this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2024
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Fungi won’t trade if the tree is not giving enough nutrients. So while they don’t trade for profit they sure as hell aren’t engaging in charity.
Mutual aid, in other words.
A marketplace, of sorts
No. Flat out no. There is no competition and they're literally providing what they are capable of to take care of the others' need. Mutual aid is not a marketplace and the fact you instinctually thought of it that way tells me you need a book on capitalist realism.
There's no competition between trees? Hmm...
Not all competition is mediated via markets. Mushrooms will compete by injecting themselves into their adversaries using their own internal pressure.
Yeha, but they are showing an instance of nature in which things work one way and ask "why can't humans XYZ if even a mushroom can? ", but there are also plenty of instances in which nature is savage.
There is a constant war in the roots of trees, does that mean humans should be in constant war?
Plus, there IS a profit incentive. Those mushrooms are trading. What they get in return is the profit incentive.
Trading for food to eat is now "profit incentive"? How is there profit if you consume what you take?
Edit: and don't get me started on the violence used in our own market systems. Thankfully Mushrooms learned long ago to eat the rich, because "surplus profit" are just resources that aren't being used.
How do you know they aren't consuming more than what they need to barely survive?
Because consuming more than what you can use or need is not a competitive advantage. The mushroom that trades that surplus instead of wastefully consuming it will have a more resilient support structure. It's a different perspective where you view the fitness of an individual in regards to how well it embeds itself in the system by making itself useful to others, not by how well it can "extract profit" from its surroundings (like a cancer or obesity).
You're assuming it only consumes exactly what it needs to survive and not even a small amount more than that. You'll have to prove that. Pretty sure they probably keep some buffer or give priority to their own species or certain species, making the network their own buffer. Would that be mushroom racism? I don't want to learn anything from racist mushrooms man.
There's a big difference between storing energy for the winter and being obese.
Mushrooms aren't simply favoring their own species, they are favoring species that are cooperative. If they perceive a species as obese or cancerous, they will fight to control those surplus resources.
Yes, but there are likely factors produced by both parties in the symbiotic relationship that keep each other in check. Otherwise one of the parties could become parasitic instead.
This whole conversation comparing evolutionary mechanisms that are complex enough to include self sacrifice just to have more "you", is a poor analogy anyways. While humans evolved their social dynamics, i'd like to think we can operate beyond what's best for our species.
Where in that response did you see the word capitalism. Economics exist outside of your agenda/baggage.
"market place" is a concept of competition in contrast to Kropotkin's concept of mutual aid
So in dum dum terms the trees are keeping the fungus as a pet?
As much as a person can keep an outdoor cat as a pet...
More like two people sharing resources to reproduce more effectively while having a gun pointed towards each other at all times
There likely could be other benefits to them sharing such as:
Similar for the tree, but also mushrooms are recycling minerals from dead material.
I don't know if there'd be "stingy" trees (aside from vastly different nutrient needs), I could see it more of miscommunication or having too much difference with language/biologic pathways. EDIT: Also I gotta imagine that giant trees don't even bother counting it for mushrooms so long as they aren't stressed. Sugar water is in the grid, take as much as you want.
I bet you chestnut trees are stingy little assholes. Prickly fucks.
At first, I read that as you accusing them of being a stingy asshole chestnut tree and I was about to inform you that you were in fact talking to a lemon, not a tree 😄
Trees that rely on myco networks usually only get giant because of previous myco networking bonds, which funnel excess nutrients between not just the fungi but also other trees within the system. And depending on the involved species, this sometimes includes multiple plant species exchanging nutrients.
change your name. Assuming you aren't underage so that psychotic pedo fuck would't be interested.
I assumed it was ironic. Don’t ya think?
Yeah, bacteria secreting digestive enzymes would have been a better example.