Let's ban it before anyone finds out if it's useful
Just need a minority in America to associate it with
Do you lot ever get tired of saying stuff like this? It’s not 2016 anymore, there’s no need for it.
Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations
161–170 of 344 posts
Re: Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations
#162Re: Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
BTW, Caffeine is also a naturally occurring insecticide, yet humans tend to repurpose and hack things.
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.
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.
Re: Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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, suggesti…
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.
Re: Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just need a minority in America to associate it with
Do you lot ever get tired of saying stuff like this? It’s not 2016 anymore, there’s no need for it.
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
Re: Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations
#166Earlier 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…
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…
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.
Re: Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations
#167So, 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…
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.
Re: Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations
#168So, 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 doze…
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.
Re: Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
BTW, Caffeine is also a naturally occurring insecticide, yet humans tend to repurpose and hack things.
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.
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