Guided by Plant Voices
nautil.us
nautil.us
The focus on habituation studies as if these findings are rocking the world doesn't make sense to me. Holmes & Gruenberg ran habituation studies on differing stimuli in 1965. Pfeffer ran habituation studies in 1873, all with the same Mimosa Pudica!
The spiritualistic/shamanistic parts of the article are a bit suspect. The circumstances are too into the outlandish to make sense to me:
1. A scientist has dreams, in these dreams she sees people
2. She is not seeking out psychedelic experiences
3. She flies to Peru where these exact people happen to be, and she knew where to find these people that she didn't know
4. They just so happen to have psychedelic drugs, which she definitely wasn't seeking out but accepted when they were offered (???)
5. She has life changing experiences as a result of all of these unlikely coincedences but is adamant that they're legitimate coincedence and not planned
This quote is really what makes me doubt:
But even that is not correct because inside my head it does sound exactly like a conversation. Not only that, but I know it’s not me. There is no way that I would know about some of the information that’s been shared with me.
There's so many places she could've picked up the idea of using peas over sunflowers, the sudden presentation of this idea during a hallucinogenic experience is another in a chain of requests to the listener to ignore Occam's Razor and opt for the more fantastic sounding.
I assume you know a little bit about the startup scene since you're reading HN. Do investors buy tech or do they buy compelling stories?
Mmmh... Yes it does?.
Would we build the hanging bridge designed by the drunk engineer, or would take the design of the sober boring guy? This is not much different.
This looks more a quest for social acceptation in the line of "craving to be seen as cool" than about dry truth. Probably fueled by horrible working conditions as researcher or by the pressure of finding something, whatever, before a narrow interval of time expires. Can bring the beacon and even show something new and unexpected, but can distroy also her credibility pursuing a ghost race. Is a treacherous path.
"The first time I went, I found this place that was in my dream. It was just exactly the same as what I saw in my dream. It was the same man I saw in my dream, grinning in the same way as he was in my dream."
This paragraph honestly triggers a blinking red flag for me.
"of course, all plants are psychedelic"
seriously?
Are you trying to say that successful engineers can't drink outside of the job? Why the heck do you think startups have beer hours? It's so they get a little loose and talk about their work and think up of ways to solve their current problems.
She is selling her work through the story, the story is full of holes and requests to just believe in spite of those holes. It detracts from the outcomes because she's being openly untrustworthy.
Also the biography of barbara mcclintock.