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Consciousness is weird

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Apparently Mimosa pudica can remember the consequences of its environmental conditions in the same way an animal would.

"Dr Monica Gagliano from the University of Western Australia and her colleagues designed their experiments as if Mimosa was indeed an animal.

They trained Mimosa‘s short- and long-term memories under both high and low-light environments by repeatedly dropping water on them using a custom-designed apparatus.

The scientists show how Mimosa plants stopped closing their leaves when they learnt that the repeated disturbance had no real damaging consequence.

The plants were able to acquire the learnt behavior in a matter of seconds and as in animals, learning was faster in less favorable environment.

Most remarkably, these plants were able to remember what had been learned for several weeks, even after environmental conditions had changed."

Amazing stuff.

http://www.sci-news.com/biology/science-mimosa-plants-memory-01695.html

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I read that...............but is it consciousness....or just a conditioned behavioural response?..........of course consciousness as we might know it.....could be a very complex behavioural response.........

it is a nice idea she...the researcher was putting forward though.......I think trees relate to each other....in all kinds of ways..................

Edited by Dreamwalker
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I tend to believe that mycellium has close to what we would call a human consciousness... :huh:

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Dreamwalker you're totally right - I was really glib with calling that response consciousness, good point.

RC, isn't there a really interesting book by Stamets about mycelium communication/consciousness? Is that where you get the idea, or is it something you've noticed yourself?

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RC, if they're around and your tuned it, the consciousness becomes one and it leads directly to the fruits (or at that point of combined consciousness, yourself).

Edited by prioritise
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yeah one of Stamets vids compares images of mycellium networks with the brains neural network..........and then the patten of dark matter (or galaxies) in the universe ...and they look almost identical..................

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yeah one of Stamets vids compares images of mycellium networks with the brains neural network..........and then the patten of dark matter (or galaxies) in the universe ...and they look almost identical..................

Just because conscious neural networks are fractal, does not mean that all fractals represent consciousness. Stupid pattern-seeking human brains and their converse errors... I wonder if self-aware galaxy-spanning darkmatter-beings suffer from the same kind of logical fallacies that we do?

Edited by Anodyne
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Just because conscious neural networks are fractal, does not mean that all fractals are conscious. Stupid pattern-seeking human brains and their converse fallacies...

yeah I can assume that a braided river bed or a snail shell or the dune pattens on Titan are not conscious....but mycellium networks are most successful life forms on this planet................life as we know it is dependent on them...............they nourish they recycle they breath and their shared mass (I think) out weighs all over life forms........why shouldn't they possess consciousness......... perhaps not as we might know or understand it....................and the web of stars or dark matter.......................why can't the universe be conscious?

Edited by Dreamwalker.
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yeah one of Stamets vids compares images of mycellium networks with the brains neural network..........and then the patten of dark matter (or galaxies) in the universe ...and they look almost identical..................

Got a link ?

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Got a link ?

would have been a year or more ago.....give me a few days 'll see can find it...........you tube

Edited by Dreamwalker
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Got a link ?

Ok took 3 clicks.......................he has so much stuff out there...................I remember it was TED......................talks about mycellium internet and consciousness and DARK MATTER

www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=WuF4s-0-0Gs

Edited by Dreamwalker.
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mycellium networks are one of the oldest and most successful life forms on this planet................life as we know it is dependent on them...............they nourish they recycle they breath and their shared mass (I think) out weighs all over life forms........why shouldn't they possess consciousness?

Well, to pose another question - why should they? Do they need consciousness to do any of that stuff? What's so great about consciousness that we think everything else should have it too? What if the beings that aren't self-aware are actually more aware of the rest of the universe, whereas us conscious beings are forever doomed to dwell in & on our own thoughts, being conscious of our consciousness, ad infinitum/nauseum...

This is not to say that they can't be, mind you. But I'm not sure that the human brain is well-equipped to be spotting these things. We're good at finding patterns, when something "looks like" something" else. What we're not so good at is figuring out when this actually means something. If we were, we wouldn't need statistics. As it is we misinterpret just about everything, including statistics.

I also wonder whether there are forms of conscious life that we would never even recognise as such - simply because we are looking for cognates with familiar forms. It seems tremendously anthropocentric to assume that we'd be able to recognise a self-aware galaxy...what?....just because it "looks like" our own brain structure? While we're busy searching for consciousness in trees and AI's, we'll probably miss it when it turns up somewhere like our own cell nuclei, or light itself.

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I love Paul Stament such a Legend

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the original paper just showed learned behaviour in response to stimulus, it didn't say anything about plants being "conscious",

besides, what even is "consciousness"

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In my opinion everything is consciousness, awareness will differ due to neural makeup or whatever but consciousness itself is everywhere, everything.

I once seen a program, can't remember what it was called or what plant was used but it was a type of vine if i remember correctly, after doing tests to see why the vine chose its host (as it had a favourite it would latch on to) they found the plant followed the smell, the usual host the vine would find was ignored when a strong scented extract in a bottle was put down beside it, the vine found the bottle.

So the vine smells the plant its after.

Something like that anyway. Pretty cool

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I got a feeling all existence is conscious to some extent. That nature exhibits self-similarity in varying scale and form suggests to me that both biological entities and inanimate matter are subject to a common underlying conscious principle. Hmm wish I could articulate that better - it's late and I'll try again tomorrow. Loving the brain food around here lately :)

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