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Some of the best writing on the uses of LSD come from Alan watts. In his early life he said "it was impossible to bottle mysticism" and yet on dropping acid the

Some of the best writing on the uses of LSD come from Alan watts. In his early life he said "it was impossible to bottle mysticism" and yet on dropping acid the first time felt like "they have completely bottled mysticism!". But then he noticed that the results really depend on who is taking it and what their world view is. If you do not have any inclination towards that mystic space, you will not get the ego death. It is as Eckhart Tolle said "just your senses turned up to 11", that is if there is nothing else you can get out of it. As Douglas Rushkoff said "If you give tech bros a hit of psychedelics, all you get is tech bros on psychedelics." There is no higher sense achieved.

gchamonlive 1y ago
It's because meaning isn't essential to the universe, but derived from human experience. The universe needs us just as much as we need the universe. Actually this separation is an artifact of reductionism we have to let go. In any case, this is why I think philosophy is the required work to be done so that we can invite spiritualism and mysticism into our lives and potentially experience them with these reality altering drugs.
- throwaway7783 1y ago
  Nothing is essential to the universe, the universe does not need us. We need it exactly as it is today, and that is it. Everything else is stuff we made up to understand the universe weakly, or to cope with life. This is not nihilism, but meaning to life is meaningful only in the context of humans and has nothing to do with universe needing us.
  - josephg 1y ago
    If we’re gonna talk trip philosophy, then: This is only true at the physical level. At another level, the only thing that “exists” is a mind. If all you have is a bunch of rocks floating through space with nothing to perceive it, the universe is indistinguishable from emptiness. Experience lives at the intersection of instantiated reality and thought / perception. You need both. You can also imagine travelling along the axis of an idea or an archetype through time and space. For example, the idea of lovers or warriors or something. Each instantiation of that idea in someone exists along that axis. The idea can only come into being inside a physical reality or simulation. But the idea itself is eternal. The idea of the number 1 doesn’t “need” the universe. Ideas aren’t made out of atoms.
    - ostwilkens 1y ago
      It's a nice thought. If an idea could be encoded... that each persons idea of a concept, viewed in the right dimensionality, has a rough, similar outline. At least, that's my interpretation of your idea. :-) Your comment either triggered, or made me notice an ongoing shift in my worldview. Thank you!
    - andsoitis 1y ago
      > But the idea itself is eternal. The idea of the number 1 doesn’t “need” the universe. Ideas are mental concepts, thoughts, or notions that exist in the mind. As far as we know, there’s no evidence of mind-independent ideas. We can only access ideas through our minds, so we have no way to verify they exist without minds.
      - josephg 1y ago
        Is an LLM "a mind"? They certainly seem to encode brain-independent ideas. > We can only access ideas through our minds, so we have no way to verify they exist without minds. Its symmetric. We can also only access the physical world through our minds too. We have no way to verify it exists without a mind. Actually we have no way to verify it exists at all in the form we perceive it - since it might just be a big simulation. In that sense, I have more direct evidence of my ideas than I do the world, since I can perceive ideas directly. (I say "my ideas" not "our ideas" because I can't tell as easily if you exist.)
        svnt 1y ago
        This is trivially untrue. If you see a large enough, dangerous-looking enough animal in person and up close, you will respond physically without a single thought or idea. If you didn't, evolutionarily you wouldn’t exist. This is because you are parallel systems. Ideas are not primary experience.
        josephg 1y ago
        Sorry, I’m not sure how that disproves my claims? Or which claim it disproves. Say more?
- SlowTao 1y ago
  I have nothing more to add but... Yep, spot on!
- svnt 1y ago
  Meaning seems to be both — otherwise we wouldn’t mind it.
josephg 1y ago
> "If you give tech bros a hit of psychedelics, all you get is tech bros on psychedelics." This is an amazing line. I must admit: the first time I tried LSD I had some code open on my laptop. Before the trip I was curious what programming on LSD would be like, so at some point dutifully I sat down in front of my editor. I was immediately utterly transfixed by the colours of the text cursor as it pulsed. Then I lost myself watching hover states as I moved the mouse around. Needless to say, I didn’t get any programming done. I remember thinking how strange and hilarious it was that, while sober, I care at all about programming. It all seemed so hollow. A lot more happened on the trip - the whole thing was incredibly profound and insightful. But all these years later, I still have a crystal clear image of that pulsing cursor etched in my memory.
- lukan 1y ago
  Ok, that was a theoretical lesson I learned before when reading books about it. You cannot do productive work while tripping. And I also had my laptop close by to maybe take notes, but the screen was really stressfull. Watching wild nature in the sun was much more enjoyable.
- ttoinou 1y ago
  Ahh I had a similar trip with Ableton GUI on acid, all the gui controls went in fire and animated in a psychedelic way
- sfn42 1y ago
  It depends on the dose, I've successfully programmed and written about programming while high on acid. Though usually just a half tab or even a quarter. I felt like it was useful, improved focus and creativity. One time I played CSGO on acid, my brain might be exaggerating the memory but I swear I played like a master. Maybe I just had easy games but it really felt like I was playing much better than usual and I was dominating. Also played satisfactory once, though with that I just ended up painting my factory in neon colors and stuff like that. It looked pretty cool though, I kept the color theme I made.
  - josephg 1y ago
Nursie 1y ago
> If you do not have any inclination towards that mystic space, you will not get the ego death I am as agnostic-atheist as they come and would go as far as to say I find mysticism offensive to good sense. But I've experienced the ego death parts of LSD, and consider I have come to know myself more through it. I don't think it reveals some fundamental truth outside myself so much as being simply a phenomenon of the action of psychedelics on my brain. Frankly I think this idea that you have to be studied in philosophy or open to mystic woo-y nonsense to fully appreciate or even fully experience psychedelics is hilarious and self-aggrandising.
- lukan 1y ago
  "would go as far as to say I find mysticism offensive to good sense." How come? The mystics of all the religions are the most approachable to agnostic me. Mysticism to me means mainly, the universe as its whole is a great mysterium and those who claim "it is exactly like this and this, because this holy book says so!" are rather the aggressive fools to me. So genuinly curious, what do you perceive as aggressive from mysticim?
  - Nursie 1y ago
    Offensive to good sense, not aggressive. Mysticism usually seems to me to imply a poor grasp on reality and can be accompanied by all sorts of baseless claims to knowledge and (often naturalistic) fallacies. It often goes hand in hand with silly beliefs about crystals, alt-med and all sorts of other crap. "We don't know" is fine. "We don't know, therefore these specific lines of bullshit" less so. But I didn't post the above to say that my views on mysticism are correct or even to provoke a discussion about it. I posted it to provide a counterpoint to the bizarre notion that one must be into mysticism to experience aspects of the psychedelic experience. We may interpret the experiences very differently, of course, but the claim that part of it is closed to those who don't subscribe to witter about "the goddess" is ironically very egotistic.
    - lukan 1y ago
      No need to debate about. It was just for my curiosity what triggered you and indeed what you describe I rather label esoteric new age stuff and that mostly puts me off as well.
randomtoast 1y ago
There is a nice quote by Robert M. Pirsig: "The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there." This translates well to psychedelic drug use.
- abhaynayar 1y ago
  I think the mountain does help with Zen. How much, depends on the individual. But yes, I do feel (in my limited experience) that for most people the thoughts they carry are more important to work on, than the environment they are in.
pinoy420 1y ago
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gchamonlive 1y ago

It's because meaning isn't essential to the universe, but derived from human experience. The universe needs us just as much as we need the universe. Actually this separation is an artifact of reductionism we have to let go. In any case, this is why I think philosophy is the required work to be done so that we can invite spiritualism and mysticism into our lives and potentially experience them with these reality altering drugs.

throwaway7783 1y ago
Nothing is essential to the universe, the universe does not need us. We need it exactly as it is today, and that is it. Everything else is stuff we made up to understand the universe weakly, or to cope with life. This is not nihilism, but meaning to life is meaningful only in the context of humans and has nothing to do with universe needing us.
- josephg 1y ago
  If we’re gonna talk trip philosophy, then: This is only true at the physical level. At another level, the only thing that “exists” is a mind. If all you have is a bunch of rocks floating through space with nothing to perceive it, the universe is indistinguishable from emptiness. Experience lives at the intersection of instantiated reality and thought / perception. You need both. You can also imagine travelling along the axis of an idea or an archetype through time and space. For example, the idea of lovers or warriors or something. Each instantiation of that idea in someone exists along that axis. The idea can only come into being inside a physical reality or simulation. But the idea itself is eternal. The idea of the number 1 doesn’t “need” the universe. Ideas aren’t made out of atoms.
  - ostwilkens 1y ago
    It's a nice thought. If an idea could be encoded... that each persons idea of a concept, viewed in the right dimensionality, has a rough, similar outline. At least, that's my interpretation of your idea. :-) Your comment either triggered, or made me notice an ongoing shift in my worldview. Thank you!
  - andsoitis 1y ago
    > But the idea itself is eternal. The idea of the number 1 doesn’t “need” the universe. Ideas are mental concepts, thoughts, or notions that exist in the mind. As far as we know, there’s no evidence of mind-independent ideas. We can only access ideas through our minds, so we have no way to verify they exist without minds.
    - josephg 1y ago
      Is an LLM "a mind"? They certainly seem to encode brain-independent ideas. > We can only access ideas through our minds, so we have no way to verify they exist without minds. Its symmetric. We can also only access the physical world through our minds too. We have no way to verify it exists without a mind. Actually we have no way to verify it exists at all in the form we perceive it - since it might just be a big simulation. In that sense, I have more direct evidence of my ideas than I do the world, since I can perceive ideas directly. (I say "my ideas" not "our ideas" because I can't tell as easily if you exist.)
      - svnt 1y ago
        This is trivially untrue. If you see a large enough, dangerous-looking enough animal in person and up close, you will respond physically without a single thought or idea. If you didn't, evolutionarily you wouldn’t exist. This is because you are parallel systems. Ideas are not primary experience.
        josephg 1y ago
        Sorry, I’m not sure how that disproves my claims? Or which claim it disproves. Say more?
SlowTao 1y ago
I have nothing more to add but... Yep, spot on!
svnt 1y ago
Meaning seems to be both — otherwise we wouldn’t mind it.

josephg 1y ago

> "If you give tech bros a hit of psychedelics, all you get is tech bros on psychedelics." This is an amazing line. I must admit: the first time I tried LSD I had some code open on my laptop. Before the trip I was curious what programming on LSD would be like, so at some point dutifully I sat down in front of my editor. I was immediately utterly transfixed by the colours of the text cursor as it pulsed. Then I lost myself watching hover states as I moved the mouse around. Needless to say, I didn’t get any programming done. I remember thinking how strange and hilarious it was that, while sober, I care at all about programming. It all seemed so hollow. A lot more happened on the trip - the whole thing was incredibly profound and insightful. But all these years later, I still have a crystal clear image of that pulsing cursor etched in my memory.

lukan 1y ago
Ok, that was a theoretical lesson I learned before when reading books about it. You cannot do productive work while tripping. And I also had my laptop close by to maybe take notes, but the screen was really stressfull. Watching wild nature in the sun was much more enjoyable.
ttoinou 1y ago
Ahh I had a similar trip with Ableton GUI on acid, all the gui controls went in fire and animated in a psychedelic way
sfn42 1y ago
It depends on the dose, I've successfully programmed and written about programming while high on acid. Though usually just a half tab or even a quarter. I felt like it was useful, improved focus and creativity. One time I played CSGO on acid, my brain might be exaggerating the memory but I swear I played like a master. Maybe I just had easy games but it really felt like I was playing much better than usual and I was dominating. Also played satisfactory once, though with that I just ended up painting my factory in neon colors and stuff like that. It looked pretty cool though, I kept the color theme I made.
- josephg 1y ago

Nursie 1y ago

> If you do not have any inclination towards that mystic space, you will not get the ego death I am as agnostic-atheist as they come and would go as far as to say I find mysticism offensive to good sense. But I've experienced the ego death parts of LSD, and consider I have come to know myself more through it. I don't think it reveals some fundamental truth outside myself so much as being simply a phenomenon of the action of psychedelics on my brain. Frankly I think this idea that you have to be studied in philosophy or open to mystic woo-y nonsense to fully appreciate or even fully experience psychedelics is hilarious and self-aggrandising.

lukan 1y ago
"would go as far as to say I find mysticism offensive to good sense." How come? The mystics of all the religions are the most approachable to agnostic me. Mysticism to me means mainly, the universe as its whole is a great mysterium and those who claim "it is exactly like this and this, because this holy book says so!" are rather the aggressive fools to me. So genuinly curious, what do you perceive as aggressive from mysticim?
- Nursie 1y ago
  Offensive to good sense, not aggressive. Mysticism usually seems to me to imply a poor grasp on reality and can be accompanied by all sorts of baseless claims to knowledge and (often naturalistic) fallacies. It often goes hand in hand with silly beliefs about crystals, alt-med and all sorts of other crap. "We don't know" is fine. "We don't know, therefore these specific lines of bullshit" less so. But I didn't post the above to say that my views on mysticism are correct or even to provoke a discussion about it. I posted it to provide a counterpoint to the bizarre notion that one must be into mysticism to experience aspects of the psychedelic experience. We may interpret the experiences very differently, of course, but the claim that part of it is closed to those who don't subscribe to witter about "the goddess" is ironically very egotistic.
  - lukan 1y ago
    No need to debate about. It was just for my curiosity what triggered you and indeed what you describe I rather label esoteric new age stuff and that mostly puts me off as well.

randomtoast 1y ago

There is a nice quote by Robert M. Pirsig: "The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there." This translates well to psychedelic drug use.

abhaynayar 1y ago
I think the mountain does help with Zen. How much, depends on the individual. But yes, I do feel (in my limited experience) that for most people the thoughts they carry are more important to work on, than the environment they are in.

pinoy420 1y ago

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