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Comment by Mz | Hacker News Reader

They also can "scream" by giving off a pulse (that humans can't hear) when attacked and can "talk" to each other by giving off chemicals when attacked by insects, thereby warning neighboring relatives to start creating protective chemicals to defend themselves.

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> They also can "scream" by giving off a pulse (that humans can't hear) when attacked...

Do you have a source for the ‘scream’ phenomenon?

I am aware of (and was myself misled by) several pop-science books which confusingly tried to compare plants giving off chemicals when attacked with animals screaming. The result was that a skim read would have given one the impression that plants could make sounds inaudible to humans, which was not what was meant.

Trees who suffer from drought apparently give off ultrasound when their dried cells are destroyed, but it seems to attract pests who then finish off the tree: https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Pop+chirp+bite+crunch+chew%3a...

But that's the sound of the tree decaying/dying, not communicating as the GP seemed to imply.

Sorry, no. It was in a textbook from a college class some years ago. I no longer have the textbook and can't tell you more than that.

I will never again feel safe in the woods.

I stopped obsessing about the supposed morality of eating meat after I learned these things. Just because you can't hear your veggies scream doesn't mean they aren't suffering.

(There are lots of really good reasons to limit meat consumption. But, the touchy-feely appeal to "think about the suffering of the animals" is species-ist (for lack of a better word).)

This is getting very off topic, but I think that's a terrible basis for disregarding the ethical argument against eating meat. Why is it "species-ist" to think that mammals and other animals with highly developed nervous systems might have a conscious experience similar to our own (and not plants)?

MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW

Oh sorry my cat just wanted to comment on this. Hope it doesn't get downvoted for not being relevant, because he has a 'conscious experience similar to our own'...

The same argument leads a rational person to stop obsessing about the supposed morality of killing humans. The touchy-feely appeal to "think about the suffering of the _humans_" is likewise species-ist

So the rational path takes us to a horrible conclusion. Are you saying it's time to throw out rationality?

I think they're saying that you may have thrown out the baby with the bathwater. If your conclusion horrifies you—doesn't resemble what you were optimizing for—you may be optimizing for the wrong thing. Rationality isn't broken; revisit your optimization criteria. See the paperclip optimizer, the smiles optimizer, etc.

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