5 ms·
I feel like if all the things people believe and espouse about hallucinogens were true and not just the effect of permanently damaging your mind, with the illus
by wincy 2y ago
I feel like if all the things people believe and espouse about hallucinogens were true and not just the effect of permanently damaging your mind, with the illusion of wisdom, we’d be able to point at all the revolutionary scientific breakthroughs and discoveries made under the influence of hallucinogenic substances.
However, everyone I’ve met who admits to having taken hallucinogens seems reduced in some way, rather than enhanced. Like the lights are on but someone else is home.
- antonkar 2y agoThere is the Qualia Research Institute, one of the things they do is using dope and making simulations of the experience. They basically found 2 main types of drugs: 1. Most “create more separate personalities” in you 2. One (the “toad poison”) actually makes you feel like a giant place, the feeling is usually pleasant. So there is either “agentification” of you into more “agents” or “space-ification” into one giant place without any agency in it. I think we can make this static place AI and it’ll be safe by definition because we’re the only agents in it. P.S. I don’t promote drugs
- bongodongobob 2y agoIt happens all the time. DNA double helix is a good example. You really think people are going to mention their drug use in white papers? I think not. Nothing to gain and everything to lose.
- devmor 2y agoThe record of a scientific discovery that is heavily criticized for plagiarism and falsehoods is probably not a good example, actually.
- bongodongobob 2y agoWell here's one: tons of people do drugs. It's not even a question whether or not drugs have inspired discoveries. They obviously have.
- wat10000 2y agoTons of people eat carrots. That doesn’t imply carrots have inspired discoveries.
- soulofmischief 2y agoThat is a textbook false equivalence.
- wat10000 2y agoIt’s exactly the same argument.
- soulofmischief 2y agoPlease explain how they are equivalent and why the psychoactive properties of a psychedelic don't make it categorically different in this situation than a carrot.
- wat10000 2y agoThe argument was: lots of people do X, so X has obviously inspired discoveries.
- soulofmischief 2y agoCarrots inspire science, too. https://phys.org/news/2015-12-tablet-screen-brought-aid-carrots.html https://phys.org/news/2015-12-tablet-screen-brought-aid-carr... > It was the Austrian botanist Friedrich Reinitzer and the German physicist Otto Lehmann who discovered liquid crystals in 1888 when they were experimenting with the natural substances found in carrots Carrots have also inspired art, I don't need to find an example of that. That said, if you view that premise as it being a given that X has inspired something just because lots of people do it, then it is indeed preposterous. However, if you view it as "a critical mass of people have done mind-altering substances and thus it's almost a certainty that discoveries have been made under and due to their influence", then it makes a lot more sense. It's a fundamentally different argument and you can't generalize it to any non-mind-altering substance. The point is that the mind is altered by the substance, causing different modes of thought. I think you were just confused about the way the other commenter laid out their premise, because it's a purely statistical argument with the qualifier that we're talking about substances that measurably alter thought processes.
- LVL96 2y agoThis was sort of my experience with LSD. It just broke me. I fell into a deep depression afterward, but the reason was only partly due to damaging my mind. The other part of it was that the LSD made me realize where my life was going, and how completely unfulfilled I'd end up being in 10-20 years. In that way, it helped me course-correct. I'm healthier, more honest with myself, and got back into college because of the experience. But it did damage my mind. I have mild to moderate anhedonia now. Weed hits me completely differently now (feels more like strong caffeine + brain fog instead of any pleasure). I lost my desire to write creatively.
- bongodongobob 2y agoUnless you did a thumbprint, you're perfectly fine, no damage. Just get your shit together, that seems to be your takeaway. Sounds like it worked. Now you have to keep working on yourself rather than blaming a harmless drug for your problems.
- wizzwizz4 2y agoIf a thumbprint can do damage, why can't a lower dose? What's the mechanism?
- bongodongobob 2y agoIt's similar to one aspirin vs 10000. Also, people do thumbprints and live normal lives after, I just threw that out as an extreme. LSD is very safe if you're doing normal doses. Most people don't take 10000 doses so I can't really speak to that.
- InvertedRhodium 2y agoWater will kill you if you consume too much of it - almost universally, the poison is in the dose not the substance.
- wizzwizz4 2y agoThe mechanism for water toxicity is physically displacing ions in the brain, causing osmotic damage. (This also explains why lower amounts of water are safe.) A thumbprint dose of LSD is nowhere near high enough to do something like that.
- gruntbuggly 2y agoA fair observation, but real assumptions about progress, what it means, and what is valuable
- _rpxpx 2y agoThere are lots of examples, you've just decided not to see them. Just for a start, here's an account by Ralph Abraham of the impact of psychedelics on mathematics. http://www.ralph-abraham.org/articles/MS%23124.Maps/maps2.pdf http://www.ralph-abraham.org/articles/MS%23124.Maps/maps2.pd...
- ljsprague 2y agoI don't know if he credits the drug for the inspiration but the inventor of PCR was famously a user of LSD.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]