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This stands in contrast to the scholarship of, for example, Terence McKenna, who suggested that certain plants and mushrooms actually delivered novel content vi

by jMyles 11y ago

This stands in contrast to the scholarship of, for example, Terence McKenna, who suggested that certain plants and mushrooms actually delivered novel content via the presence of (and ratios between) various psychoactive compounds. Like most of McKenna's ostensible empiricism, he didn't try to convince anyone that this was true in some objective sense, but rather that it was useful as a mindset to withstand the psychedelic experience. I find this view more effective at helping to explain how my neurochemistry interfaces with reality.

coldtea 11y ago
>This stands in contrast to the scholarship of, for example, Terence McKenna, who suggested that certain plants and mushrooms actually delivered novel content via the presence of (and ratios between) various psychoactive compounds. It's not really in constrast though. Gibson means: better tweak what you produce or how you act, instead of merely tweaking how your isolated self experiences reality. That's the same whether it's a "slight tweak of incoming data" or something that can be seen as novel content (a full tweak).
- derefr 11y ago
  This comes down to whether self-improvement is useful. You could "tweak" your brain into working better: giving you more raw data, filtering for more relevant data, making connections more quickly, etc. such that you can get better knowledge from the same data, and therefore act toward your goals more effectively. This especially applies to situations where the brain starts off "tweaked" into some messy suboptimal configuration (depression, ADHD, anxiety, etc.) where it's making very bad use of incoming data. (I always thought Gibson's real argument was just that your goals shouldn't be considered in terms of sensory inputs, unless you want to end up like AIXI, converting your own mass into paperclips because you don't realize that that will kill you.)

by jMyles 11y ago

coldtea 11y ago

>This stands in contrast to the scholarship of, for example, Terence McKenna, who suggested that certain plants and mushrooms actually delivered novel content via the presence of (and ratios between) various psychoactive compounds. It's not really in constrast though. Gibson means: better tweak what you produce or how you act, instead of merely tweaking how your isolated self experiences reality. That's the same whether it's a "slight tweak of incoming data" or something that can be seen as novel content (a full tweak).

derefr 11y ago
This comes down to whether self-improvement is useful. You could "tweak" your brain into working better: giving you more raw data, filtering for more relevant data, making connections more quickly, etc. such that you can get better knowledge from the same data, and therefore act toward your goals more effectively. This especially applies to situations where the brain starts off "tweaked" into some messy suboptimal configuration (depression, ADHD, anxiety, etc.) where it's making very bad use of incoming data. (I always thought Gibson's real argument was just that your goals shouldn't be considered in terms of sensory inputs, unless you want to end up like AIXI, converting your own mass into paperclips because you don't realize that that will kill you.)