[HN Gopher] The fungal mind: on the evidence for mushroom intell...
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The fungal mind: on the evidence for mushroom intelligence
Author : pps
Score : 121 points
Date : 2021-09-03 17:24 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (psyche.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (psyche.co)
| leptoniscool wrote:
| Intelligence is an emergent property. And neurons or mushrooms
| can support it.
| buu700 wrote:
| It's a shame that they missed the opportunity to coin the phrase
| "mycoid intelligence". dang, can we edit the title?
|
| (Just kidding about editing the title, of course.)
| hinkley wrote:
| This feels a bit like part of a pendulum swing from Human
| Exceptionalism to recognizing how far back eukaryotes developed
| certain traits.
|
| I suspect it's closer to the truth to say that fungi exhibit
| instincts of a sophistication that we usually expect from the
| insect and animal kingdom, and less so from plants and fungi.
|
| The botulism bacteria is capable of voting, but I hope we don't
| try to cheapen that discovery and others by calling it a hive
| mind to sell ads.
| avaldes wrote:
| > The botulism bacteria is capable of voting,
|
| I tried my best Google Fu and couldn't find any references to
| this. Do you have any? Sounds fascinating.
| AllegedAlec wrote:
| Quorum sensing
| hinkley wrote:
| They produce a chemical signal in the blood and when it
| reaches a threshold they all start producing toxin at once,
| before they can be identified by the immune system as a
| pathogen. It's why the bacteria is so deadly. By the time
| you're fully symptomatic it's often too late for IV
| antibiotics to kill them in time.
|
| They're studying whether they can trick the bacteria to
| switch on sooner or block the receptors to keep them from
| quorum sensing.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Agreed. I think it is part of a growing tend to
| anthropomorphize everything.
|
| Water flowing down hill shows remarkable problem solving skills
| in determining paths to lower elevation. Rivers could probably
| outperform most college graduates in calculating the optimal
| path in a head to head challenge. Iterative floods communicate
| information across hundreds or thousands of years between
| events, ect.
| jancsika wrote:
| I don't see the relevance. Doesn't physics do the job of
| exhaustively explaining that behavior at this point? (I don't
| want to minimize that difficulty, as it may get into quantum
| physics if one hurls enough Socratic bombs at the
| explanation)
|
| And even if you concoct a bad faith experiment to see how
| "priming" the water's temperature makes this look similar to
| the fungi example, doesn't mundane science still already
| cover that in terms of viscosity?
|
| On the other hand, how would physics explain why fungi primed
| with high temperature stress recovered more quickly and grew
| more evenly in mild temp stress than the control group?
| Furthermore, how would physics explain why that improvement
| disappeared after 24 hours?
|
| And what about the Beechwood example? What do you think of
| that one?
|
| That's not to say we should anthropomorphize fungi, only that
| the experiments are vastly more interesting from a scientific
| standpoint than your analogy would suggest.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| Maze and complex routing problem are non trivial exercice.
|
| It's been used to assess the problem solving capacities of a
| variety of organisms.
|
| Not that it means much. But it should be acknowledged, that
| all.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Water isn't an organism, but is also amazing at solving
| maze and routing problems. In fact, using an inanimate
| model is often a powerful method of solving such problems.
|
| I think my point was more that something is lost when test
| problems are extrapolated out of their intended class. You
| can compare a rat and a dog performance at a maze problem
| and draw some interesting hypothesis about memory and
| spatial awareness. but what does it mean to compare a rat
| vs water? Certainly not the same ideas of cognitive
| function
| throwaway47292 wrote:
| i have grown to dislike the vegan debate
|
| so arrogant of us, to look at something and judge it conscious or
| not.
|
| the reality is, for me to live, something has to die.
|
| be it fungi, plant, or animal, i just try not to waste, and treat
| it with respect (subjective).
|
| i think only Lithoredo abatanica
| [https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2019...]
| can live without eating living things, but its still unclear how
| exactly it gets energy
| sebow wrote:
| Everything that's alive should be cherished. And in the
| (innevitable) case of consumption of living things,it should be
| appreciated and never looked upon with disregard.Interestingly
| all the major cultures (i know) ended up doing this, and only
| in recent modern times we began to stop appreciating the life
| we consume due to the corrosion on traditions & cultures.
|
| Veganism/other forms of prohibition of consumption is not the
| answer to the challenges we face about this topic.As humanity
| scales , we should (and are responsible) to nurture and scale
| all life around us.In other words it's not about us or them,
| but both, together.
| Aisen8010 wrote:
| There's a very good documentary about the theme: "Fantastic
| Fungi". It exposes a theory that the trees can "talk" with it
| other through the the Fungi network.
| pps wrote:
| Another interesting article (interview) on this topic:
| https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/mushroom-expe...
| bsksi wrote:
| Ughhhghhhh I'm shroomin
| after_care wrote:
| There's almost definitely a lot of unexplored science in fungus
| that would have massive benefits for us. They are responsible for
| so much direct benefit, from beer to penicillin. They are a very
| critical part of our ecosystem.
|
| I am a vegan, and have probably thought more about human
| interaction with other earth species than the average techie.
| While there is memory and stimulus-response there's simply
| nothing we've found in nature that implies as much intelligence
| as a central nervous system.
|
| Fungus seems to occupy an interesting niche where they can travel
| spores to various organisms that they can form fantastic
| symbiotic relationships with. It's fascinating, but I'm not
| convinced it's near mammal level intelligence.
| oxymoran wrote:
| Intelligent enough that a vegan should probably feel bad about
| eating it though. You are cutting off the sexual organ of a
| somewhat intelligent living thing and that probably causes pain
| or at least distress signals. Same for plants though. Let's all
| just starve to death.
| i_haz_rabies wrote:
| Good take. Vegans are so silly. So hilarious and worthy of
| criticism when people take the time to consider the ethical
| ramifications of their actions and move their moral bar
| without descending into absurd reductionism. /s
|
| It's so weird how uptight some people get at the concept
| of... not eating meat.
| t-3 wrote:
| I think it's something like "if your ethics != my ethics, I
| must preemptively discredit and attack you to prevent you
| from criticizing me". A very natural xenophobic reaction
| when you look at it like that.
| pvarangot wrote:
| I guess you also mock meat eaters by saying let's all eat
| humans too? Or do you only waste your great talent at
| hyperbole on vegans?
| CameronNemo wrote:
| I would never eat a human. Too worried about prion
| diseases. I feed humans to my dogs. /sarcasm
| ladyattis wrote:
| Yeah, I don't think the term intelligence helps define the
| novel behavior of fungus in this article. The better way to
| describe their behavior is adaptive. Fungus adapt in a way
| that's more like a resilient network than as a conscious being
| or organism. And that's really something we ought to focus on
| especially when it comes to engineering them for better use
| cases. I've seen one case of fungus being used for making
| insulation bricks for houses (non-load bearing) and it looks
| quite impressive considering it's cheaper and biodegradable.
| gerbilly wrote:
| > I don't think the term intelligence helps define the novel
| behavior of fungus in this article.
|
| Maybe you are right, but I think humans are blind to any
| behavior that happens at a frequency either too low or too
| high.
|
| If an organism responds too far out of our frequency band (on
| the order of hundreds of milliseconds), especially on the
| extreme low end, we seem unable to consider it 'intelligent'
| or even purposeful.
|
| We barely even notice it and if any behaviour that unfolds
| over days seasons or even years.
|
| It also doesn't help fungi that mycelial networks are almost
| all underground where they are literally invisible to us.
| sokoloff wrote:
| If I think about the qualities I want in insulation, it's not
| clear to me that "biodegradable" is highly prized.
|
| I've got some wood in my garage structure that has
| biodegraded (aka "rotted") and it's now a project I need to
| deal with.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| > I am a vegan, and have probably thought more about human
| interaction with other earth species than the average techie.
|
| Sorry but adopting a provably unhealthy diet plan doesn't prove
| that at all. Have a nice day!
| throwanem wrote:
| I wonder if "mammal-level intelligence" isn't a bugaboo. Crows
| are smarter than some humans I've known.
| desmosxxx wrote:
| no they're really not
| phaemon wrote:
| Well...
| dylan604 wrote:
| I wonder if they can detect a joke, because you clearly
| can't therefore, smarter than you if they can.
| bittercynic wrote:
| Might be more accurate to come at it from the other side:
| Humans are capable of higher levels of stupidity than cows.
| LegitShady wrote:
| maybe you just need to get to know cows better
| DabbyDabberson wrote:
| you didn't grow up in one of the 'fly over' states did you
| p1mrx wrote:
| We can stop saying it when the crows complain.
| hinkley wrote:
| Have you met a crow? They complain all the time.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Fungi are really interesting, though at least in terms of
| eating them many folks in the US are strangely reluctant. But
| this article does seem to be at pains to tease apart
| 'intelligence' from 'consciousness' - so I think it's not
| unreasonable for them to claim fungi can be intelligent without
| being very similar to us (in the same way we could say that of
| an ant colony, for example).
| chubot wrote:
| Michael Pollan talks about this in a few of his books. Some
| cultures are more mycophobic (USA), and some are more
| mycophilic (Russians, I would say Chinese as well). I think
| you can attribute some of it to whether there are many
| poisonous mushrooms in that culture's land area!
|
| I googled and found related quotes:
|
| https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/05/21/berkeley-talks-
| transcri...
| filoeleven wrote:
| Knowing your local species is super important. Apparently
| lots of poisoning cases in the (western?) US is because one
| of the toxic species looks a lot like an edible species in
| Asia.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I am not sure "strangely" is a good adjective for the
| reluctance. Many people do not like the taste of various
| mushrooms. Additionally, for collecting in the wild, there's
| a lot of These Will Kill You. Meanwhile, a carrot is easy to
| identify and tasty.
| phaemon wrote:
| Carrots were naturally white. They were bred to be orange
| for reasons you can Google.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Still easy to identify and safe to nibble on, like
| strawberries.
| rgacote wrote:
| And wild carrots (Queen Anne's lace) look remarkably like
| poison-hemlock. Some people also have a dermal reaction
| to wild carrot as well.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| I'm a techie vegan too, and think about the fungi kingdom too,
| especially after watching Fantastic Fungi and some other
| personal experiences!
|
| I'd like to video chat with you about this if you are ever up
| for it (and any others as well). If so, please send me an email
| at elijah@elijahlynn.net with a subject of "Video chat...".
|
| Cheers
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm not a vegan, but I think about fungusamongus all the
| time. I'm not a vegan, and I make concious decisions about my
| meals too. Why are we adding vegan like it's 'special' in
| this case?
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| I'm just trying to meet other vegans. It is a lonely world
| for vegans, a very underrepresented group, so when I see
| there is another vegan in tech, I get excited, and HN
| doesn't provide a way to contact others so leaving a
| comment was my only option at creating this connection.
| carvin wrote:
| OP never claimed to be special but simply above average,
| which I think is fair since most vegans transitioned to
| that stage by starting to think much more about what they
| consume than they ever did before.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Not a full and consistent vegan, but what sentient becomes
| more important because it has practical implications for
| your diet choices. Should I eat fungi or not? I'm sticking
| with eating them but this topic is more relevant because of
| the diet impact
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Your question reminded me of this meme.
|
| https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1031973-urinal-etiquette
| dylan604 wrote:
| I've seen that with "I do crossfit"
| pvaldes wrote:
| The logical result of an entire generation that interacted with
| Biology mainly through Pokemons.
|
| Animals can show some degree of intelligence because they have
| brains feeded by biological sensors. Brains are made of nerve
| cells.
|
| Fungi, plants or rocks don't have nerve cells, never had nerve
| cells and never will have nerve cells, so they can not have a
| brain. Not. They don't have it. I don't care about if bulbasaur
| is half plant and your favorite. This things are not real...
|
| Now fill the gaps: A creature without a nervous system can't have
| ...
|
| Pseudoscientific attention grabbers are becoming a plague
| [deleted]
| omegalulw wrote:
| > The logical result of an entire generation that interacted by
| Biology mainly through Pokemons.
|
| This seems like a stretch. As a kid, I liked Pokemons because
| they were Pokemons, not because of some weird associations with
| biology.
| sa1 wrote:
| Tardigrades don't have muscles either. Yet they can walk.
| pvaldes wrote:
| The presence of three types of muscles in Tardigrades is well
| documented since the year 1840.
| rodrigosetti wrote:
| You don't need a nervous system for information processing
| joshuamcginnis wrote:
| I'm an indie researcher developing a diy-friendly approach to
| genetic engineering of mushrooms [1][2][3]. If anyone is
| interested, I'd be happy to provide a piece of the same slime
| mold species (Physarum polycephalum[4]) referenced in the article
| and used to study fungi memory and intelligence. It's pretty easy
| to grow and the only food it needs is oats.
|
| The best way to send me your request is probably to send me a DM
| on Instagram or to email me (josh@everymanbio.com). Depending on
| how many requests there are, it may take me some time to get it
| to you - but I will.
|
| A few $ donation for shipping would be helpful, but not required.
|
| [1] http://everymanbio.com/
|
| [2] https://www.instagram.com/everymanbio/
|
| [3] https://youtube.com/everymanbio
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physarum_polycephalum
| sebringj wrote:
| They were able to move here and there quite quickly, adjusted
| trajectory in the most efficient way possible. They commonly
| gather together in large groups. They are...dried up leaves
| blowing in the wind. Now if you think dried up leaves are smart,
| wait till you hear about mushrooms...
| technothrasher wrote:
| This article seems to be conflating sentience with consciousness.
| Much of that complex interaction with the external world they
| describe can still be achieved by humans while asleep, yet we all
| accept that while asleep we are not conscious. So there's more to
| consciousness than what they are describing in fungi.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Do fungi dream of decaying biomatter?
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| http://www.byronevents.net/nisargadatta/that2.htm
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Confusingly, "conscious" is also used as a synonym for
| "sentient"
| crazydoggers wrote:
| I think where people get caught up is that there's a lot of
| confusion on definitions (partly since consciousness is almost
| certainly a spectrum). But a lot of people confuse human sapience
| with a requirement of consciousness which is not really the case.
| When looked at in that light, conscious fungus makes a lot more
| intuitive sense.
|
| My favorite description of the difference was from the cognitive
| scientist Daniel Dennett. He gave the example of a dog sitting in
| the sun. When we see our dog sitting in the sunshine looking
| content, it is almost certainly enjoying the warmth, and we are
| probably correct in assuming the dog is feeling content in a way
| that we can relate to. The difference with a human, is that we
| can reflect on that state; we can contemplate the experience
| itself (sapience) rather than just sensing it (sentience).
|
| So complex mycelial networks probably allow some level of
| sentience (experience states of sense, awareness of the
| environment), but we shouldn't think of it as something that is
| contemplating it's existence on a higher level. Would we define
| that as consciousness? Perhaps the difficulty of that assessment
| is just in applying a single word to represent reality.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Lots of comments here about Fantastic Fungi. If you enjoy that I
| also recommend The Creeping Garden which is about slime molds
| which have a lot going for them that makes them closer to animals
| than mold or plants or even fungi. Fascinating and well done.
| colechristensen wrote:
| This leans far too heavily on the word "intelligence" to describe
| the behavior of fungus. Yes indeed almost every organism reacts
| to the world around it, a good word for that is "alive".
| Intelligence requires a lot more than simple stimulus response
| and internal changeable state, much less consciousness or
| sentience.
|
| Calling mushrooms intelligent appeals to a certain sort of person
| and publishing articles like this are just taking advantage of
| those people for their attention.
|
| The behavior of fungi is interesting without having to project
| intelligence on to it.
| nemo44x wrote:
| You eat enough of the right mushrooms and it can all make
| sense. They'll even talk to you!
| a9h74j wrote:
| When I am stranded on an island I am certain I will be
| talking to the mushrooms.
| blueprint wrote:
| Everything that exists reacts to the world around it ;)
| throwaway14356 wrote:
| this has me convinced
|
| https://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bugbitten/2014/11/05/zombie-...
|
| I mean wtf?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| This is a compiles and amazingly complex mechanism of
| propagation, but doesn't require any intelligence or
| awareness on the part of the fungus. Just millions of years
| of evolution and deterministic neurochemistry.
| colechristensen wrote:
| It shouldn't.
|
| Diseases very often modify the behavior of the host to help
| them spread. They don't do it "intelligently" they do it on
| accident by hitting on a modification of the host which
| results in better transmission of the disease.
|
| Covid makes you cough to spread little droplets filled with
| virii, rabies makes mammals violent so they'll bite to spread
| infection through saliva. It isn't through intense
| manipulation, it's by pulling a few levers. One species
| taking advantage of another species through biochemistry is
| extremely common. Every psychoactive drug, poison, etc. are
| all manipulations through chemistry.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| What is intelligence?
| exo-pla-net wrote:
| The article is written by a professor of biology, a scientist.
|
| Per the article, a fungus can somehow remember where it
| previously found food. That degree of spatial awareness/memory
| is surprising.
|
| Thus, in the way that biologists use the word "intelligence",
| fungi are intelligent. They'd be pretty dumb on any
| intelligence scale, but they have intelligence.
|
| Yeah, hippies get a little too excited about the mind of the
| fungus or whatever when they hear the word "intelligence"
| applied to fungi. Who cares.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think my sibling post is relevant and addresses these
| points.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28408847
| colechristensen wrote:
| >Yeah, hippies get a little too excited about the mind of the
| fungus or whatever when they hear the word "intelligence"
| applied to fungi. Who cares.
|
| I care about the inflation of terms like intelligence and the
| selling of science as "woah dude" to get clicks. A professor
| of biology isn't necessarily an expert in what should be
| called "intelligence" or immune to writing things worth
| criticism.
|
| People are constantly amazed that things that are alive
| aren't as inert as a rock, yes life is cool, but you don't
| need to thing that everything which interacts with the
| environment has an experience like "thinking".
|
| >Thus, in the way that biologists use the word
| "intelligence", fungi are intelligent
|
| In the way that this biologist is using the word, but it is
| well worth questioning that use of the word. Saying
| everything in the world is intelligent sort of makes the term
| not have any meaning. Is my mechanical thermostat
| intelligent?
|
| Really simple systems can have complex behavior when you
| don't understand how they work, and when you do figure the
| system out you can be impressed by how something simple can
| accomplish but simple machines aren't intelligent,
| intelligence is something different and much more special.
| retrac wrote:
| Not everything in the world. Rocks are not intelligent.
| That's simple enough. They don't encode any information as
| far as I can see, they certainly don't actively process or
| transform it.
|
| Living systems seem to. Even bacteria. Information theory
| seems too applicable when I look at DNA. All living systems
| seem intelligent, to varying degrees, as they are storing,
| duplicating and conditionally applying patterns to various
| biochemical problems in the task of propagating the
| rulebook of solutions further, the same task that the
| intelligence of the brain was evolved for. I worry this is
| more pseudospiritual woo rather than philosophy, though.
| colechristensen wrote:
| And that drills down into my point.
|
| "alive" and "intelligent" shouldn't by synonyms. We
| should reserve the word "intelligent" for a certain
| considerably higher level of ability and complexity than
| can be ascribed to most anything living. When you say
| every living system is intelligent, the word ceases to
| add any information and you might as well just say
| "alive" and drop "intelligent".
| retrac wrote:
| For practical purposes, I get you. But if it is the same
| essence at its very core, maybe we _shouldn 't_ separate
| them so vigorously when we think about it
| philosophically.
| mtqwerty wrote:
| In my mind, alive is a binary term. Something is alive or it is
| not. We don't say something is more alive than something else.
|
| Rocks, road signs and tables are not alive. Humans, pigs and
| fungi are alive. That is a useful distinction but it disregards
| differences in the latter group.
|
| Fungi are reacting to stimuli with more complex behaviors than
| a single-celled organism can. We can't say fungi are more alive
| than the single celled organisms, so what are they?
|
| Where does one draw the line with intelligence? In your
| opinion, what organisms can appropriately be considered
| intelligent?
| marmot777 wrote:
| For well a very well articulated argument for fungal
| intelligence, look up Paul Stamets, the mycologist on YouTube and
| elsewhere.
|
| He's a serious scientist but he shows up in popular culture, too.
| For example, Lieutenant Commander Paul Stamets, a astromycologist
| serving on the USS Discover, was named after the real Paul
| Stamets.
| remexre wrote:
| There's a Hannibal character with the same surname too!
| https://hannibal.fandom.com/wiki/Eldon_Stammets
| pvarangot wrote:
| For a less articulated argument Terence McKenna also speculated
| that psilocybin is some kind of intelligent substance that came
| to earth via meteors and consciously played a role in
| humanity's self awareness.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_McKenna#Psilocybin_pan...
| foxhop wrote:
| Permaculture designed systems sequester high carbon wood chips
| naturally via Fungi Mycelium networks which break down tree
| lignin over 5-15 years & mix with native soils to produce a
| perfect Food Forest Growing medium. Forest grow on top of dead
| trees, after all!
|
| Video related, happy labor day!
|
| https://youtu.be/9QMXmupBYpY
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(page generated 2021-09-03 23:01 UTC)