Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by coriny » Sat, Dec 27, 2025, 2:18 PM UTC

uh_uh wrote: post #138

wyldfire wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 h…

> 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…

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.

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

#252

Post by justinclift » Sat, Dec 27, 2025, 2:47 PM UTC

gus_massa wrote: post #244

justinclift wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Slightly related as mushrooms are closer to animal than to plants, as anyone in a grocery store would guess.

> 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. ;)

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

#253

Post by nck_p » Sat, Dec 27, 2025, 2:47 PM UTC

chpatrick wrote: post #26

Common Side Effects anyone?

Probably something like temporary death and teleportation

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

#254

Post by horsawlarway » Sat, Dec 27, 2025, 2:58 PM UTC

TheGoddessInari wrote: post #207

joquarky wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

THC comes in a plant in the THCa form. CBD comes in CBDa form. Both are not bioactive by default in their natural form.

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.

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

#255

Post by an0malous » Sat, Dec 27, 2025, 3:06 PM UTC

shlant wrote: post #225

fluoridation wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn. 8-12? For me the peak always lasted 2-3 hours and I was sober again after 7 hours.

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.

they might be counting the “after glow” as part of the trip, others don’t

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

#256

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Sat, Dec 27, 2025, 3:11 PM UTC

uplifter wrote: post #200

fc417fc802 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 towar…

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…

> 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.

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

#257

Post by squeefers » Sat, Dec 27, 2025, 3:15 PM UTC

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…

> 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

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

#258

Post by raverbashing » Sat, Dec 27, 2025, 3:27 PM UTC

Sam6late wrote: post #153

estimator7292 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

BTW, Caffeine is also a naturally occurring insecticide, yet humans tend to repurpose and hack things.

Capsaicin as well

And birds are immune to it

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

#259

Post by squeefers » Sat, Dec 27, 2025, 3:32 PM UTC

uplifter wrote: post #208

card_zero wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

> 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 sc…

> 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?

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

#260

Post by etyhhgfff » Sat, Dec 27, 2025, 3:33 PM UTC

treetalker wrote: post #6

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…

Would be interesting if the chemical mechanism is related or similar to the DMT one that creates the "machine elves" experience.

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.