Friday, September 01, 2006

Aggressive Plants

You wrote:
But the fact that there are so many bacteria alive makes me think that the golden rule is somehow in everything born from natural selection, assuming my previous argument of "why populations survive" is correct, if my argument is incorrect then they don't need the golden rule gene. What about plants though - do they have the golden rule? I'll have to think about this some more!
I was thinking about this today ... I was out for a long ride on the motorcycle, and I got to thinking about plant "mating". It doesn't really happen on their own accord, right? I mean, it's not like a Saguaro Cactus wanders over and punches the lights out of another male cactus so he can get first dibs on the little hottie cactus.

So if plants have a "golden rule" gene, how in the world does it come into play? This is where I was going with my "does the gene involve conscious thought" question. If a plant is utterly helpless in its efforts to procreate, then what value would a "golden rule" gene have?

It was a good way to occupy my brain as I sped up Arizona 191. :-)

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