent, or conscious of their surroundings, it is clear to me that consciousness is not a product of the brain and that my heory is correct. Therefore, this disproves the idea that most, if not all, mainstream scientists have: that consciousness comes from the brain. This leads me to my personal belief, that consciousness is the foundation of our universe, from which all physical entities are created. This is more commonly reffered to as God or spirit.