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I’m skeptical that the mushroom is in any way “learning to crawl”. It looks more like the mushroom naturally produces signals in response to light, and the robo

I’m skeptical that the mushroom is in any way “learning to crawl”. It looks more like the mushroom naturally produces signals in response to light, and the robot triggers a walk cycle when it sees that signal.

ofalkaed 1y ago
As a fungophile who spends way too much time crawling around in the woods looking for mushrooms, I think fungus learned to crawl before we did.
- pyman 1y ago
  I find that claim interesting, especially given your background in studying fungus. Could you expand on it a bit?
  - sethammons 1y ago
    Slime molds are super interesting and are able to find optimal paths for resource management. Slime molds have been used to model and improve traffic flow for humans. https://phys.org/news/2022-01-virtual-slime-mold-subway-network.amp https://phys.org/news/2022-01-virtual-slime-mold-subway-netw... I would call this action "crawling" and I am sure predates mammals. Or dinosaurs. Or plants.
    - empthought 1y ago
      Slime molds aren’t fungus, though…
      - sethammons 1y ago
        > Slime molds are classified within the Kingdom Protista, and are more closely related to amoebas and certain seaweeds than to fungi, plants, or animals. Not a true fungi; today I learned. Thanks!
  - ofalkaed 1y ago
    If you take a small plot of wild land, say 50'x50' and visit it everyday watching all the various mushrooms which will grow there (there will be far more then most people realize or expect) and try and find the sense in where and when they fruit it becomes difficult to write it all off as simple biological responses to environment/following the food/etc, and even if you do look at it that way and start adding up the possible causes and effects you can end up with such a long list that it becomes difficult to not see it as some sort of at least instinctual level intelligence and that the growth of mycelium often has more in common with crawling than mindless growth. For example, many mushrooms are very good at fruiting just out of sight from trails, walk 20' off the trail, turn around and suddenly you start seeing mushrooms. Instinct is to say that all the mushrooms which grow within sight of the trail get picked by curious people or kicked by children but if you start looking for remains and stumps and mushrumps and those hard to spot just starting to fruit immature buttons, you find surprisingly few. So you think environmental, the trail alters windflow and runoff, animal movement, etc, but than you notice that this is true of even those small trails created by a fox or children which only affect a bit of low growing undergrowth so only has a tiny effect on a very localized area. On and on it goes until you run out of explanations. I am mostly convinced there is some level of intelligence here and we just can not see it because it is so very different from what we understand as intelligence. But, I may just spend too much time with mushrooms, during the season I always seem to have at least a dozen various mushrooms which I will visit everyday to watch them grow and rot away.
    - luqtas 1y ago
      great read: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1878614621000246 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187861462... fungi has memory and can decide to not grow on a previous hostile enviroment/direction edit: i'm skeptical about the fantastic type of journalism title. the paper points on using fungi electrical reactions to light to drive a robot, not the the otherwise, even less the fungi understanding a "robot" and using it. despite them showing spatial perception on studies about their capabilities
      - pyman 1y ago
- lopatin 1y ago
  Off topic but my dad took me around the woods this weekend to show me mushrooms and he almost couldn’t contain his excitement. And this is a person who usually doesn’t like stuff. And the whole time I was like “yep, that’s a mushroom”. There’s clearly something fascinating about the hobby that I don’t get (yet). Curious to hear your take.
  - ofalkaed 1y ago
    Your dad sounds like a good sort. I have no idea how to explain the mushroom fascination that some of us have to those that lack it and have mostly learned to just not talk about mushrooms with people who don't have the fascination.
whoknowsidont 1y ago
[flagged]
- literalAardvark 1y ago
  Still, a child telling their parent to walk isn't actually walking. It could easily not even know what walking means, just know that there's food when it tells mom to go to the kitchen. I used to ask my grandmother for "plain water" because she always brought me milk. I was very disappointed when I asked someone else for plain water, because I had no idea why grandma's was better.
  - lisper 1y ago
    > a child telling their parent to walk isn't actually walking. How is that any different from a brain telling its body to walk?
    - adammarples 1y ago
      Because the brain has to continually monitor hundreds of inputs like gravity, pressure, balance, visuals, muscle feedback, etc and integrate them with hundreds of outputs to muscles and coordinate the whole thing which keeps changing, that's walking. All this mushroom does is emit a signal that it was already emitting (ie. It's learned nothing) and the robotocists build a walking system around that which handles all the complexity of walking.
      - whoknowsidont 1y ago
        >Because the brain has to continually monitor hundreds of inputs like gravity Human brains cannot monitor gravity. We're actually very bad at it. Also you're failing to understand the scaling involved here, so to speak. I'm actually really not interested in trying to explain this if you can't be bothered with spending a few minutes on how nervous systems work.
        1y ago

ofalkaed 1y ago

As a fungophile who spends way too much time crawling around in the woods looking for mushrooms, I think fungus learned to crawl before we did.

pyman 1y ago
I find that claim interesting, especially given your background in studying fungus. Could you expand on it a bit?
- sethammons 1y ago
  Slime molds are super interesting and are able to find optimal paths for resource management. Slime molds have been used to model and improve traffic flow for humans. https://phys.org/news/2022-01-virtual-slime-mold-subway-network.amp https://phys.org/news/2022-01-virtual-slime-mold-subway-netw... I would call this action "crawling" and I am sure predates mammals. Or dinosaurs. Or plants.
  - empthought 1y ago
    Slime molds aren’t fungus, though…
    - sethammons 1y ago
      > Slime molds are classified within the Kingdom Protista, and are more closely related to amoebas and certain seaweeds than to fungi, plants, or animals. Not a true fungi; today I learned. Thanks!
- ofalkaed 1y ago
  If you take a small plot of wild land, say 50'x50' and visit it everyday watching all the various mushrooms which will grow there (there will be far more then most people realize or expect) and try and find the sense in where and when they fruit it becomes difficult to write it all off as simple biological responses to environment/following the food/etc, and even if you do look at it that way and start adding up the possible causes and effects you can end up with such a long list that it becomes difficult to not see it as some sort of at least instinctual level intelligence and that the growth of mycelium often has more in common with crawling than mindless growth. For example, many mushrooms are very good at fruiting just out of sight from trails, walk 20' off the trail, turn around and suddenly you start seeing mushrooms. Instinct is to say that all the mushrooms which grow within sight of the trail get picked by curious people or kicked by children but if you start looking for remains and stumps and mushrumps and those hard to spot just starting to fruit immature buttons, you find surprisingly few. So you think environmental, the trail alters windflow and runoff, animal movement, etc, but than you notice that this is true of even those small trails created by a fox or children which only affect a bit of low growing undergrowth so only has a tiny effect on a very localized area. On and on it goes until you run out of explanations. I am mostly convinced there is some level of intelligence here and we just can not see it because it is so very different from what we understand as intelligence. But, I may just spend too much time with mushrooms, during the season I always seem to have at least a dozen various mushrooms which I will visit everyday to watch them grow and rot away.
  - luqtas 1y ago
    great read: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1878614621000246 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187861462... fungi has memory and can decide to not grow on a previous hostile enviroment/direction edit: i'm skeptical about the fantastic type of journalism title. the paper points on using fungi electrical reactions to light to drive a robot, not the the otherwise, even less the fungi understanding a "robot" and using it. despite them showing spatial perception on studies about their capabilities
    - pyman 1y ago
lopatin 1y ago
Off topic but my dad took me around the woods this weekend to show me mushrooms and he almost couldn’t contain his excitement. And this is a person who usually doesn’t like stuff. And the whole time I was like “yep, that’s a mushroom”. There’s clearly something fascinating about the hobby that I don’t get (yet). Curious to hear your take.
- ofalkaed 1y ago
  Your dad sounds like a good sort. I have no idea how to explain the mushroom fascination that some of us have to those that lack it and have mostly learned to just not talk about mushrooms with people who don't have the fascination.

whoknowsidont 1y ago

[flagged]

literalAardvark 1y ago
Still, a child telling their parent to walk isn't actually walking. It could easily not even know what walking means, just know that there's food when it tells mom to go to the kitchen. I used to ask my grandmother for "plain water" because she always brought me milk. I was very disappointed when I asked someone else for plain water, because I had no idea why grandma's was better.
- lisper 1y ago
  > a child telling their parent to walk isn't actually walking. How is that any different from a brain telling its body to walk?
  - adammarples 1y ago
    Because the brain has to continually monitor hundreds of inputs like gravity, pressure, balance, visuals, muscle feedback, etc and integrate them with hundreds of outputs to muscles and coordinate the whole thing which keeps changing, that's walking. All this mushroom does is emit a signal that it was already emitting (ie. It's learned nothing) and the robotocists build a walking system around that which handles all the complexity of walking.
    - whoknowsidont 1y ago
      >Because the brain has to continually monitor hundreds of inputs like gravity Human brains cannot monitor gravity. We're actually very bad at it. Also you're failing to understand the scaling involved here, so to speak. I'm actually really not interested in trying to explain this if you can't be bothered with spending a few minutes on how nervous systems work.
      - 1y ago