I've been facinated by why plants have an incentive to be alive and adapt and reproduce. I mean animals at least have the joy of living. But plants don't even have a brain.

They are alive because of complex interactions of chemicals/proteins etc. Unless you believe in homeopathy (molecules have memory) then the chemicals/proteins etc dont have minds, and dont have an 'incentive' like humans do, or anything with a brain for that matter. And I would'nt say that animals reproduce for the 'joy of living' but rathar because of hormones changing their state of mind.

Plants (and all living things) adapt with evolution, a blind unintelligent process. No need to want to adapt, those that are better off in an environment have better chances to survive etc etc.

Try not to anthropomorphize things.

Hi All,

Why do humans live? The same reason... we share about 40% of our genetic code with them. I mean 40% is "identical". They sometimes have more or less overall genetic material but it is substantially the same type of stuff. They are alive because we are alive. Some individual cells from the plant world share the same kinds of function as some of the more agile cells in our body. They move seek food and some have primitive photoreceptor's but they predominantly went into a different evolutionary path to us. There may be on some alien planet that the dominant creature is an intelligent species of plant. Lets face it next time you go down to the green grocer give some of your distant cousins a "group hug".

Remember the mitochondria inside of us is predominately a kind of symbiotic "slime mold" and we are partially plant and can't live without them in all our cells, vital to human energy functions. A lot of your characteristics are inherited through that "matriarchal" lineage. You have a lot more in common with plants than you think.

Cheers

If there's one thing we hate it's being anthropomorphized .

Mainly because all the plants that don't live ... aren't around anymore.

Life is a self-selecting process. It's the nature of life to continue. If you found life, that means that its whole history is filled with organisms that have struggled for life.

By the same token, our galaxy will soon be 'green' with humanity, because life's nature is to spread. Any life that doesn't spread is replaced by life that does!

Exactly. We try so hard to find more meaning in life, but life is the meaning. Every living thing has a desire to live, otherwise it dies. Maybe there has been a couple of suicidal plants, but they didn't live to pass on there DNA. The number one meaning in life, for all life, is to live and reproduce. Plants don't have a mental need for any meaning Beyond that, like humans.

Why be fascinated with plants when Viruses have the urge to infect humans when in fact they dont even "live" or Prions or Viroids...I mean life is not how we humans percieve it. It is not necessarily conscious of its existence untill it reaches a certain complexity.

Especially mentally conscious of its existence. Some animals have 'self awareness', for sure, but some cannot be said to be sentient ... anymore than the nerve bundle controlling our heart is sentient.

I don't think.
Therfore, I aren't.

Descartes. Yes, he was a good fellow but how about :

I think that I think, when in fact I am just a mediate for some other entity's thinking? Do I still exist?

Plants are an ancient race of beings who wandered the universe for millenia, spreading life everywhere, acting as the caretackers of the universe. Then they created us, there most awesomust creation, to take there place as caretakers of the galaxy. They gave up there mobiliy to live on earth and watch us grow. They do not care that we kill them because they know that we will grow out of it eventually, and they are not afraid of death.

Or maybe they are just stupid plants.

What was that again????

Of course, you exist. Because I can see your post. And because you can post. And because you're using your computer. And because you have the money to buy a computer or to go to an internet shop. And because of many things... Just look around you. If you exist, they exist.

Actually, the Drude persona is a Turing-bot that I programmed.

Maybe.

Hi All,

You underestimate life... in all it's forms. There is an emergent quality you are apparently unable to experience or appreciate. Humans are just collections of cells. They exhibit more than just the sum of a collection of cells. Plants are also "collections of cells"... just because you are unable to appreciate the emergent qualities of the plants as a "collection" you think you can do without them. The air we breathe comes from plants and you are stuffing it up... collectively. Our "emergent behavior" is quite stupid... proud, haughty and unable to appreciate connectedness in the Universe. The more our behavior "emerges" the more we appear to stuff things up ... we may soon be extinct.

To appeal to the Xian minds among us. Life is defined by a simple programmed instruction: "Go forth and replicate"

And all things that do not follow that rule will in time stop to exists.

Folks,just today I got reply from Lawrence Krauss regardin Hagelin's views,and his reply was very short(I copy/paste): "I wouldn't believe anything from hagelin"