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I’ve come to think that the field of “psychedelic engineering” will emerge from this trend, and that it may be the tool we need to finally start grappling with
by gfodor 7y ago
I’ve come to think that the field of “psychedelic engineering” will emerge from this trend, and that it may be the tool we need to finally start grappling with the hard problem of consciousness.
Until we can run safe, targeted, empirical experiments around consciousness, we are stuck using noisy outlier cases (like those who have physical brain damage) to extrapolate from, with no control, defined variations, or iterative deductions possible.
Alternatively, if one could quickly design drugs to alter conscious experience in a targeted and safe way, not only would it open up the population of people who could partake in these kinds of experiments (legally of course) but also open the possibility of a new frontier of exploration, with tactical ‘expeditions’ set out by researchers, similar to the astronauts, where there was some risk but the artifact would be validated knowledge about the brain and mind.
In combination with other experimental techniques, one could imagine a whole host of hypotheses which could be rapidly tested in a replicatable way that presently are not possible to do so. For example, the question of if these experiences are completely self-created psychoses, or if the ‘entities’ seen during these experiences have some, if partial, external coupling (even if it is as benign as non-living, static environmental factors), could be readily tested if it were possible for repeated, controlled, experiments to try to falsify various claims.
- crtlaltdel 7y agoid argue that “psychedelic engineering” has long been a goal of researchers. oh, and in pretty sure i’ve heard tell of “psychonauts” before...
- 3131s 7y agoRead PiHKAL and TiHKAL. These two books on phenylethylamines and tryptamines have a unique mixture of personal insight into the recreational use of psychedelics along with technical instructions from a chemist to recreate hundreds of these drugs.
- crtlaltdel 7y agoyup, read them many-many years ago. i spent a large portion of my youth immersed in this world (figuratively, literally) :)
- prox 7y agoThis, as I’ve been taught, is already what yogi’s have endeavored during the ages. It is all about subjective experience being tested, and experienced. Texts like the yoga sutras lay the foundation for a codified roadmap. Subjects minds are as diverse as anything in this world, but with that roadmap, experiencing what conciousness is, is very much possible. Empirical or objective science is about the world. Subjective experiments (such as meditation and so on) are about you.
- trevyn 7y agoRemember that “the hard problem” might not exist at all in the scientific formulation you expect, but instead arise out of a failure to internally reconcile archaic Cartesian dualistic thought patterns with established neuroscience. In other words, perhaps people are taught to have subjective experience — how to be a subject, because it has certain advantages in our current social context. And this may not be the only way to be. And this may be what psychedelics teach.
- walleeee 7y agoEven if we posit that the conscious "I" is a conditioned construct, that doesn't resolve the problem of qualia: which is the really hard one, imo. It doesn't help, of course, that a lot of people don't seem to see a difference between the two formulations.
- trevyn 7y agoWe have neural circuits that receive sense data, place attention, and record attentional memories. Where’s the problem?
- collyw 7y agoYou could do all of what you describe in a computer system. Subjective experience is something quite different from that (or it seems to be).
- trevyn 7y agoYou know what it’s like to be a computer system with human & surrounding society levels of complexity? That has been conditioned to think it’s not a machine?
- collyw 7y agoYou seem very certain of you conclusions. What makes you so sure of them, as the area we are discussing seems very poorly understood by science at present?