I think the theory has more potential to explain the development of cultures and societies of humans rather than the vast change from earlier hominids to homo sapiens.
I think it's fairly reductionist logic, it seems to me, that it would have happened by degrees, the mental expansion brought on first by tool use, then the ability to harness and control fire. These lead to cooked animal protein, and shared space around the communal fire. To these factors add the mushrooms, which in modern times are being proven to not promote nuero-plasticity but also nuero-genisis, ( see John's Hopkins study 2019) even in advanced aged people. To this add the knowledge that we have an endogenous cannabanoid system which proves we co-evolved with the cannabis plant, it offers some evidence , I'm not stating that stoned ape is solid ground, but at least plausible, to my limited understanding
When people talk about Terence McKenna they always talk about his crazy theories (which he himself was very critical of), they never talk about his main points; what drugs have on material evolution. The one drug to be legalized for most of the modern era was alcohol which creates dominate behavior, compared to other drugs like weed and shrooms that create more passive attitudes. McKenna is basically saying that drugs play a key role in effecting our material conditions.
Man the talk of McKenna where he explains how alcohol and tobacco actually cause anti social behavior and just a worse atmosphere in total, compared to countries or places that use psychedelics or weed and such, these people were very open and involved with eachother, more social and less violence
& that "I entertain these idea but I give no belief over to these things, I don't believe in these theories..... the truth requires no belief, it is the truth" Why doesn't she see for herself? "Stoned on mushrooms you might forget your bow 🙇♂️ " that is lost him & the interview credibility that's pathetic strawman argument, is wildly immature & insulting that's not even how the effect works long term just wow. Microdosing which does work that way is proven practice that pushes the tech industry today, to ignore that is willfully ignorance. This seems like it had good intentions & harshly judgment closed minded research, please we can do better. It's not black & white she should be moving forward considering this theory not taking & fighting it as fact, What in The Science! What in the Name Of Progress!
Exactly, it's just that psychoactive drugs affect our mental ability and how we act. Like saying water is wet fire burns and if you drop a rock it falls to the ground. Not that we gained intelligence from drugs, just that they shaped our behavior to a degree that still has effects to this day. Since we still use them.
yeah, the material and cultural element... the "historical materialist" element, if you will, is definitely the far more convincing, and ultimately relevant, part of his ideas. and while "historical materialism" has that kind of unfortunate historical link with V.I. Lenin (see [1]), I think that a good, opening historical materialism is one of the best historical methods we have... but more... one of the best analytical frameworks we have for a sociological and political-economic analysis of what is driving our current development (and problems) and how to address that. [1] (leading some people to insist that a "proper" understanding of historical materialism *inevitably* must lead "scientifically" to "socialism"... except that Lenin et al., mean *their* specific, authoritarian, "socialism", and their VERRRRY generous self-appraisal of their own "science")
I thought the stoned ape hypothesis was that psilocybin played a factor in the sociocultural part of the evolutionary drive of human intelligence. Not the sole reason and not the direct cause of genetic change.
Right, if u listen to terence explain it, it was fairly well-thought-out. I personally believe Terence is greatly underestimated, the guy was basically a genius.
@Kristie Hansen And what were the apes before they were apes? ANd before that and before that? Everything is made from the same thing. So you could say we evolved from an eukaryote also and be just as accurate.
@Kristie Hansen The evidence is that there are over 10 million different species. Which would me that all different life forms would have started around the same time and then through natural selection, be what they are today. However, if the evolution theory is contemplated then a single life form could have branched out into all the different species due to natural selection, into what we see today. So to your point, though, I have not seen evidence either of one species turning into another species but it was explained to me this way, just like a rainbow you cant tell where one color really ends and starts a new color. Now if we look at genetics then its probably evolution.
I've experimented with a lot of psychedelics and I can definitely understand why it could make you a better hunter. You feel way more in tune with your surroundings; you hear better and you see sharper and clearer. You feel like you're part of nature at a level that's impossible to feel when sober. Staring far in the distance, or at clouds, the stars and the Moon are some of the most satisfying things you can do on a high dose of LSD or psilocybin.
There is no evidence to show that it improves visual acuity. You will not do better on an eye exam. However, it helps with visual perception, which may help you with identifying patterns or doing a jigsaw puzzle. You may feel like you have better eyesight, but what you may be experiencing is seeing details that your brain previously ignored or took for granted. Pretty cool! However, there’s no evidence to show that visual perception makes you a better hunter. Haha
@@neurotransmissions Many don't realize how big a role present awareness, patience and stillness play in hunting. The right dose can erase time and allow a prolonged sense of open awareness and unbroken alert presence. Also: dilated pupils gather more light in low light when animals are most active. Or for tracking in low light.
@@davidgough3512 If you can show me a controlled study that demonstrates that psilocybin improves visual acuity, then we’ve got data we can discuss. Until that point, it’s just anecdotes.
@@neurotransmissions Perhaps you have mistaken me for another commentor. Nowhere did i mention acuity. In fact my experience agrees with your suggestion that pattern recognition plays more of a role. Also, the (admittedly ideosyncratic) enhancement of the ability to sit still and remain alertly present, and the fairly universal dilation of pupils at even small doses (won't make the eyechart any clearer but will make it more apparent in dim light ) are symptoms other than acuity. As for evidentary studies, we're 50 years behind, thanks to recent prohibitions, part of the heresy crushing since emperor Constantine, and a current inhibited interest in profit investment into researching the unpatentable.
Psychedelic's definitely have potential to deal with mental health symptoms like anxiety and depression , I would like to try them again but it's just so hard to source out here.
Psilocybin containing mushrooms saved my life . The drastically reduced my benzodiazepine withdrawal allowing me to quite illicit pill addiction after three years of heavy daily use before it would had became medically dangerous to quit . It has also helped me survive depression .
The Trips I've been having have really helped me a lot , I finally feel in control of my emotions and my future and things that used to be mundane to me now seem incredible and full of nuance on top of that I'm way less driven by my ego and I have alot more empathy as well.
@@lucasanthony5648 I am feeling the same way too, I put too much on my plate and it definitely affects my stress and anxiety levels. I am also glad to be part of this community.
it is also unscientific to do experiments of this type for a few months only on adult rats. giving successive generations of mice mushrooms on a regular basis over the course of about 40 years would be the way to conduct this study. by the time it concluded the mice might be in charge of the planet like hitchhikers guide.
… or the sentient yoghurt from “Love Death + Robots”…. But as anyone who really knows where his towel is could tell you, humans aren’t descended from those simians anyway; we were wiped out by the useless third of the population (hair-dressers, fine arts experts, PR consultants, anything with human resources, executive managers, and so on) of an alien civiliazation, after they were tricked into crashing their escape rocket (to escape the impending *DOOM* of 2012-like proportions for their planet, although that was a made-up story by the useful two thirds of the population, who promised they would be following RIGHT after the useless left) into pre-historic earth. They were a bit confused at first, f.ex. they didn’t have any money, until some marketing guy noticed that money is green, so are tree leaves, now tree leaves will be our money. This idea, however, led to terrible inflation, since their money now literally grew on trees, but their military (useless, remember?) offered to solve the inflation problem… with flame-throwers… since the leaves wouldn’t grow on trees, if only they burned down everything on the planet that carried green leaves… Oh yeah, and the original ultimate question about life, the universe and everything was lost with this unforseen change in earths programming (earth is a supercomputer designed by mice, well duh!), but a slightly erroneous copy is preserved in the mind of one Arthur Dent, eventually read by a paranoid android from before Radiohead, and eventually revealed through a game of Scrabble. The (erroneous) ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is: “What do you get if you multiply 5 by 7?”… I prefer the lab mice’s take on it for artistic reasons, though: “how many roads must a man walk down?”, so profound, so deep, so empty of any coherent meaning or message… EDIT: I like Dylan Thomas too. I won’t go quietly into any dark night, I rage to the point where the neighbors complain that I won’t accept the waning of the light. But that poem is waaaay over-used, and Robert Zimmerman is a MUCH better poet in my not-so humble opinion.
You would need strong evidence to support this especially since the mechanism proposed is Darwinian selection and that would be very difficult to perform in lab settings.
Yes, as they become in charge of the planet egos may form whether be tool language psychedelics etc but it seems like these all combined or more likely theory’s of evolution if evolution is really the truth ?
In scientific terms hypothesis and theory means different things, a theory explains observable facts and such while a hypothesis is basically an untested idea. A hypothesis turns into a theory once the tests are conclusive. Linguistically this is only a hypothesis.
Agreed. It is a hypothesis, not a theory. The only reason we used that language in the video is because it is more commonly called the "stoned ape theory". I even did a search on google trends and significantly more people look for "stoned ape theory" rather than "stoned ape hypothesis". But you are correct that it is only a hypothesis.
I want to add, to Terence defence, that he was always very undogmatic. He frequently pointed out to his audience or readers that everything he said might as well be the ravings of a lunatic, and that you should make what you wanted out of it. Nevertheless, ideas can be very powerful and this particular theory has caused a lot of debate, engagement and speculation. That is one of the main driving forces of science. Without curiosity, discourse and open-mindedness whe have nothing, only status quo.
He was incredibly quick to dismiss the idea that an organism could create something that would effect another species as a whole. But that's literally what alcohol and caffeine and tobacco have done to our society. I don't think that anyone can argue the history of these 2 substances has had a massive effect on humans as a whole.
"how convenient this perfect substance happen to be in the right place at the right time?" Psychedelics can be found all over the earth from mushrooms,herbs,cacti,seeds even animals.
Exactly, there are some very fishy points here that she tries to make. And even if it were the perfect time, I think that would only aid more of what Terence said concerning the purpose of the mushroom so I doubt it would hurt his point regardless
right? and what about life itself? is that her response to the formation of life? Because the first single celled organism was also very convenient but that happened didnt it?
@@rickshawredemption That entire statement proves you clearly haven't a clue about reindeers, evolution, this video, how to justify a statement with reasoned arguments or psychadelics. If you are going to level a charge of ignorance against me please explain why you think I am ignorant not just of what (which was pretty redundant as it followed a one sentance statement... it wasn't going to be the geopolitics of modern day Persia was it)
@@alexc1105 I think what Noah is trying to say is that reindeer are known to consume Amanita muscara mushrooms, which are not actually considered to be psychedelics. Though they are famously hallucinogenic, A. muscara mushrooms are said to produce, beyond anything else, a state of sensory distortion and delirium, as opposed to psychedelic drugs which are of course regarded as having the potential to enhance perception or produce more meaningful states of mind. In the community of psychedelic enthusiasts, A. muscara is typically not given much reverence for these reasons. I don’t share this in support of stoned ape theory but rather because I thought you mind find it interesting and because it might clarify this misunderstanding.
@@patrickholston7090 There is a gap in my mycological knowledge there. I did think (mistakenly) that the Fly argaric contained Psilocin or psilcybin as well as muscolin. I think to be fair though, Noah Boblett just wanted to be... a bit of a troll...
As flawed as Mckenna's idea is, l think it's also overly simplistic to assert that psychadelics played no part in the evolution of human consciousness. Transcendant experience is core element of the psychadelic effect, a key component in the evolution of religion and is a feature of human societys as far back as we can find any trace of ourselves. We are revelation junkies.
The stoned ape hypothesis specifically argues that it triggered it and that is what she is arguing against. It also wouldn't be the drugs that caused the changes in brain evolution, it would be culture. Just like art and religion or traditions would affect brain evolution.
@@BobardeZanzibar why would it be culture, and not drugs? Psychedelics are proven to promote neurogenesis... a direct injection of a serotonin analogue, flooding your brain creating new connections. Couldn’t you argue that culture came from mushrooms? You can’t count out early humans taking powerful psychedelics. 5 dried grams, would probably be half a meal for these people. They were taking huge doses.
It's important to mention that most ancient cultures had some sort of shamanism. Shamans used to be what priests are to modern religions. So it's not hard to imagine that those ape-humans were taking psychedelics as a way to connect to the gods, spirits, animas or whatever cosmology they had. If psychedelics precede religion then I don't doubt that they were an important asset in the homo sapiens evolution.
Maybe. Religion serves a utilitarian purpose, being that it enabled collaboration on a mass scale independant of factors such as familial bond or location. It can prompt people who have never met to see one another as friends thanks to a mutual interest, which in turn opens up the potential for trade and cooperation in procuring resources or hunting. Simply put, its an effective means of gettings strangers to organize. I think the fact that religion engendered profound tangible benefits is most likely to be the cause for it's widespread proliferation, rather than psychedelic use. Maybe psychedelics were indeed involved in some capacity, but I don't personally believe they played an integral role.
Each discussion on psychedelics should include a disclaimer on whether the person speaking has done them and in what doses. As soon as this obviously intelligent professor said you might forget your bow and arrow while high on psilocybin, I had to assume he’s never actually experienced it. I’ve hunted on psilocybin using a firearm, and I’m a soft bodied American who spends way too much time sitting. Imagining that someone who LIVES to hunt would forget their weapon on mushrooms is frankly laughable. I’m sure he’s an expert in his field, but it seems he’s not in this one. I do wish him well.
Clearly more research is needed. The specifics that Terence McKenna suggested are wrong, but there’s plenty of room to study the hunting advantages and disadvantages other symptoms may have. Personally, I believe this theory deserves refinement, not outright dismissal.
As with any theory that has clear and measurable ideas, it deserves decent study indeed. I just wonder if people will accept the results (both supporters and opponents)
I'm afraid this video might be missing a key point. In my opinion it may not be the "being stoned" part that helped in any way (i.e. you don't necessarily hunt better when stoned; likely you hunt worse), but the repeated use (in small doses, during specific occasions, by specific members of clans, etc) over tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, that has had a somewhat permanent impact on our species' brain development. How can one prove that ingesting a specific substance for countless generations via countless individuals has or doesn't have an impact in the overall evolution of the species? I'm tempted to say it is not possible to prove nor disqualify, but worth many many hours of discussion !
In regards to ego death being not meaningful to apes: fresh mushrooms would be quite tasty to hungry apes. Its a meat substitute w/o the danger of hunting. Its really not that hard of a concept.
Also, they're fun. Elephants and some birds have been caught repeatedly seeking fermented fruit and then drunkenly stumbling around. Animals are not judgemental, what feels good gets repeated.
As a fighter I have experimented with psychedelics and combat. There is potential for neurogenesis when ingesting mushrooms. I don’t find my personal anecdote to be facts or anything. But i did feel an amplified intuition with my body; also my fear was dissolved and I was able to see my opponents as what they were. My reflexes felt hypertuned, my vision was clear, my mind was empty but for the instinctual movements. It was an educational experience. The peculiar thing is that I have been able to reproduce this state of clarity when completely sober when I focus.
I simply don’t find this any more convincing than his ideas. We don’t know enough to say the hypothesis is true, and we certainly don’t know enough to say that it’s “too easy” to be true. No one in their right mind says that it’s an umbrella solution either, it’s probably an aspect of psychological evolution, not the sole cause.
The point of the video was to show that the ideas posed by the Stoned Ape hypothesis are not supported by any research or evidence. The claims that McKenna made do not align with existing data. And you're right that other theories should be similarly scrutinized. But at least there's _some_ supporting research. So they really should be more convincing because they're the only ones with some backing based in science: www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/10/17/1206390109 www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047248417303597?via%3Dihub www.pnas.org/content/95/3/1336
@@neurotransmissions Thanks for your response! I definitely appreciate your video, I just think it’s important that we not rush to discount these hypotheses as “bad” overall, because while it might not be an umbrella solution, the central ideas may still lead to some important discoveries.
@@neurotransmissions Still quite a dismissive and slightly unscientific perspective on the theory since we literally don't have any research into it. Imagine before any new discovery everyone just said, well no data supports it so can't be this new thing, quite a ridiculous answer.
@@ekay4495 First, we have research about related topics that have shown results that do not align with McKenna’s claims. Second, this *is* how science works. The burden of proof is on the creators and researchers of a hypothesis. Without substance to back it up, it’s just a fun story. It can exist, but that doesn’t make it legit.
"How convenient that this perfect substance happened to be in the right place at the right time." This is a flawed line of thought in my opinion. One could also reflect on our improbable existence and say: "How convenient that our sun just happened to be the exact distance away from our planet to harbour life". This is known as the "anthropic principle". IF the sun wasn't absolutely perfect, we wouldn't be here to say otherwise. IF psychedelics weren't available, our brains wouldn't have evolved enough to say otherwise. It doesn't prove anything (of course), but it's another cog in the mechanism.
My hypothesis about the sun being at perfect distance is that the sun is conscious. Stars in general. Some kind of conciousness, even if different than humans. Cant prove it, but interesting thought... In the same sense, perhaps substances are also part of conciousness
I am not a scientist, but i learned in my math classes that if you decide to take a sample of 16 people, you cant percieve a significant difference. Although, with an amount of 1000 people or more, you can. Then the experiment no longer has a chance factor. All i am saving is that Fischer did not execute a very professional or reliable experiment, in my amateur eyes. (Referring to 13:40 )
Seeing people talking about psychedelics without ever doing it, especially scientists or bigots makes me sick. It's like talking about going 10 billion stars away after one Rick and morty episode. Smoke some dmt. Take some shrooms. Then come back and talk. I'm not taking about the theory of Terrance. I don't really care. I talk about the attitude.
I never hear anyone talk about how it could very likely have had an epigenetic effect. There's never going to be just one thing that expanded our brains so much, and psychedelics were likely fed to children as well, this is all to say that language likely formed alongside this phenomenon
prove that psychedelics were likely fed to children? You have none. Most current hunter-gatherer shamanistic cultures use those ONLY during rituals, only by adults, and not even all adults. In many cultures only shamans can take psychedelics
This over looks small mushroom related statues and other artifacts found in Mexico and India. Some dating as far back as 600 b.c. There seems to be more evidence pointing to it being true than not. especially after hearing the argument against it.
Argues that our hungry ancestors wouldn't eat a lot of shrooms because they don't have egos (what?!) and therefore wouldn't experience ego death (supposedly why WE eat lots of shrooms). Immediately goes to an expert explaining that some chimpanzees like mushrooms so much they get erections upon seeing them! I'm actually not deeply committed to the stoned ape hypothesis, although I find it as good as any other theory in explaining the bizarrely rapid mutations that lead to super fast brain growth. But I'm sorry, this video just makes a god-awful case against it. I'm especially peeved that it mostly presents a straw person Lamarckian-type evolutionary approach to the theory. In other words, she's arguing that the theory states the effects of the shrooms on the adults who ate them led to bigger brains, rather than the far more plausible take that shrooms ingested during pregnancy could explain the sudden increase in fetal brain mutations that the theory seeks to explain - irregardless of whatever they did to the adult hominids.
@@mortenwintherolsson3237 You know what, I think I may have made a Lamarckian type error myself. I was assuming that a drug with well-documented evidence for altering neural networks could have a profound effect on the developing neural networks of a fetus, and that when these changes were beneficial, they would be passed on. But although those changes would precipitate birth, they wouldn't necessarily alter the genes of the child, would they? There are epigenetic possibilities here, and chemically-induced mutations are a possibility, but on that level, If psilosin effected genetic change, it wouldn't necessarily impact the neural genes, I don't suppose. Maybe I'm the one making god-awful cases here.
Honest mistake, but yes, I believe it is a mistake, still 😊 Altering the state or even structure does not necesarrily change the “blueprint” (dna). I wouldn’t be too surprised if it DID alter DNA in some way, I just don’t see how right now :)
I'm a huge McKenna fan, it is important to hold his hypothesis to the fire though. McKenna may have had a lot of wisdom and understanding of both human nature, language and psychs, but that doesn't mean that everything he said was true. I appreciate the perspective, and you make an excellent argument. You brought me around on this.
It sounds plausible that a substance could cause a rise in creativity, that causes you to change your environment, causing genetic adaptation to the environment bringing various advantages. Though, just because it's plausible, it doesn't make it true. I also appreciate honest scepticism when dealing with ideas like this. Truth should never be rejected because of personal bias. I can understand how the reality might be offensive to some, especially with the bigoted attitudes to certain substances. If it was scientifically and generally accepted that psychedelics accelerated human evolution, then there would likely be much less of a stigma around them. Though, we can't challenge bad ideas with more bad ideas.
mckenna was a loon but this is one of his only theories that actually made any sense. there's a lot of holes in it for sure, but for it to be dismissed just because the guy who thought of it was crazy is ridiculous. every time some new breakthrough scientific discovery has been made it was by some guy who everyone thought was a lunatic.
@@Competitive_Antagonist exactly. It's not healthy to build a mythology just because we like the impact that it would have now. It's better we end the war on psychedelics by modern ancidotal evidence of safety and hard data from experiments. Inventing this version of psudo-history will only serve to make mushrooms and the people who take them, to be crazy.
He himself did not take his ideas around psychedelics as gospel, they were just ideas to be pondered over but people seem to think that he was the psychedelic messiah. He said himself I'm just a guy that said I don't even take myself seriously
This discussion is simply far to derivative and contrived for my taste, and I think you’ve missed McKenna’s point completely. “Stoned Ape” is also a misnomer or misleading term, as it’s quite ludicrous to think that contact with psychedelics somehow miraculously and instantaneously caused a slew of psychological and physiological changes in ancient hominids. No. The essence of the matter, which beyond all these abstractions and minutia of particularities, precedes, pervades and underpins all of human history, from the early hominids to you and me talking through these funny black squares. Perhaps an early dose spurred some kind of early curiosity and fascination, which has endured and evolved with us as we hunted and herded animals, farmed our crops, and had prolonged contact and a relationship with psychedelic substances, which is reflected in our very neural chemistry. A better term would be “psychedelic symbiosis hypothesis”
"We invented agriculture so we can make beer" ... where did this come from? We invented agriculture for food to feed the people, we added hops and whatnot to our agriculture to make beer.
Humans actually shrank after doing agriculture, suggesting malnourishment. Hunter gatherers we’re the same height as modern first-world people. There always a great video about it by “Trey the Explainer” (amazing channel btw) but I can’t remember which one.
good point. it makes more sense to me that discovering fermentation and beer would have been a natural and swift consequence of farming, specifically because farming is so ridiculously effective, as soon as you get the hang of it you often end up with more crops than you know what to do with. these excess crops would, to my thinking, be the first place a person would stumble upon fermentation. especially if you were in a very wet region.
Another reason why this theory is popular, is because it literally is proven to regrow and as well as completely grow new neurons and strengthen the neurons responsible for sensing your environment.
You could say that psycadelics helped along the way, but there are so many other factors that it couldn’t possibly be the only thing that got us to where we are today
Have a psychedelic experience or don't talk about what it is to have one. Empiricism is one approach to understanding the world around you, but it's not the only one.
Here's a thought exercise: imagine how much easier it would be for non-academics to understand these concepts, and consequently how many less angry people there would be, if the word "theory" had the same meaning in science as it does in other fields/everyday usage.
Don't know how it got past them in high school science and math. And yet everybody has followed detective crime dramas, where the scientific process is applied to evaluate evidence, test hypotheses and develop a theory on what went down.
Or imagine how better informed people would be if they understood what a scientific theory actually is instead of applying the shorthand version that people attribute to it i.e. lots of people mistakenly think theory is synonymous with a guess without understanding the scientific methods that go into something actually being deemed a formal theory.
About the theory that psychodelics increase your Capacity to hunt. Which culture uses them to improve their hunting? It is a serious question. If there are cultures doing this, then it can be that there is some support to this theory. If no hunting culture does this, then you should wonder why.
@@67kingdedede really for hunting? I've heard many stories of them being used for warfare, but not hunting. I'm not saying you're wrong, I just want to check. If you are correct, it would lend some plausibility to the theory.
Maybe I missed it, but the video never ( up to the 21 minute mark ) never gave evidence that mushrooms did not aid in the development of language, harnessing fire and using tools. The impression I got was that the video author is saying those skills, not magic mushrooms, was what spurred humanity onward. In so far as I understand the conversion as a whole, I don't think the development of those skills totally excludes psychedelics.
Yeah I also found that to be weird. Seems to me like a culture eating mushrooms would suddenly find different values, and would start highly prioritizing traits like vocalization, singing, creativity, etc. It seems plausible enough to me that the introduction of psilocybin into their communities would alter the natural selection as singers/vocalizers became desirable to men and women as much as physical strength. I dont think the theory is supposed to explain everything or discount other factors, it's really a straw man on her part.
@@samus598 I know that Sillypsybun has helped me a great deal. I can only imagine what it could do on an evolutionary timeline and with societal/tribal collaboration,.
Do you have evidence that they do? She specifically began the video saying that we can't know for certain but that mushroom use is not necessary or sufficient to generate consciousness especially when it would have taken millions of years of continual use for that to be the case.
I believe it. Psychedelics open our minds to creativity, re-balancing, spirituality, thru enthalpy. Mushrooms not just psychoactive but other sacred plants are highly beneficial (plants for pain (wild lettuce), sleeping, energy, mental focus, night sight clarity (xanga/ibogaine).. we are so blind with mental blockage (we rather watch tv then forage in the forest or roll up to fast food for convenience..) these guys had all the time in the world to trip and benefit, explore our natural side. Lastly there is ancient cave art depicting signs of psychedelic use. Literally mushroom headed cave art so ancient they can't date.. Haha.. enjoy
I've heard a lot of tripping stories, and they are very exciting,I would love to try magic mushrooms but I can't easily get some, Is there any realiable source I can purchase from??
I can definitely attest to psilocybin improving visual acuity. My eyesight is not what it used to be when I was younger, but when I go mushroom foraging on a low dose of 1 - 2 grams, the details of the forest floor are greatly enhanced, and I usually spot more mushrooms. Edges are sharper. Depth of perception is improved (more 3D). Details in the rocks, leaves, and trees pop. And as for its affect on the language centers of the brain, this is also verifiable. On large doses of 7 - 10 grams, I have had spontaneous glossolalia, sometimes speaking in multiple languages.
Your visual _perception_ is definitely affected, but there is no evidence supporting improvements in visual _acuity_ . Your brain may have an easier time identifying patterns and perhaps spotting mushrooms would be easier, but it doesn't improve your eyesight.
@@neurotransmissions visual perception is not the same as perception of visual perception. If you feel you can spot things easier, that perception will positively affect your visual acuity. Don't downplay the placebo effect.
Visual perception may be affected by mushrooms, but if you are saying that an increase in visual acuity can be attributed to the placebo effect, then you are effectively saying that it is _not_ caused by the mushrooms. Instead, it is caused by the mind.
Argument for stoned ape theory: Someone thinks its true. Argument against stoned ape theory: You don't think it's true. We're getting no where with this.
Terrence Mckenna did not believe in his theories. He always welcomed the intellectual community in to discuss his strange ideas and get down to the bottom of things.
If you are going to call a theory BS don't replace it with a bigger helping of BS. Also Terrance many times seemed to make sure we understood that he was more of a philosopher than a scientist.
So I watched the 27 minutes of this and I feel like there's an elephant in the room that you didn't talk about: Evolution does not work by writing modifications acquired during an individuals life into their genetic code. If stoned apes became conscious in a new way, that didn't make their offspring like that. You'd get a selection maybe for apes with big appetite for these shrooms, like how modern humans have evolved higher alcohol tolerance. But if shrooms made apes have language, why do all of us have language *without* shrooms? Am I somehow wrong here?
You should spend more time listening to Terrance McKenna’s Stoned Ape Theory. Where do you think our idea of gods came from? Too easy is probably the way it happened.
I don't mean to comment on this Hypothesis at all, but saying that a couple of comments from a total of a few thousand is many, is the typical misunderstanding of how the internet works at all. Beautiful tattoos.
I think the Stoned Ape Hypothesis is a better explanation for the evolution of society and perhaps even technology, but certainly not biologically. Languages, cultures, religions, myths, philosophies... Yeah, all of these could be assisted by psychedelic use. They didn't turn us from ape to man, evolution did that just fine. But it may have enhanced our ability to create and evolve society.
Psychedelics are probably responsible for religion(s) though. By the way, the mushrooms you labeled as Cubensis on dung are Psilocybe Cyanescens, which grow on wood.
i know the last bit is presented as kind of a joke, but i wanna point out mckenna didnt necessarily believe all the ideas he put forth. alot of ideas he did get, but he decided to present them as such, and worry about skepticism after the fact. as he got older, he did grow increasingly doubtful of his ideas, the extraterrestrial one included.
I think there was bias against this theory. Psychedelics are a stepping stone on a long evolution journey. Makes you passive and more social means a culture will thrive and language will flourish. Language was your argument I would say language could not have happened without Psychedelics.
As a heavy user of these substances, I have to say that they are overhyped, much like the Stoned Ape theory. Many wild animals consume magic mushrooms, but don't reach the same level of intelligence. What I believe is, psychedelics only contributed to our intelligence, but was not the sole driving force behind it. Psychedelics gave us spirituality, and thus superstition, and thus religion, and thus rituals, and thus the ability to organize ceremonies based around calendars, which would lead to the formation of clergies, which would then become the record keepers of their respective societies, (notice the word "clerk" comes from "cleric") and because of their propensity for record keeping, would become the first scholars, and start the first academies and universities. It's no secret that the first and most od the top universities were originally for training clergymen, the same clergymen who created the scientific method, which created the modern world. To this day, the titles we award to academics, like Doctor and Professor, were originally the titles of saints and other religious leaders - particularly, Doctor was first used for the Christian apostles, who purportedly used mind-altering substances.
No experience with psychedelics but visual acuity is definitely improved by extreme sleep deprivation. The issue is that post-processing doesn't seem to be a thing so it's more paroidoliac and also much bluer than normal human vision. I would go so far as to say sleep deprivation fundamentally alters color perception and probably blue sensitivity. The downside is that paroidoliac hallucination provides a lot of false positives and you can completely irrelevant phenomena like dusty air currents in a normal room or St. Elmo's fire on everyday objects.
Something I spent a lot of time thinking about as well, thanks for that walk through! I agree that Terrance (and I do love Terrance) was overstating the scale of influence that psilocybin could have had, and it's important to be clear on that. One thing that was stated is that entheogens have been given to chimps and other high primates. Does anyone had a link to those studies? I looked through the references but I wasn't sure if one of those books were where that statement came from. Lastly, regarding the idea that Terrance believed that the mushroom was an intelligent species that made it's way to earth to commune with us... You have to remember that Terrance was also a mystic of sorts, who, like so many of us that engage in this form of spirituality, gravitates towards the implication of pan-psychism. The "Gaia Mind" and so on. I never saw it so much that Terance believed the mushroom itself was intelligent, but rather that as a part of the Gaia mind of nature "arrangements" were made [by the "universe" then] to see to it that this catalyst would cross our paths. I myself have had encounters with this oracle, but I have never seen it as an expression of the fungus itself, but rather the fungus is a early contributor into what became the collective mind of the bio-sphere. Psilocybin is a channel you get tuned into, and in that channel lies an "other", and that other is a deep intelligence that appears via a manifestation that is involuntary of your thoughts or actions, wherefrom I do not understand. That being said, anyone who's smoked DMT knows the content of these kinds of visions do not come from the lexicon of your living experiences.
I hear you I entered this journey as a total close minded atheist that wanted nothing to do with anything spiritual. Many of my friends have been the same. Over the last few months we have all converted to this sort of idea of the universe setting a scene. There's just been too many coincidences during our trips together it's been hard for us not to acknowledge that it feels like the outside world was playing with us.
The people that are getting upset about you questioning and commenting on the stoned ape hypothesis are clinging too tight to an idea as if it's part of their identity or something. Many people want a simple answer because it's something they can grasp. Try not to spend too much time placating to these types of people. Not unless you have a lot of time and a lot of patience and it's something you're serious about tackling otherwise it might be a waste of time. Well done work as always.
The way I see this theory: Psychedelics enhance pattern recognition skills and can provoke synesthesia, both of which is necessary for the development of language. However, primates could not have been the only animals using psychedelics, so where are the talking cats and dogs? I do find this theory very interesting, but I hate that it doesn’t take other animals into account.
It’s funny that so many people in this comments section feel the same way about mushrooms, yet speak so confidently about human evolution without any experience or training to talk about it. In any case, you can rest assured that we’ve got plenty of experience.
@@neurotransmissions I dont know anything about human evolution. It was a simple question with no ill intent. I just know how little I know. And that's a good thing i think🤗
I took 3 hits of yellow mescaline when I was a teenager. The things I saw and experienced were beyond description. It was a terrifying experience. After I came down and thought about it, I wondered if somehow our ancestors had taken these things and gained some kind of insight into the world's. If you have never experienced it, don't knock it. Try it out. I did, and a week later, I did it again with a much better outcome. I wish I had some now.
Your looking way too close! The mushrooms in and of themselves is only a very small percentage of the overall pressure it applies to the growth of the species. The pursuit, the collection, processing etc would have a synergistic effect. Not the single substance, it and of itself, alone.
I feel like you yourself would have had to try mushrooms or psychedelics to make this argument. Now we shouldn't judge a book by its cover but it doesn't look like you've tried many if not any
The problem with this video is the title. It immediately forms a bias that the stones ape theory is “bad” and should have just been called a “a review of the stoned ape theory. Essentially the only reasons it gives for the theory being bad is that it’s simple? (Which isn’t necessarily bad, I.E. Occam’s razor). And that there is no hard evidence to back it up. The video is balanced in looking at the evidence and I agree it can’t be conclusively proved. But that doesn’t make the theory bad. Early humans certainly consumed psychedelic mushrooms. While it may not have been the only reason for our evolution, it still may have been a catalyst that helped advance civilisation. Also she talks about ego death as incredibly important. It can be for emotional healing from but it’s certainly not that important. I’ve only experienced ego death once. The mushrooms are still incredibly powerful without ego death.
I'm a McKenna fan. Not a Rogan fan. I haven't consumed psychedelics in years, but my reverence toward them is life long. McKenna's SPECULATIONS are very insightful and stimulating them. But remember, that even McKenna's psychonaut homies like Ralph Abraham (mathematician) and Rupert Sheldrake (biologist) confronted McKenna with string skepticism when he'd slip down the slope of presenting his speculations as fact. I think the Stoned Ape Hypothesis has value if it is very filtered down. Cuz, like @26:00 NT concedes, that it is hard to doubt that psychedelics have had an impact on humans throughout history. I feel that it is undeniable that psychedelics have played at least a minimally significant role in the evolution of human culture (especially art, spirituality, philosophy, etc)
Have there been studies where modern day chimpanzees have been given mushrooms? I think that’s the only way to confirm/deny this theory for good. If you give small doses of mushrooms to chimpanzees, do they get better at language? Do they get better in any way? Even if the process is slow, we should still be able to detect it.
We need to ask do they get better at language etc and then are the ones who are best at language etc more likely to reproduce than they otherwise would be. The study of ape language acquisition has had a LOT of quackery in the field too so the study would need to be controlled very carefully.
I think UCSD art department is frivolous at best. Hardly think art students undressing, naked as a Jaybird, before drawing in class prepares you for commercial art. Doesn't teach you Verdaccio painting or Frank Reilly life drawing. Hippie theories are just as bad as hippie art techniques.
@@transsexual_computer_faery You've proven my point, i ve tripped many times and experienced the dissolution of the ego multiple times. And what has it given me? Good things, but it is not a perfect, magical cure. These chemicals put you in a mental state like no other, and can be incredibly dangerous. They should be treated with the utmost respect. They probably arent responsible for the development of human consciousness. And, quite frankly, they are highly dangerous. Especially during dissociative ego death moments.
@@edmundpope6415 "important" and "dangerous" are not mutually exclusive. i personally do not believe psychedelics spawned human consciousness and i didn't assert as such in my earlier comment. just a whole lot of assumptions on your part. you only provided one very specific statement, which is what i commented on. so no issues there.
id like to note that Terence McKenna later on said that he doesn't believe the stoned ape theory is the hole story. And his brother has said he probably wouldn't believe it if he was around today. I for one believe that psychedelic's played a role but it was similar to how coffee changed us. maybe psychedelics made us more creative or entuned with are emotions.
Your visual acuity does in fact get better, I used to eat the mushrooms in the field while I looked for them and as time went on I would be spotting them across the field like crazy. Noticing the field mice scurry away while the cows stare at me with big curious eyes. Tripping with a ton of harmless cows is nice and yall should try it sometime if the farmer is cool with it.
It was very gracious of you to spend so much time on what is essentially an unfalsifiable hypothesis that even Terrence did not take seriously and then come up with an alternative explanation that the average psychonaut can find so thought provoking. Great work.
I get why you're saying the "it's too simple" thing as an explanation for why it's so popular, but I mean Occam's Razor is still a thing right? I think for Terence it was just a cool idea that was possible, hard to prove or disprove but could maybe be proven one day, and if he was the one who got it right he'll be remembered forever. But yeah, with no concrete evidence there's no real reason to believe it, but for now it's just a fun speculation that is coherent and still very much possibly true.
It was left out of elysium for a reason, el is diety ly is the isness of is and ium is the biota or elementalness. Its hard to mention the god likeness within men of a certain epoch without them conflating themselves with gods in light of the incommensurable wrath they can inflict on the mental inferior. The evidence of that particular absence could validate its necessity and mine with its very absence and essence.... you can do ark but never mars or tower
You are completely misusing Occam’s razor here. It is not ’the simpler of two options is most often correct’ But, ’The alternative that is based on the fewest suppositions’
@@12kwh Fair enough, but I think the stoned ape hypothesis is "simple" because it only really has two suppositions, that our ancestors ate these mushrooms, and that these mushrooms contributed our growth in brain size and intelligence. Her argument that this idea is bad because it's "too easy" seems like a complexity bias fallacy.
No, it’s bad because there is no evidence that psilocybin results in significant neuronal growth. As opposed to other theories that can explain this, have supporting data, and seem more plausible.
My 2 cents. When you are in outdoor camping what are the things that mind considers important? Fire, shelter, food and community of friends. Once you have the first three then you look for friends. Thats where psychedelics or even alcoholic drinks came into play into human civilization. Once humans had their fire and were full with day's hunt did they tried these things to calm themselves down for a nice sleep for a next day of adventure and uncertainties of aftrican jungle life.
Sleep deprivation is also "chemical binoculars." The problem is that there's a goddamn reason your eyes do all the postprocessing and filtering that lowers the resolution and constrains the focal range. You see a lot more of the blue end of the spectrum especially and you see movement where none exists. You also see a lot of irrelevant things like dust floating in the air or little St. Elmo's fire at the tips of leaves and such. And pareidolia goes crazy and you see animals where there are none. I would argue that this probably makes you worse at hunting, not better, but that's just my guess.
No No No. It didn't make us the organism we are today. BUT IT DID mid-wife a few of our ideas. Besides, it was fish! We' learned to fish when our brain got big. "The fishing net" likely helped even more than the shrooms. HOWEVER, if we got the idea for "the net" while ON shrooms..... I personally LOVE getting stoned and going fishing; so....
Improves my vision even at high doses. And so does LSD. I love staring in the distance when tripping, makes it a lot easier to stare and focus on tiny subjects very far away.
For the record as a pretty experienced athlete and user of psychedelics they (just being general) most definitely do improve athletic capability, visual capacity and etc. Undoubtedly someone on a lose dose would perform better than not assuming they were doing something that does not require new critical thinking. Ex. A professional athlete playing their sport, not random guy snowboarding for first time lol. As far as vision goes it would/could help in a few ways, one is helping distinguish movement in low visibility areas (low light/high grasses/etc), another is through increased focus and pupil dilation, and there are others. Anecdotally I have very obviously and consistently seen it myself but I believe also the science is there znd most people with insight/experience would agree. And that ignores a lot of other factors like "flow state" or even just the high level at which people perform when "happy"/excited.
If you haven't had a psychedelic experience with Mushrooms, I recommend you to do it and put your hands to work on this investigation 👍🏾 You got nothing to lose and I'm sure you'll find out a lot more than you think you know through conventional channels! Take it easy! But take it 😎 Nice video tho
the only thing you find on a trip is your own hallucinations. Surely, they may be valuable, and may trigger your imaginations etc, but that information comes from inside of your brain, so it can't teach you about the outside world
I think these objections are pretty clownish, especially with the low understanding of the broad situation. After the 17:00 minute mark you go on to tell about how language itself is very transformative and go on to say “it’s the real thing.” Those series of statements really show that the profundity of the issue has not settled in for you. You think language just appeared in a relatively or even marginally similar structure to how we understand it. If you can seriously assert that language itself(void of any explanation for it) is what has transformed us so rapidly, then I don’t think you are even qualified to answer the question. Some of the other bad points you made is underestimating the period of time of transformation we are talking about. The effect of mushrooms don’t have to appear significant in the lab to have a significant effect over at least 100,000 years. The fact that you can see an effect at all is probably good evidence of a profound long term effect since there’s no other natural(unprocessed) chemicals that could ever hope to do the same. And also when the “expert” made the statement that he doesn’t think that getting stoned on mushrooms will yield a helpful result and then said “he’d probably forget his bow.” That shows a clear misrepresentation to what was ever claimed. So either he was trying to sabotage the perception of the argument, or just didn’t understand the actual claim. Terence said, in the hunting context, that they would likely have taken doses so little that you or i wouldn’t have any idea unless we were told that we dosed. Also the fact that you think something “simple or umbrella” like his explanation, for that fact alone, should not be considered, and then proceed to say how little is actually known about the issue. Clearly there is a big portion we are missing there is no refuting that. So considering that, why are you(and most of academic and politicized science) so objected to a big explanation. Well as an ex atheist I could explain that it gives us intellectual ptsd of being under the Christian rule of god, so in essence, the “intellectual institution” tends to object any prominent factor. It would be like you rejecting evolution as a whole because it aims to explain too much. And while I think there’s something to that, no one can deny the almost full control it has over the biological world. The mind altering chemicals are the missing link. It’s a shame you didn’t go over archeological sites and depictions they have there because this conversation is more relevant than ever there. Where almost all ancient cultures have mushrooms or other active plants depicted in very interesting and seemingly profound ways. Also it’s pretty funny that you made the example that there was no leather with “we took mushrooms and it made us smarter” written on it, as if there was any language that they could have communicated in that the Moderns would understand. While they were trying to communicate the profoundness of the mushrooms, they were still pre literate and conceivably making no more noise than mildly coordinated grunts. If you consider that fact, that there’s no organized language going back 40-50 thousand years plus, then that should be a key to you that you are really misunderstanding and probably not even close. That means between here and there, something very profound happened that evolved our language to allow for such a society as we now have. It’s the same thing that is still evolving peoples language and life models. Also one reason that people act aggressive now with mushrooms, is because the individual ego is a fully intact personality, rather than, like Terence said, 60,000 years ago plus, people didn’t have that individual ego because they were almost all collective, for the sheer fact of not being able to trace the lines of male paternity because of the group orgasms. So they had no choice but to be egoless in the case of an individual. In that context, what he is saying is probably closer to the case because we are a very neurotic group of individuals which ironically is due to the natural separation from these mushrooms. They dried out with the rest of Africa so slowly they became more accessible. You can find these traces is realistically any ancient culture. I’d like to hear your alternative explanation on the religious impulse because I think you’d have about nothing
taking shrooms is hardly a real experiment. Proper scientific experiment needs to have a significant number of participants, to be double-blind, so obviously, researchers and participants can't be the same people, and employ a proper statistical analysis
Ego death. Yes, in 1971, while tripping on LSD, the title of a book (by Alan Watts) that I found fascinating, traipsed through my head: "This Is It" - after about the third repetition, I saw or experienced "IT" - the immediate now, or what the ancient Eastern philosophers called, "The Tao." I pulled over, got out of my car and looked up at the clear night sky. I didn't see the stars - my eyes and the stars were the same thing. "I" and everything else was the same thing or conversely, there was never an "I" to begin with. The Taoists also call the experience, "That which can't be named." Trying to describe ALL in an eternal NOW is as futile as trying to bite your own teeth or taste your own tongue. It's like a dog chasing its own tail who suddenly realizes that the tail and him are ONE.
I think the most basic problem with the theory is it depends on some form of Lamarckism. Otherwise, how would the changes caused by the mushrooms, or any other psychedelic, persist up to present generation and appear in people who don't have experience with psychodelics, magic mushrooms or otherwise.
Well as someone studying evolutionary biology, I will say that the amount of Baby that we have thrown out with the Bathwater when it comes to Lamarkism / the inheritance of acquired characteristics is a bit up in the air. I'm not endorsing the stoned ape theory, because obviously it's a bit silly and what we in the field call a "Just-So Story" - meaning it sounds appealing enough that some people will accept it, but there's no real evidence for or against it, and there doesn't exist a good way to test it as a hypothesis (without a time-machine, of course). But as I said, some important questions in this area these days are whether epigenetic changes induced in a parent can be reliably transferred to the offspring, and whether these epigenetic changes can eventually be incorporated into the information of the genome. Changes to the epigenome are especially associated with the developmental process, so it isn't out of the question that it could eventually influence brain regions.
@@chinobambino5252 Fair enough, I am somewhat familiar with the subject you're talking about and and hope to keep as much of a baby with me when disposing of bath water. I guess my revised position would be that the changes that the Stoned Ape Theory aims to explain seem more significant in magnitude and duration than what I understand as possible through epigenetics. This again might be false, but I think it would be in at least in a more conservative/less sweeping way.
@@chinobambino5252 I agree, but it’s still not clear to me. Let’s say that mushrooms directly improve brain function and this is a survival advantage. In order for this to be inherited, the germ cells would have to be altered (either epigenetically or via mutation). It doesn’t make sense to me how mushrooms could both improve brain activity directly (pharmacologically), and also epigenetically alter the germ line in such a way as to produce the same brain improvement. This is where the theory is flawed it seems to me.
@@b3u3g3g3y Yep I think this is the biggest issue - the separation of the germ cells and somatic cells. A potential avenue of transmission would be a mother eating the substance after having just conceived, but during fetal development the epigenome is extremely dynamic to allow for cell differentiation so I bet any small effects you'd see would be quickly washed away, or else lead to extreme malformations. If someone did a study today and found that psilocybin drastically altered our epigenome then maybe you'd have some evidence to follow, but I think that's highly unlikely as it doesn't seem to cause cancer or anything else associated with erosion of the epigenetic landscape. In all honesty, I think the Stoned Ape Theory is much more conceivable, although still in an untestable way, from a psychological standpoint rather than a biological one. If you've ever done psychedelics, you know that you feel much more "on the same wavelength" with your peers (whatever that means), even without speaking your mind. I am sure this feeling of more open communication is what gave rise to Stoned Ape Theory. However, it seems to me that the likely mechanism for this is that on psychs you become more intensely aware of subtle cues and body language from others, which having developed language to communicate, we no longer use as much. But of course back before we developed language, we were probably relying on these nonverbal cues much more. So in essence the loss of ego, lowered language ability, and heightened sense of nonverbal cues we experience on psychs now may even reflect the state early humans were in already.
Ha! That clip from 2001 was brilliant. Thank you so much for making this. Psychedelics have greatly improved the quality of my life. I'm one of those people that had otherwise untreatable depression and anxiety until psilocybin stepped in to the rescue but as you can imagine as an atheist and an enthusiast of all things science I'm pretty much a loner in the psychedelic community. I'm constantly having to remind people that the Stoned Ape Theory is a neat idea but doesn't have a whole lot of concrete evidence behind it. If I also took the time to explain to everybody how the words theory and hypothesis kind of got mixed up in how they're used in modern times and actually isn't the proper scientific application, I wouldn't have any friends anymore.
@@TrevorJrHotkiss11 Epigenetics don't have sustained effects on populations, the whole point is that things eventually revert as conditions change. How genes get activated and deactivated at different stages of a cell's life and which of those states remain and which are changed after division, meiosis, fertilization etc. are determined by the genome which is subject to natural selection. Individuals who's genomes instruct for epigenetic markers that better prepare their offspring for the current conditions will be at an advantage, natural selection is required to tune those systems. So there would still be the issue of explaining what selective pressures mushrooms had on individuals that their offspring would need to be specially prepared for a decade of an abundance or dearth of psychoactive mushrooms. edit: grammar
@@paulfoss5385 I don't think it's as serious as the species requiring the mushrooms. It would be a series of events that lead to advantageous selections. IIRC there was a time for the human population when we were as little as 10,000. If it was more likely for us who consumed mushrooms to survive, that would be selection pressure. I don't think a lack of mushrooms meant no survival. Taking mushrooms could have exacerbated cultural development and social complexity, which influences future generations. That would open the door for specific humans with specific mutations to thrive in the mushroom culture. With enough benefit, it would create genetic groups with specially selected neurological genes. Genes that could help with tool use.
@@paulfoss5385 The environment that potentially came from mushrooms would create different selection pressures. Using them, we could have potentially sped up selection of neurological gene variations. This would mean if there was a single man with "the human smartness gene," the cultural environment of psychedelic use could have specially selected for it.
Ive onky just heard of this hypothesis and already within the first 30 seconds she badly misrepresented what I literally only just learned about 1 hour before watching. The idea is that the Shrooms cause such intense stimuli that the neurons develope so many new synapses that over repeated use, the subsequent generations may started keeping mutations that were adapted to better handle the extreme stimulation. The side effect of which means more potential brain matter available for holding information and thus, intelligence.
"It's too clean and simplistic to sound possible." The first indication that someone merely wishes to sound intelligent, rather than actually think and act with intellect.
Following my comment, I feel it's appropriate to ask: When you folks started recording this video, did any of you actually invest time and effort into researching Stone Ape Theory yourselves? Did you rely primarily on your own reasoning and logic assessing the theory, or did you rely mostly on confirmation bias when referencing certain doctors and the research provided? The most important question here might just be: Are any of you qualified to the same degree as Terrence McKenna himself? I have an interesting feeling that none of this was actually taken into account. Be that as it may, an opinion is an opinion, and what you're stating is just that, an opinion.
I agree absolutely. It's just like the dogmatic display we have seen in the scientific community since the 17th century. I just added Carta to my list of untrustworthy businesses that likely either educated this individual to scoff without any research or even funded this. Purely speculative of course, but there was no argument here! It's as if they don't even know the stone ape hypothesis!
Y'all are hilarious. I love when we support our claims with peer-reviewed evidence that contradicts the theory, and y'all are just like, "no, you're wrong because I don't like you" without giving any real evidence that what was said is incorrect.
@@neurotransmissions I love you. Your intelligence and persona. I really do. That's why I want you to see this. Ask Ootzi what he was gathering though. The one in a million chance that we'd find a primitive individual of the area of his time period in ice??
Humans were like lions. Hunters, but what do lions do most of the day, they lay around. Since we are not strict carnivores then we would have for sure eaten mushrooms. and that includes the trippy kind. And they would have become popular.
Ok, so I am tripping rn, I am studying neuroscience (first year), and I feel like the algorithm brought me here for a reason. I subscribed to you immediately. This is fate.
Lol, idk what this guy is talking about but we didn't censor any comment of his. I've got my hands full removing scammers/FBI agents who wanna sell you fake shroom spores on instagram
@@YawnGod nah it's probably TH-cam deleting your comments. I have mine deleted too very often. I guess it's a blacklist, once you get your account into the blacklist, your comments often get deleted even if you don't put any numbers or links (If I do that, it doesn't even let me post comments lmao). Of course it depends on context. If I try to name a video or website or a social media handle, my comment gets yeeted lol
I think the theory has more potential to explain the development of cultures and societies of humans rather than the vast change from earlier hominids to homo sapiens.
I was thinking along the same lines. It could have sparked the idea of god
You say rather than, but I don't think you can separate developments of cultures and societies from the vast changes of earlier hominids.
Agree. Which Terence will probably still be remembered and credited
Yeah that sounds about right
I think it's fairly reductionist logic, it seems to me, that it would have happened by degrees, the mental expansion brought on first by tool use, then the ability to harness and control fire. These lead to cooked animal protein, and shared space around the communal fire. To these factors add the mushrooms, which in modern times are being proven to not promote nuero-plasticity but also nuero-genisis, ( see John's Hopkins study 2019) even in advanced aged people.
To this add the knowledge that we have an endogenous cannabanoid system which proves we co-evolved with the cannabis plant, it offers some evidence , I'm not stating that stoned ape is solid ground, but at least plausible, to my limited understanding
When people talk about Terence McKenna they always talk about his crazy theories (which he himself was very critical of), they never talk about his main points; what drugs have on material evolution. The one drug to be legalized for most of the modern era was alcohol which creates dominate behavior, compared to other drugs like weed and shrooms that create more passive attitudes. McKenna is basically saying that drugs play a key role in effecting our material conditions.
Man the talk of McKenna where he explains how alcohol and tobacco actually cause anti social behavior and just a worse atmosphere in total, compared to countries or places that use psychedelics or weed and such, these people were very open and involved with eachother, more social and less violence
& that "I entertain these idea but I give no belief over to these things, I don't believe in these theories..... the truth requires no belief, it is the truth" Why doesn't she see for herself? "Stoned on mushrooms you might forget your bow 🙇♂️ " that is lost him & the interview credibility that's pathetic strawman argument, is wildly immature & insulting that's not even how the effect works long term just wow. Microdosing which does work that way is proven practice that pushes the tech industry today, to ignore that is willfully ignorance. This seems like it had good intentions & harshly judgment closed minded research, please we can do better. It's not black & white she should be moving forward considering this theory not taking & fighting it as fact, What in The Science! What in the Name Of Progress!
Exactly, it's just that psychoactive drugs affect our mental ability and how we act. Like saying water is wet fire burns and if you drop a rock it falls to the ground. Not that we gained intelligence from drugs, just that they shaped our behavior to a degree that still has effects to this day. Since we still use them.
McKenna even said low doses for hunting
yeah, the material and cultural element... the "historical materialist" element, if you will, is definitely the far more convincing, and ultimately relevant, part of his ideas.
and while "historical materialism" has that kind of unfortunate historical link with V.I. Lenin (see [1]), I think that a good, opening historical materialism is one of the best historical methods we have... but more... one of the best analytical frameworks we have for a sociological and political-economic analysis of what is driving our current development (and problems) and how to address that.
[1] (leading some people to insist that a "proper" understanding of historical materialism *inevitably* must lead "scientifically" to "socialism"... except that Lenin et al., mean *their* specific, authoritarian, "socialism", and their VERRRRY generous self-appraisal of their own "science")
I thought the stoned ape hypothesis was that psilocybin played a factor in the sociocultural part of the evolutionary drive of human intelligence.
Not the sole reason and not the direct cause of genetic change.
Right, if u listen to terence explain it, it was fairly well-thought-out. I personally believe Terence is greatly underestimated, the guy was basically a genius.
In the Amazon and Mexican indigenous society's its use is still an important part of those society's structure.
and also played a factor on language development
@Kristie Hansen And what were the apes before they were apes? ANd before that and before that? Everything is made from the same thing. So you could say we evolved from an eukaryote also and be just as accurate.
@Kristie Hansen The evidence is that there are over 10 million different species. Which would me that all different life forms would have started around the same time and then through natural selection, be what they are today. However, if the evolution theory is contemplated then a single life form could have branched out into all the different species due to natural selection, into what we see today. So to your point, though, I have not seen evidence either of one species turning into another species but it was explained to me this way, just like a rainbow you cant tell where one color really ends and starts a new color. Now if we look at genetics then its probably evolution.
I've experimented with a lot of psychedelics and I can definitely understand why it could make you a better hunter. You feel way more in tune with your surroundings; you hear better and you see sharper and clearer. You feel like you're part of nature at a level that's impossible to feel when sober. Staring far in the distance, or at clouds, the stars and the Moon are some of the most satisfying things you can do on a high dose of LSD or psilocybin.
I agree, visual acuity is definitely increased with psilocybin.
There is no evidence to show that it improves visual acuity. You will not do better on an eye exam. However, it helps with visual perception, which may help you with identifying patterns or doing a jigsaw puzzle. You may feel like you have better eyesight, but what you may be experiencing is seeing details that your brain previously ignored or took for granted. Pretty cool! However, there’s no evidence to show that visual perception makes you a better hunter. Haha
@@neurotransmissions Many don't realize how big a role present awareness, patience and stillness play in hunting. The right dose can erase time and allow a prolonged sense of open awareness and unbroken alert presence. Also: dilated pupils gather more light in low light when animals are most active. Or for tracking in low light.
@@davidgough3512 If you can show me a controlled study that demonstrates that psilocybin improves visual acuity, then we’ve got data we can discuss. Until that point, it’s just anecdotes.
@@neurotransmissions Perhaps you have mistaken me for another commentor. Nowhere did i mention acuity. In fact my experience agrees with your suggestion that pattern recognition plays more of a role. Also, the (admittedly ideosyncratic) enhancement of the ability to sit still and remain alertly present, and the fairly universal dilation of pupils at even small doses (won't make the eyechart any clearer but will make it more apparent in dim light ) are symptoms other than acuity. As for evidentary studies, we're 50 years behind, thanks to recent prohibitions, part of the heresy crushing since emperor Constantine, and a current inhibited interest in profit investment into researching the unpatentable.
That’s crazy, have you ever done DMT?
Clearly she hasn't lmao
@@hectorthesolfather5059 twas a joe Rogan reference
Along with richat structure and ancient Egyptians kinda weird
It’s a Joe Rogan reference, for all the AFABs that don’t get it
Not yet, just tried a small dose of shrooms. Working my way to the top
Psychedelic's definitely have potential to deal with mental health symptoms like anxiety and depression , I would like to try them again but it's just so hard to source out here.
Psilocybin containing mushrooms saved my life . The drastically reduced my benzodiazepine withdrawal allowing me to quite illicit pill addiction after three years of heavy daily use before it would had became medically dangerous to quit . It has also helped me survive depression .
The Trips I've been having have really helped me a lot , I finally feel in control of my emotions and my future and things that used to be mundane to me now seem incredible and full of nuance on top of that I'm way less driven by my ego and I have alot more empathy as well.
@@lucasanthony5648 Tripping is not all that bad but one has to find a good mycologist to teach you the right things you need to
know
@Frank Teddy This whole thing is pretty new to me, can I try 3 grams?
@@lucasanthony5648 I am feeling the same way too, I put too much on my plate and it definitely affects my stress and anxiety levels. I am also glad to be part of this community.
it is also unscientific to do experiments of this type for a few months only on adult rats. giving successive generations of mice mushrooms on a regular basis over the course of about 40 years would be the way to conduct this study. by the time it concluded the mice might be in charge of the planet like hitchhikers guide.
😁🤪😉👍
… or the sentient yoghurt from “Love Death + Robots”…. But as anyone who really knows where his towel is could tell you, humans aren’t descended from those simians anyway; we were wiped out by the useless third of the population (hair-dressers, fine arts experts, PR consultants, anything with human resources, executive managers, and so on) of an alien civiliazation, after they were tricked into crashing their escape rocket (to escape the impending *DOOM* of 2012-like proportions for their planet, although that was a made-up story by the useful two thirds of the population, who promised they would be following RIGHT after the useless left) into pre-historic earth. They were a bit confused at first, f.ex. they didn’t have any money, until some marketing guy noticed that money is green, so are tree leaves, now tree leaves will be our money. This idea, however, led to terrible inflation, since their money now literally grew on trees, but their military (useless, remember?) offered to solve the inflation problem… with flame-throwers… since the leaves wouldn’t grow on trees, if only they burned down everything on the planet that carried green leaves…
Oh yeah, and the original ultimate question about life, the universe and everything was lost with this unforseen change in earths programming (earth is a supercomputer designed by mice, well duh!), but a slightly erroneous copy is preserved in the mind of one Arthur Dent, eventually read by a paranoid android from before Radiohead, and eventually revealed through a game of Scrabble. The (erroneous) ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is: “What do you get if you multiply 5 by 7?”… I prefer the lab mice’s take on it for artistic reasons, though: “how many roads must a man walk down?”, so profound, so deep, so empty of any coherent meaning or message…
EDIT: I like Dylan Thomas too. I won’t go quietly into any dark night, I rage to the point where the neighbors complain that I won’t accept the waning of the light. But that poem is waaaay over-used, and Robert Zimmerman is a MUCH better poet in my not-so humble opinion.
You would need strong evidence to support this especially since the mechanism proposed is Darwinian selection and that would be very difficult to perform in lab settings.
Yes, as they become in charge of the planet egos may form whether be tool language psychedelics etc but it seems like these all combined or more likely theory’s of evolution if evolution is really the truth ?
In scientific terms hypothesis and theory means different things, a theory explains observable facts and such while a hypothesis is basically an untested idea.
A hypothesis turns into a theory once the tests are conclusive. Linguistically this is only a hypothesis.
Agreed. It is a hypothesis, not a theory. The only reason we used that language in the video is because it is more commonly called the "stoned ape theory". I even did a search on google trends and significantly more people look for "stoned ape theory" rather than "stoned ape hypothesis". But you are correct that it is only a hypothesis.
@@neurotransmissions Besides, if you look at historical usage of the word "theory," it hasn't always been that anal.
I want to add, to Terence defence, that he was always very undogmatic. He frequently pointed out to his audience or readers that everything he said might as well be the ravings of a lunatic, and that you should make what you wanted out of it. Nevertheless, ideas can be very powerful and this particular theory has caused a lot of debate, engagement and speculation. That is one of the main driving forces of science. Without curiosity, discourse and open-mindedness whe have nothing, only status quo.
He was incredibly quick to dismiss the idea that an organism could create something that would effect another species as a whole. But that's literally what alcohol and caffeine and tobacco have done to our society. I don't think that anyone can argue the history of these 2 substances has had a massive effect on humans as a whole.
"how convenient this perfect substance happen to be in the right place at the right time?" Psychedelics can be found all over the earth from mushrooms,herbs,cacti,seeds even animals.
Billions of years ago too before us
The entire universe is only possible because of very convenient, perfect conditions.
Exactly, there are some very fishy points here that she tries to make. And even if it were the perfect time, I think that would only aid more of what Terence said concerning the purpose of the mushroom so I doubt it would hurt his point regardless
right? and what about life itself? is that her response to the formation of life? Because the first single celled organism was also very convenient but that happened didnt it?
I'm going to start calling them 'Convenient Mushrooms' instead of 'Magic Mushrooms' from now on.
The stoned ape theory would make a lot more sense if reindeer ruled the world
@@rickshawredemption ...Because how so?
Stoned ape theory makes more sense when you're stoned.
@@rickshawredemption That entire statement proves you clearly haven't a clue about reindeers, evolution, this video, how to justify a statement with reasoned arguments or psychadelics. If you are going to level a charge of ignorance against me please explain why you think I am ignorant not just of what (which was pretty redundant as it followed a one sentance statement... it wasn't going to be the geopolitics of modern day Persia was it)
@@alexc1105 I think what Noah is trying to say is that reindeer are known to consume Amanita muscara mushrooms, which are not actually considered to be psychedelics. Though they are famously hallucinogenic, A. muscara mushrooms are said to produce, beyond anything else, a state of sensory distortion and delirium, as opposed to psychedelic drugs which are of course regarded as having the potential to enhance perception or produce more meaningful states of mind. In the community of psychedelic enthusiasts, A. muscara is typically not given much reverence for these reasons.
I don’t share this in support of stoned ape theory but rather because I thought you mind find it interesting and because it might clarify this misunderstanding.
@@patrickholston7090 There is a gap in my mycological knowledge there. I did think (mistakenly) that the Fly argaric contained Psilocin or psilcybin as well as muscolin.
I think to be fair though, Noah Boblett just wanted to be... a bit of a troll...
“ I get why this theory is appealing , it’s very neat “
Boy oh boy does that explain a lot of peoples political views
I bet your political ideas are very based and cool, and not just following others around you
As flawed as Mckenna's idea is, l think it's also overly simplistic to assert that psychadelics played no part in the evolution of human consciousness. Transcendant experience is core element of the psychadelic effect, a key component in the evolution of religion and is a feature of human societys as far back as we can find any trace of ourselves. We are revelation junkies.
The stoned ape hypothesis specifically argues that it triggered it and that is what she is arguing against. It also wouldn't be the drugs that caused the changes in brain evolution, it would be culture. Just like art and religion or traditions would affect brain evolution.
@@BobardeZanzibar why would it be culture, and not drugs? Psychedelics are proven to promote neurogenesis... a direct injection of a serotonin analogue, flooding your brain creating new connections. Couldn’t you argue that culture came from mushrooms? You can’t count out early humans taking powerful psychedelics. 5 dried grams, would probably be half a meal for these people. They were taking huge doses.
It's important to mention that most ancient cultures had some sort of shamanism. Shamans used to be what priests are to modern religions. So it's not hard to imagine that those ape-humans were taking psychedelics as a way to connect to the gods, spirits, animas or whatever cosmology they had. If psychedelics precede religion then I don't doubt that they were an important asset in the homo sapiens evolution.
Probably the origin of those concepts like god and spirit world
Seeing shit that’s not there and making up a religion or cult around visions has not been a good thing.
Maybe. Religion serves a utilitarian purpose, being that it enabled collaboration on a mass scale independant of factors such as familial bond or location. It can prompt people who have never met to see one another as friends thanks to a mutual interest, which in turn opens up the potential for trade and cooperation in procuring resources or hunting. Simply put, its an effective means of gettings strangers to organize. I think the fact that religion engendered profound tangible benefits is most likely to be the cause for it's widespread proliferation, rather than psychedelic use. Maybe psychedelics were indeed involved in some capacity, but I don't personally believe they played an integral role.
@ippos_khloros good point, if anything it'd influence culture and culture would influence evolution/biology.
Santa was essentially a shaman.
Each discussion on psychedelics should include a disclaimer on whether the person speaking has done them and in what doses.
As soon as this obviously intelligent professor said you might forget your bow and arrow while high on psilocybin, I had to assume he’s never actually experienced it. I’ve hunted on psilocybin using a firearm, and I’m a soft bodied American who spends way too much time sitting. Imagining that someone who LIVES to hunt would forget their weapon on mushrooms is frankly laughable. I’m sure he’s an expert in his field, but it seems he’s not in this one. I do wish him well.
Clearly more research is needed. The specifics that Terence McKenna suggested are wrong, but there’s plenty of room to study the hunting advantages and disadvantages other symptoms may have. Personally, I believe this theory deserves refinement, not outright dismissal.
As with any theory that has clear and measurable ideas, it deserves decent study indeed. I just wonder if people will accept the results (both supporters and opponents)
And somehow your view will be dismissed even though it’s the most rational, nuanced and thought out
Welcome to modern discourse
@@TimiPigeon it might be. I like to be naive and it will be mostly like this in the public discourse and less in the scientific
@@ronsnow402 In a starving situation would be the difference... as the dudes in sylicon valley using this as a edgy competing tool
@@TimiPigeon if you present it with actual evidence and not in a youtube comment section, your chances to not be dismissed will be a lot better
I'm afraid this video might be missing a key point. In my opinion it may not be the "being stoned" part that helped in any way (i.e. you don't necessarily hunt better when stoned; likely you hunt worse), but the repeated use (in small doses, during specific occasions, by specific members of clans, etc) over tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, that has had a somewhat permanent impact on our species' brain development.
How can one prove that ingesting a specific substance for countless generations via countless individuals has or doesn't have an impact in the overall evolution of the species? I'm tempted to say it is not possible to prove nor disqualify, but worth many many hours of discussion !
In regards to ego death being not meaningful to apes: fresh mushrooms would be quite tasty to hungry apes. Its a meat substitute w/o the danger of hunting. Its really not that hard of a concept.
Also, they're fun.
Elephants and some birds have been caught repeatedly seeking fermented fruit and then drunkenly stumbling around. Animals are not judgemental, what feels good gets repeated.
As a fighter I have experimented with psychedelics and combat. There is potential for neurogenesis when ingesting mushrooms. I don’t find my personal anecdote to be facts or anything. But i did feel an amplified intuition with my body; also my fear was dissolved and I was able to see my opponents as what they were. My reflexes felt hypertuned, my vision was clear, my mind was empty but for the instinctual movements. It was an educational experience. The peculiar thing is that I have been able to reproduce this state of clarity when completely sober when I focus.
I simply don’t find this any more convincing than his ideas. We don’t know enough to say the hypothesis is true, and we certainly don’t know enough to say that it’s “too easy” to be true. No one in their right mind says that it’s an umbrella solution either, it’s probably an aspect of psychological evolution, not the sole cause.
The point of the video was to show that the ideas posed by the Stoned Ape hypothesis are not supported by any research or evidence. The claims that McKenna made do not align with existing data. And you're right that other theories should be similarly scrutinized. But at least there's _some_ supporting research. So they really should be more convincing because they're the only ones with some backing based in science:
www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/10/17/1206390109
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047248417303597?via%3Dihub
www.pnas.org/content/95/3/1336
@@neurotransmissions Thanks for your response! I definitely appreciate your video, I just think it’s important that we not rush to discount these hypotheses as “bad” overall, because while it might not be an umbrella solution, the central ideas may still lead to some important discoveries.
Seriously. What ever happened to Occam's Razor? Lol
@@neurotransmissions Still quite a dismissive and slightly unscientific perspective on the theory since we literally don't have any research into it. Imagine before any new discovery everyone just said, well no data supports it so can't be this new thing, quite a ridiculous answer.
@@ekay4495 First, we have research about related topics that have shown results that do not align with McKenna’s claims. Second, this *is* how science works. The burden of proof is on the creators and researchers of a hypothesis. Without substance to back it up, it’s just a fun story. It can exist, but that doesn’t make it legit.
“If all you have is a psilocybin mushroom everything else starts to look like your mom” - my mom
"How convenient that this perfect substance happened to be in the right place at the right time."
This is a flawed line of thought in my opinion.
One could also reflect on our improbable existence and say: "How convenient that our sun just happened to be the exact distance away from our planet to harbour life".
This is known as the "anthropic principle".
IF the sun wasn't absolutely perfect, we wouldn't be here to say otherwise.
IF psychedelics weren't available, our brains wouldn't have evolved enough to say otherwise.
It doesn't prove anything (of course), but it's another cog in the mechanism.
My hypothesis about the sun being at perfect distance is that the sun is conscious. Stars in general. Some kind of conciousness, even if different than humans. Cant prove it, but interesting thought... In the same sense, perhaps substances are also part of conciousness
@@SelfPoisonBand for at least some native american cultures mushrooms are also conscious and master plants
I am not a scientist, but i learned in my math classes that if you decide to take a sample of 16 people, you cant percieve a significant difference. Although, with an amount of 1000 people or more, you can. Then the experiment no longer has a chance factor. All i am saving is that Fischer did not execute a very professional or reliable experiment, in my amateur eyes. (Referring to 13:40 )
Seeing people talking about psychedelics without ever doing it, especially scientists or bigots makes me sick. It's like talking about going 10 billion stars away after one Rick and morty episode. Smoke some dmt. Take some shrooms. Then come back and talk. I'm not taking about the theory of Terrance. I don't really care. I talk about the attitude.
I never hear anyone talk about how it could very likely have had an epigenetic effect. There's never going to be just one thing that expanded our brains so much, and psychedelics were likely fed to children as well, this is all to say that language likely formed alongside this phenomenon
@@sophiedee2557 ?
prove that psychedelics were likely fed to children? You have none.
Most current hunter-gatherer shamanistic cultures use those ONLY during rituals, only by adults, and not even all adults. In many cultures only shamans can take psychedelics
This over looks small mushroom related statues and other artifacts found in Mexico and India. Some dating as far back as 600 b.c. There seems to be more evidence pointing to it being true than not. especially after hearing the argument against it.
“i don’t understand why apes would keep eating the mushrooms” proceeds to tell us that mushrooms give monkeys erections
Rx: 5 DRIED grams on an empty stomach.
Argues that our hungry ancestors wouldn't eat a lot of shrooms because they don't have egos (what?!) and therefore wouldn't experience ego death (supposedly why WE eat lots of shrooms). Immediately goes to an expert explaining that some chimpanzees like mushrooms so much they get erections upon seeing them!
I'm actually not deeply committed to the stoned ape hypothesis, although I find it as good as any other theory in explaining the bizarrely rapid mutations that lead to super fast brain growth. But I'm sorry, this video just makes a god-awful case against it.
I'm especially peeved that it mostly presents a straw person Lamarckian-type evolutionary approach to the theory. In other words, she's arguing that the theory states the effects of the shrooms on the adults who ate them led to bigger brains, rather than the far more plausible take that shrooms ingested during pregnancy could explain the sudden increase in fetal brain mutations that the theory seeks to explain - irregardless of whatever they did to the adult hominids.
Wait… psilocybin causes mutations? Ok… source? Or brief explanation of proposed mechanism?
@@mortenwintherolsson3237 You know what, I think I may have made a Lamarckian type error myself. I was assuming that a drug with well-documented evidence for altering neural networks could have a profound effect on the developing neural networks of a fetus, and that when these changes were beneficial, they would be passed on. But although those changes would precipitate birth, they wouldn't necessarily alter the genes of the child, would they? There are epigenetic possibilities here, and chemically-induced mutations are a possibility, but on that level, If psilosin effected genetic change, it wouldn't necessarily impact the neural genes, I don't suppose. Maybe I'm the one making god-awful cases here.
Honest mistake, but yes, I believe it is a mistake, still 😊
Altering the state or even structure does not necesarrily change the “blueprint” (dna). I wouldn’t be too surprised if it DID alter DNA in some way, I just don’t see how right now :)
@@mortenwintherolsson3237 Thank you for correcting me. Much appreciated!
I'm a huge McKenna fan, it is important to hold his hypothesis to the fire though. McKenna may have had a lot of wisdom and understanding of both human nature, language and psychs, but that doesn't mean that everything he said was true.
I appreciate the perspective, and you make an excellent argument. You brought me around on this.
It sounds plausible that a substance could cause a rise in creativity, that causes you to change your environment, causing genetic adaptation to the environment bringing various advantages. Though, just because it's plausible, it doesn't make it true. I also appreciate honest scepticism when dealing with ideas like this. Truth should never be rejected because of personal bias.
I can understand how the reality might be offensive to some, especially with the bigoted attitudes to certain substances. If it was scientifically and generally accepted that psychedelics accelerated human evolution, then there would likely be much less of a stigma around them. Though, we can't challenge bad ideas with more bad ideas.
mckenna was a loon but this is one of his only theories that actually made any sense. there's a lot of holes in it for sure, but for it to be dismissed just because the guy who thought of it was crazy is ridiculous. every time some new breakthrough scientific discovery has been made it was by some guy who everyone thought was a lunatic.
@@Competitive_Antagonist exactly. It's not healthy to build a mythology just because we like the impact that it would have now. It's better we end the war on psychedelics by modern ancidotal evidence of safety and hard data from experiments.
Inventing this version of psudo-history will only serve to make mushrooms and the people who take them, to be crazy.
World-class comment.
He himself did not take his ideas around psychedelics as gospel, they were just ideas to be pondered over but people seem to think that he was the psychedelic messiah. He said himself I'm just a guy that said I don't even take myself seriously
This discussion is simply far to derivative and contrived for my taste, and I think you’ve missed McKenna’s point completely. “Stoned Ape” is also a misnomer or misleading term, as it’s quite ludicrous to think that contact with psychedelics somehow miraculously and instantaneously caused a slew of psychological and physiological changes in ancient hominids. No. The essence of the matter, which beyond all these abstractions and minutia of particularities, precedes, pervades and underpins all of human history, from the early hominids to you and me talking through these funny black squares. Perhaps an early dose spurred some kind of early curiosity and fascination, which has endured and evolved with us as we hunted and herded animals, farmed our crops, and had prolonged contact and a relationship with psychedelic substances, which is reflected in our very neural chemistry.
A better term would be “psychedelic symbiosis hypothesis”
"A hippie version of intelligent design" - SHOTS FIRED 🤣
i feel so seen rn 😂
on point!
"We invented agriculture so we can make beer" ... where did this come from? We invented agriculture for food to feed the people, we added hops and whatnot to our agriculture to make beer.
fermenting cereals is the oldest known way to preserve them from mold etc. Hoops is not essential to make "beer".
Humans actually shrank after doing agriculture, suggesting malnourishment.
Hunter gatherers we’re the same height as modern first-world people.
There always a great video about it by “Trey the Explainer” (amazing channel btw) but I can’t remember which one.
So food was probably not the reason they started doing agriculture
Beer is more plausible
good point. it makes more sense to me that discovering fermentation and beer would have been a natural and swift consequence of farming, specifically because farming is so ridiculously effective, as soon as you get the hang of it you often end up with more crops than you know what to do with. these excess crops would, to my thinking, be the first place a person would stumble upon fermentation. especially if you were in a very wet region.
i took shrooms this past weekend and hypothesized the stone ape theory myself before i even knew what it was lmfaoooo.
When the only tool you really, really, really like using is a getting hammered....
Another reason why this theory is popular, is because it literally is proven to regrow and as well as completely grow new neurons and strengthen the neurons responsible for sensing your environment.
You could say that psycadelics helped along the way, but there are so many other factors that it couldn’t possibly be the only thing that got us to where we are today
Have a psychedelic experience or don't talk about what it is to have one. Empiricism is one approach to understanding the world around you, but it's not the only one.
Here's a thought exercise: imagine how much easier it would be for non-academics to understand these concepts, and consequently how many less angry people there would be, if the word "theory" had the same meaning in science as it does in other fields/everyday usage.
( claps slow)
Have You Ever Cosumed Psilocybin Mushrooms Before? 🍄
@@LowMedow I have. Both socially and on lone explorations.
Don't know how it got past them in high school science and math. And yet everybody has followed detective crime dramas, where the scientific process is applied to evaluate evidence, test hypotheses and develop a theory on what went down.
Or imagine how better informed people would be if they understood what a scientific theory actually is instead of applying the shorthand version that people attribute to it i.e. lots of people mistakenly think theory is synonymous with a guess without understanding the scientific methods that go into something actually being deemed a formal theory.
About the theory that psychodelics increase your Capacity to hunt. Which culture uses them to improve their hunting? It is a serious question. If there are cultures doing this, then it can be that there is some support to this theory. If no hunting culture does this, then you should wonder why.
ive heard word of peoples like mayans having used them
@@67kingdedede really for hunting? I've heard many stories of them being used for warfare, but not hunting. I'm not saying you're wrong, I just want to check. If you are correct, it would lend some plausibility to the theory.
Maybe I missed it, but the video never ( up to the 21 minute mark ) never gave evidence that mushrooms did not aid in the development of language, harnessing fire and using tools. The impression I got was that the video author is saying those skills, not magic mushrooms, was what spurred humanity onward. In so far as I understand the conversion as a whole, I don't think the development of those skills totally excludes psychedelics.
Yeah I also found that to be weird. Seems to me like a culture eating mushrooms would suddenly find different values, and would start highly prioritizing traits like vocalization, singing, creativity, etc.
It seems plausible enough to me that the introduction of psilocybin into their communities would alter the natural selection as singers/vocalizers became desirable to men and women as much as physical strength.
I dont think the theory is supposed to explain everything or discount other factors, it's really a straw man on her part.
@@samus598 I know that Sillypsybun has helped me a great deal. I can only imagine what it could do on an evolutionary timeline and with societal/tribal collaboration,.
Do you have evidence that they do? She specifically began the video saying that we can't know for certain but that mushroom use is not necessary or sufficient to generate consciousness especially when it would have taken millions of years of continual use for that to be the case.
I believe it. Psychedelics open our minds to creativity, re-balancing, spirituality, thru enthalpy. Mushrooms not just psychoactive but other sacred plants are highly beneficial (plants for pain (wild lettuce), sleeping, energy, mental focus, night sight clarity (xanga/ibogaine).. we are so blind with mental blockage (we rather watch tv then forage in the forest or roll up to fast food for convenience..) these guys had all the time in the world to trip and benefit, explore our natural side. Lastly there is ancient cave art depicting signs of psychedelic use. Literally mushroom headed cave art so ancient they can't date.. Haha.. enjoy
I've heard a lot of tripping stories, and they are very exciting,I would love to try magic mushrooms but I can't easily get some, Is there any realiable source I can purchase from??
I have been looking for a legit seller to buy from.
@Laura Polonioli came across the comments about bergwilly1 and I must say he is a genius.
Does he ship to Canada?
This whole thing is pretty new to me, can I try 3grams?
How did it go? Is this person reliable? I’m in the same boat as you. I want so bad to try it.
I can definitely attest to psilocybin improving visual acuity. My eyesight is not what it used to be when I was younger, but when I go mushroom foraging on a low dose of 1 - 2 grams, the details of the forest floor are greatly enhanced, and I usually spot more mushrooms. Edges are sharper. Depth of perception is improved (more 3D). Details in the rocks, leaves, and trees pop.
And as for its affect on the language centers of the brain, this is also verifiable. On large doses of 7 - 10 grams, I have had spontaneous glossolalia, sometimes speaking in multiple languages.
Your visual _perception_ is definitely affected, but there is no evidence supporting improvements in visual _acuity_ . Your brain may have an easier time identifying patterns and perhaps spotting mushrooms would be easier, but it doesn't improve your eyesight.
@@neurotransmissions Next time I will skip the foraging and take an eye-test. ;)
@@neurotransmissions visual perception is not the same as perception of visual perception. If you feel you can spot things easier, that perception will positively affect your visual acuity. Don't downplay the placebo effect.
Visual perception may be affected by mushrooms, but if you are saying that an increase in visual acuity can be attributed to the placebo effect, then you are effectively saying that it is _not_ caused by the mushrooms. Instead, it is caused by the mind.
Research has shown psilocybin to have potential to treat a range of psychiatric and behavioral disorders.
I learned more about myself on one trip than I have through over a year of therapy.
Argument for stoned ape theory: Someone thinks its true. Argument against stoned ape theory: You don't think it's true. We're getting no where with this.
Terrence Mckenna did not believe in his theories. He always welcomed the intellectual community in to discuss his strange ideas and get down to the bottom of things.
good video
If you are going to call a theory BS don't replace it with a bigger helping of BS. Also Terrance many times seemed to make sure we understood that he was more of a philosopher than a scientist.
Messing with psychedelics like mushrooms, dmt, and peyote, I have definitely expanded my mind. I dont think it's far fetched at all.
Messing with beer and weed, I have definitely expanded my waist line.
So I watched the 27 minutes of this and I feel like there's an elephant in the room that you didn't talk about: Evolution does not work by writing modifications acquired during an individuals life into their genetic code. If stoned apes became conscious in a new way, that didn't make their offspring like that. You'd get a selection maybe for apes with big appetite for these shrooms, like how modern humans have evolved higher alcohol tolerance. But if shrooms made apes have language, why do all of us have language *without* shrooms? Am I somehow wrong here?
No you are correct and why the science community doesn't take this idea seriously. Basically this only appeals to the science illiterate community.
The slow-zoom while you're talking is very psychedelic
You should spend more time listening to Terrance McKenna’s Stoned Ape Theory. Where do you think our idea of gods came from? Too easy is probably the way it happened.
2:34 - thats a 3D portrait of Terence by Fabio Paiva. Just to give credit.
I don't mean to comment on this Hypothesis at all, but saying that a couple of comments from a total of a few thousand is many, is the typical misunderstanding of how the internet works at all. Beautiful tattoos.
I think the Stoned Ape Hypothesis is a better explanation for the evolution of society and perhaps even technology, but certainly not biologically.
Languages, cultures, religions, myths, philosophies... Yeah, all of these could be assisted by psychedelic use.
They didn't turn us from ape to man, evolution did that just fine. But it may have enhanced our ability to create and evolve society.
Why did the brain grow so fast in such a short time.. and now hasn't really gained or lost any size
hello, i've grown kilograms of mushrooms during lockdown.
*pats himself on the back✋
You are the hero we deserve.
What's your name and your address
Psychedelics are probably responsible for religion(s) though. By the way, the mushrooms you labeled as Cubensis on dung are Psilocybe Cyanescens, which grow on wood.
i know the last bit is presented as kind of a joke, but i wanna point out mckenna didnt necessarily believe all the ideas he put forth. alot of ideas he did get, but he decided to present them as such, and worry about skepticism after the fact.
as he got older, he did grow increasingly doubtful of his ideas, the extraterrestrial one included.
anyways he said "it's a good candidate" and it is...
I think there was bias against this theory.
Psychedelics are a stepping stone on a long evolution journey.
Makes you passive and more social means a culture will thrive and language will flourish.
Language was your argument I would say language could not have happened without Psychedelics.
As a heavy user of these substances, I have to say that they are overhyped, much like the Stoned Ape theory. Many wild animals consume magic mushrooms, but don't reach the same level of intelligence.
What I believe is, psychedelics only contributed to our intelligence, but was not the sole driving force behind it. Psychedelics gave us spirituality, and thus superstition, and thus religion, and thus rituals, and thus the ability to organize ceremonies based around calendars, which would lead to the formation of clergies, which would then become the record keepers of their respective societies, (notice the word "clerk" comes from "cleric") and because of their propensity for record keeping, would become the first scholars, and start the first academies and universities.
It's no secret that the first and most od the top universities were originally for training clergymen, the same clergymen who created the scientific method, which created the modern world.
To this day, the titles we award to academics, like Doctor and Professor, were originally the titles of saints and other religious leaders - particularly, Doctor was first used for the Christian apostles, who purportedly used mind-altering substances.
I forgor what u said
It made me think of the game Super Mario. He eats mushrooms and becomes bigger and better.
No experience with psychedelics but visual acuity is definitely improved by extreme sleep deprivation. The issue is that post-processing doesn't seem to be a thing so it's more paroidoliac and also much bluer than normal human vision. I would go so far as to say sleep deprivation fundamentally alters color perception and probably blue sensitivity. The downside is that paroidoliac hallucination provides a lot of false positives and you can completely irrelevant phenomena like dusty air currents in a normal room or St. Elmo's fire on everyday objects.
When it comes to what I hear from opposing ideas is: "drugs bad therefore theory bad"
Except we literally never say that. Quite the opposite, actually. Drugs good, but theory bad.
Something I spent a lot of time thinking about as well, thanks for that walk through! I agree that Terrance (and I do love Terrance) was overstating the scale of influence that psilocybin could have had, and it's important to be clear on that. One thing that was stated is that entheogens have been given to chimps and other high primates. Does anyone had a link to those studies? I looked through the references but I wasn't sure if one of those books were where that statement came from.
Lastly, regarding the idea that Terrance believed that the mushroom was an intelligent species that made it's way to earth to commune with us... You have to remember that Terrance was also a mystic of sorts, who, like so many of us that engage in this form of spirituality, gravitates towards the implication of pan-psychism. The "Gaia Mind" and so on. I never saw it so much that Terance believed the mushroom itself was intelligent, but rather that as a part of the Gaia mind of nature "arrangements" were made [by the "universe" then] to see to it that this catalyst would cross our paths. I myself have had encounters with this oracle, but I have never seen it as an expression of the fungus itself, but rather the fungus is a early contributor into what became the collective mind of the bio-sphere. Psilocybin is a channel you get tuned into, and in that channel lies an "other", and that other is a deep intelligence that appears via a manifestation that is involuntary of your thoughts or actions, wherefrom I do not understand. That being said, anyone who's smoked DMT knows the content of these kinds of visions do not come from the lexicon of your living experiences.
I hear you
I entered this journey as a total close minded atheist that wanted nothing to do with anything spiritual. Many of my friends have been the same. Over the last few months we have all converted to this sort of idea of the universe setting a scene. There's just been too many coincidences during our trips together it's been hard for us not to acknowledge that it feels like the outside world was playing with us.
Nice video, I have a question. How many different psychedelic experience did you and the sir in the interview have had yourself?
The people that are getting upset about you questioning and commenting on the stoned ape hypothesis are clinging too tight to an idea as if it's part of their identity or something. Many people want a simple answer because it's something they can grasp. Try not to spend too much time placating to these types of people. Not unless you have a lot of time and a lot of patience and it's something you're serious about tackling otherwise it might be a waste of time. Well done work as always.
The way I see this theory:
Psychedelics enhance pattern recognition skills and can provoke synesthesia, both of which is necessary for the development of language. However, primates could not have been the only animals using psychedelics, so where are the talking cats and dogs? I do find this theory very interesting, but I hate that it doesn’t take other animals into account.
Have you ever done mushrooms yourself? I think every person should talk about what they know from experience.
It’s funny that so many people in this comments section feel the same way about mushrooms, yet speak so confidently about human evolution without any experience or training to talk about it. In any case, you can rest assured that we’ve got plenty of experience.
@@neurotransmissions so I take it as a yes i assume
@@neurotransmissions I dont know anything about human evolution. It was a simple question with no ill intent. I just know how little I know. And that's a good thing i think🤗
@@neurotransmissions
“Rest assured that we have plenty of experience”
Really?
I assumed that you had no experience with psychedelics.
I took 3 hits of yellow mescaline when I was a teenager. The things I saw and experienced were beyond description. It was a terrifying experience.
After I came down and thought about it, I wondered if somehow our ancestors had taken these things and gained some kind of insight into the world's.
If you have never experienced it, don't knock it. Try it out. I did, and a week later, I did it again with a much better outcome. I wish I had some now.
Your looking way too close!
The mushrooms in and of themselves is only a very small percentage of the overall pressure it applies to the growth of the species. The pursuit, the collection, processing etc would have a synergistic effect. Not the single substance, it and of itself, alone.
How is that different from, say, hunting or gathering?
@@BobardeZanzibar because you eat psilocybin at the end...
I feel like you yourself would have had to try mushrooms or psychedelics to make this argument. Now we shouldn't judge a book by its cover but it doesn't look like you've tried many if not any
That’s a bad assumption then.
Lol okay 😗
The problem with this video is the title. It immediately forms a bias that the stones ape theory is “bad” and should have just been called a “a review of the stoned ape theory. Essentially the only reasons it gives for the theory being bad is that it’s simple? (Which isn’t necessarily bad, I.E. Occam’s razor). And that there is no hard evidence to back it up.
The video is balanced in looking at the evidence and I agree it can’t be conclusively proved. But that doesn’t make the theory bad. Early humans certainly consumed psychedelic mushrooms. While it may not have been the only reason for our evolution, it still may have been a catalyst that helped advance civilisation.
Also she talks about ego death as incredibly important. It can be for emotional healing from but it’s certainly not that important. I’ve only experienced ego death once. The mushrooms are still incredibly powerful without ego death.
Gotta bait
I'm a McKenna fan. Not a Rogan fan. I haven't consumed psychedelics in years, but my reverence toward them is life long.
McKenna's SPECULATIONS are very insightful and stimulating them. But remember, that even McKenna's psychonaut homies like Ralph Abraham (mathematician) and Rupert Sheldrake (biologist) confronted McKenna with string skepticism when he'd slip down the slope of presenting his speculations as fact.
I think the Stoned Ape Hypothesis has value if it is very filtered down. Cuz, like @26:00 NT concedes, that it is hard to doubt that psychedelics have had an impact on humans throughout history. I feel that it is undeniable that psychedelics have played at least a minimally significant role in the evolution of human culture (especially art, spirituality, philosophy, etc)
Have there been studies where modern day chimpanzees have been given mushrooms? I think that’s the only way to confirm/deny this theory for good. If you give small doses of mushrooms to chimpanzees, do they get better at language? Do they get better in any way? Even if the process is slow, we should still be able to detect it.
I agree with this experiment.
We need to ask do they get better at language etc and then are the ones who are best at language etc more likely to reproduce than they otherwise would be. The study of ape language acquisition has had a LOT of quackery in the field too so the study would need to be controlled very carefully.
Have you watched the video? )
Gonna take waaayyy too long. Besides I can't imagine how difficult it will be monitor this experiment and make sure we don't bias the results somehow
@@8lec_R Yeah a few hundred years and 1000s of apes to give a reasonable chance for beneficial mutations.
I think UCSD art department is frivolous at best. Hardly think art students undressing, naked as a Jaybird, before drawing in class prepares you for commercial art. Doesn't teach you Verdaccio painting or Frank Reilly life drawing. Hippie theories are just as bad as hippie art techniques.
people just want psychedelics to be have some important meaning attached to them
Take DMT and then come back and tell me there isn't...
enter into those portals and you'll understand why we place such importance.
@@transsexual_computer_faery You've proven my point, i ve tripped many times and experienced the dissolution of the ego multiple times. And what has it given me? Good things, but it is not a perfect, magical cure. These chemicals put you in a mental state like no other, and can be incredibly dangerous. They should be treated with the utmost respect. They probably arent responsible for the development of human consciousness. And, quite frankly, they are highly dangerous. Especially during dissociative ego death moments.
@@edmundpope6415 "important" and "dangerous" are not mutually exclusive. i personally do not believe psychedelics spawned human consciousness and i didn't assert as such in my earlier comment. just a whole lot of assumptions on your part. you only provided one very specific statement, which is what i commented on. so no issues there.
I didn't know that there are so many professors in the TH-cam comments.
id like to note that Terence McKenna later on said that he doesn't believe the stoned ape theory is the hole story. And his brother has said he probably wouldn't believe it if he was around today.
I for one believe that psychedelic's played a role but it was similar to how coffee changed us. maybe psychedelics made us more creative or entuned with are emotions.
Your visual acuity does in fact get better, I used to eat the mushrooms in the field while I looked for them and as time went on I would be spotting them across the field like crazy. Noticing the field mice scurry away while the cows stare at me with big curious eyes. Tripping with a ton of harmless cows is nice and yall should try it sometime if the farmer is cool with it.
It was very gracious of you to spend so much time on what is essentially an unfalsifiable hypothesis that even Terrence did not take seriously and then come up with an alternative explanation that the average psychonaut can find so thought provoking. Great work.
You take some mushrooms and do some complex tasks.
You won't get very far lol.
As a hunter and someone who's tripped alot it's harder than you think.
Mushrooms are also a lot more potent nowadays. They didn't have the ability to dehydrate them and take much large doses, and other things.
Small doses heightens vision, hearing and general senses.
Very good for hunting.
Tripping off your head on high doses surely not a good hunting aid.
I get why you're saying the "it's too simple" thing as an explanation for why it's so popular, but I mean Occam's Razor is still a thing right? I think for Terence it was just a cool idea that was possible, hard to prove or disprove but could maybe be proven one day, and if he was the one who got it right he'll be remembered forever. But yeah, with no concrete evidence there's no real reason to believe it, but for now it's just a fun speculation that is coherent and still very much possibly true.
It was left out of elysium for a reason, el is diety ly is the isness of is and ium is the biota or elementalness. Its hard to mention the god likeness within men of a certain epoch without them conflating themselves with gods in light of the incommensurable wrath they can inflict on the mental inferior. The evidence of that particular absence could validate its necessity and mine with its very absence and essence.... you can do ark but never mars or tower
For icarus it was wings and nimrod the tower and the fallen the apples intervention as if prometheus's flame and mercuries message
You are completely misusing Occam’s razor here.
It is not ’the simpler of two options is most often correct’
But, ’The alternative that is based on the fewest suppositions’
@@12kwh Fair enough, but I think the stoned ape hypothesis is "simple" because it only really has two suppositions, that our ancestors ate these mushrooms, and that these mushrooms contributed our growth in brain size and intelligence. Her argument that this idea is bad because it's "too easy" seems like a complexity bias fallacy.
No, it’s bad because there is no evidence that psilocybin results in significant neuronal growth. As opposed to other theories that can explain this, have supporting data, and seem more plausible.
My 2 cents. When you are in outdoor camping what are the things that mind considers important? Fire, shelter, food and community of friends. Once you have the first three then you look for friends. Thats where psychedelics or even alcoholic drinks came into play into human civilization. Once humans had their fire and were full with day's hunt did they tried these things to calm themselves down for a nice sleep for a next day of adventure and uncertainties of aftrican jungle life.
Sleep deprivation is also "chemical binoculars." The problem is that there's a goddamn reason your eyes do all the postprocessing and filtering that lowers the resolution and constrains the focal range. You see a lot more of the blue end of the spectrum especially and you see movement where none exists. You also see a lot of irrelevant things like dust floating in the air or little St. Elmo's fire at the tips of leaves and such. And pareidolia goes crazy and you see animals where there are none. I would argue that this probably makes you worse at hunting, not better, but that's just my guess.
The video isn’t about sleep deprivation though…
Not a very good guess huh.
No No No. It didn't make us the organism we are today.
BUT IT DID mid-wife a few of our ideas.
Besides, it was fish!
We' learned to fish when our brain got big.
"The fishing net" likely helped even more than the shrooms.
HOWEVER, if we got the idea for "the net" while ON shrooms.....
I personally LOVE getting stoned and going fishing; so....
It definitely does enhance your vision at low doses.
Improves my vision even at high doses. And so does LSD. I love staring in the distance when tripping, makes it a lot easier to stare and focus on tiny subjects very far away.
this is true, but i feel like if apes were to find mushrooms theyd most likely just plop 1 or 2 of them in theyre mouth and eat em
For the record as a pretty experienced athlete and user of psychedelics they (just being general) most definitely do improve athletic capability, visual capacity and etc. Undoubtedly someone on a lose dose would perform better than not assuming they were doing something that does not require new critical thinking. Ex. A professional athlete playing their sport, not random guy snowboarding for first time lol. As far as vision goes it would/could help in a few ways, one is helping distinguish movement in low visibility areas (low light/high grasses/etc), another is through increased focus and pupil dilation, and there are others. Anecdotally I have very obviously and consistently seen it myself but I believe also the science is there znd most people with insight/experience would agree. And that ignores a lot of other factors like "flow state" or even just the high level at which people perform when "happy"/excited.
If you haven't had a psychedelic experience with Mushrooms, I recommend you to do it and put your hands to work on this investigation 👍🏾 You got nothing to lose and I'm sure you'll find out a lot more than you think you know through conventional channels!
Take it easy!
But take it 😎
Nice video tho
the only thing you find on a trip is your own hallucinations. Surely, they may be valuable, and may trigger your imaginations etc, but that information comes from inside of your brain, so it can't teach you about the outside world
I think these objections are pretty clownish, especially with the low understanding of the broad situation. After the 17:00 minute mark you go on to tell about how language itself is very transformative and go on to say “it’s the real thing.” Those series of statements really show that the profundity of the issue has not settled in for you. You think language just appeared in a relatively or even marginally similar structure to how we understand it. If you can seriously assert that language itself(void of any explanation for it) is what has transformed us so rapidly, then I don’t think you are even qualified to answer the question. Some of the other bad points you made is underestimating the period of time of transformation we are talking about. The effect of mushrooms don’t have to appear significant in the lab to have a significant effect over at least 100,000 years. The fact that you can see an effect at all is probably good evidence of a profound long term effect since there’s no other natural(unprocessed) chemicals that could ever hope to do the same. And also when the “expert” made the statement that he doesn’t think that getting stoned on mushrooms will yield a helpful result and then said “he’d probably forget his bow.” That shows a clear misrepresentation to what was ever claimed. So either he was trying to sabotage the perception of the argument, or just didn’t understand the actual claim. Terence said, in the hunting context, that they would likely have taken doses so little that you or i wouldn’t have any idea unless we were told that we dosed. Also the fact that you think something “simple or umbrella” like his explanation, for that fact alone, should not be considered, and then proceed to say how little is actually known about the issue. Clearly there is a big portion we are missing there is no refuting that. So considering that, why are you(and most of academic and politicized science) so objected to a big explanation. Well as an ex atheist I could explain that it gives us intellectual ptsd of being under the Christian rule of god, so in essence, the “intellectual institution” tends to object any prominent factor. It would be like you rejecting evolution as a whole because it aims to explain too much. And while I think there’s something to that, no one can deny the almost full control it has over the biological world. The mind altering chemicals are the missing link. It’s a shame you didn’t go over archeological sites and depictions they have there because this conversation is more relevant than ever there. Where almost all ancient cultures have mushrooms or other active plants depicted in very interesting and seemingly profound ways. Also it’s pretty funny that you made the example that there was no leather with “we took mushrooms and it made us smarter” written on it, as if there was any language that they could have communicated in that the Moderns would understand. While they were trying to communicate the profoundness of the mushrooms, they were still pre literate and conceivably making no more noise than mildly coordinated grunts. If you consider that fact, that there’s no organized language going back 40-50 thousand years plus, then that should be a key to you that you are really misunderstanding and probably not even close. That means between here and there, something very profound happened that evolved our language to allow for such a society as we now have. It’s the same thing that is still evolving peoples language and life models. Also one reason that people act aggressive now with mushrooms, is because the individual ego is a fully intact personality, rather than, like Terence said, 60,000 years ago plus, people didn’t have that individual ego because they were almost all collective, for the sheer fact of not being able to trace the lines of male paternity because of the group orgasms. So they had no choice but to be egoless in the case of an individual. In that context, what he is saying is probably closer to the case because we are a very neurotic group of individuals which ironically is due to the natural separation from these mushrooms. They dried out with the rest of Africa so slowly they became more accessible. You can find these traces is realistically any ancient culture. I’d like to hear your alternative explanation on the religious impulse because I think you’d have about nothing
As a scientist or an experimenter, have you tryed psilocybin mushrooms? Are you able to make a sound judgment by doing experiments yourself?
taking shrooms is hardly a real experiment. Proper scientific experiment needs to have a significant number of participants, to be double-blind, so obviously, researchers and participants can't be the same people, and employ a proper statistical analysis
Ego death. Yes, in 1971, while tripping on LSD, the title of a book (by Alan Watts) that I found fascinating, traipsed through my head: "This Is It" - after about the third repetition, I saw or experienced "IT" - the immediate now, or what the ancient Eastern philosophers called, "The Tao." I pulled over, got out of my car and looked up at the clear night sky. I didn't see the stars - my eyes and the stars were the same thing. "I" and everything else was the same thing or conversely, there was never an "I" to begin with. The Taoists also call the experience, "That which can't be named." Trying to describe ALL in an eternal NOW is as futile as trying to bite your own teeth or taste your own tongue.
It's like a dog chasing its own tail who suddenly realizes that the tail and him are ONE.
I think the most basic problem with the theory is it depends on some form of Lamarckism. Otherwise, how would the changes caused by the mushrooms, or any other psychedelic, persist up to present generation and appear in people who don't have experience with psychodelics, magic mushrooms or otherwise.
Well as someone studying evolutionary biology, I will say that the amount of Baby that we have thrown out with the Bathwater when it comes to Lamarkism / the inheritance of acquired characteristics is a bit up in the air. I'm not endorsing the stoned ape theory, because obviously it's a bit silly and what we in the field call a "Just-So Story" - meaning it sounds appealing enough that some people will accept it, but there's no real evidence for or against it, and there doesn't exist a good way to test it as a hypothesis (without a time-machine, of course).
But as I said, some important questions in this area these days are whether epigenetic changes induced in a parent can be reliably transferred to the offspring, and whether these epigenetic changes can eventually be incorporated into the information of the genome. Changes to the epigenome are especially associated with the developmental process, so it isn't out of the question that it could eventually influence brain regions.
@@chinobambino5252 Fair enough, I am somewhat familiar with the subject you're talking about and and hope to keep as much of a baby with me when disposing of bath water. I guess my revised position would be that the changes that the Stoned Ape Theory aims to explain seem more significant in magnitude and duration than what I understand as possible through epigenetics. This again might be false, but I think it would be in at least in a more conservative/less sweeping way.
@@chinobambino5252 I agree, but it’s still not clear to me. Let’s say that mushrooms directly improve brain function and this is a survival advantage. In order for this to be inherited, the germ cells would have to be altered (either epigenetically or via mutation). It doesn’t make sense to me how mushrooms could both improve brain activity directly (pharmacologically), and also epigenetically alter the germ line in such a way as to produce the same brain improvement. This is where the theory is flawed it seems to me.
@@b3u3g3g3y Yep I think this is the biggest issue - the separation of the germ cells and somatic cells. A potential avenue of transmission would be a mother eating the substance after having just conceived, but during fetal development the epigenome is extremely dynamic to allow for cell differentiation so I bet any small effects you'd see would be quickly washed away, or else lead to extreme malformations. If someone did a study today and found that psilocybin drastically altered our epigenome then maybe you'd have some evidence to follow, but I think that's highly unlikely as it doesn't seem to cause cancer or anything else associated with erosion of the epigenetic landscape.
In all honesty, I think the Stoned Ape Theory is much more conceivable, although still in an untestable way, from a psychological standpoint rather than a biological one. If you've ever done psychedelics, you know that you feel much more "on the same wavelength" with your peers (whatever that means), even without speaking your mind. I am sure this feeling of more open communication is what gave rise to Stoned Ape Theory. However, it seems to me that the likely mechanism for this is that on psychs you become more intensely aware of subtle cues and body language from others, which having developed language to communicate, we no longer use as much. But of course back before we developed language, we were probably relying on these nonverbal cues much more. So in essence the loss of ego, lowered language ability, and heightened sense of nonverbal cues we experience on psychs now may even reflect the state early humans were in already.
Epigenetics
Ha! That clip from 2001 was brilliant. Thank you so much for making this. Psychedelics have greatly improved the quality of my life. I'm one of those people that had otherwise untreatable depression and anxiety until psilocybin stepped in to the rescue but as you can imagine as an atheist and an enthusiast of all things science I'm pretty much a loner in the psychedelic community. I'm constantly having to remind people that the Stoned Ape Theory is a neat idea but doesn't have a whole lot of concrete evidence behind it. If I also took the time to explain to everybody how the words theory and hypothesis kind of got mixed up in how they're used in modern times and actually isn't the proper scientific application, I wouldn't have any friends anymore.
Sounds pretty Lamarckian to me. People don't seem to have the first how evolution works on populations not individuals for example.
You should check out Epigenetics
@@TrevorJrHotkiss11 Epigenetics don't have sustained effects on populations, the whole point is that things eventually revert as conditions change. How genes get activated and deactivated at different stages of a cell's life and which of those states remain and which are changed after division, meiosis, fertilization etc. are determined by the genome which is subject to natural selection. Individuals who's genomes instruct for epigenetic markers that better prepare their offspring for the current conditions will be at an advantage, natural selection is required to tune those systems. So there would still be the issue of explaining what selective pressures mushrooms had on individuals that their offspring would need to be specially prepared for a decade of an abundance or dearth of psychoactive mushrooms.
edit: grammar
@@paulfoss5385 I don't think it's as serious as the species requiring the mushrooms. It would be a series of events that lead to advantageous selections.
IIRC there was a time for the human population when we were as little as 10,000. If it was more likely for us who consumed mushrooms to survive, that would be selection pressure. I don't think a lack of mushrooms meant no survival.
Taking mushrooms could have exacerbated cultural development and social complexity, which influences future generations. That would open the door for specific humans with specific mutations to thrive in the mushroom culture. With enough benefit, it would create genetic groups with specially selected neurological genes. Genes that could help with tool use.
@@paulfoss5385 The environment that potentially came from mushrooms would create different selection pressures. Using them, we could have potentially sped up selection of neurological gene variations. This would mean if there was a single man with "the human smartness gene," the cultural environment of psychedelic use could have specially selected for it.
Ive onky just heard of this hypothesis and already within the first 30 seconds she badly misrepresented what I literally only just learned about 1 hour before watching.
The idea is that the Shrooms cause such intense stimuli that the neurons develope so many new synapses that over repeated use, the subsequent generations may started keeping mutations that were adapted to better handle the extreme stimulation. The side effect of which means more potential brain matter available for holding information and thus, intelligence.
"It's too clean and simplistic to sound possible."
The first indication that someone merely wishes to sound intelligent, rather than actually think and act with intellect.
Following my comment, I feel it's appropriate to ask:
When you folks started recording this video, did any of you actually invest time and effort into researching Stone Ape Theory yourselves?
Did you rely primarily on your own reasoning and logic assessing the theory, or did you rely mostly on confirmation bias when referencing certain doctors and the research provided?
The most important question here might just be: Are any of you qualified to the same degree as Terrence McKenna himself?
I have an interesting feeling that none of this was actually taken into account.
Be that as it may, an opinion is an opinion, and what you're stating is just that, an opinion.
I agree absolutely. It's just like the dogmatic display we have seen in the scientific community since the 17th century. I just added Carta to my list of untrustworthy businesses that likely either educated this individual to scoff without any research or even funded this. Purely speculative of course, but there was no argument here! It's as if they don't even know the stone ape hypothesis!
Y'all are hilarious. I love when we support our claims with peer-reviewed evidence that contradicts the theory, and y'all are just like, "no, you're wrong because I don't like you" without giving any real evidence that what was said is incorrect.
@@neurotransmissions Cite the peer reviewed articles....
@@neurotransmissions I love you. Your intelligence and persona. I really do. That's why I want you to see this. Ask Ootzi what he was gathering though. The one in a million chance that we'd find a primitive individual of the area of his time period in ice??
Humans were like lions. Hunters, but what do lions do most of the day, they lay around. Since we are not strict carnivores then we would have for sure eaten mushrooms. and that includes the trippy kind. And they would have become popular.
Literally, there was no stigma back then. To them it was real magic. And it still is
Ok, so I am tripping rn, I am studying neuroscience (first year), and I feel like the algorithm brought me here for a reason. I subscribed to you immediately. This is fate.
Just remember that fate often brings you to see the negative. Let me let you know that they censored my comment. What don't they want you to read?
@@YawnGod you're tripping me up.
Lol, idk what this guy is talking about but we didn't censor any comment of his. I've got my hands full removing scammers/FBI agents who wanna sell you fake shroom spores on instagram
@@YawnGod nah it's probably TH-cam deleting your comments. I have mine deleted too very often.
I guess it's a blacklist, once you get your account into the blacklist, your comments often get deleted even if you don't put any numbers or links (If I do that, it doesn't even let me post comments lmao). Of course it depends on context. If I try to name a video or website or a social media handle, my comment gets yeeted lol