@DarrenWalker I think I may have addressed that in response to @Mike403 . It is an interesting thought, as an atheist but also somewhat open to the hypothesis that death is not the complete and total end of us
@pmvines: What I'm trying to say here is "So you can't prove vegetables don't have souls which hang around in their corpses and scream when they're eaten—that doesn't mean they do."
@DarrenWalker - Is there also a plant heaven and hell? That would be kind of interesting.
@Mike403 ~ Veggies don't have heaven and hell because they're reincarnated.
@quixotic_life - I hug snakes.
@Mike403: Interesting, yes. Real, probably not.
Look, you have to have evidence to justifiably believe a thing. Absence of evidence is not evidence! For instance, can you prove that I'm not your father?
You may say I'm definitely not, but can you prove it? Can you prove that I didn't go back in time and bang your mother, then use advanced surgical techniques to disguise your true heritage? There's no way that happened, you say—but can you prove it?
I can come up with all sorts of ways in which I could be your dad, ways that can't possibly be disproved. Does that prove I'm your father?
No. No, it doesn't, because that's stupid.
It's as stupid as saying "You can't prove that carrots don't feel pain, which proves that they do!"
@Mike403 ~ Omg! I could have been getting boa hugs this whole time! And in a tree! I need to rethink my desire to go hang out in a cabin trapped by snow (because then my aloneness feelings would be easier to validate and deal with).
But big strong squeezes from a snake! I knew there was a reason I left the travel hammock in the car...
Lol @DarrenWalker ~ Every once in awhile, like now, I'm reminded of this rant I went on once that my mother couldn't prove she was my mother because there are no pictures of me from before the age of three and none of her pregnant either. So where did I come from?!
Now there's DNA tests, but she was pretty crafty and good with data. How would I know she didn't mess with it just to keep the ruse going?
@quixotic_life: This is why it's important to calibrate your beliefs based on evidence, rather than leaping to conclusions based on the lack of it.
@DarrenWalker - Gravity doesn't really exist and is just an illusion. Einstein was able to somehow prove that in 1905.
@Mike403: Citation needed.
@DarrenWalker ~ Maybe... But it's also just fun to entertain the ridiculous and absurd (for me anyway). If I my thought process was reliant only on facts and evidence, I'd probably bore myself into a coma. Typically I enjoy it more if others join me but, I can skip my way down the nonsense trail until I meet with reality again, all on my own too. Fun had either way. 🙂
@DarrenWalker - Look up curve space time. We are constantly in motion and planets follow their orbits due to the curvature in space. I'll give you an example:
If you and a friend was standing at the equator hundreds of miles apart, and go north until you both reach the North Pole(neglecting oceans), you two would eventually meet each other, but there wasn't a gravitational force pulling you two together. That's how space works.
@DarrenWalker Your argument is sound. Just because you can’t prove something isn’t true, doesn’t mean it’s true. We should have evidence and data to back up our position.
However, human experience is typically based on on imperfect knowledge. Often, I’m left saying to myself “I will proceed as if this is true, until I see evidence to the contrary.” I just try to keep an open mind.
As for me, I’ll proceed as if vegetables don’t have souls and don’t feel pain. Because they’re tasty. If one day they start speaking to me, then I think I’m doomed.
Are we still talking about trees? I have been planting willows all over the property . I had dozens of Ash trees but the ash borer destroyed them last few years. I really needed to have my "Ash" saved last couple years. Oh well
@quixotic_life: I, too, enjoy fiction and fantasy. But I like to keep a hold on reality, and so I never quite forget, when fantasizing, that I am in fact fantasizing.
@Mike403: Sounds like we're getting a better and better idea of how the force we call "gravity" works all the time. Go, science.
@cualtzin: Yes—calibrate your beliefs based on evidence, and don't forget to update probabilities when new evidence comes in. Proceed as if vegetables don't have souls or feel pain because there's no evidence, to date, that they do! And if evidence that they do turns up, be sure to take it into consideration.
@DarrenWalker - I find his ideas fascinating.
@OhioMike It’s still about trees in a figurative sense. It’s branching off in all directions 😊. Maybe we need some more pictures of your trees to help keep things focused.
@OhioMike OMG I would just love to see all those willows! Were they best for your climate or why did you pick them?
@cualtzin Agreed with your most recent post here 100%. IMHO there are plenty of observations that can help us to draw conclusions about the sentience of life around us, even if it is not “sentient” as we consider it.
@DarrenWalker Why do you have to define what is worthy of respect? But since we’re talking about trees, I’d say the hundreds of years older they are than us warrants it by itself...it’s like respecting your elders. They will still be perfectly fine without us for millions of years after we are dust. Cosmically, they matter more and contribute more to the order of earth than humans ever could. I understand that you think differently so I’m not arguing with you, but I think you’re questioning things that don’t need to be 🙂
@caultzin ... gotcha covered ! And I’m ok with your tent back there lol
@Allerdale , yes willows are really good here for soaking up all the rain, flooding we get here in Central Ohio. The only problem is the deer love to eat the bark when they are just planted. In this last picture is a willow i planted last year. And on the right you can see the results of another ash tree that died. I planted 3 willows up on that hill.
@OhioMike 🤩 Wooow, that’s absolutely stunning! I would cuddle with all the trees 😂 In all seriousness though they look so healthy. I need to drive out to Flagstaff more often to see more than just city-maintained trees.
@Allerdale: We have different perspectives, I think. I'm looking at reality as, you know, reality—what is, no matter what (or if) anybody thinks about it. You seem to be taking a human perspective, where your ideas about value are (somehow) cosmic truths.
"The order of earth," you say... as though there's some objectively ideal state for the earth to be in.
Ideal for what? For whom? And why does this ideal matter more than the way things actually are? You seem to say that age alone makes a thing objectively better than something with less age: why?
And so on.
Cuddlers are like trees, in a way: they don't exist, then they exist for a while, then they stop existing. Cuddlers being sentient, though, they tend to have more ideas about value than trees do.
I have always liked that saying that you don't plant trees for this generation but the next generation. I mean someone planted a lot of these trees before me. So everytime I lose one I replace it. I have lost track over the years but dozens and dozens of trees have been planted in this generation here.
@OhioMike: I think they're gorgeous. Thanks for the pictures (and the planting)!
@Allerdale , @DarrenWalker , thank you for your comments.
Interesting discussion in this thread. As far as believing something without proof, many scientific discoveries started as only theories that hadn't been proven yet. For instance, probably nobody would have believed in atoms before they were proven, and some people might have said you're crazy if you mentioned small pieces of energy flying around a nucleus. I've also heard people were initially skeptical that fingerprints could uniquely identify people before it was proven to be the case.
Regarding trees - I am reminded of the Rush song The Trees.
@FlyingToaster: No one believed in phlogiston before that hypothesis was put forward, either. Waiting on evidence before coming to your conclusions is a pretty dang rational idea.
@DarrenWalker Yes, I agree. Things that are provable are certainly compelling, and it's good to wait for confirmation.