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- "Narby spent two years living with the Ashaninka people in the Peruvian Amazon, where he observed the role of ayahuasca, a powerful hallucinogenic brew, in th
by perihelions 2y ago
- "Narby spent two years living with the Ashaninka people in the Peruvian Amazon, where he observed the role of ayahuasca, a powerful hallucinogenic brew, in their cultural and spiritual practices. His experiences led him to theorize that the Ashaninka shamans could access information at a molecular level through their hallucinogenic visions, specifically about the structure and function of DNA."
That's a Stanford PhD anthropologist. Good god, the soft sciences have fallen hard.
- Gormo 2y agoWhat does "access information at a molecular level" even mean? Information isn't made out of molecules.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- carapace 2y ago> Information isn't made out of molecules. Oh yes it is. DNA, neurotransmitters, etc. biology is closer to information science than you might imagine (imagine with your brain molecules.)
- Gormo 2y agoNo, those things are substrates that carry information, not the information itself. And examining those substrates at a molecular level usually means looking beneath the level of complexity at which the information is encoded in the first place, and so not even seeing the information itself.
- carapace 2y agoNo, those things are where information and reality meet. When you smell something the molecule and the information "in" or "of" the molecule are not distinct. The meaning of the molecule is itself. I'm trying to offer information to help you understand the original article, I'm not interested in arguing about it. Being able to communicate between the "ego" and the molecular level of information means being able to e.g. smell a plant and know what medicine it is.