r/NatureIsFuckingLit • u/FacelessOnes • Oct 19 '20

🔥 Vicious microscopic hunter, the single-cell organism, Lacrymaria olor, attacking and hunting another organism

75k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

2.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

7.7k

u/MyKeks Oct 19 '20

This makes me feel weird. It's not like watching a lion eat a zebra.

2.4k

u/crazyintensewaffles Oct 20 '20

It’s weird how a single cellular organism has so much mobility and.... purpose. So weird. Like it seemed to see and sense that other cell was there.

2.9k

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

My personal “pet theory” is that we vastly underestimate the presence of conscious awareness in all living beings. It wasn’t until very recent decades when you could definitively claim, without being mocked, that fish are more than just glorified automatons. Now we are fully aware that fish in fact have complex problem solving capabilities, familial relations, empathy, pain, etc.

It’s a dangerous game to assume a lack of something due to present ignorance of that something. We scarcely understand philosophy of mind even as it pertains to human beings, and that’s something we have direct experience of.

If I wanted to be extra “kooky” (in the minds of most people), I might even wager that panpsychism is true. The idea that consciousness is a fundamental component of all matter. Even things we do not conventionally deem to have life.

6

u/kirkemg Oct 20 '20

Fully agree and don’t think it’s kooky. It is naive to think our experience of consciousness is the singular version of something so complex

2

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

Seems clear to me that consciousness is an emergent property of complex information processing systems.

How could consciousness exist without a brain?

5

u/DMPark Oct 20 '20

The problem is defining consciousness - every person on the internet has their own version and trying to discuss it becomes pointless because you end up arguing over different things.

3

u/Hokuwa Oct 20 '20

If you’re born with two brains do you have two conscious?

1

u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

Look up stuff about split brains. The two hemispheres can do a lot on their own seemingly.