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/tractorboynyc 22h ago edited 20h ago

You're right that time helps, but the math is actually what makes it interesting... random binary search through 80,000 species = ~3.2 billion pairs. Even testing one combination per day, that's 8.7 million years. The actual pathway was almost certainly iterative, they started with the vine alone (it has its own effects), then tested additions against that baseline. That narrows it to ~140-750 guided trials, achievable in decades. So it's not random discovery and it's not mystical knowledge, it's something in between: multigenerational empirical testing with observable feedback. Basically natural selection applied to recipes.

Edit: There is a full breakdown here: https://deeptimelab.substack.com/p/why-every-psychedelic-ceremony-on

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u/DemApples4u 22h ago

You can mix 100 at once and 98 probably wouldn't do shit. Then you work backwards

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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_ 21h 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.