Here you are:

This picture has no right to say it shows a face when it omits the eyes and jaws. It’s like posting a picture of human nose and saying what an ugly face people have.

Yeah, the author was having fun.

I’ll do you one better: Diceros bicornis.

Yep, I don’t trust them they’re a botanist.

Makes sense, why should I keep waving when you can see me now.

All ups, no downs.

Wait, I’m lost. What does it have to do with the amount of protons?

I’m subscribed as well but the post don’t seem to show up in my feed. I’ll have to look into that.

Don’t underestimate biologist dads.

Probably depends on the field or even the institution. My experience is much more positive.

This is the kind of meme for me!

Where Diatoms?

Yeah, thank you, I think I get you now. I’ve seen many “gotcha arguments” like you describe and I agree that responding to them is draining. And I can see how what I say can be seen as similar. My way of thinking about these things can be upsetting for both meat eating people and vegans/vegetarians, I’m afraid, but I’m just trying to do my best with what I know. In general, I sympathize with vegans and I think it’s a great thing that veganism is getting a bit more mainstream nowadays.

You’re asking me what I am and how I handle my sympathy with all that is alive. The truth is, I’m a biologist (botanist). I view killing life for your own survival (and even cruelty) as something natural and understandable, I don’t find it a moral thing to do if it can be avoided though. I eat meat, although not often and I don’t usually buy it for myself. (When I do eat meat, I feel evil and I own it. I try not to avoid the responsibility and I accept that a fully sentient animal was killed for me to eat.)

I think even unicellular organisms are well equipped for experiencing the world around them including sensations of being harmed - it’s crutial to have something like this to survive.

My specialization is plants and I’m seeing a breakthrough of plant senses research now (which used to be kind of taboo in the past). There are so many things we didn’t know or didn’t want to know being finally objectively researched! Plants are alive too and their aliveness, striving to survive and to not be eaten is evident, even though we don’t have enough data to say whether they can have some kind of consciousness by our standards. They do have ways to tell when they’re harmed and they react.

My point is, I think many organisms were and still are rather underestimated when it comes to their ability to sense the world around them and to integrate the collected information, which are the basics for what we call feeling something and having some kind of intelligence and consciousness.

So the answer, I guess, is I do what I can and don’t do what I can’t. And I feel a lot of sympathy with all kinds of life forms, despite eating some of them regularly :)

I hope I’ve explained myself in some decypherable way, I sometimes find it hard.

I suppose you could call me a lifeist. I expect similar attributes to be much more probable in things that already have something in common and are all related to each other. I find living things to be different enough from nonliving things to expect them to function differently. I expect pain in living things, because they are subjets of evolution and feeling pain is pretty useful.

I don’t think it’s probable stones feel pain because it wouldn’t benefit them in any way, and I agree with science that they are outside of what we call life.

I do expect the existence of life not related to ours thst can be quite different from ours. (To describe what life is, let’s use the commonly used attributes of evolution, propagatio and, self organization, although we could allow for some other definitions as well). If I came across a completely different life (and somehow cozld tell it was actuslly alive), I would definitely do my best not to harm it, even though there would be no way for me to tell whether it feels pain. There is, after all, the effect called convergence, and feeling pain is an advantage.

Now I’ve written quite a bit of a response. It seems you’re quite emotional about this topic. I have this vague feeling that my thoughts are somehow not your cup of tea, but I have no idea why. Would you mind sharing your own views?

Because, as you say, they are non-living. What is and what isn’t life is not arbitrary. It’s a distinction based on science.

I don’t want to disregard science. I want to err by being preemptively more inclusive, not more cruel, when I don’t have sufficient information.

Insects and other animals were not (and are still not in all cases) always considered sentient or capable of feeling pain. When it comes to other life forms, the fact is we have no idea how they experience the world. They are way too different from us. That doesn’t automatically make them less alive or less valuable.

That seems well thought out to me, thank for this explanation.

Yeah, some vegans draw the line at the animal kingdom. (Plants, algae, mushrooms - these are all living things as well, but one has to eat something.) Some vegans I know do eat honey though. It depends on what feels like animal exploitation to the person.