What thinks? Where do we draw the line?

Ive found articles saying bacteria may be able to even have communication www.cs.montana.edu...
Much of what ive found isnt to recent but i felt this link has a few interesting things.

Ive found articles saying bacteria may be able to even have communication www.cs.montana.edu...
Much of what ive found isnt to recent but i felt this link has a few interesting things.

Ive found articles saying bacteria may be able to even have communication www.cs.montana.edu...
Much of what ive found isnt to recent but i felt this link has a few interesting things.

sorry i didnt mean to triple post and dont know how to delete

The reaction of a bacteria to move toward food or away from poisons is called positive or negative chemotaxis. It is not a sign of self awareness.

a reply to: Antwonzilla

It happens. Don't worry about it.
If you were a microbe you certainly wouldn't.

a reply to: Phage

I would surely shrivel and die

a reply to: Antwonzilla

My main point was how words and phrases meanings are often changed to support an idea.

With this, I see it more as the bacteria that survive to reproduce are the ones that react in a certain way to a certain stimulus. That means future generations will react the same due them being the ones to survive. There is no conscious effort to save their own lives, since they are not aware they are alive. They are not capable of self awareness and abstract thought.

originally posted by: Blaine91555
a reply to: Antwonzilla
There is no conscious effort to save their own lives, since they are not aware they are alive. They are not capable of self awareness and abstract thought.

no one said they were geniuses, although we wouldnt exist without them. I think the building blocks of life have a little more to them than stimulus but in all honesty that is just my personal opinion and i respect yours as well this isnt how i planned my Friday night but now i wanna do more research. Much respect to you blaine even if we disagree!

Hey. The title changed completely.
Mandela Effect!

a reply to: darkbake

It likely has a very simple autonomic nervous system that contracts it away from what is not food... and then as it slowly consumes or over takes those adverse to what was not food it absorbs it spreading out until it is immune and then spreads that new gene until it contacts something else... expansion and contraction until no adversity is found.

a reply to: BigBrotherDarkness

Would you consider that a stimulus or some sort of awareness ? Just curious of your thoughts.

a reply to: Antwonzilla

The food and poison a stimulus... one causes it to spread and one causes it to retract like a spring in a sort of hive mind... then as the danger subsides it grows back over absorbing adapting and growing as long as the entire culture is not wiped out.

Even in autoclaves that are machines to sterilize if the machine itself is not sterilized ever so often then it becomes a hot bed for the spreading of bacteria hospitals have become cess pools of disease full of super bugs that have grown and adapted like MRSA and on into flesh eating bacteria.

So unless we adapt to them and evolve... much more difficult as it takes us much much longer the more complex the organism then they will over take us too as we run out of effective antibiotics.

We have never lived in a clean room environment trying to make the environment a clean room is an impossibility... the best we have is trying to stay ahead of these things and adapt through medicine or technology or grow evolve and adapt.

Vaccines try to help that by injecting the dead bacteria inside of us so the bacteria in our bodies and our immune system says ok we know what this is and can adapt the same way the bacteria does... as it is not the bacteria that makes us sick it's our immune system trying to adapt to it that makes us sick.

Like Europeans had been exposed to many of these bacteria that native populations had not been... so when Europeans showed up to these various places the bacteria and virus's did too wiping out a lot of population without that evolved immunity.

Since we are on a conspiracy site Alien life forms here would be the same way unless they had adapted to those things themselves our environment would be toxic to them... sort of like how in E.T. the little fellow started getting sick the longer he was exposed... of course bio-hazard protection would be a given including for us as we stretch out to other worlds... no telling what sorts of mutated bacteria is out there we haven't been exposed to in our lil ecosystem much less other worldly or deep in the ground from ages ago buried... that's where the curse of the Pharaohs comes from old bacteria getting breathed and caught on hair and making it's way into our mucus membranes for exposure.

Evolution or adapting when it comes to life isn't really about the form it's about the time it takes... and the arrow of that time slows down the larger the organism is or the less time it has been around. As herding animals we spread things rather quickly and that's not really a bad thing because in a sense we are no different than these bacteria ourselves... of course our ideologies can also appear to be a virus too by way of mouth to impressionable ears.

So microcosm macrocosm the only difference is thinking there is one.

a reply to: Phage

Haha no, I figured I would change the title to "think" instead of "self-aware" and I am interested in when we draw the line.

I was already reading about chemotaxis and in the explanation for it, Wikipedia mentions that they seem to be using temporal senses. I'm wondering if that makes someone self-aware or counts as thinking. What is the mechanism behind these temporal senses?

This biased random walk is a result of simply choosing between two methods of random movement; namely tumbling and straight swimming.[6] In fact, chemotactic responses such as forgetting direction and choosing movements resemble the decision-making abilities of higher life-forms with brains that process sensory data.

Wikipedia: Chemotaxis

I am interested how this is explained.

a reply to: Blaine91555

I *am* wondering if cells and bacteria are self-aware, as the ability to learn from mistakes and make choices based on learned data is a kind of introspection.

a reply to: BigBrotherDarkness

Wow very well worded big brother. This makes me wonder of the evolution of bacteria. How different was it hundreds of thousands of years ago, and has any aspect of it been possiblyself aware at least to some extent for it to develop certain traits. Im meaning how does the bacteria learn to become resistant to a drug. To me that still makes me think that some bacteria is or has in the past perhaps built some type of instinctively behaviors such as stimulus life based off of awareness of its surroundings or other factors. I might be way out there right now im a bit tired yet restless and rambling haha.

a reply to: Antwonzilla

Eventually it will grow into more complex forms the more adversity it encounters as it grows and adapts to them... no different really than other complex species of course plants do the same thing but they become varieties like humans we only look different because of the time spent and what we were exposed to in our environments... closer to the equator darker skin and well it flows through dominate genes the more dominate the gene the more it overtakes and strengthens the entire populous in which it spreads. Of course, there are mutations from exposures.

If we look at apes they are very visually adverse to these mutations within their own populations and will tear them up at any sign of difference like an extra finger or seen as weak they will become an outcast... so how are we acting any different when we are supposed to be more intelligent and exhibit the same behaviors we aren't that's why we are animals too... but evolving out of that is what started separating us out of animist religions and of course thinking we are not animals has led to a lot of ideological adversity. That separates us from nature yet still hold those same behaviors that we try to moral or ethic out of each other so we aren't as zooish in habitat... but who's to say that is the outcome? One would have to believe in something called evil for that... but that's simply due to our innovation it can be a benefit or detriment and sometimes how we handle it IS the detriment.

But life in all it's forms are branched from phylum and if we keep making those connections then it will lead to these bacterial forms that started springing to life as soon as the sun started heating it up over a very very long time... remember the less complex the faster that adaptation? So in the early stages things were moving at a very very rapid pace in competition and being food for everything else life is a food chain and matter the form it clings to.

Basically just business as usual as life goes.

originally posted by: BigBrotherDarkness
a reply to: Antwonzilla
Basically just business as usual as life goes.

Amen to that brother

a reply to: darkbake

Does a rock learn from its mistakes? No. Does it experience time-flow? It has no idea how to experience time flow, or the rock would start long-term planning. But the rock does "feel" the flow of time through the forces of erosion and other natural laws of physics.

Are you sure about this? Have you asked a rock that answered you? Or is this just a theory, because unless the rock answered you and told you this (in which case it would prove the opposite), then it can only be a theory.

You see, that's the funny thing about metaphysics . . . it is really easy to prove a theory wrong, but next to impossible to prove it right.

As for my theory . . . well I do not believe that we are self aware. I believe we are ignorant lifeforms that know nothing about our true existence and thus are not self aware at all.

a reply to: JDeLattre89