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No fucking shit... anyone with half a brain and a minimum of empathy already knows that.

Yes, yes, the scientific method doesn't discriminate between what is and isn't obvious, but the headline is, as usual, aimed at people with the intellectual capabilities of a 4 year old.

Ofc they are sentient.

I fail to understand why do we will push the 'no expression of the face means no intelligence or emotions bcs most of us communicate that way'.

It always turns out that whatever brain mechanics we think of as our own we later & with minimal research find in other animals as well.

Evolutionary speaking too, same brain centres (with various density and relative size - of which we dont have all that dense brains & and most parts are underdeveloped), it's absolutely unlikely we would have developed something new in a few millions of years (especially given smol & fragmented populations facing extinctions and smol gene pools - tho that could be interpreted the other way too). It's just specialisation, some (advantageous) functions grew, other were optimised to the point of non-existence.

Then again, given how intolerant are we to our own species in terms of our emotional response to slight visual differences (I mean vcompletely evolutionary, uncanny valley thing, the next village of humanoids might have been competing for the same resources, which makes different culture/colours/face shapes = danger, etc), how we choose to ignore compassion (like 'look at that idiot, ofc they have no feelings, not unlike me, the superior being') ... ofc we can't immediately recognise and understand what and how animals are feeling. It takes a lot of time, effort, & empathy (mechanical empathy, like to fully underhand their environment from their pov, and emotional empathy, how they are processing that environment).

And the bigger the difference and habitats, the harder it is (like any sea animal really). Anything non-mammal seems alien to us, no matter the smarts (eg cuttlefish, that can clearly experience psychological trauma on individual and population/cultural level).

And then there are fungi. After that plants. And whatever we choose bacteria to be (like beings, or just a literal matter of environment we live within). Etc :).

The new paradigm is coming

IS veganism the real solution here, or is the real solution the all-artificial, all-synthetic diet? Me personally, I'm going to down this jug of red 40, and then I think I'll get back to you

Sometimes I confuse Sentient and Sapient in sentences but they actually don't mean the same thing at all.

I've always thought this, and thought it strange we assumed other creatures experienced lesser levels of sentience.

So arrogant are we

I dunno about all that, but I used to have an African fish that would always get the zoomies when I'd come home from work. He'd spit water at me or gravel at the glass to get my attention, and loved playing hide and seek and always brushed up on my hands when I was working on his tank. He never reacted this way to visitors, just me.

This raises some interesting questions. The premise of these scientists is that consciousness can be quantified empirically. Yet many of the tests described in this article can be passed by machines. Does that mean that the scientists who signed the declaration consider some smart devices to demonstrate consciousness? And what are the implications?

Any being that needs a map of the environment is going to have consciousness. Depending on its sense organs it will experience consciousness much differently than other beings.

So yeah that's a pretty low bar. We're going to find it everywhere. I suspect even mycelium is a rudimentary consciousness/nervous system. And plants are a lot more active underground than they are above, roots will move around rocks, be aware of if their neighbors are their siblings or not and share nutrients with their siblings by giving them more space, be more competitive with plants that they're not related to.

Life's a trip, and we are just some clever apes who have a lot to learn I think.

so it's time to stop masturbating with my dog in the room

In my opinion the idea of animal conscious has been fairly well supported for decades at minimum. There was a certain anti-consciousness orthodoxy in the animal behavior field that held back understanding of this topic. But I mean simple observation of animal behavior and the similar nervous structures surely leave animal consciousness the most likely explanation, even if it’s difficult to definitively prove.

A more interesting question in my mind is whether plants are conscious. This is a question that we truly have no idea how to answer.