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

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

#91

Post by Sharlin » Fri, Dec 26, 2025, 10:16 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…

0) What do humans have to do with it? We're not the only animals that eat mushrooms.

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

#92

Post by decimalenough » Fri, Dec 26, 2025, 10:19 PM UTC

RajT88 wrote: post #84

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…

> 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…

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).

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

#93

Post by culi » Fri, Dec 26, 2025, 10:20 PM UTC

memming wrote: post #37

Aparently 见手青 is mildly toxic yet commonly consumed in Yunan.

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 (见手青) is completely fine when cooked

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

#94

Post by culi » Fri, Dec 26, 2025, 10:21 PM UTC

spjt wrote: post #27

Let's ban it before anyone finds out if it's useful

Just need a minority in America to associate it with

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

#95

Post by consumer451 » Fri, Dec 26, 2025, 10:26 PM UTC

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.

Sorry to use a reddit-ism, but "this should be at the top" - for safety.

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

#96

Post by decimalenough » Fri, Dec 26, 2025, 10:27 PM UTC

poulpy123 wrote: post #20

isoprophlex wrote: post #14

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…

> mushroom sized > blue when bruised > make see small fairy people did they found the schtroumpf village ?

Aka the Smurfs in English.

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

#97

Post by yieldcrv » Fri, Dec 26, 2025, 10:31 PM UTC

tirant wrote: post #64

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…

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.

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

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

#98

Post by andy_ppp » Fri, Dec 26, 2025, 10:31 PM UTC

astronads wrote: post #8

treetalker wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, the machine elves rabbit hole is interesting for sure. I hope a lot more rigorous science delves into both mushrooms and DMT

Someone has to support consciousness and reality I guess, thanks to the elves I say…

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

#99

Post by ACCount37 » Fri, Dec 26, 2025, 10:34 PM UTC

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…

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.

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

#100

Post by DonHopkins » Fri, Dec 26, 2025, 10:34 PM UTC

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…

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.