In addition to laying the groundwork for complex life, there's evidence they helped in the emergence of intelligence and consciousness[1] as well as helping save honeybees[2]
[1] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsif.2014... (pdf link)
[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/10/09/446928755/co...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_McKenna#%22Stoned_ape%...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnEKoFrx1rI
Yes it's "a little" out there, but I think it's actually quite plausible.
> 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.
So, what you're saying is that it's state-of-the-art work in the burgeoning field of evolutionary psychology.
[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01965761
This isn't a question of "evolutionary psychology", but of neuroscience.
- psilocybin has been proven to reduce vision capabilities under all circumstances, and this is conclusively proven in that report?
- each of his contributing sub-theories must have been true (all are pre-requisites) for his overall theory to have some unrealized truth to it?
- there are conclusive studies demonstrating it is not possible for psilocybin to effect evolutionary psychology?
Just trying to get a clear understanding of what you are saying, and what you are not. Typing is such a low-bandwidth medium.
EDIT: -1, gosh I find it frustrating how difficult it seems to be to communicate with others on certain topics.
> that the drug improves visual acuity and can sexually arouse, but there's no evidence for it.
If you're referring to formal, peer reviewed studies, of course not. But the sexual arousal and community bonding aspects I'd say there's plenty of anecdotal information consistent with the possibility. This of course in no way proves that his theory has any validity to it on a historic basis, but it at least doesn't rule it out as being impossible.
The whole theory is best taken with a healthy quantity of salt (and it's best to listen to audio of it), but it is a really interesting theory/prediction. One's opinion of the plausibility is likely proportional to their experience with psychedelics, those with a lack of experience would likely have some difficulty with the "how" part.
Dmitry Belyayev was able to produce a tame variety of the red fox within 4 generations of breeding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Belyayev_(zoologist)#Be...
Whether psychedelics are actually effective at producing 'inductive leaps' is something that is under-researched as a result of legal status. There were some very interesting study results around this from the 60s, but more research is needed (many used subjective measures). How can inductive leaps be quantified? Perhaps some sort of expert-peer-grading?
Not saying it’s correct, but that’s the hypothesis.
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.
It happens sometimes—feral children who are neglected or abandoned in various ways.
I’m not sure if that person would be more conscious than a dolphin, or a bear.
If you are a circuit board, getting some water on yourself would be one way to (potentially destructively) learn about what your design actually is.
Or fault injection or fuzzing, same idea. By making errors happen, you find out about possible errors that even can happen, and that tells you something about the overall design. Maybe the design cannot be fully determined this way, but a portion can be learned, maybe a portion unreachable by any other means (MRI, neural probes, etc) so research into the mind and consciousness by use of psychedelics does make sense.
Out of curiosity, have you tried them before?
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.
Almost like claiming that smashing subatomic particles together might give insight into the relationships between and properties of said particles?
In my experience LSD is far different from Psilocybin, in that it "feels" more artificial, definitely does not give the same feeling of belonging to a greater organic whole that you may get with mushrooms.
Terrence McKenna has a theory on the evolutionary contributions psychedelics might have made: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_McKenna#%22Stoned_ape%...]
Not necessarily structural changes as a direct result of usage (but maybe), but I can easily see social changes resulting in structural changes via greater evolutionary success being passed down, as you note in your next sentence. This stuff is extremely complicated, we only have a rough idea of how it all works, and much of what we "know" is actually just theory.
> What's that social, or perhaps functional, advantage?
I would put my money on the notion that they promote things such as greater "wisdom" and behavioral strategies (via thoughtful meditation while normal neurological filters are reduced) resulting in more peaceful and successful coexistence between people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_gating https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/brain-babble/20150...
> No, just LSD.
Functionally more or less the same thing I would say.