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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

#141

Post by heavyset_go »

card_zero wrote: post #63

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 spe…

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.

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

#142

Post by estimator7292 »

card_zero wrote: post #63

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 spe…

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.

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

#143

Post by didibus »

fooqux wrote: post #69
card_zero wrote: post #63

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 spe…

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…

> 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.

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

#144

Post by DoctorOetker »

card_zero wrote: post #63

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 spe…

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.

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

#145

Post by homerowilson »

card_zero wrote: post #63

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 spe…

"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...

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

#146

Post by fc417fc802 »

jacquesm wrote: post #139
fc417fc802 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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.

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".

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

#147

Post by uh_uh »

DonHopkins wrote: post #100
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…

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.

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.

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

#148

Post by subscribed »

why-o-why wrote: post #58
Aurornis wrote: post #56

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.

"Days"?!? Hard pass. My experiments with shrooms in college was fun, but I couldn't deal with the 8-12 hours of hallucinating.

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.

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

#149

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

uh_uh wrote: post #132
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bel…

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.

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).

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

#150

Post by godelski »

bluerooibos wrote: post #130
card_zero wrote: post #63

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 spe…

Amanita Muscaria seems like it does use colour as a warning signal - it's bright red.

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.

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