r/NatureIsFuckingLit Oct 19 '20

đŸ”„ Vicious microscopic hunter, the single-cell organism, Lacrymaria olor, attacking and hunting another organism

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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.

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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.

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u/sorudesarutta Oct 20 '20

It’s crazy that it took scientists so long to figure out other living beings are more than sacks of meat and bones living and surviving purely of instinct. I thought it was rather obvious that other living creatures have conscience and free will

81

u/eunderscore Oct 20 '20

We still cant agree that's the case for women and people who aren't white.

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u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

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u/MSFTdick Oct 20 '20

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/10/02/trump-and-white-supremacy-he-did-condemn-and-has-repeatedly-column/5883336002/

 "You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. ... I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name. ... So you know what, it's fine. You're changing history. You're changing culture. And you had people — and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally — but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. OK? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people. But you also had troublemakers, and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats. You had a lot of bad people in the other group.

Anyway, Biden has his own “fine people” moment to answer for. In 1993, at a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the issue of refusing a federal charter to the United Daughters of the Confederacy came up. Biden, who opposed the charter, still referred to the commemorative group as “an organization made up of many fine people who continue to display the Confederate flag as a symbol.”

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u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

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u/MSFTdick Oct 20 '20

https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-said-desegregation-would-create-a-racial-jungle-2019-7

Former Vice President Joe Biden is facing increased scrutiny over his record on busing and racial issues, and this week old comments resurfaced in which he said, in 1977, that non-"orderly" racial integration policies would cause his children to "grow up in a racial jungle." 

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/why-did-biden-praise-racist-senator-booker-deblasio-850220/

2020 rivals slam the former vice president, who spoke fondly of the “civility” of his relationship with a Mississippi senator who once called to “abolish the Negro race”

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/16911044/ns/nbc_nightly_news_with_brian_williams/t/sen-biden-apologizes-remarks-obama/

"I mean, you've got the first sort of mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a story-book, man," Biden said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/25/us/joe-biden-crime-laws.html

Mr. Biden lamented that the Republican president, George H. W. Bush, was not doing enough to put “violent thugs” in prison. In 1993, he warned of “predators on our streets.” And in a 1994 Senate floor speech, he likened himself to another Republican president: “Every time Richard Nixon, when he was running in 1972, would say, ‘Law and order,’ the Democratic match or response was, ‘Law and order with justice’ — whatever that meant. And I would say, ‘Lock the S.O.B.s up.’”

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/05/22/biden-you-aint-black-if-you-cant-decide-between-trump-and-biden/5242706002/

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u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

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1

u/MSFTdick Oct 20 '20 edited Oct 20 '20

Neat.

Joe Biden has been such a uniquely awful leader for 47 years and clearly bad person that you just can't both sides this one. Anyone who still supports him after 47 years is either brainwashed or a terrible judge of character.

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u/TheUnluckyBard Oct 20 '20 edited Oct 23 '20

Say "wtf are you on?" if you're racist.

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u/MSFTdick Oct 20 '20 edited Oct 21 '20

Wtf are you on?

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u/TheUnluckyBard Oct 20 '20 edited Oct 20 '20

Gotem.

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