Plant Communication: The Evolution of Forest Networks

Plants may possess a form of consciousness, enabling communication and adaptation within ecosystems.

### The Consciousness of Plants: Exploring Communication and Evolution in Forest Ecosystems
* 🌱 The idea that **consciousness can organize information processing** extends beyond animals to suggest that plants may possess a form of **sentience over different time spans**.
* 🌳 European fairy tales reflect ancient beliefs in plant spirits, indicating a **long-standing recognition of their potential consciousness**.
* 🔄 Research shows that plants can **learn and communicate internally**, with information transmitted between **roots and leaves**, allowing for **adaptive responses**.
* 🌲 Evidence suggests that trees can **communicate over long distances**, enabling them to develop **defensive mechanisms against threats** before they reach them.
* 🍄 Interactions between trees and neighboring organisms, like mushrooms, imply that plants can **exchange information**, potentially evolving a **shared communication network** akin to an "**internet**."
* 🔗 This hypothetical network would allow for **feedback loops among plants**, enhancing their **collective adaptability and interaction** within the forest ecosystem.
* 🧬 As a computer scientist, I find it intriguing to consider how evolution might naturally lead to such structures, as they could provide **significant benefits to ecosystems** and **enhance understanding of locomotion control**.

so if information a Consciousness can organize information processing in brains um it's conceivable that there is something that is analogous to our Consciousness that exists in Plants just over different time spans and our ancestors actually believe that very strongly so if you look at the European

fairy tales they basically say that the spirits of plants are sentient and they populate the forest and one day in carul Land seven years in new which might allude to this 10 differential but what we see is that plants have means for the approximation

they can learn there's evidence for uh communication inside of plants so with view how on the roots of a tree information gets sent to the leaves back to the roots and the tree reorganizes accordingly and there's also evidence for communication across plant even

over considerable distances so when you have a forest in which one side gets infected by uh some bug that invades the forest trees long far away are going to develop defensive mechanisms long before this happens so there is some kind of communication going on across the

forest there's another aspect if you are living next to a tree and if you're for instance a mushroom uh you can probably learn to send information to the tree because the individual cells in the tree don't know what information they're translating they just passing on a

certain pattern and uh if there's another organism going next to it then and can are no firewalls it means they need to evolve to get along this probably means that forests over a long enough time span are going to evolve something like an internet and this

Internet is going to have some kind of shared protocol over which the individual software agents that run on the plants can build feedback loops that extend beyond an individual plant, which allows them to be somewhat non-local in the forest and even move around in some sense in the focus of attention. Right, uh

This is something that I don't know whether that's all true. It's something that a lot of culturists look at, and I, as a computer scientist that looks at this from an evolutionary perspective, I just look at needs and motives, and I don't see how to stop evolution from

forming such a structure. So it would be something that I would be inclined to look for, be very curious about, because I suspect it should evolve under normal circumstances, something that you should expect to exist in nature because it is very useful to apply it to the

ecosystems, and it also has a lot of explanatory power in locomotion control, for example.

Do plants have spirits?

Joscha Bach Bits

Consciousness in Plants and Ancient Beliefs

The possibility of plant consciousness analogous to human consciousness is explored.

European fairy tales depict plant spirits as sentient beings, potentially hinting at this concept.

Evidence suggests plants have communication methods, with information transfer between roots and leaves, and tree reorganization based on this information.

Inter-plant Communication and Forest-wide Networks

Communication between plants over long distances is observed, with distant trees developing defenses before infection reaches them.

Organisms like mushrooms may communicate with trees, potentially leading to the evolution of a forest-wide network.

Over time, forests may develop a shared communication protocol, similar to an internet, allowing for non-local interactions.

Evolutionary Perspective and the Likelihood of Plant Networks

The speaker, a computer scientist, examines the concept from an evolutionary perspective, focusing on needs and motives.

The speaker finds the evolution of such a network likely due to its usefulness and explanatory power in various contexts.

The concept is deemed useful for explaining locomotion control in ecosystems.