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Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations

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Re: Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations

#101

Post by IanCal »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #80
fooqux wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 th…

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.

Re: Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations

#102

Post by pea »

astronads wrote: post #2

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…

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.

Re: Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations

#103

Post by wyldfire »

uh_uh wrote: post #83
VanshPatel99 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 h…

> 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.

Re: Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations

#104

Post by yes_man »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #87
uh_uh wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

That mechanism is a set of genes failing to procreate.

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)

Re: Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations

#105

Post by thaumasiotes »

renewiltord wrote: post #45
culi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

xiǎo rén rén? 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.

It doesn't look like 小人人 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.

Re: Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations

#107

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #80
fooqux wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 th…

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).

Re: Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations

#108

Post by Bjorkbat »

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.

Re: Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations

#109

Post by gary_0 »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #80
fooqux wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 th…

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).
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