No, I wasn’t stoned. This thought was inspired by the post the other day about how trees evolved independently (e: multiple times) from different plants, the product of convergent evolution.
As always, there is a relevant xkcd for this: https://xkcd.com/2608/
I was going to say one of them should have been 50 times removed but Randall got me in the alt text:
Grandma says that because of differences in primate and feline lifespans, the cat is actually my 17,000,000th cousin 14,000,000 times removed.
Every gardening also
Where do fungi fit in?
A lot looks like we and champignons share a common ancestor that had already separated from plants. But, it’s not sure.
Nobody knows.
I wonder which of that ancestor’s descendants would be its favorite child.
I don’t. I know.
I have a deep connection to willows.
40% pussy willow, 40% weeping willow, 20% banana.
Will future generations ever look at trees the way we look at primates today?
I imagine that would spell trouble for our eating habits.
It’ll be fine. Sharks are older than trees so we can switch to them.
I mean, people already are…
We don’t have a better definition for consciousness then “it’s what anesthesia stops” and we don’t have a better idea about what anesthesia does than “stops consciousness”. So it’s a chicken/egg thing.
The thing is, anesthesia works on everything, humans, animals, plants, even single celled organisms.
Literally everything is consciousness. Tomatoes even feel pain thru our most common definitions.
So yeah, people that claim to be vegan because of animal suffering are still causing suffering and pain to life, then ending that life.
You’d need to be some super specific type of vegan where you only eat fruits because those specifically evolved to be eaten in a symbiotic relationship with animals.
But like, I’m pretty sure that would just give you organic diabetes or something.
So everyone draws their personal line wherever, but none of us really have an “ethical diet”
TIL! Never heard that definition, thanks for that.
As for your point, it’s one I like to make sometimes, even though I’m fully in favor of veganism. One just cannot avoid trampling ants when walking. It’s such a fine line, even a paradox that keeps sucking me in. None of the extremes would work: eat everything vs eat nothing. The line drawn by society will always seem arbitrary, no matter where it’s at.
One just cannot avoid trampling ants when walking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahimsa_in_Jainism#Ascetic_practices_for_adherence_to_Ahimsa
Jain ascetics sweep the ground before them to avoid injuring the most minuscule forms of life. They generally brush the ground clear of insects before they tread. Digambara monks do not wear any clothes and eat food only when it is not prepared for themselves. Ascetics of the Śvētāmbara tradition wear a small mask to avoid taking in tiny insects.
Apparently, some already try since quite some time now
Amazing! :o
TIL! Never heard that definition, thanks for that.
Yeah, it’s pretty accurate and comes from the guy most equipped to talk about what consciousness is.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Hameroff
He’s spent the last 30 years working on consciousness with literally the world’s smartest physicist if not human:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Penrose
Like, you know how everyone knows Stephen Hawking? Penrose was the guy doing the hard science to finish up Eisntein’s work, Hawking was the “face” who explained it to people. When it was just Penrose and Hawking working on something, Hawking was the dumb guy at the table. Which is just wild.
But for the longest time people said Hameroff and Penrose couldn’t have been right because quantum entanglement couldn’t happen somewhere as “warm and wet” as the brain. About 11 months ago we found out microtubules can not only work as tubes that can sustain entanglement, it can sustain quantum superposition.
So, another decade or two and we should have a better answer for what consciousness is and what anesthesia actually does. But for now, that’s the best we can do
And tardigrades, just to give you the warm fuzzies.
I’m not sure most people really, really grasp this idea. We are all connected in this way. The tree of life.
Yep, literally every single living thing has a common ancestor.
Monkey? Yep.
Tree? Yep.
Octopus? Yep?
Mushroom? Yep?
Bacteria? Yep.
What if a bunch of the earliest life spontaneously formed by the millions independently in different places? Would we all really have a true single common ancestor then?
Edit: I think there’s been a misunderstanding. I believe that all life on earth came from the same “species”, being the same kind of structure spontaneously generated in the primordial soup, but that there could’ve been a number of those structures that were generated and were all identical to each other. This would mean that any of them could evolve from the same starting point in terms of “design”, but not literally be the exact same object, meaning that we could have a number of origin ancestors that were all identical, and were potentially not an exact one singular living thing.
Some (probably bacteria-like) form of life appeared almost as soon as conditions made it possible, so it’s conceivable that it arose multiple times in earth’s history. But eucaryotes (animals, plants, and fungi) took almost half the lifetime of the earth to appear, and have a lot of contingent features, so it’s overwhelmingly likely that all eucaryotes have a common ancestor.
It’s almost a certainly that all current life on earth has the same common ancestors. It makes sense for a ton of reasons.
For example all living organism have dna, and they all use the same 4 nucleic acids that their dna is made from. Neither of those facts are necessary requirements for life to exist, so since 100% of life does both of those things then that’s very strong evidence that 100% of life had a common ancestor.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_life
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_universal_common_ancestor
