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Comment by fugalfervor | Hacker News Reader

There is no evidence of that. What you say is not supporting, but rather "conveniently makes sense".

I don't dispute the utility of psychedelics. But I have observed (and this is anecdotal) that the fanatic devotees of the drugs tend to engage in magical thinking around the power/history/whatever of psychedelic substances, no matter their intelligence or accomplishment, or rigorous critical thinking in other areas.

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It’s a controversial theory, but it does exist[0]. As far as I know, there is no prevailing theory about where consciousness came from so speculating based on existing theories isn’t claiming it’s the truth.

Is it such a leap that fungi are one of the few natural drugs that cause brain elasticity so maybe our early ancestors took it to get the evolutionary process started.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoned_ape_theory

One of the reasons this is such a long bow to draw is that, as you have absurdly reiterated and an earlier commenter posited, this is Lamarckism. If it is true, where are all the sapient reindeer and other animals that have consumed these substances as a species for as long or longer than we have existed?

I see what you did here - you assumed sapient animals HAVE to create technological civilization, didn't you?

Maybe they are sapient - you know, like the dolphins from the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy :)

I'm aware of the theory. I'm not aware of any explanation offered by the theory as to how those who first experienced consciousness via psychedelics managed to pass consciousness on to their descendants. It doesn't make any sense. If you cut the tail off a rat, it doesn't have tailless children.

How are these traits inherited by descendants who don’t consume drugs that increase the plasticity of their brain themselves?

Good question.

I would think it might sometimes depend on what state of mind those were in when they were writing the scripture or prophesizing the dogma that persisted or was enforced afterward.

Using actual "performance-enhancing" substances would be expected to result in a wildly different outcome compared to performance-degrading materials.

Plasticity may or may not be the intended objective in any case.

This is from the intellectual con artist Terence McKenna. McKenna never let things like this get in the way of his theory. There was a flaw in the math of his ridiculous Time Wave Zero idea that when pointed out to him, didn't change anything. I was super into McKenna as a dumb teenager. I even had the dos program of Time Wave Zero. The idea McKenna would be taken seriously on anything after December 21, 2012 is really an interesting study in the power of the cult of personality. The stoned ape idea has more holes than swiss cheese. None of the least being that the actual study he based this idea on with edge detection didn't even say what he claimed it did. Distorted form perception as opposed improved edge detection, something that makes perfect sense to anyone who has tripped. He is not even a clever fraudster. It is just hard to know as a dumb teenager that James Joyce and Whitehead's Process and Reality are intentional choices in the unintelligible and the obscure so they could mean whatever McKenna needed them to mean.

You'll get more buy in on your ideas if you didn't present them so bitterly. Your comment seems like you were let down after getting highly attached to the theory.

This theory relies on not defining consciousness. My dog certainly appears to be conscious, and I doubt there is any evidence of some canine use of psychedelics.

Reconciling the profound interiority of the experience with a mere external catalyst can be quite challenging.

Consider the question yourself next time you are in the throes of an exoerience and see how hard it is to maintain objectivity...

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