[HN Gopher] Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-...
___________________________________________________________________
Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like
hallucinations
https://archive.is/CwDtf
Author : astronads
Score : 463 points
Date : 2025-12-26 17:07 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (nhmu.utah.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (nhmu.utah.edu)
| astronads wrote:
| It is interesting how the hallucinations consistently represent
| tiny people/elves to the mushroom consumer, even across
| geography/culture.
|
| I wonder what the brain is doing...
| nospice wrote:
| Could be that the mushroom just temporarily interferes with the
| substances the elves put in our water supply to keep us in the
| dark?
| egypturnash wrote:
| s/elves/government
| joe8756438 wrote:
| exactly, the real question is what the elves are doing while
| they're unseen.
| ok_dad wrote:
| They keep the universe running.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Making toys, caring for reindeer, sleight maintenance, ...
|
| And spook work for His Jolliness' Secret Service, to keep
| their Naughty and Nice databases current.
| johnea wrote:
| We should've asked Terence McKenna...
|
| It could be a subspecies of the "machine elves"...
| blincoln wrote:
| This was my first thought as well. I've always been
| fascinated by written accounts of DMT triggering such
| oddly specific effects for users.
| amarant wrote:
| I can answer the what, that parts easy!
|
| The real question is WHY they keep stealing my underwear
| and left-foot socks?
| eykanal wrote:
| This is some real antimemetics stuff here :) (https://scp-
| wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub if you're not
| familiar)
| Tempatio wrote:
| Yeah the mushrooms are obviously an amnestic that lets you
| see the elves which are usually antimimetically cloaked.
| febusravenga wrote:
| Amazing rabbit hole, thank you for link.
| treetalker wrote:
| Would be interesting if the chemical mechanism is related or
| similar to the DMT one that creates the "machine elves"
| experience.
| astronads wrote:
| Yeah, the machine elves rabbit hole is interesting for sure.
| I hope a lot more rigorous science delves into both mushrooms
| and DMT
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Someone has to support consciousness and reality I guess,
| thanks to the elves I say...
| etyhhgfff wrote:
| I had a DMT breakthrough experience and was able to
| communicate, via something like Neuralink, to the entities
| and for me they did not look like machine elves, but rather
| some type of alien (a bit like species 8472).
|
| So not everyone is seeing elves is my point here.
| flir wrote:
| These mushrooms are small, these elves are far away.
| seg_lol wrote:
| You will get a kick out of
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVUuoXAkuUg a Corridor Crew
| video on in-camera forced perspective effects.
| bilsbie wrote:
| Occam's razor would say they're real.
| tokai wrote:
| Lilliputian hallucinations are also common in mental illnesses
| with hallucinations. Definitely some kind of physical
| foundation for it in the human brain.
| adzm wrote:
| I imagine it is something similar to pareidolia.
| newman8r wrote:
| reminds me of trip reports from people trying Salvia Divinorum
| - there's even a name for these tiny people, 'Smelves'
| akka47 wrote:
| Since we're in the topic of elves and common hallucinations, I
| want to share these Salvia trip replicas that some say are
| extremely accurate:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2IRKuS3sSE
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65XfIpJdlEY
| ceroxylon wrote:
| It gets the visuals accurate, but the experience includes a
| lot of physical sensation that is very difficult to convey,
| e.g. the 'wind' that pushes you back and the discomfort of
| going into a chaotic dissociated state. You see those things
| but it feels very 'real'.
| OldSchool wrote:
| Wow, looks terrifying!
|
| I can only speak for medically-administered intravenous
| Ketamine, but I would describe it as like relatively
| effortlessly floating inside of the non-physical space inside
| of you and meeting yourself in metaphor, all the while
| completely aware. The biggest risk seemed to be temporarily
| becoming a relatively inanimate part of the infrastructure
| there, and even that was a sort of pleasant and satisfying
| state.
| pea wrote:
| I think it makes sense given the following:
|
| - Your brain has been trained extensively to recognize faces /
| people. Even very small babies can do this.
|
| - Your brain processes a large amount of mostly noise, and
| sometimes mislabels noise as objects, which trends towards
| face-like things (see: seeing faces in clouds, people in
| shadows etc.) Various classes of substances make this effect
| more noticeable (even stimulants, including caffeine)
|
| - The jump from that to 'elves' is largely just cultures have
| some form of small magical person.
| sandspar wrote:
| >Caffeine increases pareidolia
|
| I like that coffee is clearly a drug, a mind-alterer. But
| it's mostly harmless so it's been boosted as a sort of
| society-wide mascot. Humans really love drugs.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| I wonder what lab rats would experience - lots of tiny rats ?
| candiddevmike wrote:
| SWIM would like to know how to get paid as (instead of paying to
| be) "an expert who explores new mushrooms".
| neogodless wrote:
| Someone Who Isn't Me?
| MrDrone wrote:
| Yes, this was a common phrase in early psychedelic and other
| drug experience sharing forums. Like a verbal talisman people
| believe kept them from incriminating themselves. I haven't
| thought about it in years. Delightful.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| Yeah - I was going to ask... for a friend
| mistersquid wrote:
| > Someone Who Isn't Me?
|
| Funny, I saw "SWIM" and reasoned "Someone Who Is Me",
| thinking "is not" would be represented as "Is Not" instead of
| the contraction. :)
| Aurornis wrote:
| In some online drug forums it was believed that if you used
| SWIM instead of I for all of your posts, the government was
| powerless to use any of the posts against you. You can still
| find threads on forums where everyone is saying SWIM did this
| and SWIM experienced that as if they have discovered a
| loophole to protect themselves from the law.
|
| It always reminded me of those FTP servers in the early days
| of the internet that had big warning banners declaring the
| law enforcement was not allowed to connect.
| culi wrote:
| I feel like most people didn't actually believe it would
| somehow grant them legal protection but still used it kinda
| tongue-in-cheek. I think it's kinda cute and still use "my
| friend Swim..." in a joking way when talking about legally
| dubious escapades
| airstrike wrote:
| I always feel like they should bring along an artist for the
| trip so we can get a visual depiction of what it was like
| optimalsolver wrote:
| And a poet.
| rolph wrote:
| Ride my Llama
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMC3DjAFQEs
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Exploring new mushrooms is more likely to end in agonizing
| death than piercing the veil of reality.
| attila-lendvai wrote:
| no, statistucally not.
|
| but yeah, a warning is warranted.
| dekhn wrote:
| Major in biology, do a grad program in medicinal chemistry,
| join a lab that already studies this.
|
| (I know folks who read PiHKAL and thought "Hmm, this would be a
| nice ML training/prediction exercise")
| rolph wrote:
| some breadcrumbs for your SWIM
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_McKenna
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_Morris
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton%27s_Pharmacopeia
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Incredible! A mushroom that bruises blue, but the visions are
| seemingly unlike traditional tryptamines, and there's no
| psilocybin found in the mushroom. Also no muscimol present (the
| thing in Fly Agaric, the 'other' type of hallucinogenic mushroom
| compound) yet there's definitely a consistent syndrome of
| hallucinations if you eat it undercooked.
|
| Could this mean we're on the brink of discovering an entirely new
| class of hallucinogens?
| culi wrote:
| From the Wikipedia
|
| > In 2023, Lanmaoa asiatica received international media
| attention after U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was
| reported to have eaten a dish that contained it during an
| official visit to China. Yellen stated that the dish had been
| thoroughly cooked, and she experienced no ill effects
| (hallucinations).
|
| It seems _Rubroboletus sinicus_ , another bolete, is also
| suspected to have this effect. These hallucinogenic mushrooms
| are collectively known as "xiao ren ren" in China.
|
| They seem to be relatively well known in parts of China, the
| Philippines, and Papua New Guinea but the ethnomycological work
| in English is just not really there.
|
| It also seems like it's most likely something in the tryptamine
| class which could explain the blue bruising. The Wikipedia page
| has more info
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogenic_bolete_mushroom
| renewiltord wrote:
| xiao ren ren? Like "small people"? Okay, if the mushrooms are
| literally _called_ little guy mushroom and you see little
| guys running around then surely this is an old discovery.
| culi wrote:
| Well yes ofc this is an old "discovery". Boletes are known
| choice edibles around the world so ofc people would
| discover that if they undercook this mushroom they would
| trip. We even have some written history about it:
|
| > The Chinese Daoist Ge Hong wrote in Baopuzi (The Master
| Who Embraces Simplicity) around 300 CE that eating a
| certain wild mushroom raw would result in attainment of
| transcendence immediately, suggesting that the mushrooms
| may have been known for thousands of years.
| Aloisius wrote:
| I'm not sure a vague passage from 1700 years ago is much
| in the way of evidence, especially given he claims the
| mushroom _is_ a 10 inch tall person riding a carriage
| which you see _before_ you consume it.
|
| Of course, he also claimed another mushroom would let you
| live for a millennia without aging, there were 1,000 year
| old white bats flying around and 10,000 year old horned
| toads and that eating 200 pounds of jade would make you
| fly, so... a fair bit of fantasy mixed into his works.
| cess11 wrote:
| It doesn't count until an occidental university has written
| some stories about it and claimed to be the real discoverer
| due to having put some stuff in one of their taxonomies.
| stinkbeetle wrote:
| That's not true at all.
|
| _Today 's_ occidental universities would have to pay
| faux homage to "the poor helpless natives" who were the
| original custodians of the discovery but were too
| uncomplicated to do much with it, so with their wonderful
| generosity these kindly westerners did them the great
| service of elevating their voices, etc.
| estimator7292 wrote:
| Sick casual racism bro, got any other hot takes for us?
| zzrrt wrote:
| I read it as mocking the white savior mentality, not
| endorsing it.
| stinkbeetle wrote:
| Are you claiming that people who think that way are
| racist? That's violent unsanctioned speech, bro.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Spare me. Calling criticism "violent unsanctioned speech"
| is a tired, adolescent MAGA-adjacent move: provoke with
| loaded caricature, then reframe accountability as
| persecution.
|
| You exhibit the same performative grievance-driven
| identity pattern across your other comments: sweeping
| "regime and cronies" rhetoric, insinuations without
| evidence ("what did Obama get in return?"), mocking
| humanitarian concern as manipulation, and then retreating
| to grievance when challenged.
|
| That's not satire; it's MAGA-adjacent culture-war
| edgelording.
|
| If you quote racism without clearly rejecting it, you're
| responsible for how it lands; if you didn't want your
| comment read as endorsing racist tropes, you shouldn't
| have put them on the page without explicit rejection.
| Accountability isn't censorship, and criticism isn't
| violence.
|
| This isn't uncharitable or violent; it's grievance
| rhetoric filling the gap when your argument doesn't land.
|
| Happy Festivus, Georgie!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1njzgXSzA-A
| stinkbeetle wrote:
| Looks like one of the white knights of the left is riding
| in on an extremely high horse to defend the poor simple
| indigenous folx. Bravo.
|
| I'm so glad you were able to police my other comments
| too, they're also wrong but you're incapable of
| addressing them so you just decree with no evidence
| rquired that they make me "MAGA-adjacent" and therefore a
| bad person. Apparently it's fine to have grievance
| rhetoric against governments except when the corrupt
| warmongers happen to be the secular high priests of
| _your_ religion. This is so great! I 'm sorry for all the
| violent hate speech that offended you so, my liege.
| cess11 wrote:
| I agree, it's much better to name the movement you
| represent by its original name and don't waste time
| trying to engage in conversation.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| It doesn't look like Xiao Ren Ren refers to the mushrooms.
| It refers to the hallucinations, and is not necessarily
| expected to include visions of people:
|
| > "No!," she said, most emphatically, "They are _real_. I
| have seen them myself! "
|
| > Miss Oh clearly remembered the hallucinations that began
| that evening and continued into the next day. The walls
| moved and shifted in geometrical patterns and strange
| shapes appeared.
|
| > "I'm sleepy all day," she said in English. "I see them.
| And I see flies bigger than the actual one, perhaps two
| times big. I see little insects. Not all the time, but when
| the water splashed out." She apparently became fascinated
| by the dripping kitchen faucet, for each drop would, upon
| hitting the sink, sprout wings and legs and crawl away. And
| she remembered, very clearly, staring intently at the bows
| of her shoelaces until they turned into butterflies and
| fluttered off.
|
| The paper devotes quite a bit of text to explaining that
| the mushrooms bearing this quality have no specific name,
| and in fact are not distinguished from non-hallucinogenic
| mushrooms at all. They are referred to by their property of
| turning blue when handled, which is a property not
| exclusive to the hallucinogenic ones.
|
| https://sci-hub.se/https://www.jstor.org/stable/40390492
|
| Interestingly, despite this prior paper being cited by this
| press release, and despite the fact that the prior paper
| devotes almost a page to describing the difficulty of
| identifying which mushroom(s) might be hallucinogenic given
| that the people of Yunnan never draw any distinctions
| between them, this press release assures us that
| identification of the hallucinogenic species was as simple
| as asking market vendors in Yunnan whether this was the
| mushroom that caused hallucinations.
| poulpy123 wrote:
| > mushroom sized > blue when bruised > make see small fairy
| people
|
| did they found the schtroumpf village ?
| consp wrote:
| Is any of the variants called gargamel or a latin variant of
| it in the scientific name 'by accident'?
| decimalenough wrote:
| Aka the Smurfs in English.
| bilsbie wrote:
| Or a new reality...
| ipsum2 wrote:
| These mushrooms have been eaten for thousands of years. Does it
| really count as a new discovery? Maybe isolating the specific
| compound does.
| ericmay wrote:
| I don't think the article was insinuating that these
| mushrooms were a new discovery, they've been known not just
| in the region but to scientists for some time, though they
| did assert that this is the first time that the DNA had been
| sequenced.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| What excites me as a chemist (and as someone who dabbled in
| psychedelics as a teenager) is the prospect of identification
| the active components... and it turning out to be an entirely
| new class of chemicals.
|
| The great, late Alexander Shulgin made his fame through
| systematic tweaking of the tryptamine and phenethylamine
| backbones, giving rise to many interesting psychoactive,
| mostly psychedelic compounds. Nature has a few more classes
| of psychedelics, but it's very rare to come across an
| entirely new category of molecular compounds.
|
| Because the hallucinations are seemingly distinct from the
| effects from traditional psychedelic, that's... pretty
| tantalizing. But the mushroom does bruise blue, which is what
| tryptamine-containing magic mushrooms also do.
|
| It's super exciting, all in all. It's either a cultural or
| mass psychological effect (but I doubt it personally), an as
| of yet unidentified tryptamine-like compound that's highly
| active (and thus difficult to isolate because theres
| relatively little mass of it) or an entirely novel chemical
| class.
| culi wrote:
| I think the point GP was making was to take issue with
| framing like "and it turning out to be an entirely new
| class of chemicals."
|
| More accurately we can say "an entirely newly described
| class of chemicals". Even before penicillin was isolated
| and described for the first time, soldiers would keep moldy
| pieces of bread and use them on wounds (Penicillium being
| the most common bread mold). Even Otzi the iceman was found
| to be carrying a piece of fungi that we know was used to
| kill parasitic worms.
|
| While these traditions didn't conceptualize their medicines
| as compounds or chemicals, they were certainly well aware
| of their effects. Sometimes intimately so.
|
| All that aside though, there are bolete species documented
| to have tryptamine content so I would be a little surprised
| if the active compound(s) in question here aren't also
| tryptamines. Although I did read that Dennis McKenna
| hypothesized it could be an anticholinergic effect (i.e.
| Datura alkaloids)
| anthk wrote:
| You would love the readings from Mckenna and the DMT, and
| the concept of Fractal Time.
|
| https://serendipity.li/trypt.html
|
| List:
|
| https://serendipity.li/dmt/dmtart00.html
|
| Yeah, I know, pseudoscience and the like, but biology it's
| _weird_ and with the current scientific discoveries (and
| even reusing quantum mechanics for profit, such as
| chlorofilla with leafs and photons), Nature itself it 's
| 'magical'. Not actually something from fairy tales, but
| from weird mechanics we are actually grasping a little
| today.
|
| Instead of my comment from I-Ching being taken as
| numerology, I would think of the universe as something
| being 'computed over', kinda like numeric towers under
| Lisp. Because in the end nothing exists per se; it's just
| fields generating matter, waves, energy and probably,
| information. Thus, the Mckenna theory on Fractal Time (and
| the Chinese paper from Vixra) might be related to
| hypercubic equations (because of Hamming distance between
| changes) that we aren't fully aware.
| throw310822 wrote:
| I was disappointed that the article doesn't contain pictures of
| these little people.
| throwup238 wrote:
| It does but the liliputians are invisible on photographs unless
| you've eaten the undercooked mushroom.
| dekhn wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cottingley_Fairies_1.jpg
| felubra wrote:
| Strangely enough, I just finished listening today to this
| podcast episode on the Cottingley Fairies (it's a great
| listen):: https://omny.fm/shows/cautionary-tales-with-tim-
| harford/phot...
| pjerem wrote:
| Easy, eat another well known species of uncooked mushrooms so
| that your camera is now able to eat the mushroom.
| chpatrick wrote:
| Common Side Effects anyone?
| nck_p wrote:
| Probably something like temporary death and teleportation
| morningsam wrote:
| Was my first thought as well. I had no idea those little guys
| were based on something real.
| spjt wrote:
| Let's ban it before anyone finds out if it's useful
| culi wrote:
| Just need a minority in America to associate it with
| tt24 wrote:
| Do you lot ever get tired of saying stuff like this? It's not
| 2016 anymore, there's no need for it.
| culi wrote:
| Buddy relax. It's a joke about the way the drug war has
| historically developed. You might get more out of it if you
| read some history about marijuana in the US
| itomato wrote:
| You can stop though. Nobody on this side is served well
| by these ideas.
| tt24 wrote:
| Sorry, do you think anyone isn't aware of this factoid?
| Why do you think your comment is immune to criticism just
| because it references a historical event?
| jyounker wrote:
| You appear to lack the historical knowledge to appreciate
| the joke:
|
| The war on drugs was specifically designed to allow the
| government to go after the left and black people. Nixon's
| domestic policy chief said this in 1994:
|
| * https://eji.org/news/nixon-war-on-drugs-designed-to-
| criminal...
| tt24 wrote:
| What makes you think I lacked the context here?
| jyounker wrote:
| Because you failed to see how the historical context made
| it funny, and even responded in kind of a vicious way.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| It appears there are several blue staining boletes in the same
| genus that grow in the US. Seems like a fertile area for study.
| tartoran wrote:
| It's Elves all the way down.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I wish it were another dimension, or breaking through the Matrix.
| I never had the chance to experience such items but look forward
| to doing so.
| memming wrote:
| Aparently Jian Shou Qing is mildly toxic yet commonly consumed
| in Yunan.
| culi wrote:
| Spinach too is mildly toxic because of its oxalate content yet
| we eat it all the time. Some of those toxic saponins even have
| certain health benefits. There are plenty other examples of
| toxic foods we regularly consume: legumes contain deadly
| saponins, beets contain oxalates, and potatoes contain
| glycoalkaloids
|
| From what I read _Suillellus luridus_ (Jian Shou Qing ) is
| completely fine when cooked
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Meat is also toxic when eaten raw; that is not generally held
| to be a reason to avoid eating it cooked.
| VladVladikoff wrote:
| What toxins does raw meat contain? Or are you referring to
| bacteria contaminated raw meat?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Doesn't have to be bacteria. Raw meat can contain any kind
| of horrifying contamination. Viruses, bacteria, mold,
| nematodes... there is no limit. It's the perfect substrate
| for everything.
|
| Living toxins are much worse than nonliving ones because
| the living toxins can reproduce to dangerous levels even if
| you consume a tiny dose.
|
| But if for some reason you think they're not dangerous,
| foods that contain nonliving toxins when unprocessed are
| _also_ commonly eaten; a major example would be cassava.
| See also acorns, nardoo, fugu, and the Greenland shark.
|
| Most things prefer not to be eaten; you can't let that stop
| you.
| jumperabg wrote:
| If used can we hallucinate and predict the HN news of
| tomorrow(especially any acquisition related news)?
| metalman wrote:
| yes,but you wont care.
| czzprr wrote:
| I have a friend who gave up taking regular magic mushrooms
| because he always hallucinated tiny Power Rangers.
| fluoridation wrote:
| Interesting. Did he find it boring, annoying, disturbing, or
| what?
| culi wrote:
| Giving up right when its getting good
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _When mice are given chemical extracts of Lanmaoa asiatica, their
| behavior shifts noticeably compared to controls._
|
| Doesn't say how, for some reason. I presume they are shocked to
| see tiny mice, but I would like to know what behaviors they
| exhibited.
| Ccecil wrote:
| Are they seeing tiny mice...or are they seeing the same 2cm
| tall "people"?
| Aurornis wrote:
| The Wikipedia page (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogenic_bolete_mushroom )
| talks about effects lasting for days, even in animal studies.
| Some of the historical records claimed effects lasting even
| longer, from months to years, though this sounds like triggered
| psychosis.
|
| So perhaps not very recreational as might be assumed given the
| topic.
| why-o-why wrote:
| "Days"?!? Hard pass. My experiments with shrooms in college was
| fun, but I couldn't deal with the 8-12 hours of hallucinating.
| subscribed wrote:
| I guess you didn't touch LSD? I think 12 would be considered
| short :)
|
| I knew personally someone whose trips usually took 48 hours.
| Unusually long, yes, and really exhausting.
| why-o-why wrote:
| LSD had the same duration with me, but more psychological &
| emotional impact. So I avoided it for two reasons. Weirdly,
| all my divorced 50+ year-old male peers are now into K and
| DMT. They are raving about DMT, but I feel like my brain is
| too frail-as-is.
| subscribed wrote:
| Interesting.
|
| Admittedly i wanted to try both but back then I didn't
| have opportunity, and now the mindspace is just not
| too.... Right for the risks.
|
| Maybe when I'm too old to worry and it's too late to care
| :)
| fluoridation wrote:
| Damn. 8-12? For me the peak always lasted 2-3 hours and I was
| sober again after 7 hours.
| shlant wrote:
| yea people in this thread saying 8-12 for psilocybin and 12
| is short for LSD tells me these are either heroic doses or
| hyperbolizing.
| fluoridation wrote:
| Nah. Everything I've read about hallucinogens says dose
| doesn't change effect duration, only intensity. Drugs do
| affect people differently, so I wouldn't jump straight to
| saying they're exaggerating.
|
| Also, 12 hours is definitely not short of LSD. I'd say
| it's the standard duration, with the peak lasting 7
| hours. Longer trips can happen, at least to some people,
| but the default assumption should be about half a day.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Or testifying about how long it felt like.
| why-o-why wrote:
| you're right. i was only high for 20 minutes. happy now?
| an0malous wrote:
| they might be counting the "after glow" as part of the
| trip, others don't
| why-o-why wrote:
| definitely not hyperbole. last time i took LSD i dropped
| at 5pm before going to dinner and ended up at a bread
| factory 15 miles away at 5am watching them run the big
| mixers. no idea how i got there just remember walking all
| night.
| fluoridation wrote:
| That's... odd. Sure it was LSD? It shouldn't cause
| dissociation like that.
| consumer451 wrote:
| Sorry to use a reddit-ism, but "this should be at the top" -
| for safety.
| mlrtime wrote:
| I wonder if Hamilton Morris has tried it yet. Hamilton, if
| you're reading let us know when you're going to let us hear
| about it :)
|
| For anyone vaguely interested in psychoactive/psychedelic
| drugs, his books and videos are amazing:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton%27s_Pharmacopeia
| RomanPushkin wrote:
| The next step should be to send enthusiasts there, get samples of
| this mushroom from that market, and introduce it to the
| underground for personal research. That's normally what happens
| when something interesting is discovered.
|
| For example, members of a famous forum recently found, analyzed
| for alkaloid content, and re-cultivated a strain of Phalaris
| Aquatica because of its notable alkaloid content. Some other
| mushrooms became popular this way as well -- for example,
| Psilocybe Natalensis, first found in Natal, Africa. Or the now
| famous Tamarind Tree British Virgin Islands (TTBVI) Panaeolus
| Cyanescens that's widely cultivated at home.
|
| So IMO it's not only scientists, but often enthusiasts who end up
| gifting these discoveries to everyone else!
| RickS wrote:
| The natalensis story is even stranger: the underground was
| growing what they _thought_ was natalensis for many years,
| until someone finally did the sequencing and found out that
| what everyone had grown and loved was actually new to science.
| At this point last year, their "natalensis" received its
| proper scientific name, ochraceocentrata. The underground then
| had to go out and fetch some actual natalensis, which is only
| just now being introduced to those circles (eg by Yoshi Amano).
| I haven't yet tried true natalensis, but ochras are definitely
| distinguishable from the usual cubensis, experentially, and I'd
| heartily recommend them to anyone that likes that kind of
| thing.
| Liquix wrote:
| The issue is lanmaoa asiatica is ectomycorrhizal, meaning it
| grows exclusively on the roots of certain plant species in a
| symbiotic relationship. This is not like TTBVI or p.
| ochraceocentrata (misclassified as p. natalensis until
| recently) where amateurs can produce grain spawn with relative
| ease. Cultivation would involve planting or having access to
| the correct host species (Yunnan pine) which is a prohibitive
| barrier for most.
|
| It's also not yet known if the active compound can survive
| dehydration like psilocybin. If not, it would mean even
| experiencing l. asiatica will be very difficult to impossible
| for enthusiasts not residing in its native region.
| contingencies wrote:
| Lived in Yunnan for over a decade, primarily as a vegetarian.
| Mushrooms there are indeed many and varied and quite tasty. Many
| poisonings annually but the government are pretty good at helping
| people to ID with warning posters. Personally ate many mushrooms
| that looked like this and never had hallucinations. Did have some
| others which made me feel a little ill, however. I suspect locals
| are unduly relaxed about types science would avoid due to
| hepatoxicity.
|
| While occasionally FOAFs would get hallucinogenic effects from
| dining, I don't recall explicitly hearing of anyone seeing little
| people, or hearing the term he details in this writing. As such,
| I wonder where this guy gets his info from. Certainly, most
| Yunnanese would describe these mushrooms as Niu Gan Jun
| ("bolete") and more specific Chinese common names for similar
| reddish species would include Tao Hong Niu Gan Jun ("peach-
| colored bolete"). As a general type, they are _very common_ in
| markets across much of Yunnan.
|
| Given the claims, the clearly infrequent effects, and the
| personal experience I can trust, I would conclude with three
| theories: perhaps either the compounds are rapidly degraded when
| non-fresh, safely broken down when cooking (traditionally these
| mushrooms are cut thinly before sauteeing or boiling in hotpot),
| or there are one or two "look alike" species which are more
| rarely found and contain additional compounds which are
| responsible for the occasional effects.
| reissbaker wrote:
| According to Wikipedia, the Yunnan mushrooms indeed have their
| hallucinogens broken down after cooking:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogenic_bolete_mushroom
|
| Good guess!
|
| Although, the local hospital records imply that hallucinations
| can last for days or even months, so uh, probably not a great
| idea to go looking for them...
| contingencies wrote:
| According to a voluminous illustrated tome I acquired during
| my extended stay, Yunnan has at least seven species of native
| psilocybe. Like nearby areas along the Himalayas, cannabis
| and opium are endemic and widely utilized in traditional
| cultures of the area. Heroin processed in Myanmar became a
| problem in rural Yunnan the early 2000s and present-era
| government shut it down with a heavy-handed campaign around
| 15 years ago. These days it's probably trans-shipped more
| than locally consumed.
| temp0826 wrote:
| My guess would be there is probably some contamination with
| something ergot-like going on. Long-lasting but maybe hard to
| detect because such a small amount is needed for effect that
| it's easy to miss.
| card_zero wrote:
| So, about one mushroom species in five is poisonous. Why is the
| ratio so low, why are there lots of edible ones? Without hard-
| shelled seeds to spread, why be eaten? And the poisonous ones
| apparently don't use color as a warning signal, and don't smell
| all that bad, and some of the poisons have really mild effects,
| like "gives only some people diarrhea" or "makes a hangover
| worse". Meanwhile three of the deadliest species seemed to need
| their toxin (amanitin) so much that they picked it up through
| _horizontal gene transfer._ Why did just _those_ ones need to be
| deadly? In addition to which we have these species that don 't
| even make you sick, just make you trip out, a function which
| looks to have evolved three times over in different ways. What
| kind of half-assed evolutionary strategies are these? What do
| mushrooms _want?_
| tirant wrote:
| That's also my thought. The seem to be inside some type of
| evolutionary gray area or dead-end, where mutations in the
| edibility axis do not seem to matter much for the survival of
| the specifies. So we end up getting species of all extremes:
| extremely poisonous, highly valuable for coursing, trippy, non-
| trippy, mildly poisonous, etc.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Metastatic cancer where our organs and cells grow every
| direction forever until resources expire is extremely
| counterproductive and doesn't matter for the survival of our
| species because it usually occurs after reproductive age and
| the reproduction happened. Perpetuating the flawed genes in
| the next generation.
|
| Its the same with mushrooms, the difference being that not
| only do the spores exist in high numbers, a mushroom getting
| eaten does nothing to the mycelium that spawns the mushroom
| choilive wrote:
| Its the same evolutionary patterns that plants went through.
|
| Most mushrooms are edible because their spores can pass through
| the digestive system of most animals, thus allowing them to
| spread.
|
| Other mushrooms developed toxins to protect their fruiting
| bodies - often the biggest threat isn't larger animals, but
| insects. Toxins that are neurotoxic to insect nervous systems,
| happen to cause mostly "harmless" psychedelic trips to our
| brains. Other toxin mechanisms happen to be deadly to both
| insects and humans.
|
| As proof of this evolutionary arms race, there are fruit flies
| that have developed resistance to amatoxins.
| ajb wrote:
| It may be worth mentioning, for anyone who didn't know this
| already; that the fruiting body, which is what your normally
| see, isn't most of the mushroom. The rest of it is in the
| ground, or in something else like a dead log or live tree. So
| the organism can afford the fruiting body to be eaten, if it
| serves the purpose of spreading spores.
| uplifter wrote:
| This relates to why you will often see multiple mushrooms
| of the same type blooming at the same time in a ring
| pattern: the edge of the ring is the periphery of the
| linearly, radially expanding mat of subterranean fungal
| fiber weave, which produces fruiting bodies at its edges.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| > Toxins that are neurotoxic to insect nervous systems,
| happen to cause mostly "harmless" psychedelic trips to our
| brains.
|
| True for coffee as well (if you substitute psychedelic with a
| more appropriate word).
| choilive wrote:
| Yep, thats a good one. Caffeine is deadly to insects, but a
| mostly safe stimulant for us. Nicotine also comes to mind.
| Plants have developed tons of defense mechanisms that are
| deadly to one class of animals, but useful or only mildly
| deterrent to others. Avians are immune to capsaicin, but an
| irritant for mammals.. except for some hairless primates.
| cluckindan wrote:
| Insects have the some of the same neurotransmitters as
| mammals, but they can be relaying different things. For
| example, dopamine is not used for reward learning, but for
| aversion learning and pain.
| card_zero wrote:
| Even in humans it has multiple roles, such as for movement
| (as in Parkinson's disease), and various signals around the
| body, excreting salt, calming down T-cells.
| observationist wrote:
| They want the same thing as every other organism wants -
| maximal exploitation of a niche by a lineage. Each adaptation
| that survives overwhelmingly tends toward advantage in the
| exploitation of a niche - fending off predation, establishing
| control over resources, symbiotic support, parasitic drain, and
| a myriad other capabilities that are highly environment
| dependent.
|
| Just look at antelope in north america - they evolved
| incredible speed and agility in order to outrun and evade
| megafauna predators, but there's nothing left nearly fast
| enough to be a threat to them. Environments can change, and
| leave an organism with features that are no longer necessary or
| even beneficial in terms of overall quality of life and energy
| efficiency. The slightest noise can disturb a herd of antelope
| into bolting as if there were prairie lions or sabertooth
| tigers on the prowl. They don't need to be hypervigilant in the
| same way, and it burns a lot of calories to move the way they
| do, so whitetail deer and other slower species that aren't
| quite as reactive or fast are better at exploiting the
| ecosystem as it is.
|
| With mushrooms that have mysterious chemistry, there will be a
| lot of those sorts of vestigial features. Extinct species of
| insects and animals and plants will have been the target of
| specific features, or they might end up in novel environments
| where other features are particularly suitable, but some become
| completely counterproductive in practice.
|
| As far as psilocybe mushrooms go, in lower quantities, they
| actually provide a cognitive advantage sufficient to make a
| symbiotic relationship plausible between mammals and the
| mushrooms, albeit indirect. Animals under low levels of
| psilocybin influence have better spatial perception, can better
| spot movement in low light conditions, and there's a slight
| reduction in the neural influence of trauma inspired networks.
| Large quantities can be beneficial in a number of abstract
| ways. Any animal that sought those mushrooms out could thereby
| gain adaptive advantage over competitors that didn't partake.
|
| Having an extremely toxic substance might be useful for killing
| large organisms and their decomposition either feeding the
| fungi directly, or feeding the organisms beneficial to the
| fungi. This can be plants, other fungi, or the feces of
| scavengers. Horizontal transfer might occur if there's an
| initial beneficial relationship, animals like the smell and
| taste of a thing, and then the fungi picks up the killing
| poison, and the consequences are sufficiently beneficial to
| outbreed the safe ones.
|
| If too many become deadly, animals get killed off, and the non-
| deadly ones tend to gain the upper ground, since they aren't
| spending any resources on producing any poisons. Where there's
| a balance of intermittent similar but poisonous mushrooms, they
| take down enough animals to optimize their niche.
|
| There are dozens of such indirect webs of influences and
| consequences that spread from seemingly simple adaptations, and
| it's amazing that things seem so balanced and stable as they
| do. It's a constant arms race of attacks and temptations and
| strategies.
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| Two things:
|
| 0) Humans (and even our recent ancestors) eating you are a very
| recent thing to be concerned about, numbers-wise. By the time
| our numbers were enough to provide evolutionary pressure, we
| started farming what we wanted, which kinda breaks the process.
| Also. most poisons don't effect everything equally, so what
| might prevent a horse from eating you might taste delicious to
| us (like the nightshade family) or even be _sought after_ for
| other reasons, like capsaicin.
|
| 1) You're succumbing to the usual evolution fallacy. Evolution
| doesn't _want_ anything more than 1 and 1 want to be 2. It 's
| just a process, and sometimes (hell maybe even often) it
| doesn't work in a linear fashion. Lots of "X steps back, Y
| steps forward", and oftentimes each of those steps can take
| anything from decades to centuries or more to make, and by the
| time it happens what was pressuring that change is gone.
|
| So many people, even when they obviously know better, like to
| think of evolution as _intelligent_. It 's obviously not. But
| every time someone says stuff like this, it reinforces the
| fallacy and then we get people saying things like "if evolution
| is real, why come $insane_argument_against_evolution?"
| malux85 wrote:
| Also way too biased to humans, the fact that they poison us
| could just be a biochemistry coincidence, the author is
| operating from a very human-centric POV (like you say in (0))
| VanshPatel99 wrote:
| I would expect this way of thinking about evolution would be
| common but unfortunately it isn't. I feel the way we say "X
| animal evolved to do Y" sets the ton as if it was a active,
| thought out decision. Instead, it was just 1000s of mutation
| happened and maybe a certain kind was able to survive while
| other wasn't. It is more of a mathematical concept than
| conscious one.
| uh_uh wrote:
| I find it hard to believe that evolution is completely
| blind. The search space that it can explore via mutations
| is astronomically large. Considering that the experiment is
| run at planet-scale over billions of years doesn't really
| save the argument as it takes some specimen years to
| develop and get feedback on their fitness. It's hard to
| believe that it's truly just random "bit-flips".
|
| I'm not trying to suggest woo here, but there has to be
| some mechanisms to constrain the search space somewhat.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That mechanism is a set of genes failing to procreate.
| yes_man wrote:
| Epigenetics can arguably be an example of what the
| comment means by narrowing the search space. You can have
| heritable changes to gene expression that are not part of
| your genome, but are a result of feedback from the
| environment (and not random mutations, viability of which
| natural selection will judge over future generations)
| DonHopkins wrote:
| As a general rule of thumb:
|
| truth = claim.replace(/I'm not (.*?), but (.*)/, "I'm
| $1.");
|
| Then again this is a discussion about "Experts explore
| new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations"
| so maybe woo is appropriate, and you should embrace it.
| FunHearing3443 wrote:
| Is there a way their question could have been phrased
| that would have not drawn you to make that assumption,
| which seems to be an ethos attack, or are you predisposed
| to reply in such a way about any philosophical evolution
| question?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| When people say /I'm not (.*?), but (.*)/, they
| invariably are what they're claiming they aren't. That's
| what that phrase means. For example, we've all heard it a
| million times from people defending their vote for Donald
| Trump. There's even a wikipedia page about it:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_not_racist,_but...
|
| If you really mean $2, then just say $2, you don't have
| to preface it with "I'm not $1, but". That's a waste of
| words, beating around the bush, a rhetorical shield, that
| reveals that you really are $1 and you feel the need to
| be defensive about it.
|
| The word "but" in that context means the thing before it
| is false, just air escaping from the folds of your fat,
| and you can ignore everything before the "but".
|
| "But" is a contrastive conjunction, signaling the clause
| before "but" is expected, socially required, or
| reputationally protective, and the clause after "but" is
| the actual communicative payload. It means to discount or
| ignore $1 and evaluate the speaker by $2. Saying "I'm not
| $1, but $2" does not strengthen $2, it does't make $2
| safer or clearer, it just signals defensiveness, and
| undermines credibility.
|
| Again, this is a discussion about psychedelic mushrooms,
| fairytale-like hallucinations, and machine elves, so woo
| away all you want!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aO2dPIdEaR4
| uh_uh wrote:
| I have little patience for intelligent-design and the
| likes, if that's what you are getting at.
|
| All I'm saying is that blind enumeration of mutations
| seems combinatorially infeasible due to the vastness of
| the search space. It is already known that mutation bias
| exists, so what I'm saying shouldn't be that
| controversial.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| In stark contrast to what you're claiming, I have
| absolutely zero patience for intelligent design and the
| likes -- that's exactly my point.
|
| All I'm saying is that the whole point of the theory of
| evolution is that blind enumeration of mutations is not
| required, and that combinatorial feasibility emerges in
| spite of the vastness of the search space. It is already
| well known that mutation bias exists, so none of this is
| controversial.
|
| Multiple commenters here have already explained this from
| different angles, including chemical and environmental
| constraints (PaulDavisThe1st), developmental and
| functional constraints (Supermancho), and even software
| analogies like coverage-guided fuzzing and genetic
| algorithms (BobbyTables2). These are not fringe ideas;
| they are standard ways of explaining why your
| "astronomical search space" framing is a strawman.
|
| You are hedging; I am not trying to weasel word or
| distance myself from evolution, or use red-flag
| rhetorical "I'm not $1, but $2" devices. I have read,
| agree with, and acknowledge the other replies to your
| message, because I understand that evolutionary theory
| already fully explains the concern you're raising.
|
| Your claim that "blind enumeration of mutations seems
| combinatorially infeasible due to the vastness of the
| search space" flatly contradicts the theory of evolution.
|
| This has also been directly challenged by other
| commenters asking you to justify the alleged
| combinatorial barrier in concrete terms (uplifter), and
| by others pointing out that genomes do not need to
| traverse all possible combinations to move between viable
| states.
|
| The entire point of evolutionary theory is that blind
| enumeration is not required, and that combinatorial
| feasibility emerges from selection, heredity, population
| dynamics, and cumulative retention of partial solutions.
| No "woo" is required.
|
| Evolution is blind with respect to foresight, but not
| blind with respect to feedback, structure, or retention.
|
| Mutation bias, developmental constraints, and non-uniform
| genotype-phenotype mappings are foundational components
| of modern evolutionary biology, not ad-hoc patches.
|
| People who doubt evolution tend to rephrase it into a
| strawman -- "random bit flips over an astronomical search
| space" -- and then declare that strawman implausible.
|
| Several replies here explicitly reject your framing. For
| example, thrw045 points out the massive reuse of
| structural templates across species, and PaulDavisThe1st
| notes that only a small fraction of DNA even codes for
| proteins, further undermining the idea of a uniform,
| unconstrained search.
|
| Your "I'm not pushing intelligent design, but evolution
| seems combinatorially infeasible" move closely mirrors
| the Discovery Institute / "teach the controversy"
| pattern: disclaim ID, then introduce a doubt-claim based
| on a strawman of evolution as uniform random search, then
| retreat to "just asking questions." That strategy is
| explicitly, insincerely, and unintelligently designed to
| manufacture doubt about evolution while insisting it is
| not religious.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_Institute
|
| We can see the sealioning pattern play out here in real
| time: repeated insistence that ID is rejected, followed
| by reiteration of the same mischaracterized impossibility
| claim, even after multiple substantive explanations have
| already been given.
|
| I'm not hedging like you are here: evolutionary theory
| does not claim "blind enumeration over an astronomical
| space," and treating it that way is simply a misstatement
| of the theory.
|
| I think I and other people recognize your rhetorical
| patterns and misunderstandings, even if you don't, thus
| the downvotes. Other commenters have fully addressed your
| doubts about evolution. To me, the big give-away was your
| "I'm not $1, but $2" wording.
|
| In any case, this is a thread about psychedelic mushrooms
| and hallucinations, so if some machine elves want to
| weigh in with some woo about population genetics, I
| suppose that's fair game.
| squeefers wrote:
| great, but we still cannot say anything beyond "what
| survives, survives". fitness is a central concept to
| natural selection and ultimately evolution, but it seems
| to bother nobody that its an empty concept, a tautology.
| its a nice observation but doesnt actually explain
| anything, and I expect science to explain the world.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Science helps figure out "how". If you want it to help
| you figure out "why" (beyond a probabilistic or
| mechanical model), you will be disappointed.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Saying "what survives, survives" may bother Creationists,
| the Discovery Institute, and Intelligent Design pushers,
| but not actual scientists who don't have an ideological
| agenda to discredit evolution as revenge because it
| discredits their religious dogma.
|
| Saying "what survives, survives" is like saying physics
| explains motion as "things that move, move." That's not
| what the theory actually claims; it's a caricature.
|
| Evolutionary theory explains mechanisms, not slogans.
| "Fitness" is not the explanation, it's a measurable
| consequence of those mechanisms.
|
| If you want teleology or ultimate purpose, science won't
| give you that, so take some shrooms and ask the machine
| elves. But evolution absolutely explains how structured
| complexity accumulates without foresight, and it does so
| with predictive, testable models.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Please inoculate yourself against believing and parroting
| anti-science Intelligent Design / Creationist talking
| points by understanding where they come from, and what
| they led to.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_Design
|
| Intelligent Design is a religious ideology, not a
| scientific theory. The Discovery Institute is the
| evangelical advocacy organization that systematized and
| promoted it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_Institute
|
| After Intelligent Design failed legally and
| scientifically, the Institute pivoted to the "Teach the
| Controversy" strategy -- not to advance new science, but
| to manufacture doubt about evolution in public education.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_the_Controversy
|
| That approach -- revealingly effective -- became a
| template for later efforts to reintroduce religious
| ideology into secular institutions. Project 2025
| represents the political continuation of that same
| strategy at a much larger scale: shifting from attacking
| a single scientific theory to reshaping education,
| governance, and public policy along explicitly religious
| lines.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
|
| These are not isolated phenomena. They are successive
| adaptations of the same agenda after earlier versions
| failed.
|
| Exposing Discovery Institute Part 1: Casey Luskin
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRxq1Vrf_Js
|
| >Have you heard of the Discovery Institute? Have you
| fallen under the impression that they know what they are
| talking about, or can be considered an even remotely
| legitimate source of information?
|
| >Well, you've come to right place. They aren't. They're a
| propaganda mill, and all of their content is full of
| lies.
|
| >They hide behind a paper-thin roster of scientists who
| have deluded themselves into dishonestly preaching
| outside of their expertise, and they blatantly
| misrepresent any scientific research or scientists they
| are referring to. Constantly. Sometimes they even commit
| slander.
|
| >That's what this video is about, and it is the first
| installment in a series where I will expose the
| fraudulent activity of all the major contributors at the
| Discovery Institute, one clown at a time.
|
| >Part 1 addresses Casey Luskin, and it is centered around
| some very serious slander he committed against an
| esteemed anthropologist.
|
| >But don't worry, I cover lots of other lies and
| stupidity that come out of his mouth as well.
|
| >If you're a fan of the DI, do please find the courage to
| watch this rather than running to the comments section to
| yell at me.
|
| >It's not all that long, and I promise that I make it
| extremely clear and undeniable that Casey is a liar. If
| you have a shred of honesty within you, you will quickly
| see that this is the case. Enjoy!
|
| This dives into the "Junk DNA" cannard:
|
| Exposing Discovery Institute Part 10: Casey Luskin Again
| (Because He's Such a Loser Fraud)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOnb0SZYZUI
| uh_uh wrote:
| I think you are psychoanalyzing me a little bit too much.
| Am I allowed to say that I'm an atheist and I don't
| believe in intelligent design, or are you going to
| explain to me that I'm confused about my own beliefs?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| It's exactly because you're rationally reachable that
| this matters.
|
| I'm not questioning your beliefs, and I'm not saying you
| secretly believe in Intelligent Design. The issue is that
| some of the arguments you're making didn't originate
| organically or scientifically -- they were deliberately
| promoted through education policy and textbook standards,
| especially in large markets like Texas, precisely because
| that influence scaled nationally. People often absorb
| them without realizing their origin.
|
| After Intelligent Design failed in court, its proponents
| shifted strategy toward influencing education standards
| rather than arguing science directly. In Kitzmiller v.
| Dover Area School District (2005), a U.S. federal
| district court ruled that Intelligent Design is not
| science and cannot be taught in public school biology
| classes because it is religious in nature.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_Sc
| hoo...
|
| States like Texas were key targets because of their
| centralized textbook approval process and market size,
| which historically shaped textbooks used nationwide. The
| "teach the controversy" framing was designed to insert
| doubt about evolution without explicitly promoting
| religion, and its language appeared repeatedly in state
| curriculum debates.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_the_Controversy
|
| As a result, many people encountered these arguments
| against evolution in school without ever being told where
| they came from or what they were designed to accomplish
| -- and repeat them without realizing how the same
| strategy continues today in much broader political
| efforts, like Project 2025.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design_in_polit
| ics...
| wyldfire wrote:
| > some mechanisms to constrain the search space somewhat.
|
| Your perspective has the unfortunate bias of being posed
| at the end of a long stream of evolution that happened to
| emerge with an intelligence far superior from other
| living things.
|
| > Considering that the experiment is run at planet-scale
| over billions of years
|
| It's not just planet-scale, it's universe-scale. Lots of
| planets conduct the experiment, ours just happens to have
| resulted in intelligence.
|
| > It's hard to believe that it's truly just random "bit-
| flips".
|
| Mutations introduce randomness but beneficial traits can
| be selected for artificially, compounding the benefits.
| uh_uh wrote:
| > It's not just planet-scale, it's universe-scale. Lots
| of planets conduct the experiment, ours just happens to
| have resulted in intelligence.
|
| My argument doesn't depend on the existence of an
| intelligent species on the planet. The problem already
| arises when there are multiple species on ONE planet. If
| you calculate the pure combinatorial distance between the
| DNA of 2 species, you must find that you can't just brute
| force your way from one to the other before the heat-
| death of the universe. This is why mutation bias exists:
| not all mutations are equally likely, evolution favours
| some kinds over others.
| uplifter wrote:
| > If you calculate the pure combinatorial distance
| between the DNA of 2 species, you must find that you
| can't just brute force your way from one to the other
| before the heat-death of the universe.
|
| Can you expand on this? I'm not seeing why it is
| implausible for one genome to mutate into another, that
| seems like it could be accomplished in reasonable time
| with a small, finite number of mutations performed
| sequentially or in parallel. After all the largest genome
| is only about 160 billion base pairs, and the average is
| much smaller (humans are 3 billion base pairs). So what's
| the difficulty in imagining one mutating into another?
| coriny wrote:
| Your maths doesn't seem right. You can estimate mutation
| rates very easily, and you don't end up at crazy numbers.
| The sequence space explored by evolution is tiny compared
| to the possibilities and closely interlinked. A simple
| example is comparing haemoglobin sequences from different
| animals.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The search space _is_ highly constrained. All life on
| this planet is based on hydrocarbon chemistry, more or
| less, and must operate in the face of high rates of
| oxidation and water as pretty much the only available
| solvent. Even with such constraints, the differences
| between what has evolved (bacteria to blue whales!
| viruses to polar bears! algae to orchids!) are
| staggering.
|
| The fact that you find something hard to believe doesn't
| say much at all. Humans have all kinds of things that we
| find hard to believe - for example, I find it almost
| impossible to believe that there is only one object I can
| see in the night sky with my own eyes that is outside of
| our galaxy - but that doesn't make them any more or less
| true.
| uh_uh wrote:
| Let's take human DNA as an example. It contains 3.2B GTCA
| base pairs. This gives rise to 4^3.2B possible combos.
| It's just not possible to navigate this space blindly.
| There is not enough atoms in the universe to do that. It
| is known that there is bias in what mutations are
| favoured.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Only a tiny percentage (around 1%) of the DNA in
| chromosomes codes for proteins.
|
| And yes, certain mutations are favored precisely because
| of the chemistry constraints (an extremely basic one is
| which base pair changes actually alter the resulting
| protein; a more sophisticated one is which amino acid
| changes alter the physical functionality of the protein).
| Supermancho wrote:
| There are multiple constraints that I can immediately
| identify. Maximal temperature extremes, barometric
| pressure, atmospheric/substrate compositions, etc. The
| bias is inherent to the history of the planet Earth and
| the gradients present across that time and space. I'd say
| it's highly constrained.
| uplifter wrote:
| Of course there is bias, the bias is provided by the
| natural environment where the organisms coded by the
| genome must thrive or die. The bias is applied after the
| mutation occurs, but the mutations themselves are random,
| or nearly so. Probably there is some differential rate
| between the likelihood of each of the four base pairs to
| mutate into each of the others, but I would guess its
| nearly parity, because that would probably be close to
| optimal (though that depends on the details of the
| genetic coding scheme, ie the triplet code that
| translates nucleotide triples into amino acid codons).
| thrw045 wrote:
| But is the diversity really that staggering? I mean most
| animals including possibly dinosaurs that have ever
| existed share a lot of internal organs, in the same
| place. They have eyes, brain (with a lot of the same
| brain areas, even birds have something like a prefrontal
| cortex but it's called something different). They all
| have legs, torso, head. I would say there is a lot more
| commonality than difference. The differences come from
| slight variations on a basic template that works, and
| then the body looks different and so on.
|
| I'm not sure how to think about the diversity that
| evolution creates and how diverse it actually is. I would
| say there are _a lot_ of repeating patterns all across
| history, with variations on those repeating patterns
| always changing.
| uplifter wrote:
| You're choice of samples is rather skewed towards ones
| sharing a relatively recent common ancestor. Octopus and
| Sea Squirts are also animals, and they don't have legs or
| torsos or, in the later case, heads or eyes. Octopus
| brains are also rather different from those of
| vertebrates, and they have 8 mini-brains for more
| distributed/localized control of each major limb.
|
| That said, I agree with you that there is a lot of
| commonality in life. Even in the case of Octopus we share
| a lot of DNA. I just mostly think that is due to common
| ancestor and common environmental pressures, not to some
| fundamental limit in the breadth of evolutionary
| potential itself. Its probably worthwhile to wonder at
| how that actually works though. Maybe evolutionary
| potential could be improved.
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| Look at software fuzzing, particularly the coverage
| guided mutators (basically a simple "genetic algorithm".
|
| It's amazing what a few random bit flips combined with a
| crude measurement can do.
|
| To me, evolution at first seem implausible. Monkeys
| banging on a typewriter aren't going to write
| Shakespeare. But add a crude feedback loop to them, and
| soon they'll be dishing out Charles Dickens too!
| summa_tech wrote:
| The monkeys in my last experiment got there in 221 years,
| in particular.
| bavell wrote:
| Maybe won't be viewed favorably by the HN crowd, but I
| enjoyed the most recent Bret Weinstein interview on Joe
| Rogan [0] where Bret talks about his pet theory on
| natural selection / evolution (maybe 2/3 way through the
| interview).
|
| Basically, the "junk" DNA we have may be "variables" that
| influence form and morphology, thus giving natural
| selection a vastly reduced design space to search for
| viable mutations. E.g. not much chemical difference
| between a bat wing and another mammals hands - mostly a
| difference of morphology. Allowing for more efficient
| search of evolutionary parameters instead of pure random
| walk.
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/WX_te6X-0aQ
| DonHopkins wrote:
| This is getting downvoted for the same underlying reason
| I've already pointed out elsewhere in the thread: it
| follows the same red flag "I'm not $1, but $2" pattern,
| just expressed in a different form.
|
| "Maybe won't be viewed favorably by the HN crowd, but..."
| is a rhetorical hedge that serves the same function:
| preempt criticism, then introduce a claim framed as
| rescuing evolution from an implied flaw. That's social
| weasel-wording, not epistemic caution, and HN reliably
| downvotes it.
|
| On top of that, citing an uncritical Bret Weinstein
| interview on Joe Rogan is about as many red flags as you
| can stack in one sentence. As you must know but don't
| state, both are infamous for repackaging long-settled
| evolutionary biology as contrarian insight, often using
| the same "search space", "random walk", and "junk DNA"
| language that shows up in intelligent-design adjacent
| arguments.
|
| Nothing described here is new or controversial.
| Regulatory DNA, morphological variation on shared
| templates, and highly constrained evolutionary pathways
| have been mainstream biology for decades. Presenting them
| via a podcast anecdote, framed as a fix for "pure random
| walk", just reintroduces the same strawman of evolution
| that people have already corrected multiple times in this
| thread.
|
| And recommending a Joe Rogan interview with somebody like
| Bret Weinstein, after admitting you know it won't be
| viewed favorably (for very good but unstated reasons), is
| a disrespectful waste of people's time.
|
| That's why it's being downvoted.
| bavell wrote:
| 1) No one asked why it's being down voted (to... -1, the
| horror). I'm not here for internet points.
|
| 2) This isn't my field - I am not making any claims,
| merely relaying what I thought was an interesting
| concept/mechanism I hadn't heard of before, that I
| thought other curious individuals here might also think
| was interesting. Isn't that the entire point of HN? I
| would have very much appreciated links or something to
| Google over this bizarre analysis of why my comment is
| downvoted. I didn't know this wasn't novel and was
| accepted science.
|
| 3) I understand Bret/Joe aren't looked upon favorably by
| certain crowds, particularly on this forum. I tried to
| get ahead of the "but didn't you know they can't be
| trusted!" comments and attempt to focus on the substance.
| If the substance is wrong, great! Let's talk about that.
|
| 4) You are assuming malice where there is none, and
| calling me disrespectful and insisting I must know
| things. I find that quite disrespectful and uncalled for.
| Not everyone has your opinions or knows what you know.
| 10k a day and all that https://xkcd.com/1053/
|
| HN guidelines: "Please respond to the strongest plausible
| interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one
| that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
| DonHopkins wrote:
| You obviously know they can't be trusted, you just said
| so.
|
| Why not just say that as a disclaimer to the video,
| instead of attempting to "get ahead" of other people who
| also know that, and will call you on omitting it.
|
| Don't dismiss HN users as "certain crowds" and
| preemptively try to head them off at the pass for
| pointing out what you chose to omit. What "certain
| crowds" would that be, people who don't tolerate
| bullshit?
|
| It's not about "certain crowds" who know Joe Rogan and
| Bret Weinstein are full of shit, it's about Joe Rogan and
| Bret Weinstein being full of shit, and you knowingly
| repeating and recommending their shit.
|
| FIFY:
|
| >Joe Rogan and Bret Weinstein are full of shit, but I
| enjoyed the most recent Bret Weinstein interview on Joe
| Rogan [0] where Bret talks about his pet theory on
| natural selection / evolution (maybe 2/3 way through the
| interview), which is bullshit.
|
| Then don't just repeat their bullshit without question.
| You could have even gone as far to explain WHY they're
| full of shit, and who they really are, and what other
| malicious bullshit they spew, instead of just propagating
| their bullshit without warning, as if "certain crowds"
| are trying to suppress that vital information.
|
| When you uncritically recommend and parrot bullshit, and
| try to preempt comments from "certain crowds" who you
| know rightfully disagree, it sure comes off looking like
| you believe it, which is not a good look. The strongest
| plausible interpretation is that you enjoy listing to
| deceptive idiots make fools of themselves and spread
| misinformation, and I'll give you that.
|
| "Junk DNA as variables that reduce search space" is a
| very old idea, but it's routinely introduced in popular
| media as if it fixes a flaw in evolution -- usually the
| "pure random walk" strawman. That framing is a huge tell,
| because evolutionary biology abandoned that view
| generations ago.
|
| Weinstein and Rogan's signature move is to take settled
| science, remove its context and literature, and rebrand
| it as contrarian revelation, implying experts missed
| something obvious or are hiding it. That move reliably
| revives strawmen, Intelligent-Design-adjacent language,
| and manufactured doubt, while producing zero new
| knowledge.
|
| Joe Rogan and Bret Weinstein are notorious not because
| they're unpopular, but because they're dishonest and
| corrosive.
| bavell wrote:
| Whew boy, your comments are great examples of not being
| curious, understanding or promoting civil discussion.
|
| > You obviously know they can't be trusted, you just said
| so.
|
| A baseless accusation with no supporting evidence. I
| never asked anyone to trust anyone else. I didn't even
| assert the idea was true, just interesting to consider. I
| merely thought the idea was interesting as a layman with
| little knowledge of evolutionary biology.
|
| > Why not just say that as a disclaimer to the video
|
| Because you're putting words in my mouth that I don't
| believe.
|
| > What "certain crowds" would that be
|
| Curmudgeons like you.
|
| > When you uncritically recommend and parrot bullshit
|
| Really? I recommended something? I thought I said I
| enjoyed a video talking about a pet theory relevant to
| the topic at hand, which I had recently learned of.
|
| This whole "framing is a huge tell", and "reliably
| revives strawmen, Intelligent-Design-adjacent language,
| and manufactured doubt, while producing zero new
| knowledge" shtick is boring and wrong. I've been atheist
| since I could critically think for myself and it's silly
| how off-base you are.
|
| Since you seem to be so knowledgeable on the subject and
| confident in your position, can you point me to something
| I can read instead of just taking your word for it?
| Otherwise you're no better than them. I skimmed a few
| wikipedia pages [0][1] and didn't find the morphology
| "variables" Brett was discussing.
|
| Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if you just pattern
| matched on Rogan/Weinstein, typed out your reply and
| don't actually know what was being discussed. The tone
| and tenor of your comments so far would seem to indicate
| so. Your entire objection boils down to "I don't like
| them and no one should listen to them". Light on
| substance, heavy on the ad hominem - not exactly
| persuasive.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_DNA [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-coding_DNA
| username135 wrote:
| Why does it need some kind of boundary? What if it was
| operating on a limitless trajectory?
| jyounker wrote:
| The constraint is a life-forms' existing form. A given
| genetic sequence can only move (in general) a small
| distance from the existing sequence.
|
| Since you're already starting with a successful sequence,
| the odds are that a small variant on that sequence is
| also going to be only marginally more or less successful
| than the original sequence.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| While your objection is technically correct it can still be
| useful (ie simple, straightforward, etc) to phrase things in
| terms of a goal. Since a goal (pursued by an intelligent
| being) and optimization pressure (a property of a blind
| process) are approximately the same thing in the end. In
| other words, Anthropomorphization can be useful despite not
| being true in a literal sense.
|
| Certainly this can be misleading to the layman. The term
| "observer" in quantum mechanics suffers similarly.
| IanCal wrote:
| It's a useful start to move away from "it's just random"
| but it's just so different it doesn't help in many cases.
| It's not approximately the same.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| No.
|
| "Optimization pressure" makes it sound as if there is a
| single metric for optimization, whereas there are a
| constantly shifting set of different metrics. Worse (or
| more precisely, more complex) there are frequently multiple
| different "solutions" for a given metric, and evolution
| doesn't care. Put a little differently, there is no
| "optimization" pressure at all: evolution is not attempting
| to optimize anything (*).
|
| Trying to fit anthropomorphized design onto a process that
| is absolutely the opposite of that in every way (no intent,
| multiple outcomes, no optimization) just leads people to
| not think clearly about this sort of thing.
|
| (*) no, not even "reproductive fitness" - rates of
| reproduction are subject to massive amounts of
| environmental "noise", to the degree that minor
| improvements in offspring survivability will often be
| invisible over anything other than the very long term.
| Further, the most desirable rates of reproduction will also
| vary over time, leading to what once may have appeared to
| be an improvement into a liability (and vice versa, of
| course).
| tialaramex wrote:
| Right. It's _extremely_ unlikely that "unable to
| synthesize Vitamin C" would ever have actively been
| selected for. But it was also unlikely to be strongly
| selected against in any version of humans or their near
| ancestors which have access to basically any common food.
|
| So, randomly this pathway is deleted in our species, but
| there won't be a satisfying "just so" explanation, it's
| just blind luck. I happen to think we should fix it, most
| people either don't care or believe we shouldn't.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Framed in anthropomorphized terms this would look
| something like the goal of humans as a species is not the
| synthesis of vitamin C but rather mere survival. Walking
| a path where we come to depend on external sources is not
| necessarily at odds with that.
|
| Or more generally: Why did I do that specific thing? No
| particular reason, it just happened to work. After all, I
| managed not to fall off the platform for another few
| seconds. No telling what the future will bring.
|
| As long as we're thinking about anthropomorphization it's
| amusing to note that vitamin C synthesis can be framed as
| a species level tragedy of the commons. In that case you
| are simply advocating that we as a species make the
| responsible choice not to participate in a race to the
| bottom!
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| You're being overly literal. It's not "trying to fit
| anthropomorphized design onto a process" but rather
| "using anthropomorphization as a descriptive tool". This
| situation is not unlike when someone takes issue with an
| analogy due to erroneously interpreting it as a direct
| comparison.
|
| > here are frequently multiple different "solutions" for
| a given metric
|
| So too are there multiple different options when working
| towards any nontrivial goal in the real world. In the
| context of stochastic optimization the multi-armed bandit
| problem is a rather well known concept.
|
| > evolution is not attempting to optimize anything
|
| For the purpose of communication (of some other idea) it
| could be reasonable to say that the human race merely
| wants survival first and foremost. That is what evolution
| is after, at least in a sense. Of course that is not
| technically correct. Pointing out technical
| inconsistencies isn't going to convince me that I'm in
| the wrong here because I've already explicitly
| acknowledged their presence and explained why as far as
| I'm concerned objecting to them is simply missing the
| point.
|
| Switching to a technical angle, to claim that evolution
| is not optimizing is to claim that water doesn't flow
| downhill but rather molecules just happen to vibrate and
| move around at random. It's completely ignoring the
| broader context. Evolution happens at a species level.
| It's an abstract concept inherently tied to other
| abstract concepts such as optimization and survival.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| and you are missing my point that trying to help people
| understand a process that has no design element as if it
| was one that did actually does them (and the process) a
| disservice, possibly a great disservice.
| card_zero wrote:
| I've told people off for using the pathetic fallacy too,
| in the past, I guess I just said "what do mushrooms want"
| for the sake of rhetoric. Well, because it would be
| funny. Fine then, I was trolling.
|
| Thanks to your discussion though, I'm now wondering how
| to square the idea that evolution produces knowledge with
| the idea that it doesn't optimize even for reproductive
| fitness. I think you're technically incorrect there: it's
| that it doesn't optimize exclusively in the short term or
| by any one obvious strategy. The bottom line is that what
| survives survives, though, you can't argue with a
| tautology. Even if what survives is a sloth or a sleeper
| shark or a bristlecone or (imagine) a single infertile
| but incredibly tough organism, it still had to find a way
| (alright, _stumble into_ a way). Maybe your objection is
| just that "optimize for" implies intent, but intentless-
| purism in language for biologists is as hard as pastless-
| purism in language for time travellers.
| ddingus wrote:
| I laughed!
|
| "What do mushrooms want?" Is hilarious given your
| evolution context!
|
| Sometimes, it can make sense to step back and laugh.
|
| The number one response to words we do not like is
| righteous indignation.
|
| It is almost always a bad idea too. Funny that!
|
| Humor can be powerful as can giving benefit of doubt
| followed by one or more probing questions.
|
| Amazing conversations often follow.
| uplifter wrote:
| > how to square the idea that evolution produces
| knowledge with the idea that it doesn't optimize even for
| reproductive fitness
|
| Its really fairly simply: natural selection requires two
| things: heritable genetics and a source of variation in
| the genetics between individuals. Mutation is the most
| basic source of variation, and that produces new
| information. But new information isn't necessarily
| knowledge. Assuming a scientific testing gloss, each new
| genetic code variation X can be considered as a
| hypothesis, that "variant X is fit", and then natural
| selection events that act on copies of X (for or against)
| serve as experiments testing the hypothesis. Through
| iterative experiments, we weed out the copies of the
| variants where the hypothesis of them being fit was
| proved by natural selection to be false, and what remains
| should be those copies of genetic variants which have
| (mostly) proven to be true. Learning and understanding
| which variants are fit (where the hypotheses are true) is
| knowledge, and in this way evolution produces knowledge
| while not having any optimization goal (in the intent
| sense, which I agree is a requirement for something to be
| meaningfully "optimizing" anything, because you can't aim
| in a direction without a sense for that direction).
| squeefers wrote:
| > Assuming a scientific testing gloss, each new genetic
| code variation X can be considered as a hypothesis, that
| "variant X is fit", and then natural selection events
| that act on copies of X (for or against) serve as
| experiments testing the hypothesis
|
| this is the problem i have with natural selection... it
| has no predictive power. You can never use natural
| selection theory to say if an organism is "fit" before it
| exhibits its fitness. what good is this?
| uplifter wrote:
| This may be more a problem with how "fit" is defined and
| used than with natural selection theory itself. Fitness
| can be hard to define beyond the trivial "these organisms
| which survived the selection event must be the fit ones,"
| and natural systems are usually so noisy with inputs that
| its hard to figure out what was actually important in
| retrospect, or likely to evolve in the future.
|
| Only in situations with a powerful selection pressure
| (like an asteroid strike causing a nuclear winter, or
| antibiotic applied to a petri dish) can one have a hope
| of reliably predicting which variants will be selected
| for or against.
|
| However, these situations are not irrelevant, especially
| if we can predict the likelihood of those situations
| developing. Real predictions of the theory of natural
| selection can be applied to managing antibiotic
| resistance in populations of bacteria. For example, we
| know that antibiotic resistance mechanisms that bacteria
| evolve will often have an energy metabolism cost to their
| maintenance. This means that, absent pressure to be
| resistant to antibiotics, we'd expect a population to
| gradually lose individuals with the genes for the
| resistance mechanism, because they would be incurring a
| metabolic penalty for possessing those genes. So natural
| selection theory accurately predicts that if you remove
| the selection pressure of the antibiotic, the bacteria
| will evolve to lose the resistance mechanism, and become
| susceptible to the antibiotic again over several
| generations of natural selection. Using this knowledge,
| some rural regions will discontinue use of a given class
| of antibiotics in agriculture to allow for resistant
| strains to decline, and then resume their use when they
| are again effective. By intelligently rotating use of
| antibiotics in this way, we can enjoy their benefits
| without incurring too much inefficiencies and worse
| tragedies from antibiotic resistance.
|
| That is real & useful predictive power.
| uplifter wrote:
| There is no broader context wherein natural selection can
| be considered to be an optimization process, that is a
| pernicious misconception of evolutionary theory.
| Fortunately, people with a computer science background
| have a distinct advantage towards correcting this
| fallacy, because their training affords them an
| understanding of information as a working concept that
| lay people rarely attain.
|
| The key insight is that any algorithm implementation for
| a process which has an objective must, as an absolute
| minimal requirement, possess an encoding of that
| objective in its implementation. That is, a real
| representation of the goal must be in the process's make-
| up so that the goal can be pursued at all, because
| correct navigation requires assessing actions for whether
| they work towards the goal or not, and any such
| assessment requires meaningful reference to the goal.
| Without such a definition to refer to, differentiation
| between desirable and undesirable outcomes is impossible.
|
| This goal encoding may be explicit (ie readily
| understandable by observers studying the implementation)
| or implicit (hard to parse), but either way, it must be
| instantiated in the make-up of the implementation, in
| some medium with the capacity to hold the goal
| definition, ie a way of storing the requisite number of
| bits within the implementation itself (or readily reading
| it from elsewhere, or constructing it from some
| combination thereof). This definition of the goal must be
| implemented in a manner that can be read and acted upon
| by the rest of the algorithm implementation, so that the
| system as a whole can pursue states that better match the
| goal. ie so that it can optimize.
|
| With regards to evolution, how could nature _select_
| without having an _idea_ of _what_ it was selecting for?
| A reference definition of fitness must be available to
| nature if it is to measure each individual organism 's
| fitness and select accordingly.
|
| For a natural-selection-as-optimization-process algorithm
| implementation, there would need to be a component that
| encodes natural selection's optimization objective into
| the implementation's very make-up (or a ready way to read
| that goal from an external source).
|
| What is the make-up of the natural selection algorithm's
| implementation? It is the entirety of nature itself, in
| whole _and_ in part. Nature is literally everything in
| the universe, and literally anything in the universe,
| from the most massive galaxy to the smallest particle,
| can participate in natural selection events. And no part
| of nature, save for some animal brains, seems to contain
| a representation of a goal for natural selection.
|
| Is it even conceivable that everything in the universe,
| down to the smallest particle, could encode a common
| goal? Does a volcano encode the goal of maximizing
| reproductive fitness for the populations living around
| it? Can a shower of cosmic rays encode the goal of making
| sure the creatures who's DNA it disrupts are the ones who
| should be removed from the populace? They don't appear to
| encode any such evolutionary goals, nor do they have the
| capacity to maintain any goal at all beyond following the
| physical laws of matter -- Volcanos are disordered piles
| of rock and churning lava, and cosmic rays are singular
| fundamental particles that are subject to wholesale
| transformation with every impact -- neither has any way
| of encoding a common objective for natural selection, nor
| is there evidence for them being able to collectively
| maintain one.
|
| We can illustrate the paradox of an optimizing nature
| using your water molecule analogy. A collection of water
| molecules acting under a gravitational field will
| demonstrate downwards fluid dynamics which single
| molecules in space would not, but no matter how much H2O
| you put together, it will never spontaneously develop any
| concept of evolutionary fitness.
|
| And yet a flash flood is a very real natural selection
| event that can reshape the genepool of a coastal town,
| but all the same it has no means of representing any goal
| of optimizing the population's fitness through who it
| drowns and who it spares; its just water. Flowing water
| performs natural selection, but it isn't optimizing for
| any goal, no matter how you try to spin it, because it
| has no way of maintaining a representation of a goal in
| its disordered and inconstant structure. It flows, yes,
| but it has no goal in doing so, its not pursuing any
| optimization objective, all the while it is a real
| instance of natural selection. It doesn't have or need
| any way of determining who is more or less fit than
| another, so how could it be optimizing for it? It's just
| flooding.
|
| Whether its by deluge, an erupting volcano, a congenital
| heart attack, or a pack of rabid dogs, the processes
| making up natural selection events do not possess an
| encoding of a goal for natural selection. They do not
| possess the necessary information structure required to
| pursue a common optimization objective, and so they
| cannot be optimization processes in any meaningful sense.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > The key insight is that any algorithm implementation
| for a process which has an objective must, as an absolute
| minimal requirement, possess an encoding of that
| objective in its implementation.
|
| I don't agree with this in any way, or perhaps more
| accurately, I don't agree that we know (and perhaps could
| know) the scope of the implementation even if this claim
| was true, which I don't think it is.
|
| The idea that "people with a computer science background
| have a distinct advantage" is also plainly wrong to me. I
| have a background (as in, I quit my PhD in) computational
| biology, have been a software engineer for more than 35
| years, and there are just as many people with as without
| computer science backgrounds who fall for the fallacy.
| uplifter wrote:
| What part of it don't you agree with? That an algorithm
| implementation must encode the goal that it pursues? How
| can something pursue a goal it has no access to a
| definition of? If you have an alternative way it could
| work, please propose it.
|
| I'm not asking rhetorically, I'm truly interested in
| learning the flaws in my argument for why natural
| selection cannot be modelled as an optimization process.
| So if you have the time to reply with a more detailed
| rebuttal, I'd much appreciate it.
|
| edit: Addendum: I recognize my claim that computer
| scientists might have an advantage in understanding this
| is contentious, and I was not implying that they (we) as
| a group have a better record of understanding evolution's
| subtlety than biologists (which I studied in uni) or the
| average lay person. I just think they could have an
| advantage in understanding the version of the argument
| that I gave above, and I am interested in improving it
| for that purpose.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| What is the algorithm implementation when it comes to the
| physical world? Does the implementation extend to remote
| galaxies? Is the strong force part of the implementation?
| We don't know ... there appears to be no way to know.
|
| But even if you could know, it is just demonstrably wrong
| that the implementation must encode the goal. If you
| create selection pressure, and have a reproductive system
| that allows for mutations, then you _may end up_ an
| "implementation" that encodes the goal implicit in the
| selection pressure. But anyone who messed around with
| genetic algorithms or artificial life in the 90s knows
| that you can trivially start out with no resemblance to
| "the goal" at all. Where life on earth in aggregate or
| any specific example of it in particular might be along
| that pathway is similarly impossible to say.
|
| Finally, even defining "the goal" is tricky. Consider the
| well-documented case of moth evolution in industrial (and
| later, post-industrial) northern England. Their
| camouflaging wing tones changed to respond to the typical
| color on vertical surfaces, twice within a human
| generation or three. Was "the goal" flexible coloration
| across generations, or was it "light, then "dark" and
| then "light" again? That's a philosophical question as
| much as anything ...
| uplifter wrote:
| > What is the algorithm implementation when it comes to
| the physical world?
|
| It is the physical world, nature is the implementation of
| the natural selection algorithm. Yes, the strong force is
| part of the implementation, because the strong force can
| play a role in selection events, cf nuclear bombs and
| radiation. The gravitational pull of remote galaxies can
| also influence selection events by changing planetary
| orbits minutely.
|
| I don't see these as problems for my argument because I
| am not the one claiming they encode an objective, I just
| see them as natural forces which can influence selection
| without any overarching purpose or goal. It is those
| claiming natural selection is an optimization process who
| must show how it could work. The onus is on them to show
| where their supposed objective of natural selection is
| encoded in its implementation.
|
| > If you create selection pressure, and have a
| reproductive system that allows for mutations, then you
| may end up an "implementation" that encodes the goal
| implicit in the selection pressure.
|
| What goal are you referring to?
|
| > But anyone who messed around with genetic algorithms or
| artificial life in the 90s knows that you can trivially
| start out with no resemblance to "the goal" at all. Where
| life on earth in aggregate or any specific example of it
| in particular might be along that pathway is similarly
| impossible to say.
|
| I am one of these people, but I don't know what goal you
| are saying these systems came to demonstrate. Are you
| saying these artificial evolution systems had objectives
| they pursued? What caused them to follow these
| objectives? What is this "pathway"?
|
| >Consider the well-documented case of moth evolution in
| industrial (and later, post-industrial) northern England.
| Their camouflaging wing tones changed to respond to the
| typical color on vertical surfaces, twice within a human
| generation or three. Was "the goal" flexible coloration
| across generations, or was it "light, then "dark" and
| then "light" again?
|
| There was no goal at any point in the process. Moths with
| colors that matched their contemporaneous environment
| were less likely to be eaten by predators than those
| which stood out. Calling it a goal is a confusion, its
| trying to add a conceptual framing that isn't necessary
| and adds nothing to the understanding of the system.
| Neither the soot levels in the air nor the birds hunting
| for moths have a goal of adjusting the balance of moth
| coloration phenotypes. They are just the context, along
| with everything else in their environment, in which
| evolution of moth coloration may occur.
|
| In what sense is there any goal in the example? And if it
| is a goal, why is it not optimization? I claim there is
| no goal, no optimization objective to natural selection.
| Its not just a philosophical side question, it is the
| question.
|
| edit: typo
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > It is the physical world, nature is the implementation
| of the natural selection algorithm.
|
| But you don't know (and to some degree, cannot know)
| which parts of it. So you cannot really know if the
| implementation encodes a goal or not.
|
| > What goal are you referring to?
|
| Whatever goal was being used in the case of genetic
| algorithms or artificial life systems. Those systems have
| goals, but the early stages do not embody the goal in any
| way you could recognize.
|
| > There was no goal at any point in the process.
|
| So in the case of natural evolution, we happen to agree.
| However, I don't agree with your claim that "the
| implementation must embody the goal" is a useful way to
| think about this, and I also have some sympathy for the
| idea that there could be huge-time-scale teleology
| associated with evolution _that we cannot discern_.
| uplifter wrote:
| Its conceivable that the universe could encode a goal
| somehow, after all its so vast, but that conceivability
| alone is not evidence for the existence of an encoded
| goal any more than the conceivability of extra-
| terrestrial intelligence, or of a higher design to
| reality, is proof of their existence. What science tells
| us is that the only goal nature seems to embody is
| following the physical laws we've been able to determine,
| and nothing more. I'd apply the same interesting
| hypothesis status to huge-time-scale teleology that we
| cannot discern, and perhaps it is both real and we will
| never be able to discern it. Personally I find the
| notions very interesting, but I don't see reason to
| believe in them. If there were good evidence for them,
| they'd be the subject of scientific study already.
|
| But we seem to agree that natural selection doesn't have
| a goal. In my observation, any purported overarching goal
| that is ascribed to natural selection, including the
| measure of inclusive fitness[0], can be reduced to some
| function of the context in which it is being observed,
| like moth coloration was influenced by soot levels.
|
| As to my main claim, I do believe it is necessary that an
| encoding of a goal is necessary for choice among actions
| in pursuit of a goal, because some kind of reference to a
| goal is necessary to compare options in a decision
| algorithm. In the case of a-life systems which have
| goals, that encoding is somewhere in the algorithm of
| evolution rules combined with the initial state of the
| simulation. In the case of nature, I don't see a place
| where that encoding could exist, except the trivial
| "goal" that all elements will follow the laws of physics.
|
| Please note though that I never put it that "the
| implementation must embody the goal," I was more careful
| with my language by saying that it must have an
| accessible or working encoding of the goal, one its
| decision process or evolution rule would need to
| reference in order to make decisions that favored it. The
| encoding need not be internal (so embody is definitely
| not necessary), and none of these things are necessarily
| explicit or well partitioned (e.g. an evolution rule can
| implicitly encode a goal).
|
| edit: addendum: [0] On inclusive fitness being reducible
| to situational factors, I'm just following the direction
| of M.A. Nowak, C.E. Tarnita and E.O. Wilson on this:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09205
| gary_0 wrote:
| A more intuitive and natural phrasing, even though it's
| invalid in a technical sense. I've noticed this happens
| when people talk about computers/software as well ("it
| thinks the variable is set", "it freaks out if it doesn't
| get a response", etc). Outside of formal
| writing/presentations, using only technical terminology
| seems to take a suboptimal amount of effort for both
| speaker and listener compared to anthropomorphizing
| (unless, as you mention, the listener is a layman who gets
| the wrong idea).
| jacquesm wrote:
| It definitely is not useful. Your model should at least
| attempt to approximate reality, not to depart from it by
| putting effect before the cause. That way lies madness.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| It is not a model. It is a description. I'm torn on
| whether it would be correct to refer to the approach as
| constituting a sort of analogy.
|
| No idea why you think the effect is being put before the
| cause. I'm hungry so I head to the kitchen. An observer
| says "he wants to eat". Antibiotics are administered.
| Only the bacterial cells expressing a certain set of
| proteins survive. An observer says "the infection wants
| to be resistant".
| uplifter wrote:
| > An observer says "the infection wants to be resistant"
|
| I can confidently claim that literally nobody says this
| because a google search for this exact phrase has only
| one result, and its this thread.[0]
|
| Really though, I have never met a biologist who thought
| this way. All of the ones I've met and worked with knew
| that development of antibiotic resistance is not in any
| way like a decision process, and they usually understood
| on an intuitive level that bacterial cultures don't have
| a goal of developing the capability. Its just something
| that evolves, which is a distinct category of process.
|
| Talking about it the other anthropomorphic way, like you
| claim is normal and acceptable, just confuses things; it
| is the opposite of helpful analogy. Infections don't
| "want" anything, they are better understood using the
| details of their actual biomolecular mechanics, which are
| about as far different from how brains work as could be
| imagined.
|
| [0]https://www.google.com/search?q=%22the+infection+wants
| +to+be...
| jacquesm wrote:
| > An observer says "the infection wants to be resistant".
|
| That's complete bs. Infections don't want anything.
| You're stuck in a loop of your own making, the only way
| out is to backtrack, not to keep on digging.
|
| These lines of thinking were discredited many years ago
| and since then the field has seen enormous progress,
| anthropomorphize all you want but reality does not care.
| squeefers wrote:
| try telling that to quantum physicists... theyll just
| give you the wave function and say "well it works doesnt
| it"?
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's a bad take. I'm sure you can do a lot better than
| that.
| Sharlin wrote:
| 0) What do humans have to do with it? We're not the only
| animals that eat mushrooms.
| RicardoLuis0 wrote:
| that's exactly the point, the _lack of_ humans during its
| evolution is what it has to do with us, a mushroom may be
| poisonous to the species that it evolved around, while at
| the same time not being poisonous to humans
| hinkley wrote:
| Survival of the fittest is also a wrong way to think about
| evolution that leads many people to make assumptions that are
| backward.
|
| Selection doesn't pick winners, it picks losers. But bad luck
| also picks losers, and good luck pick winners, so things with
| small negative or positive effects can be swamped, and
| anything neutral has no pressure to be phased out at all. So
| if being born with blue hair turns out not to have any effect
| on your survival, because for instance none of your predators
| can see blue any better than they can see what every color
| your mate is, then there will continue to be blue babies at
| some rate. And if you or your mate have other genes that do
| boost your survivability, then there will be a _lot_ of blue
| babies. But not on the merits of being blue. However the
| animals involved may just decide to involve blueness in their
| mate selection criteria. Because correlation.
|
| Then many generations later, if your habitat changes, or your
| range expands, maybe blue fur protects more or less well
| against UV light, or moss growing in your fur, or some new
| predator. Now the selection works more like people think it
| works. But it's been sitting there as genetic noise for
| perhaps centuries or eons, waiting for a complementary gene
| or environmental change to create a forcing function.
| childintime wrote:
| Nowadays evolution is waiting to be called
| "backpropagation".
| didibus wrote:
| > like to think of evolution as intelligent
|
| Evolution is more intelligent than people assume.
|
| The selection is driven by each species choices, and the more
| intelligent the species, the more intelligence played a role
| in it.
| pandemic_region wrote:
| > $insane_argument_against_evolution
|
| That looks like Perl variable syntax. Arguably the most
| mushroom like programming language.
| bonesss wrote:
| There's more than one way to be a fungi.
| tor825gl wrote:
| If I understood correctly the argument in The Selfish Gene,
| Dawkins suggests that thinking about a genome as having a
| goal which it adapts itself to work towards, is absolutely a
| useful conceptual model.
|
| He makes it very clear that the genome does not actually have
| intentionality, but also that this is the right way to
| imagine how organisms might evolve, as though they did have
| both goals and a plan.
| uplifter wrote:
| In The Selfish Gene, Dawkins emphasized that the primary
| unit of evolution was the individual gene, not whole
| genomes. The genes were replicators and the genomes were
| just collections of replicators, and the way the selection
| pressure math worked out, there was too much diffusion of
| responsibility for whole genomes that typically evolution
| could not work coherently at that scale, or at least that's
| my best recollection of the book's main theory.
|
| Regarding intentionality being a good practical assumption,
| I actually don't recall Dawkins recommending that, and it
| seems doubtful because that can lead to all kinds of
| fallacious reasoning. I mostly considered Dawkins a data-
| based neo-darwininian, so it would surprise me that he
| would recommend that.
|
| Could you recall a quote or chapter from the book that
| bolsters your point?
|
| edit: typo
| tor825gl wrote:
| > Could you recall a quote or chapter from the book that
| bolsters your point?
|
| Yes, the second word of the title.
| uplifter wrote:
| Yeah, that's not really good enough, by the author's own
| admission:
|
| From wikipedia: 'In the foreword to the book's 30th-
| anniversary edition, Dawkins said he "can readily see
| that [the book's title] might give an inadequate
| impression of its contents" and in retrospect wishes he
| had taken Tom Maschler's advice and titled it The
| Immortal Gene.[2] He laments that "Too many people read
| it by title only."' [0]
|
| Furthermore, your concept that genes should be thought of
| as having a plan is just in stark contradiction with the
| Darwinian conception of natural selection, which Dawkins
| was largely a champion of.
|
| My own recollection was that he described how genes
| readily had the _appearance_ of acting in their own best
| interest, but he fell short of advocating that modeling
| them as having intention is a useful contrivance.
| Evolution does not have any sense for the future, there
| is no planning evolved, and Dawkins understands that.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene
| tor825gl wrote:
| > he fell short of advocating that modeling them as
| having intention is a useful contrivance
|
| Sorry, I remember differently. That "modelling them as
| having intention is a useful contrivance" is exactly the
| central argument of the book.
|
| People misread the title by assuming that he was arguing
| that they actually did have intention.
| uplifter wrote:
| That's fine, all I'm saying is that if genes don't
| actually have intention, then the utility of modeling
| them as though they do must be strictly limited, if not
| an outright liability in some contexts. Use the heuristic
| at your own risk, but don't sell it as gospel truth.
| squeefers wrote:
| > but don't sell it as gospel truth.
|
| i dont think he did
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > So many people, even when they obviously know better, like
| to think of evolution as _intelligent_. It 's obviously not.
| But every time someone says stuff like this, it reinforces
| the fallacy and then we get people saying things like "if
| evolution is real, why come
| $insane_argument_against_evolution?"
|
| Tbh those kinds of people are beyond convincing. And I think
| most of them are trolling or have fallen under the spell of
| other trolls. There's clearly a network effect. We don't
| really have a flat earther movement here in Europe and
| evolution deniers are insignificant.
|
| I don't think people saying these things actually think
| evolution is intelligent. They just use the phrase "want" to
| indicate the survival pressure that lead to the change
| propagating.
|
| But the people that don't believe in evolution are so
| indoctrinated it doesn't matter what words we use.
|
| Ps I do find it fascinating that a non intelligent process
| like evolution managed to create intelligence. Even though
| the state of the world often makes me doubt intelligence
| exists :)
| squeefers wrote:
| > By the time our numbers were enough to provide evolutionary
| pressure, we started farming what we wanted, which kinda
| breaks the process
|
| a lot of assumption in this sentence. proof needed
| kgwxd wrote:
| Some are _saying_ : "Don't come anywhere near me". Others are
| are _saying_ : "Take a little, I'll show you a good time. Take
| too much... I will make you end your own life."
| bdangubic wrote:
| what others are saying works for hotdogs too :)
| RajT88 wrote:
| > And the poisonous ones apparently don't use color as a
| warning signal, and don't smell all that bad, and some of the
| poisons have really mild effects, like "gives only some people
| diarrhea" or "makes a hangover worse".
|
| Some of the poisonous ones even taste really good, and don't
| start making you sick for a day or two (and then you die
| horribly). You hear about it from time to time, where people
| have the best dinner of their life and then are dead.
| decimalenough wrote:
| You're likely referring to the death cap (Amanita
| phalloides), which is reportedly quite tasty. But there's
| also a mushroom that's both deadly poisonous and a sought-
| after, commercially sold delicacy, the only difference being
| the method of preparation:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyromitra_esculenta
|
| Although recent research suggests that some poison remains
| even after careful preparation, and that consumption may even
| be linked to ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease).
| RajT88 wrote:
| Partly I am sure.
|
| I have read stories similar to what I wrote from China as
| well. I think Europe too, but I would not swear on it.
| sans_souse wrote:
| I dig your style, you sound like my inner monologue :D
| ACCount37 wrote:
| Natural selection cuts both ways.
|
| Sure, many things evolved to be less edible. But humans
| themselves are hunter-gatherer omnivores - who evolved to be
| very good at eating a lot of very different things. There are
| adaptations in play on both ends.
|
| There are, in fact, many countermeasures that would deter other
| animals, but fail to deter humans. In part due to some liver
| adaptations, in part due to sheer body mass, and in part due to
| human-specific tricks like using heat to cook food.
|
| If your countermeasures just so happen to get denaturated by
| being heated to 75C, good luck getting humans with them. It's
| why a lot of grains or legumes are edible once cooked but
| inedible raw. The same is true for many "mildly poisonous"
| mushrooms - they lose their toxicity if cooked properly.
|
| Those countermeasures don't have to be lethal to deter
| consumption! If something causes pain, diarrhea or indigestion,
| or some weirder effects, or just can't be spotted or reached
| easily, that can work well enough. So the evolutionary pressure
| to always go for highly lethal defenses isn't there. It's just
| one pathway to take, out of many, and evolution will roll with
| whatever happens to work best at the moment.
|
| Human takeover of the biosphere is a recent event too, and
| humans are still an out-of-distribution threat to _a lot_ of
| things. So you get all of those weird situations - where
| sometimes, humans just blast through natural defenses without
| even realizing they 're there, and sometimes, the defenses work
| but don't work very well because they evolved to counter
| something that's not a human, and sometimes, the defenses don't
| exist at all because the plant's environment never pressured it
| to deter consumption by large mammals at all.
|
| And with the level of control humans attained over nature now?
| The ongoing selection pressure is often shaped less like "how
| to deter humans" and more like "how to attract humans", because
| humans will go out of their way to preserve and spread things
| they happen to like.
| username135 wrote:
| I appreciate your thirst for knowledge
| bluerooibos wrote:
| Amanita Muscaria seems like it does use colour as a warning
| signal - it's bright red.
| godelski wrote:
| Not exactly. You can eat that mushroom but you'll have
| indigestion problems. Squirrels around me love it though. You
| can also parboil it and you'll be fine, which it is actually
| quite tasty.
|
| That mushroom (Amanita muscaria) is also related to the death
| cap (Amanita phalloides). Though the toxins are different in
| the death cap and will not be converted/removed by
| parboiling. Worse than that, you won't show symptoms for over
| a day.
|
| The death cap is white or yellow, looking quite mundane.
| Especially compared to Muscaria.
| vintermann wrote:
| There are other bright red mushrooms (especially russulas)
| which are quite tasty. Russulas also can have many other
| bright colors. Conversely, many of the deadliest mushrooms
| where I live are plain and unassuming, at least in the color
| spectrum I can see.
| jerf wrote:
| Many good answers, but I'll add another angle I don't see any
| replies covering, which is that being poisonous/toxic is
| _expensive_. We humans lead charmed lives by the standards of
| the biosphere, where we get obese, and even before we got
| obese, many of us had unbelievable access to nutrients and
| energy. The steady state of the ecosystem is a war where every
| calorie must be spent carefully. This is particularly clear in
| the bacterial world but it progresses up to macroscopic plant
| life as well. Producing poisons is energy you could be using to
| grow or reproduce. Some poisons require additional care because
| they 're still poisonous to the producer, it's just that the
| producer spends additional resources on containing the poison
| so it doesn't affect them.
|
| There is a constant, low-level evolutionary impetus to stop
| spending any calorie that doesn't need to be spent, which would
| generally include the production of poisons of any kind. This
| low-level impetus is clearly something that can be overcome in
| many situations, but it is nevertheless always there, always
| the "temptation" to stop spending so much on poisons and
| redirect it to growth or reproduction. Over time it's a winning
| play quite often.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Fruit bodies are reproductive organs, spores can survive
| digestion, and there are plenty of species that use animal
| waste as a substrate.
|
| The same logic of hard seeds applies to spores.
| estimator7292 wrote:
| It's really fucking suspicious that mushrooms evolved
| mechanisms to produce serotonin.
|
| But it helps when you remember that a mushroom is the _fruit_
| of a (usually) much larger organism. Then you can start
| applying normal fruit rules. Some want to be eaten, or picked
| up and moved around. Some want to keep insects from infesting
| the fruit. Others don 't give a damn and release spores into
| the wind or water.
|
| Also remember that nicotine is an insecticide. Insects that
| nibble on tobacco die, which prevents infestation at scale.
| (Un?)fortunately it's also neuroactive in apes, so we farm
| incredible quantities of tobacco to extract its poisons.
|
| There is no logic in evolution at large scales. Things happen,
| sometimes there's fourth order effects like some oddball
| internal hormone causing wild hallucinations in apes. It's all
| random optimization for small scale problems that ripple out to
| unintended large scale consequences.
| Sam6late wrote:
| BTW, Caffeine is also a naturally occurring insecticide, yet
| humans tend to repurpose and hack things.
| barbacoa wrote:
| Some argue that THC in cannabis actually works similarly
| because when herbivores regularly ingest it, they become
| lethargic and lazy, causing them struggle to survive in the
| world. Kinda like my roommate.
| spike021 wrote:
| your last sentence reminds me of my dorm roommate in
| college. very standard stoner who was constantly blazing
| and years later i've never known a lazier dude.
| shaneofalltrad wrote:
| But cannabis the needs heat to convert, it's more likely
| it evolved with Human influence considering the years of
| overlapping land races tied to our trade routes
| joquarky wrote:
| But CBD does not need heat to convert.
|
| I have a hypothesis that taking cannabis (and especially
| CBD) out of our food chain may be contributing to the
| increase1 in prevalence of chronic pain.
|
| 1 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12588185/?utm_
| sourc...
| jbkkd wrote:
| When was cannabis ever in the human food chain?
| 5-0 wrote:
| While not being cannabis, breast milk contains
| endocannabinoids.
| TheGoddessInari wrote:
| THC comes in a plant in the THCa form. CBD comes in CBDa
| form.
|
| Both are not bioactive by default in their natural form.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| All I'll say is go spend a day picking hops without
| gloves.
|
| There are a large number of cannabinoids at play, some
| clearly (as in observably and demonstrably) are bioactive
| in their natural, unheated form.
|
| ---
|
| None of which is said to endorse the other theory. Just
| to point out that claiming heat is required is incorrect.
| mothballed wrote:
| The farm bill makes 'hemp' anything with below 0.3% THC
| legal. For this reason, we have a LOT of testing on the
| THC content of cannabis, since it is required to sell and
| manufacture. As it turns out, naturally cannabis quite
| commonly has >0.3% THC even before heating or activation
| of THCa.
|
| Any human-like animal with our receptors eating a large
| amount would get high as fuck, cooked or not. A ruminant
| eating pounds of the stuff raw, would not be that
| different from a human consuming an ounce of baked pot.
| Aloisius wrote:
| THCa in cannabis plants is unstable. It will slowly
| convert to THC as it dries even at room temperature.
| LPisGood wrote:
| I thought it wasn't generally psychoactive until heated?
| hammock wrote:
| Ibotenic acid, muscarine, psilocybin, amanitin, muscimol,
| THC, caffeine - these all natural pesticides target bugs
| primarily. Which are the biggest threat. Sort of funny
| how it also affects people though
| boxed wrote:
| All spices basically too afaik.
| h33t-l4x0r wrote:
| Chilis, tobacco and tomatoes are all in the same family
| (nightshades). And they are all "New World" plants. Which
| means Europe had to live without them until 1600 or so.
| If you can call that living.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Don't forget the potato! Europe before the potato seems
| like a miserable place
| creshal wrote:
| And coffee didn't make the jump until around the same
| time, either. No wonder Europeans wanted to be anywhere
| on the planet except Europe.
| peebee67 wrote:
| I've often had the mental image of Galileo trying to
| order a pizza and being very disappointed at the garlic
| bread that turned up.
| mc32 wrote:
| Imagine Indian food without chilies... it'd be as dull as
| Russian food.
| jacobolus wrote:
| There are some flowers which produce tiny amounts of
| caffeine in their nectar, apparently to give the
| pollinators a buzz.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Love me some Capsaicin, even though I'm not supposed too (I
| guess)
| jyounker wrote:
| It's even weirder than that. It turns out that at very low
| concentrations caffeine seems to have similar effects on
| insect neurology as it does on ours. There are some plant
| species whose flowers produce caffeinated nectar. Bees seem
| to like these flowers preferentially, and have an easier
| time remembering where they are. (Yes, bees get buzzed.)
| raverbashing wrote:
| Capsaicin as well
|
| And birds are immune to it
| mjanx123 wrote:
| The brain is a fiber network like the mycelium, likely the
| same genes (animals are related to mushrooms) and
| neurotransmitters are involved in its function.
| justinclift wrote:
| > animals are related to mushrooms
|
| ???
|
| Apparently in very early evolution animals and fungi shared
| a common ancestor. That's a pretty far cry from "related
| to" as its generally used.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Slightly related as mushrooms are closer to animal than
| to plants, as anyone in a grocery store would guess.
| justinclift wrote:
| > anyone in a grocery store would guess.
|
| Actually, I'd challenge that particular point.
|
| Mushrooms seem to be found in the fresh fruit and
| vegetables area, rather than in the deli (meat and
| cheese), so that would probably point more towards them
| being considered "vegetables". Or fruit. ;)
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Yep, however one wishes to classify them botanically,
| mushrooms are a vegetable in culinary usage (similar to
| tomatoes in that way).
| gus_massa wrote:
| I agree. Sorry, bad English. "as" -> "in oposite of" (or
| something like that).
| mc32 wrote:
| It's "alive" therefore it must have an early common
| ancestor and thus related... people like stretching
| definitions.
|
| At some point when aliens are confirmed and if they were
| carbon based you might have people say earth species and
| alien species are "related".
| meindnoch wrote:
| No.
| Llamamoe wrote:
| It's not that suspicious- many molecules in nature are made
| from the same few precursors like cholesterol, amino acids,
| etc. and on top of that there's pressure for plants/fungi to
| evolve molecules similar to ones animals use in order to
| affect them.
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| A mushroom doesn't produce seeds, it produces spores.
|
| If you pick a mushroom the spores use you, your clothes, your
| pets, your horses as vectors for spreading.
| homerowilson wrote:
| "one mushroom species in five is poisonous"? 20% ??? That seems
| like a crazy high estimate to me, at least if you mean deadly
| poisonous to humans. In the USA there are only a few species of
| amanita, galerina, a few of the hundreds of species of
| cortinarius, maybe some gyromitra and a handful of others I can
| think of that will kill you. Among the many thousands of
| mushroom species in the USA, there are only a few dozen known
| deadly poisonous ones. It's a really tiny percentage. Of course
| that doesn't mean that the others are _edible_ , just not gonna
| kill you...
| zjuventus14 wrote:
| Seems clear to me that poisonous != deadly poisonous by GPs -
| as they stated, many of the poisonous mushrooms have mild
| side effects, like "makes a hangover worse." So 20% is
| definitely high for deadly poisonous, but not for
| inedible/mildly poisonous.
| hristov wrote:
| The fly agaric, is very poisonous and has a very distinctive
| red with white dots pattern to warn about its poison.
| Unfortunately, that pattern looks so pretty that disney and
| ninetendo decided to use it as their generic mushroom coloring.
| So, if you are hiking with your kids, and they see a pretty
| mushroom just like in cartoons, don't let them touch it.
|
| If there are enough poisonous mushrooms, it is possible that
| most animals decide to leave mushrooms alone regardless of
| distinctive coloring. That seems to be the case because
| mushrooms tend not to be bitten by large animals, at least when
| i go mushrooming. If that happens, it is possible that other
| mushrooms do not develop poison but rather freeload on the
| poison of other mushrooms.
|
| Thus, one may guess, that first distinctive poisonous mushrooms
| like the fly agaric developed, then most animals large enough
| to eat them developed an instinct to avoid all mushrooms, and
| then the non-poisonous freeloading mushrooms developed.
|
| There are some psychedelic mushrooms in the amazon that use
| their psychedelic effect to zombify ants and force them to
| spread the mushrooms spores. That is really disturbing, find a
| youtube video of it if you feel like having some nightmares.
|
| Furthermore it should be noted that the poison or the
| psychedelic effect may not even be relevant for evolution. The
| poisonous or psychedelic compound may be produced for
| completely different purpose or as a byproduct of the
| production of another useful compound.
| vintermann wrote:
| There are plenty of poisonous plants that large animals e.g.
| farm animals will happily eat and die. Yew, water hemlock
| etc. are notorious livestock killers.
|
| According to a farmer friend of mine, sheep are also
| absolutely crazy about hedgehog mushrooms (hydnum repandum),
| which is not poisonous, but it suggests that they don't shun
| mushrooms.
| uplifter wrote:
| >Thus, one may guess, that first distinctive poisonous
| mushrooms like the fly agaric developed, then most animals
| large enough to eat them developed an instinct to avoid all
| mushrooms, and then the non-poisonous freeloading mushrooms
| developed.
|
| Just wanted to note that these phenomena are important enough
| in the study of mimicry in biology to have earned their own
| names:
|
| Mullerian mimicry is when two species who are similarly well
| defended (foul tasting, toxic or otherwise noxious to eat)
| converge in appearance to mimic each other's honest warning
| signals.
|
| Batesian mimicry is when a harmless or palatable species
| evolves to mimic a harmful, toxic, or otherwise defended
| species.
| r00f wrote:
| I've watched a documentary on mushrooms. Their posion is not a
| defense mechanism in most (all? don't remember) cases. It is
| just a consequence of the fact that mushrooms need to dump the
| excess Nitrogen somewhere, and that is related to the fact that
| most posionous mushrooms are those who thrive in Nitrogen-rich
| environments, like a leaf forest floor. And unfortunately for
| us, Nitrogen is a component for many creative biologically
| active substances. FWIW, human is the best mushroom's friend,
| when you cut it and carry around you seed tons of spores, so as
| a sibling comment said, mushrooms would not need to develop
| anti-human defenses. It's just that some of them got (un)lucky
| when played the chemical roulette while trying to figure out
| how to get rid of Nitrogen waste.
| m463 wrote:
| I think of those "genetic algorithm car thing" simulations that
| run in a browser.
|
| weird stuff survives.
|
| and good stuff crashes and burns sometimes.
| HaukeHi wrote:
| Plants want to be eaten only by big animals that take them on
| long and random walks and then die far away from where they are
| picked up to fertilize the seed.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Which also explains the talking Ameglian Major Cow on the
| menu at Milliways, in Douglas Adams' The Restaurant at the
| End of the Universe: when you confuse evolutionary outcomes
| with intent, you end up with livestock enthusiastically
| volunteering for dinner.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAF35dekiAY
| scotty79 wrote:
| > What do mushrooms want?
|
| I think it's a way of mushrooms saying "We don't think of you
| at all."
| mapmeld wrote:
| Horizontal gene transfer is looking a lot more common than we
| learned in biology class. Fungi have a class of proteins
| (Starships) which transfer hundreds of genes, beetles picked up
| cellulose-digesting proteins from bacteria in their digestive
| tract and embryos.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_(genetics)
| hammock wrote:
| A corpse keeps other grazers away for the rest of the season.
| anthk wrote:
| That reminds me of Mckenna/Peter Meyer and the fractal time.
|
| https://www.fractal-timewave.com/articles.php
|
| You can get a free-libre Unix timewave generator there:
|
| https://github.com/kl4yfd/timewave_z3r0
|
| It's a bit pseudo-science but some Chinese wrote an article on
| the I-Ching and patterns and it can have a bit of truth on it.
|
| https://vixra.org/abs/2409.0093 [ Chinese, use whatever tool you
| like to translate it]
|
| I said this because both Mckenna and Peter did writtings about
| DMT and the experiences under it:
|
| https://scribe.rip/illumination/terence-mckenna-explores-the...
|
| >Terence had symbolically left a single mushroom standing in the
| middle of the hut. As they sat there, for a fleeting moment
| Terence saw "not a mature mushroom but a planet, the earth,
| lustrous and alive, blue and tan and dazzling white." Dennis saw
| the exact same image and concluded the experiment had been a
| success. Terence was not convinced.
|
| I saw this in a dream too; but I remember descending uber fast
| from space to home, as if I were in a amusement ride, that one
| where you are dropped at high speeds from a fair height, but with
| far more vertigo. Also, I was in space in some kind of a capsule
| before the jump.
| therobots927 wrote:
| McKenna also talked quite a bit about talking to little elves
| on DMT.
| anthk wrote:
| These could be leftovers from genetical, hereditary fears
| (and helpful feelings) against wild beasts since prehistoric
| times.
| therobots927 wrote:
| Or it could be evidence that consciousness is more
| complicated and interconnected than we think. Regarding the
| time wave I actually purchased the software but haven't
| managed to get it to run. I like a lot of mckennas ideas
| but I do get the sense that he went off the deep end
| towards the end. Maybe it had something to do with his
| brain cancer.
| anthk wrote:
| http://www.levity.com/eschaton/sheliak/shelform.pdf
|
| Also:
|
| Timewave zero for Unix:
|
| https://github.com/kl4yfd/timewave_z3r0
|
| The whole page has more info on the formalization:
|
| http://www.levity.com/eschaton/sheliak/
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Author flies around the world to find a shroom that makes reality
| feel like Super Mario and didn't even bite into one... lost
| opportunity
| oytis wrote:
| Experts
| OhMeadhbh wrote:
| Hmm... having trouble getting _that_ URL. Archive.org has a
| recent snapshot at
| https://web.archive.org/web/20251226204255/https://nhmu.utah...
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| No the site is just having its own "fairytale-like
| hallucinations"
| Bjorkbat wrote:
| I'm sure there's some boring neuro-chemical explanation for this,
| and I won't doubt or deny the neuro-chemical explanation, but the
| fact that there's a mushroom that consistently brings about
| hallucinations of tiny people is so bizarre that I kind of want
| to indulge in equally bizarre explanations. Maybe it's not a
| hallucination and this mushroom simply allows us to see the tiny
| people all around us. Maybe mushrooms are intelligent and are
| intentionally making us hallucinate tiny people.
|
| It's a little bit crazy, I know, but it's odd to me that
| evolutionary forces would produce a mushroom that makes you have
| some specific hallucinations, rather than simply make things
| swirl together or simply produce intense feelings of euphoria or
| dread. I mean, marijuana just gets you high and that's that.
| sandspar wrote:
| Perhaps human-like creatures are so common in drug
| hallucinations because we're human, social animals, creatures
| who are maximally interested in other humans. If you gave drugs
| to dogs then perhaps they'd see human-like things mixed with
| dog-like things. I assume crocodiles, solitary animals, would
| see nothing besides wounded fish or maybe sexy female
| crocodiles.
| puttycat wrote:
| Hugged to death. Archived mirror: https://archive.is/CwDtf
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Site seems to be overwhelmed rn. https://archive.vn/CwDtf
| anonzzzies wrote:
| Psilocybin always gives me fairytale like, animated and very
| vivid hallucinations. Would be curious how these differ.
| malikolivier wrote:
| If I remember correctly, the properties mentioned in this
| document are well-known and commonly found in mushroom field
| guides or scientific literature written in the Chinese language.
|
| I've been to Yunnan and have eaten that mushroom too (properly
| cooked!). We can find closely related species to this one in the
| wild in Japan too, but documentation for those Lanmaoa species
| found outside China is currently lacking, I believe.
|
| EDIT: Found the field guide I was thinking about on my shelf.
| It's "Zhong Guo Zhen Jun Zhi Niu Gan Jun Ke (III)" [1], which is
| only about boletes!
|
| [1]
| https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E7%9C%9F%E8%...
| alex_young wrote:
| Archive:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20251226204255/https://nhmu.utah...
| calebm wrote:
| I feel like the natural test to do is: do experiments, and see if
| different people see the same little people doing the same
| things. That would move the observations from subjective to
| objective perspective.
| Sargos wrote:
| Testing the theory of whether psychedelics are just inside our
| heads or whether our consciousness travels somewhere
| objectively really is why this Tales From The Trip video is my
| favorite videos. Both men see the same blue woman which is very
| interesting! https://youtu.be/P_34oNWmNsc?si=_k2CG5b-TVuDaFvM
| Razengan wrote:
| I say it again, fungi and cephalopods are the closest things to
| aliens we have on this world.
| d-lisp wrote:
| The more I look at Animalia species the more I tend to judge
| this is all alien compared to ... mountains.
|
| Eyes, hair, hands, feet, genitalia : this all becomes pretty
| weird if I look at it "objectively".
| bjt wrote:
| Looks like the site is being hugged to death. Here's another
| instance of the article (I think).
|
| https://attheu.utah.edu/science-technology/mushroom-causes-f...
| lionkor wrote:
| https://archive.ph/CwDtf
| Ekaros wrote:
| Reminds me of Lem's The Futurological Congress. Where drugs were
| speculated to be used in wars to make people imagine war
| machines. Much cheaper solution to make opponent imagine a bomber
| plane than actually to build enough of them...
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Which reminds me of the psychoactive assault makers in Lina
| Nguyen's nanotech novels.
| MaysonL wrote:
| Reminiscent of Terence McKenna and his DMT elves...
| purplezooey wrote:
| Let's get Rockefeller up in here
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