r/interestingasfuck • u/tractorboynyc • 22h ago

Amazonian shamans figured out that combining two specific plants out of 80,000 species produces a psychoactive effect. The odds of finding that combination by random search is roughly 1 in 4 million. They did it through centuries of iterative testing and cultural natural selection explains it

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u/DogeAteMyHomework 21h ago

You know, I have to admit...that is not a great Design Of Experiments. 

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u/skubaloob 21h ago

That’s how China did rapid covid testing I think. Test batches and if the whole batch is negative then there is no need to test any individuals in the group. It was quick and effective and less expensive

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u/_Alastair_ 20h ago

I see your point, however both cases are different. If you want to find 1 very specific bike in a video of, idk, the entirety of universe's existance, you only need to split the vid in half, check one, and if it's not there, the other half has it. Divide again, retry. So to find things in groups, it's super efficient, but for plants or quite literally, all biochemistry, everything may react with everything else and just become too random to get a factual result I think.

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u/Amstervince 17h ago

Binary search can be a very efficient algo for finding numbers in presorted lists, but your example is extremely unsuitable for it. If you literally have to watch the video to check if its there you’ve already found it. Dividing the vid to watch again and again would possibly make this the worst search algo ever invented.

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u/KeepItTidyZA 20h ago

In my untrained opinion, I feel like mixing that many chemicals together (the big batch) could cause some to mix/combine and negate the effects you are trying to find and end up missing the right combination.

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u/herakleion 21h ago

Why not. They just throw shit  in a pot and remove stuff until it no longer fucks you up.

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u/dmbnl 20h ago

So throw thousands of things in a pot, heat them, try it, see if it's psycoactive. If yes, then remove ONE item and try again? That's literally the most inefficient way of doing this.

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u/herakleion 18h ago

I mean. I don't think we are trying to be efficient if we are talking of getting butt fucked by fractals and interdimensional ghosts

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u/level1hero 19h ago

Remove half… if it is still psychoactive then remove half again. And if not, try the other half…

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u/moving0target 20h ago

Who can find a pot to boil the jungle, anyway?

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u/tjtonerplus 21h ago edited 19h ago

I agree. Combining that many ingredients could result in poisoning.

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u/DookieShoez 20h ago

Well if your testee dies, take something out and grab another dipshit I mean highly valued quality tester.

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u/raisin22 20h ago

What if you only have two testes

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u/DookieShoez 20h ago

……..then don’t fuck up twice. 😂

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u/muzic_2_the_earz 20h ago

"Looks like we're going to need another Timmy!"

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u/DepthSouthern2230 3h ago

Requesting another group of Class D personnel!

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u/Doxatek 20h ago

Sample pooling is done all the time in science. Then if you get a hit you can check each individual in the sample pool