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I've always personally been of the opinion that people who don't entertain any thoughts of poking their consciousness in some way are missing the point of life.

• testacct22 3y ago
  > people who don't entertain any thoughts of poking their consciousness in some way are missing the point of life. If you don't ask "why am I here" or "what's this all about" then things get pretty bland pretty quickly. I didn't get anything "spiritual" out of them. If anything, it made me realize that spirituality is a complete sham Hot take, the "spiritual" reason for doing psychedelics is this: they hate their own lives and think that some "transcendental experience" will change that There's only one legit reason for doing them: to get high. The "spirituality" reason is just a bunch of BS. The people who buy into it are the last ones who should be doing them
• echelon 3y ago
  > If you don't ask "why am I here" or "what's this all about" then things get pretty bland pretty quickly Better question: Is it possible to escape this rat cage, and if so, how? If I am the universe experiencing itself, how do I perform a sufficiently perfect playthrough against the gradients that constitute its walls? Nevermind drugs. Let's get BCI -- the end-all, be-all of humanity -- properly off to the races. Invasively or not, get these thoughts out of the rotting confines of our skulls. If it doesn't work out, whatever. It's not like that's a different outcome than the rest.
  • p-e-w 3y ago
    > Let's get BCI -- the end-all, be-all of humanity -- properly off to the races. Invasively or not, get these thoughts out of the rotting confines of our skulls. For what (ultimate) purpose? What's the end goal here? The brain already is a computer. What do you think moving its contents to a different type of computer will accomplish? Besides kicking off just another "think even faster", "calculate even better", "remember even more" rat race, that is.
    • mrguyorama 3y ago
      Now I can experience existential dread over multiple processing cores! 4x the dread in 1/2 the time!
• Thorrez 3y ago
  Does using a substance to temporarily make us feel various types of intoxication get us closer to answering "why am I here"? Wouldn't a sober study of the universe and history be more effective?
  • contingencies 3y ago
    Wouldn't a sober study of the universe and history be more effective? Once upon a time, people painted with oil paints as closely as they could to still life reality. But something was missing. Cue impressionism. After impressionism, an increasingly vanishingly small proportion of the art world tried to paint still life as an arts career and be taken seriously. The state of the art, quite simply, had moved on. And as it is with consciousness.
    • jojobas 3y ago
      > After photography, an increasingly vanishingly small proportion of the art world tried to paint still life as an arts career and be taken seriously. FTFY
    • Thorrez 3y ago
      Hmm. It seems to me that the switch from still life to impressionism was due to a change in the goal. With study vs drugs, the goal is still the same: find out why we're here. Since there isn't a goal change, it's not clear there should be a strategy change.
      • mrguyorama 3y ago
        The problem is the only reasons to suspect drugs can provide "insight" into "why we are here" arise from mysticism and other basically non-scientific things. How does making your brain work differently help us understand reality? Weed doesn't make the ruler more accurate or change size, it just makes you feel good.
    • dottedmag 3y ago
      This is a circular argument: "X is not Y because it moved on. Why one says it has moved on? Because we see X is not Y anymore"
• barrysteve 3y ago
  Necessary is a stretch. We all have heard the reports of people losing their minds on drugs and worse. The subtle dangers are starting to believe that the fun is in the drug. Drug enthusiasts often glue together the beliefs formed when under the effects, with the pill and chemical reaction itself. It's not always as explicit as the hippie who preaches a transcendent drug. Often people start to glue together the internal experience of fun, with the drug, unconsciously. Unfortunately it can subtly dull your day to day life, if you accidently over-allocate associations of fun with chems.
• thr_msc 3y ago
  Even single doses of acid are enough to change your outlook on life _substantially_. Imagine running a db migration on prod while it's live and you have no backups. This is what consousness tinkering with drugs is like.
  • audunw 3y ago
    That's a terrible analogy, because everything we're doing, every day of our life, is essentially like tinkering with no backup. If you could take a backup of our brain from then it would be a common recommendation to take a backup before driving. If you think along those lines, you could end up concluding that you shouldn't do anything fun or explorative if there's any significant risk at all.
    • thr_msc 3y ago
      No, everyday life is like running with no backup. A 5 minute conversation with the average hippie shows you that acid is quite different.
• bowsamic 3y ago
  I would trade it all away for mental stability. These questions have been torture for me
  • mrguyorama 3y ago
    If existential thoughts bring you that close to insanity, you should seek therapy and medical help.
    • bowsamic 3y ago
      I am doing so, but my point remains
• elvis10ten 3y ago
  What is the value prop? I usually ask my friends who have tried various drugs about their experiences / how they felt. I find out for most things I’m able to do them without drugs: introspection, joy, shamelessness, behavioral changes, appreciative for small things, etc. Yesterday, I just “randomly” texted some of my friends that “I loved them” (they thought I was high). Similarly, when I’m in a club I can dance for 5 hours straight —- almost as if nobody was there. I feel (light) depression sometimes but appreciate that it’s a part of life. Etc. Maybe the thing I’m missing is an out of body experience or completely “losing control”? But what is the value prop for me is something I can’t answer yet.
  • djleni 3y ago
    To put it simply, the value prop is an experience wildly different than normal experiences.
    • elvis10ten 3y ago
      Can I rephrase this to: It’s a completely different experience that people usually can’t find accurate words to describe to someone that hasn’t been there? Another question I have, If the experience is short-lived, what is the point?
      • Gijs4g 3y ago
        Life in general is short-lived experience, so what is the point?
        • mdrzn 3y ago
          Life is the longest experience you will ever have.
      • pravus 3y ago
        No, you can't describe it. Your senses are overwhelmed in ways that don't have a real-world analog so there is no description that you can convey to others that's in any way accurate. It's the entire point of an altered state and is something that has to be experienced. Many human activities are short-lived mood alterations.
• hilbert42 3y ago
  "If you don't ask "why am I here" or "what's this all about" then things get pretty bland pretty quickly." I agree with you. I've always thought the drug problem should be a medical matter handled by doctors and that the law, drug enforcement and cops ought to keep out one's lives when it comes to drugs, but things are never that simple. The range of drugs is phenomenally broad from essentially harmless to extremely dangerous—some drugs you're never going to OD on to others such as Fentanyl that kills thousands evey year. How one controls all this and brings order to it in a modern complex society seems overwhelming complex. You can't blame non-drug using people for not wanting intoxicated people driving or in charge of machinery etc. And there are just so many variables involved, the problem seems almost insurmountable. For example, the effect on those who are around a drug user, family, friends, etc. can be devastating. About a year ago a colleague and friend of mine died from long-term alcohol abuse. What made matters worse he was an organic chemist and he knew what the alcohol was doing to him. We couldn't stop him drinking and many of us tried. Yes, he had the right to do with his life what he wished but at the same time we, his friends and colleagues, had to suffer too by watching him deteriorate. Essentially, drug taking is not a thing people can do in isolation, drug takers are not decoupled from society, their actions flow-on to the broader community in very complex ways. I don't have a solution, but I certainly know that banning drugs and treating drug users as degenerates and criminals as we have been doing for over 100 years is stupid and very counterproductive.
  • Ylpertnodi 3y ago
    "I certainly know that banning drugs and treating drug users as degenerates and criminals as we have been doing for over 100 years is stupid and very counterproductive." So true - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal
• zirgs 3y ago
  Ok, how do I do it without interacting with criminals?
  • welshwelsh 3y ago
    Step 1 is to get rid of the idea that some people are "criminals" who you shouldn't be interacting with. Over half of Americans have used illicit drugs. Chances are, someone you already know can hook you up with psychedelics. Try talking to your best friend about it. If he doesn't know, try another friend. You won't need to ask a third friend.
  • bell-cot 3y ago
    Alcohol. Though with the side-effects, potential for life-long addiction, etc. - I really do not recommend doing that.
  • drblast 3y ago
    Travel to Oregon or any of the various places these things are legal. Or produce the necessary items on your own. Growing things isn't difficult.
• VoodooJuJu 3y ago
  Very wise and courageous men have pondered and bled over the meaning of life for thousands of years. Some of their best wisdom made its way into books that are still around today. If you read these books, you may find throughout they have something to say about the meaning of life and drug use, if only indirectly. You may find their ideas about the meaning of life have nothing to do with drugs. Their meaning-of-life wisdom has existed for a very long time. In a word, it's Lindy. Your meaning-of-life wisdom is untested by time, theirs is. Time is the greatest filter. We can't say with absolute certainty that your ideas about drug use and the meaning of life are wrong relative to theirs, but we can say so with a very high degree of certainty. People have been testing your ideas about drugs and the meaning of life since the 60's. Many would say it's not going so well. Contrast that with people who've been heeding the old wisdom - there's a reason it's survived for such a long time. You're of course welcome to forego the age-old wisdom on drugs and the meaning of life in favor of your own, but it may not work out too well for you.
  • pixl97 3y ago
    I mean, there are theories that disagree with yours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoned_ape_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoned_ape_theory And you'll find that most of those people writing those books were on something.