The title reminds me of the sci-fi book The Dark Forest, whose premise is that the galaxy is full of life that stays silent for fear of being annihilated. In retrospect, not a whole lot different from an actual forest.
I sometimes subscribe to the spiritual view of the author, that space (in this case a forest) is part of a larger intelligence that communicates with us. It's not something I bring up a lot, for fear of sounding unhinged, but it lines up with my experiences.
This is a tangent, but have you found any other books you can recommend for someone having a hard time finding sci fi books they like while absolute adoring The Three-body Problem trilogy / Remembrance of Earth's Past?
Spirituality is very sweet and pleasant. This article for example is a joy to read. But for that very reason, it's very dangerous. Look at this question: “Why would the old pines trust their reproductive success to these birds and animals?” . In nature, things just are, they don't have human character. They don't "trust" in the same way that a grandma trusts the grandchildren of her neighbors to clean her garden. You can say "birds and animals have been around pines for long enough that pine cones evolved," and that's it.
Then there is this one: "Recognizing that forest ecosystems, like societies, have elements of intelligence would help us leave behind the old notion that they are inert and predictable." Of course they are not inert. But the notion of unpredictability in this context requires, at the very least, some elaboration. Since living organisms like humans are walking ecosystems[1], the treatment of many common and rare ailments depends on our capacity to model and predict ecosystems[2][3][4][5][6]. And just slightly further from home, our capacity to heal and maintain those ecosystems the article's authors love so much also depends on predicting. We can not just walk away saying they are "unpredictable", specially without providing any proof. Wir müssen wissen, wir werden wissen.
The article's author is Suzanne Simard [1], who was the first to observe and study the fungi-mediated carbon transfer between trees of different species. This isn't a non-expert romanticising science; this is one of the world's leading experts on the topic at hand trying to make their research accessible to a wide audience.
More than that, the idea that communicating via metaphor is necessarily dangerous and misleading seems wrong. These complex biological systems are indeed very different to our human experience. And in many cases our understanding is very nascent; requiring creative thought to develop new insights and make progress. In that context, using metaphors as hooks helps to guide our thoughts and suggest possible paths to further elucidation.
Of course, at some point one needs to back up the mental model with hypotheses that can be tested quantitatively, and to actually go out and do the experiment. And it is true that one can take the mental model implied by a metaphor and overapply it, making you believe you understand something that you don't. But that can also happen with any kind of model; one can learn some equations relating supply and demand and feel like that's sufficent to "understand eonomics" but end up making bad predictions when the real world situation turns out to more complex than the assumptions underlying the model.
If anyone wants a good overview of the research surrounding how trees 'talk' with each other, check out this recent video over at Real Science on Youtube.
[+] [-] sdwr|4 years ago|reply
I sometimes subscribe to the spiritual view of the author, that space (in this case a forest) is part of a larger intelligence that communicates with us. It's not something I bring up a lot, for fear of sounding unhinged, but it lines up with my experiences.
[+] [-] fredsir|4 years ago|reply
This is a tangent, but have you found any other books you can recommend for someone having a hard time finding sci fi books they like while absolute adoring The Three-body Problem trilogy / Remembrance of Earth's Past?
[+] [-] TimSchumann|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsign|4 years ago|reply
Then there is this one: "Recognizing that forest ecosystems, like societies, have elements of intelligence would help us leave behind the old notion that they are inert and predictable." Of course they are not inert. But the notion of unpredictability in this context requires, at the very least, some elaboration. Since living organisms like humans are walking ecosystems[1], the treatment of many common and rare ailments depends on our capacity to model and predict ecosystems[2][3][4][5][6]. And just slightly further from home, our capacity to heal and maintain those ecosystems the article's authors love so much also depends on predicting. We can not just walk away saying they are "unpredictable", specially without providing any proof. Wir müssen wissen, wir werden wissen.
[1]: https://www.mdpi.com/2078-1547/9/2/40 [2]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7350295/ [3]: https://aacijournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1322... [4]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK552154/ [5]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41531-021-00156-z [6]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7333005/
[+] [-] jgraham|4 years ago|reply
More than that, the idea that communicating via metaphor is necessarily dangerous and misleading seems wrong. These complex biological systems are indeed very different to our human experience. And in many cases our understanding is very nascent; requiring creative thought to develop new insights and make progress. In that context, using metaphors as hooks helps to guide our thoughts and suggest possible paths to further elucidation.
Of course, at some point one needs to back up the mental model with hypotheses that can be tested quantitatively, and to actually go out and do the experiment. And it is true that one can take the mental model implied by a metaphor and overapply it, making you believe you understand something that you don't. But that can also happen with any kind of model; one can learn some equations relating supply and demand and feel like that's sufficent to "understand eonomics" but end up making bad predictions when the real world situation turns out to more complex than the assumptions underlying the model.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzanne_Simard
[+] [-] TimSchumann|4 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HiADisBfQ0
[+] [-] aliasEli|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] siavosh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pvaldes|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LAC-Tech|4 years ago|reply