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Comment by kris-s | Hacker News Reader

What is described in the article doesn't fit the definition of panic.

I'm torn because maybe I wouldn't have read the article without the needless anthropomorphization. Plants are awesome and interesting to me because they're so planty and not animaly.

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Give The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben a read and you might have to blur the border between the two. Highly recommended though - it's a marvellous read and very enlightening.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28256439-the-hidden-life...

Ok, we'll give you some scare quotes to get some ironic detachment in the title above.

A defense mechanism that is triggered by a hormone? Doesn't seem terribly far off

He makes an interesting point. Some plants have a response to rain triggered by a hormone. To ascribe the term panic to it though might possibly be mischaracterizing the response because of the tendency to anthropomorphize.

On the other hand, we have many primal and ancient behaviors that can be contextualized on evolutionary timescales so that it can be reasonably said that, yea, a lot of our behaviors have common heritage with even plants.

Except our last common ancestor with plants was single celled so we’re unlikely to share many multicellular behaviors. Commonalities will be sub-cellular.

Unicellular life has stress responses too.

Well we don't really have words to describe plant behavior. I agree, we can't view plants through an animalian lense, but at the same time we have to use the words we have to discuss them. I think it's fair to say plant "panic" is different than animal "panic" but from what I read, panic seems to be the closest analogue.

Is our immune response to a pathogen considered panic? I think not.

A chemical reaction that sets of a string of defensive protection reactions and behaviors? Sounds quite like panic to me. It's basically "fight or flight" for plants except plants can't do the "flight" part.

Panic is not the same as fear. Panic (insert here mythological reference to god Pan) is a kind of fear that causes uncontrolled, irrational and often counterproductive behaviour. Is that the case?

'uncontrolled and irrational' is only a bad thing in the context of human rationality and self control. plants obviously do not have such a thing--all their actions are primal and unmoderated. So panic for a plant would probably mean something like an immediate response to adverse stimuli, with an immediate and short-term goal of self-preservation.

"panic" means to react in a counterproductive way because fear overwhelms.

It's different from a mere adrenal response that has short term gain at long term risk.

Adrenaline makes you jump higher. Panic makes you jump off a cliff.

Except "panic" means an ultimately self destructive overreaction.

At least in my personal dictionary.

Not all of us use your personal dictionary.

Are there times when "panic" is an appropriate response to something? I mean it is often an understandable response, but I have to agree that my understanding of the term is that is a response to being overwhelmed and responding haphazardly as a result. Is that an accurate description of what's happening? The actual article is a bit light to really understand. I wonder if it's the "chain reaction" across individual trees that is what they are describing as "panic".

Just because it is a hard to name a concrete situation, where panic is a good survival strategy for the individual, it can not be concluded that nature is not ripe with situations, where panic saves the flock.

Also, it would seem that the panic response is evolved for the benefit of the flock, not the individual, as it spreads rapidly; if one person panics, more will follow suit.

Say, when you are being chased by a lion.

>Are there times when "panic" is an appropriate response to something?

Yes. When something is panic inducing.

Note that the bad connotations of panic are for not panic worthy situations (e.g. don't panic when you just lost your wallet, etc).

But when chased by a predator, a panic response is a good, and evolutionary created, way, to get from 0-60 mph adrenaline and speed wise...

A gazelle doesn't sit still and weigh the situation calmly. It panics and starts to run for its life...

I think "panic" is a segment between realising you're in danger and responding, eg "running". Panic is when you know you need to respond quickly and come to a conclusion as to the best action, but you know you can't wait for your thought process to play through.

Once you decide to move, run (if that wasn't an instinctive response), then panic is over and action has ensued.

It's the "beachball of doom" bit that happens when the you spot the lion. Do I fight, or hide, or run, ... {computing best response, please wait} ... it's the wait in that parenthetical bit where your supervisory control systems say "argh, this is taking too long, in going to get eaten".

Surely?

The dictionary.com definition has it as "overwhelming fear that causes a sudden hysterical or irrational behaviour". Running from a predator is rational, or instinctive.

By this definition panic can also be a instinctive (and rational) action -- sometimes just breaking paralysis and doing something is a statistically better than freezing in place. So it serves as an early interruption mechanism when the system doesn't have confidence that new solutions will be forthcoming in time to be useful.

Couldn't disagree more with your definition, panicking is never a desirable action. Being chased by a predator and you run? Are humans likely the fastest animals? Most predators are much faster than us and would gladly give chase. The only way out is to outsmart it and you can't do that if you're panicking. The word itself carries an undesirable connotation and is never - by definition - the best course of action.

>Couldn't disagree more with your definition, panicking is never a desirable action

Well, complains should be directed to evolution.

>Being chased by a predator and you run? Are humans likely the fastest animals?

Depends on the predator, for humans it will many times be other humans (or other homo species), and the extra boost panic mode gives you can very much help. Besides you don't have to merely run, you can run and hide, run and jump on some tree, etc.

>The only way out is to outsmart it and you can't do that if you're panicking.

You don't care much for outsmarting and subtle strategy when it's life or death either.

From Wikipedia:

"An evolutionary psychology explanation is that early animals had to react to threatening stimuli quickly and did not have time to psychologically and physically prepare themselves. The fight or flight response provided them with the mechanisms to rapidly respond to threats against survival."

If I come at you screaming with a knife would you sit and think how to outsmart me for a while, or start to panic / hide behind something / run trying to escape/avoid me? I'd like to see someone try the former...

>The word itself carries an undesirable connotation and is never - by definition - the best course of action

That's at the human cultural level, where it's 99.99% applied to non life-threatening situations, one should not worry as much about.

On the evolutionary/animal level, panic (aka fight or flight) is an excellent mechanism to stay alive...

If panic was never appropriate, the ability to panic either would never have developed or disappeared in humans a long time ago.

Only if it was sufficiently detrimental, and did not arise as a byproduct of other, evolutionarily beneficial changes.

If it had "disappeared in humans a long time ago" then that still implies a time when it existed. And if it could have existed, it could exist now.

The word "panic" is usually used to describe someone behaving irrationally. If you see a guy running from a lion, you don't say "he's panicking". If you see a guy pacing and sweating because he has to do his taxes, you do say "he's panicking". Many of the same biological mechanisms are at work, but the word is most commonly used when those mechanisms lead you astray.

Not all of us use your personal dictionary.

Well, that's unfortunate because his definition happens to be the right one.

Give it time!

In my personal dictionary "panic" means "of or relating to pans" so clearly everyone in this thread is wrong.

Almost every biological reaction is triggered or mediated by a hormone. I'd expect "panic" to mean a reaction that makes the plant more alert or able to act faster.

Is there a term for the opposite of anthropomorphization? I.e. an unwillingness to acknowledge equivalencies between humans and other species due to a presumption of “human exceptionalism”?

I agree. The word "panic" to me implies a certain mental state. Something plants lack.

...assuming panpsychism is not true.

Given plants utilize electrical signals I don’t see how you could argue they don’t have “mental states”?

CPU's and other electronic devices utilize electrical signals. Do you think they have mental states ?

Perhaps that's why "panic" is in quotes.

Also keep in mind some believe that a lot of "animalyness" is also "plantyness".

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170109-plants-can-see-hear-...

https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/6759

The quotes were added later by dang, one of the moderators of HN.

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