
Complex life may only exist because of millions of years of groundwork by fungi - pradpk
https://theconversation.com/complex-life-may-only-exist-because-of-millions-of-years-of-groundwork-by-ancient-fungi-117526
======
013a
This is tangentially related:

I've had a pet theory for a while (which may not be original, idk) that a
possible explanation for the Fermi Paradox Great Filter is literally the
existence of huge amounts of Fossil Fuels. It took millions of years of dead
biological life on our planet to build up the supplies we have, and the big
ol' meteor that hit us some 60 million years ago helped not only kill off a
bunch of that life to create oil but set the stage for actual intelligent
life. Without lots of oil, we wouldn't have hit the industrial age, we
couldn't manufacture renewable energy sources, we couldn't make plastic, we
couldn't make rocket fuel, electricity wouldn't be as widespread, basically
everything would be different.

If oil were substantially less common, its feasible that we'd still live in a
1800s-esque society with some form of civilization development, but would be
have radio? Certainly not space travel.

Point being: M-class planets might be pretty common in the universe, maybe
cellular and even multicellular life is less common, maybe
intelligent/sentient live is even less common, maybe civilization is even less
common. And we've only really "existed" for a few tens of thousand years in
the grand scheme of billions of years, those years littered with possible
extinction-like events both man-made and natural. Combine all of those
probabilities together, with the reality that we may have just "missed"
another species on the timeline of the universe, and it seems more likely than
not that we're alone in this galaxy.

Which is actually pretty awesome if you think about it. The whole playground
is our's; let's go take it.

~~~
Jedd
There is another well known corollary -- if we consume the bulk of fossil
fuels this time around, it's unlikely that recovery after a major civilisation
collapse would be possible.

Naturally the kind of leadership that declines to consider what will happen
over the next 20-30 years is even less likely to be concerned about the
subsequent 200-300.

~~~
outworlder
> There is another well known corollary -- if we consume the bulk of fossil
> fuels this time around, it's unlikely that recovery after a major
> civilisation collapse would be possible.

There will still be coal. Coal reserves are unbelievable.

Even if we consume that too, we should be fine so as long as there is wood.
You can power cars and tanks with wood.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas)

If we have no trees left... there are probably other, more pressing, concerns.
For humans, that is.

The good thing about Earth is that there is life, not just humans. Other
species may take our place if we fail, in time. Emphasis on may, since
evolution doesn't guarantee this. But it seems that at least on this planet
intelligence has been consistently rewarded (primates, birds, dolphins,
octopuses).

If there is life, there will be an energy source. No matter what it is, that
energy source can be harvested by machines too. It may take longer for a
civilization to do so, depending on the difficulty of the power source. But in
the end, it doesn't really matter. We are dealing with cosmological time
scales after all.

Even dolphins would be able to develop an industrialized civilization. No coal
needed, they can just exploit temperature gradients. Metalworking would be
more difficult, but that's their problem to solve. Right after they solve fine
object manipulation.

~~~
Jedd
Hence I said 'bulk of fossil fuels', not 'some, but leave plenty of coal
behind'.

In either case, the fossil fuels that are increasingly difficult / expensive
to obtain now, in an era with comparatively abundant free energy, would be
even more difficult / expensive to obtain in an energy-scarce world.

And yes, I'm aware that things can burn. As a species we've known how to burn
things for a very long time, but the industrial revolution really only kicked
off when we used coal to power steam engines. Wood - even charcoal - simply
doesn't burn hot enough for much beyond food and brass.

> Even dolphins would be able to develop an industrialized civilization.

Well you've lost me there.

~~~
Can_Not
Indeed, I've read a long thread on a world building site where it seemed
conclusive that a sea based intelligence could never discover some key
technology like metallurgy without being bootstrapped by an external
civilization... and dolphins don't have hands like octopus.

------
erikig
The role of fungi in earth's ecology is endlessly fascinating.

In addition to laying the groundwork for complex life, there's evidence they
helped in the emergence of intelligence and consciousness[1] as well as
helping save honeybees[2]

[1]
[https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsif.2014...](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsif.2014.0873)
(pdf link)

[2]
[https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/10/09/446928755/co...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/10/09/446928755/could-
a-mushroom-save-the-honeybee)

~~~
mistermann
See also Terence Mckenna's stoned ape theory:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_McKenna#%22Stoned_ape%...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_McKenna#%22Stoned_ape%22_theory_of_human_evolution)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnEKoFrx1rI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnEKoFrx1rI)

Yes it's "a little" out there, but I think it's actually quite plausible.

~~~
voldacar
It's certainly interesting, but what is the explanation for how consuming
Psilocybe mushrooms could have effects _across generations_? Is it that an
organism having had that experience might have altered behavior leading to
advantages in natural/sexual selection? Or that psilocybin literally alters
something physiological or [epi]genetic? Basically how could psilocybin cause
a permanent (since it has persisted long after humans stopped frequently
consuming psilocybin, assuming that was ever a thing), multigenerational
increase in intelligence over a very long period of time?

~~~
stanfordkid
Well the simplest explanation is the classic nature vs. nurture, paired with
selective breeding. If you are raised by hippie shroom eating chimp parents,
you'll probably be attracted to a different sort of mate than if you are
raised in a warrior clan. This sort of taming can happen within 3-4
generations and have permanent effects.

Dmitry Belyayev was able to produce a tame variety of the red fox within 4
generations of breeding:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Belyayev_(zoologist)#Be...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Belyayev_\(zoologist\)#Belyayev's_fox_experiment)

~~~
stcredzero
He was also able to anti-tame them quite quickly as well.

~~~
52-6F-62
I have a feeling an alien human researcher would say the same about us if they
had witnessed a Walmart on a black Friday.

~~~
stcredzero
What takes foxes a number of generations to change, corporations can change in
people just by altering incentives. This is the double edged sword of
intelligence.

------
akshayB
Every time studies are published, we redefine the way in which could be
heading towards LUCA. Maybe life on earth existed way earlier then we expected
and earth recycles everything over period of time that the traces of origin
are gone.

~~~
RosanaAnaDana
I mean, biogeochemically, we know this to be the case. The earliest evidence
of life are not fossils, but changes in atmospheric chemistry recorded in the
geologic record.

There are some well reasoned arguments that life is utterly common and almost
inevitable when conditions are even basically adequate.

~~~
akshayB
There are also lot of theories which suggest that life started at multiple
places on earth and each branch could have evolved in a very different way.
More like a forest rather then single point of origin.

------
stcredzero
Sci-fi plot: Fungi are actually alien artificial life. They were designed as a
huge family of microorganisms designed to recreate an alien biosphere.
However, when they landed on earth, they encountered something which changed
these plans.

~~~
reallydude
See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Against_the_Chtorr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Against_the_Chtorr)

specifically the ontology described during a "pink storm" in A Day for
Damnation. A fungal-like substance (the pink fuzz, which looks suspiciously
like cottonwood storms south of Seattle) is the catalyst for the rest of the
ecology.

~~~
jawilson2
I LOVED those books in high school! After rereading them a year or so ago,
they are pretty indebted to Heinlein and Starship Troopers, but still
entertaining. He also goes into preachy libertarian sometimes. This was the
guy who wrote the "Trouble with Tribbles" Star Trek episode, which explored
some of the same ideas.

Also, be prepared that the series was never completed (IIRC he had a son with
autism that took time away from writing).

~~~
hyperpallium
Also wrote _The Flying Sorcerers_ with Larry Niven, relevant to the top
comment, being about kickstarting an alien industrial revolution.

------
tehlike
Another theory is complex life exists because of viruses, and their ability
survive and modify genetic material.

