[2013-Jan-25] Chimps

[DonRetrasado]

I was walking down the street and someone threw a can of green paint at me and screamed "COTTON IS MURDER"

[nobody]

what street lol

i been throwing paint all day

[Kaharz]

Also, Kaharz, I get the idea that you think that your thoughts equate perfectly with reality. Machines should not be required to 'surpass' us because they use a different thought process. There are people who are trying to mimic human thought process - there are also people who are making neural nets out of rats, and people who build AIs off of logic. Your outlook is small! I am extremely arrogant and self-assured as a result.

I don't think my thoughts equate perfectly with reality. I have no idea what reality is. But yes, my outlook is small and you are extremely arrogant.

Oh, and you write extremely well for someone who is drunk.

[Peon]

I was walking down the street and someone threw a can of green paint at me and screamed "COTTON IS MURDER"

what street lol

i been throwing paint all day

XFD

[GUTCHUCKER]

It took me about half an hour to write that paragraph. Sorry 'bout bein a dick last night.
Edit: I respect you, Kaharz, and I'm impressed with your insight.

[Edminster]

Drunk you also totally missed the part about how we don't see barnacles and oysters as intelligent either.

[Kimra]

Drunk you also totally missed the part about how we don't see barnacles and oysters as intelligent either.

They're not intelligent, but they taste like crap either way, so let them be.

[Lethal Interjection]

Can't we all just agree to disagree shoot everything in whatever most closely represents the organism's face and then eat said organism?

[Kimra]

Can't we all just agree to disagree shoot everything in whatever most closely represents the organism's face and then eat said organism?

You... want me to shoot a tree? ... I'm okay with this!

[Lethal Interjection]

Can't we all just agree to disagree shoot everything in whatever most closely represents the organism's face and then eat said organism?

You... want me to shoot a tree? ... I'm okay with this!

Yes. Shoot a tree in it's smug little 'look at all my lovely leaves' face.

[ReasonablyDoubtful]

First: Five pages of arguing about plants, intelligence, and various other things. My OP is a success!

Second: I'm just going to make a couple points here. Not really going to bother with the rest of it because I just don't feel like it.

I'd have to say that any meaningful intelligence (which anyone would give a fuck about) is something where the organism remembers, considers, uses it, makes mistakes, makes actions which do not benefit or detriment it, and profits from it in some form. Plants have not been observed doing any of that.

Actually, pea plants at the very least have been observed remembering and using information they remember to benefit them. "Dancing" plants also have the ability to dance better as they get more practice.

I know that many plants can survive after their 'brain' (let's call thousands of possible-root-processors a brain, which is also stupid enough to force me to commit suicide) is removed, and regrow it. That makes me not give a shit how much it has suffered, or what kind of thought process (for nonsapients, lit.: complex reactions to sensory input) it uses.

Except it all boils down to how you define death. If I was able to keep your body functional after chopping off your head, would you really still consider yourself to be alive? Of course not. Everything that you were, everything that you knew, would all be gone. The same holds true with plants. When they cut off the root cap, it causes serious changes to how the plant's roots grow. It's like cutting out the part of your body that deals with controlling your right hand.

Furthermore, we have to consider this from an evolutionary point of view. If there were women that were willing to have sex with headless men, wouldn't it be evolutionarily beneficial for a man without a head to still be able to function? Well, turn that up to 11 with plants. Even if their functions are all impaired, they don't really have any memory, they can't grow roots properly, communicate, anything like that, they can still potentially reproduce. In other words, the reproductive and energy-producing parts of a plant just... giving up after the "brain" dies? That's kind of stupid (from an evolutionary point of view).

[GUTCHUCKER]

Meh.

[Edminster]

We should place the goalposts for intelligence past what humanity has attained. That way we have something to strive toward with machines.

looks like machines have already reached the pinnacle of human intelligence

[GUTCHUCKER]