Long Before Trees Overtook the Land, Earth Was Covered by Giant Mushrooms
smithsonianmag.com
smithsonianmag.com
So they don't look like toadstools. (sorry)
I'm confused about how these fit in the ecosystem though. Are these still just the fruiting bodies? Are they permanent?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI5frPV58tY
On a side note, I thought this was an interesting take on Bitcoin in relation to fungi.
https://medium.com/@BrandonQuittem/bitcoin-is-a-decentralize...
Makes me think of Omnivore (Of Man and Manta, #1) by Piers Anthony. A planet full of fungus, with fungoid animals.
https://phys.org/news/2011-04-araucarias-gauge-ancient-carbo...
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171127152109.h...
Edit: Maybe change this to https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jan/16/strangest-th...
https://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/9pmqxb/typical_...
I can only assume that mobile app was the best solution they could come up with after they realized they made a horrible mobile site.
Once they released a mobile app to compete with the great mobile app offerings that already existed, they crippled the mobile site with all those ads.
Could the ancient mushrooms and some of the theories about how mushrooms were the reason we became conscious be linked?
https://mic.com/articles/14276/magic-mushrooms-how-they-play...
This is fine, and can be useful so long as you keep it in mind. But also leads to some users of psychedelics who believe in all sorts of crackpot theories that they think they have discovered through something that seems akin to divine revelation, and are so utterly convinced of their truth that it goes beyond all reason.
You’re aware that psychedelics have been used extensively for millennia by many cultures in religious ceremonies, right?
So has animal and human sacrifice. What's your point?
I am a pretty skeptical person when it comes to these things too (doesn't even believe in god) but it doesn't strike me as such a far out explanation although as I said I have no base other than what is out there. It's at least a contender that should be taken seriously IMO.
This is pretty darned crackpot.
As to "as good an explanation as many others" - it really really isn't. We're getting into Lamarckian, inheritance-of-acquired-characteristics territory here, where this theory is positing a) that mushrooms being an aphrodisiac increases reproductive fitness of people who take them, and b) somehow this means the effects of the drug are passed on??
This is junk science.
I am not supporting any single interpretation I am just saying that in this area we don't really have anything firm to grasp on to and given that mushrooms where here before us I am not going to rule out that there is something to this even though it might not be McKennas theories.
I don't know how it can be junk science when it's not even science. I am asking a question there are more people than McKenna (people who didn't have any opinion about 2012) who have theories. Those theories will need to be testable to be science I don't think we have any test even by most rigorous scientific standards that allow us to test this area, at least not yet.
Right now I am just speculating not putting forward any specific theory but just to repeat. Mushrooms were here before us apparently covering the planet. So whatever was here originally we are a part of and that's at least to me worth exploring a little more than just calling it junk science.
If we assume that consciousness arises out of brains somehow, then we have a relatively good understanding of how psychedelics affect consciousness: they (roughly speaking) disrupt the normal pathways that electrical signals take in the brain, and cause different (pseudo random) pathways to be taken. This of course leads to all sorts of unusual thoughts and experiences. But this explanation doesn't apply in the case where there is no consciousness in the first place.
Personally I think consciousness is super-interesting. Once you realise that we have no real explanation as to how consciousness arises from the brain, and also that reactions to outside stimuli can occur without conscious awareness, it suddenly becomes much more plausible that things like trees or even rocks could have some kind of consciousness. I'm not saying I live my life as if this is true, but we really have no evidence that it's not the case...
Do they really? Or do they provide significant or important insights that are there anyway, but we can't reach them in our regular state?
This is like saying amphetamine provides an alertness that wasn't there in the host (who was, e.g. tired before taking it). Sure, that doesn't mean it's a bogus alertness.
Compare how many important insights that changed the world were obtained on psychedelics to how many were obtained not on psychedelics.
Psychedelics most likely simply trick the brain into thinking things are insightful, while dulling one's sense of reason and accuracy, making such insights fade once reason and accuracy return.
Those could simply be insights of a different nature.
Technical insights you need to sober to come up with. Artistic and philosophic insights can benefit from psychedelics (and have for millennia).
Alertness is a state of mind. Insight is not.
There might be lines of thought that are repressed normally that when on a psychedelic are allowed to enter the conscious mind.
I think psychedelic research has been repressed by society at large and I can only guess at why... But there is some positive findings that we ought to pursue around depression and addiction. I hope we can make some progress here.
And how do you know that those lines of thought aren't repressed because they're total garbage and make no sense at all?
Just because something feels true when you're on psychadelics doesn't let you skip the scientific method and assert its universal truth, fie on the unenlightened who says otherwise
Because we have carried some of those drug-induced lines of though (and poems, melodies, and insights, etc) out of drug trips for millennia, and people still care for them without drugs.
Says who? Insight in general is not the same as information.
Even without drugs a person can understand something instinctively but be totally unable to convey the notion to others (I'm reminded here of St. Augustine: "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know").
Besides, all kinds of artists, writers, thinkers and even a few scientists, have gotten interesting insights while on psychedelic drugs which remained tangible (in the form of songs, writings, etc) when they got off the drugs.
Valuing different states of mind and interesting artwork is not the same as valuing insight. Just because psychedelics produce value does not mean the value is indicative of insight.
I'm afraid the nitpick is necessary. For example, nobody said or implied that an LSD user comes out with full schematics for a CPU or some new laws of mathematics.
So, to avoid further confusion:
1) I wasn't referring to some technical or quantifiable "insight that we value" and that is "obviously not a state of mind".
2) While not on par with the discovery of calculus or the internal combustion engine, I (and many others I presume) also value the kind of insight people do get with psychedelics (and several other means, including philosophy). Even if it doesn't arrive in a readily communicable form.
3) That doesn't mean there's also no mere sentiment manipulation done by these drugs. But, even though those are there too, people have used them to come to significant personal and artistic etc insights for millennia.
4) That said, other drugs, have helped people (including scientists and engineers) achieve actual technical insights of the "kind we value", and perform impressive feats of concentration etc (amphetamines etc).
I hear what you're saying, but I don't understand why you're calling it insight. You can spend an hour talking to a AI chatbot about philosophy and value the experience. That doesn't mean the bot has some special insight.
This is especially true if you're talking about things which can't be communicated effectively. If you're finding patterns in word salad, markov chained sentences, or the rantings of doped up philosophers, the insight still needs to be demonstrated independently.
Even dreams will provide you with insights or melodies or perspectives or ideas because it frees up your pre-conceived thinking about a certain subject matter or even a whole set of subject matters.
Insights aren't some scientifically testable hypothesis, they are utilitarian.
You asked me to look it up.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/insight
It's pretty obvious that insights aren't as rigid as you seem to imply.
"Utilitatian" in the sense of demonstrating value, which requires the utility of said insight to be communicated. I didn't imply any rigidity. I'm saying that the only way to know if your psychedelic ruminations are insightful is to communicate something of value to someone else... a feat which requires other people to see the value -- using their own capacity for insight. There's no point in being a brain-in-a-vat whose every thought is a brilliant revelation who nobody else shares. There's no reason for anyone else to call that insight or value.
>You asked me to look it up.
I asked you to look it up because you kept conflating insight with value. They are not the same thing, but you kept asking questions which presume they are. Gold is valuable. Gold is not value.
Such an insight can have utilitarian value to the person experiencing it (to the point of improving their life etc) -- it doesn't have to be communicated to have utilitarian value.
(Even more so it can have non-utilitarian value, e.g. they can derive enjoyment out of it).
Besides, an insight that turns into a work of art, a song, etc, a philosophical rumination, etc, is still communicated, and depending on one's stance can be said to have utilitarian value (for a base example, many a drug-inspired songs have put food on the table for their songwriter).
>I'm saying that the only way to know if your psychedelic ruminations are insightful is to communicate something of value to someone else... a feat which requires other people to see the value -- using their own capacity for insight.
Well, the value millions of people have attributed to writings from people like Terrence McKenna, Huxley, Timothy Leary and so on, is enough to cover this, no?
(We can of course argue of their "actual" value, but as concerning the "requires other people to see the value -- using their own capacity for insight", that's pretty much covered).
Insight and value IS two sides of the same coin, that's the point.
You try to make them separate but insights without value are per definition not insights. It's the very point of insight that it has some value:
1 : the power or act of seeing into a situation : PENETRATION 2 : the act or result of apprehending the inner nature of things or of seeing intuitively
OTHER things can have value too but insights cannot not be valuable unless you don't mean the ability to see into a situation or understanding the inner nature of something is valuable.
If you're on an imploding submarine on the bottom of the ocean and you get a flash of insight about how to do cold fusion... there's no value there. You're dead. It's just a shame you didn't figure out something relevant to your situation, rather than someone else's.
Your argument is like saying that understanding cold fusion has no value because no one has communicated a valuable understanding of cold fusion.
It might not be possible but if you by your own definition figure out how to do cold fusion then that is a valuable insight, whether or not it comes to fruition or the person dies.
Insights cannot not be valuable, they don't have to be implemented to be valuable which is easily demonstrated by a simple thought experiment.
If you had a time machine and could go back in time on that submarine right after he gets the idea on how to do it, extract that information and leave before he dies, would that be valuable? Of course it would.
Getting an insight in the shower or getting an insight on drugs/mushrooms doesn't change the value of the insight whether it gets implemented or not.
"Just because psychedelics produce value does not mean the value is indicative of insight."
What is insight if not value?
[0] Forgive the informal reference to formality. To me, this is intuitively feels like how thinking goes - finding an answer is essentially inductive/indeterministic, while checking that answer is deductive/deterministic.
And not all insights have to be truth-related. An interesting way to play music can come as an psychedelic induced insight, or a different way to look at the world, which can still be interesting and important, even if not true.
>"When I'm on LSD and hearing something that's pure rhythm, it takes me to another world and into anther brain state where I've stopped thinking and started knowing," said Herbert who intervened to ban drug testing of technologists at Cisco Systems.
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I can't find the original article I read years ago, but there was one article where they claimed they came up with BGP on LSD...
I am not strong on early stage primordial soup and what went on there but I find it a little hard to believe that something went completely extinct and then something completely new appeared. Surely there must be something that survived no?
Clearly, since the "giant mushrooms" and "primordial soup" were separated by 3 billion years (75% of the earth's existence)
> I find it a little hard to believe that something went completely extinct and then something completely new appeared. Surely there must be something that survived no?
Yes, they're called "offspring". You are basically assuming that an organism has the same eye color as it's 800 millionth great grandparent.
Rather pointless.
I understand the basic "math" so to speak but congrats one scoring some cheap points.
On the other hand, there is not much (chemically speaking) in a mushroom that plants can't do. If the humans had achieved conscious eating "X", X could be anything. There is not need to fill the gap in this hypothesis with a mushroom.
http://www.maryanningsrevenge.com/2013/12/awesome-dead-shit-...