Complex life may only exist because of millions of years of groundwork by fungi

> Then at slightly higher doses, he contended, the mushroom acts to sexually arouse, leading to a higher level of attention, more energy in the organism, and potential erection in the males, rendering it even more evolutionarily beneficial, as it would result in more offspring.

> At even higher doses, McKenna proposed that the mushroom would have acted to "dissolve boundaries," promoting community bonding and group sexual activities.

> At these higher doses, McKenna also argued that psilocybin would be triggering activity in the "language-forming region of the brain", manifesting as music and visions, thus catalyzing the emergence of language in early hominids by expanding "their arboreally evolved repertoire of troop signals."

I'm not saying we don't have evidence for what happened in prehistoric times. As you said, that's hard. But the above is the outline of Mckenna's theory, taken from wikipedia. My point, is that he makes a number of claims as to the effects of psilocybin - see above - and none of those claims of what the drug can do are backed up by evidence.

I assume that Mckenna may have been speaking from personal experience, that the drug improves visual acuity and can sexually arouse, but there's no evidence for it.

I also think comparing human level of consciousness to animal level of consciousness is a hard position to defend.

Anyway I guess you're missing the original point. What it theorizes is that some mushroom compounds might have had effect on our ancestors brains and helped them develop to what we are now, over long periods of time. A bit like agriculture or writing had a huge impact on our societies, but it's not a on/off switch, it's a very long gradual process.

I don't know if there is a lot of evidence supporting it, but it's not news that some drugs can temporarily or permanently reshape parts of our brains.

I’m not sure if that person would be more conscious than a dolphin, or a bear.

Yes, I agree.

I'm not convinced, from a system perspective, that disturbing a system by poking its most intimate internal parts, and in an unusual way, means that the disturbance was directly required or a part of the emergence of the system.

I will admit that this perspective is mostly logically pedantic and, perhaps naive, disregards the universal usage of psychedelics throughout human history.

I suppose the question would be, what's the evolutionary advantage to temporarily modifying your brains behavior? Any raw structural changes from the use wouldn't be passed to your offspring, leaving mostly social advantages. One could argue that sensitivity to these compounds could promote these advantages, leading to a natural selection of those with more sensitive, and perhaps necessarily more complicated, brains.

What's that social, or perhaps functional, advantage? Maybe epigenetics could have played a role, along with the occasional tribe saving, trip induced, insight?

I would very much enjoy any facts or ramblings on this topic, it's very interesting.

> have you tried them before?

No, just LSD.