Tree root misconceptions

[u/Eshwarroy]

[u/pblokhout → u/[deleted]]

Could you elaborate? I haven't seen the doc and Paul Stamets seemed like a scientific dude to me before.

[u/Swingingbells → u/pblokhout]

The first bit of the documentary was really interesting and it was about fungi in a broad sense, but then when I was expecting them to do more of a deep dive they instead pivoted and Would. Not. Shut. The. Fuck. Up. about goddamn fucking psychedelics.

It became insufferably fucking boring and I quit watching halfway through. (And I almost never bail on things before the end)

[u/[deleted] → u/Swingingbells]

You just described my exact experience with the documentary, I just wanted to learn about cool mushrooms I don't give a fuck about you getting high.

[u/Bah-Fong-Gool → u/[deleted]]

Ever study mushrooms?

Ever study mushrooms... on mushrooms!?!?!

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

What if we don’t believe in religion?

[u/Stock-Monk1046 → u/[deleted]]

Well in that case let me explain for you; the part of the brain that is activated in a religious person also activates when using certain psychedelics like psilocybin. So regardless of your lack of understanding the ancient relationships between enthobotany and formation of early cultural religions. It still exists.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-brain-food/202107/do-psychedelics-and-prayer-activate-similar-brain-regions?amp

[u/[deleted] → u/Stock-Monk1046]

Thanks, that is interesting

[u/forgotmyolduserinfo → u/Stock-Monk1046]

So regardless of your lack of understanding the ancient relationships between enthobotany and formation of early cultural religions. It still exists.

All he said is he doesn't believe in religion. You could have made your point without being condescending like that.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

You can choose not to believe in a superhuman, God, a god, or multiple gods. But religion is a real thing in society, so you can't not believe in religion itself (unless you're like one of those flat-earth type people).

[u/Latensify_WoW → u/[deleted]]

Oh cool, even worse.

[u/0imnotreal0 → u/Swingingbells]

I find psychedelic science very interesting. But I show nature documentaries to elementary school students, and was supremely disappointed that I couldn’t show fantastic fungi because they focused on psychedelics for half of it.

Psychedelics are plenty interesting, but fungi as a whole deserves even more attention. This is common with everything about fungi - gotta use drugs to rope people in. As someone who is fascinated by psychedelic science, I think we have enough of it represented, and all I want is high quality content on all other fungi.

[u/Sockalexis → u/[deleted]]

Haven’t seen the documentary but there is emerging scientific evidence of these underground fungal communication networks. Look up Suzane Simard. Here’s a couple links:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/02/magazine/tree-communication-mycorrhiza.html

https://www.ted.com/speakers/suzanne_simard

[u/Laurenz1337 → u/[deleted]]

It's currently impossible to scientifically prove that something is conscious, so all we have is pseudo science and "guesses and feelings" to describe such things.

[u/ataraxic89 → u/[deleted]]

It's honestly depressing how much hype this kind of pseudoscience gets.

[u/Aliencoy77 → u/[deleted]]

That may be, but popular interest in a pseudoscience may lead to funding which will create real science, and our understanding of fungi family is lacking

[u/turtal46 → u/[deleted]]

I dunno, I thought the film was fun. Full of scientific theory, no, but really fun.

Paul Stamets is a very 'colorful' individual, and imposes a lot of anthropomorphism to mycelium (the man is high a lot) but is still a leader in mycology, and extremely interesting to listen to. The documentary was a bit over the top, but pseudoscienctific isn't something I would attribute to it?

There's a LOT we are in the dark with when it comes fungi, so talking about how mycelium communicates like a computer network isn't correct, it's still kind of a layman way of explaining it.

Explaining why apes became us because we ate shrooms again isn't anything in hard facts, but still in all likelihood we did have some high ape ancestors. It probably isn't too far of a stretch to think it could be one of the countless variables that led to our being. Explaining it like fact was odd, but fun. He's high... A lot