sure, but was anything wrong in second paragraph?

(following comment is long, so natural guess would be that i used a llm to write it - i did not. my poor structure sentence, grammar and spellings should indicate that. So please read it - if you are uninterested, skip the middle section and jump mostly from 3rd last para).

since i clearly do not know mushrooms (or botany for that matter, i have studied biochem moostly at intro level, so that is about it), i looked up mushroom toxicity, and most websites roughly say ‘“generally safe” to touch, but don’t ingest and wash hands’. thing is, these guidelines are said for pretty much anything, since ingestion is the easiest way to go beyond our primary defense (skin). so i tried to look up mechanisms, and found the following article

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11333700/

so i am trying to find mechanisms of toxicity which do not specifically require digestion metabolic pathways (you have metabolic processes happening in all cells, so general oxidation and reduction do not count as ingestion specific, as that can happen from topical contact only).

gyromitrin - ‘Toxicosis can result from oral and inhalation exposure.’ so likely getting into bloodstream from lungs. further processes require hydrolysis at low ph, so not happening in blood as is. but if we consider a small amount of hydrolysis, it can still form formaldehyde on oxidation.

also

‘enzyme that is directly inhibited by gyromitrin is the pyridoxal phosphokinase. This enzyme is responsible for dietary vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) conversion into active pyridoxal 5-phosphate (Horowitz et al., 2024[53]). Moreover, in vitro and in vivo, MMH may generate hydrazones with pyridoxal-5-phosphate (Barceloux, 2008[8]). Pyridoxal-5-phosphate is a cofactor for glutamic acid decarboxylase and GABA transaminase in the gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) synthetic pathway, which results in decreased GABA synthesis (Barceloux, 2008[8]). MMH can directly block glutamic acid decarboxylase when given intraperitoneally to rats at a concentration of 0.8 mM/kg, resulting in a further decrease in GABA levels (Medina 1963[71]).’

so gaba (for now, just consider it something required in brain for optimal signalling)(signalling refers to neuron activation here) is disturbed. this is a direct effect, no metabolic activity required.

moving onto - ‘Orellanine is a potent nephrotoxin found in some species of the genus Cortinarius’. nephro means kidney here.

Orellanine toxic pathway is not clear, but none of the proposed methods suggest metabolic pathways, and mostly go like after ingestion of so many grams, so and so amount is found concentrated in kidneys (and since the same compund is found, it mostly got absorbed into blood from intestines, and then filtered by blood.

also ‘Orellanine disrupts LLC-PK1 cell monolayers and inhibits membrane-bound alkaline phosphatase and cytosolic lactate dehydrogenase activity’

moving to Cyclopeptides - Phallotoxins and Amatoxins.

‘Amatoxins are able to inhibit mainly the activity of the RNA polymerase II (RNAP II) and also polymerase III (RNAP III), through α-amanitin and β-amanitin (respectively) (Diaz 2018[27]), resulting in decreases in mRNA content, causing deficient protein synthesis and cell death (Garcia et al., 2015[42]) (Figure 7(Fig. 7)).’

‘α-Amanitin has been shown to act synergistically with cytokines such as tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) and this may be the final cause of liver failure.’

then the article goes into antidotes.

point being - all the toxic things (except partly the first one, which would be much slower in one of its pathways) do not require digestive metabolic pathways, just have to reach blood, and then time and amount is key.

Should i say on stuff that I do not have knowledge about - no, mostly. my first comment was mostly written in humor, the way the parent commenter wrote. but then the asked about it in followup, and they guessed it was a joke too. but i still replied and gave a plausible reasoning for my comment, mostly because that is kinda how i like my humor (be at least partially based on reality, and then change it). could i have done a better job? sure, but I do not think i did a gross injustice. most comments that are written are not refering or citing reearch articles. I had heard of how some mushroom toxins work ( i had heard of nephro one sspecifically), so based my response on that. as to where i got that - i dont know, probably some youtube video.

And finally - can you please turn down the sass just a notch. you seemingly were unhappy with my comment (possibly a seasoned forager, or a mushroom toxicology researcher), unhappy enough to downvote both comments. and someone also agreed with you, so they likely have similar knowledge i presume. given these facts, would you like to revisit your comment, or voting. If nothing, at least respond to this comment. I think my ego is fragile enough to reply to a single line comment with 500+ words just so i can say i was write, but i do not like being wrong.

They have knowledge: the probability of words and phrases appearing in a larger context of other phrases. They probably have a knowledge of language patterns far more extensive than most humans. That’s why they’re so good at coming up with texts for a wide range of prompts. They know how to sound human.

That in itself is a huge achievement.

But they don’t know the semantics, the world-context outside of the text, or why it’s critical that a certain section of the text must refer to an actually extant source.

The pitfall here is that users might not be aware of this distinction. Even if they do, they might not have the necessary knowledge themselves to verify. It’s obvious that this machine is smart enough to understand me and respond appropriately, but we must be aware just which kind of smart we’re talking about.