this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts
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At some point it just comes down to ethics.
Is a turnip as complex lifeform as a dog? Of course not, not that we know of anyhow.
Should we still disregard it as a living being? No.
Just like we don't disregard heavily disabled humans. Or abandon heavily disabled pets.
Plants may be however complex lifeforms, but to claim they're simply piles of lifeless mush is to disregard any science progress of the past 100-200 years.
I'm not saying the OG is/isn't bait, I'm saying humans need to be less narrow minded, and more open to discussion regarding these kinds of things.
I never disregarded anything as a living being!!
I never said plants were lifeless!!!
That's what I've been emphasising so far over and over.
There's a distinction between being alive and being sentient.
All sentient beings are alive, but all alive beings aren't sentient.
Plants show all the evidence of being alive, but so far we have no evidence of them being sentient.
Disabled humans are humans all the same. So that's not a fair comparison. (At least in my mind it's very clear).
It's all just about what you consider "conscious" to be. To be alive, to me, is to be conscious.
One might raise the couple issues with that, and to an extent, they have a point. Such as completely comatose people.
We've recently discovered comatose people are conscious, and are working on ways for them to communicate.
What about people who are kept "alive" only by machines, with no brain activity? I'd consider that person dead. It's only that his organs are being kept stable, in the event he can be recovered, or until the organs get donated.