[extropy-chat] [wta-talk] LA Times article on hallucinogens

[Ben Goertzel]

Well, another well-known fact about psychedelics is that the effect is
highly variant, depending on the individual, their state of mind, and
the circumstances they take it in...

This is not really so surprising; something comparable could be said
about a lot of other life experiences, e.g. meditation or marriage or
sex....

"Sex ... hmmm .. yeah, I tried that once for a few minutes ... it was
OK, but I don't see what the fuss is all about... ultimately all it
did was get my sister mad at me... ;-p" ...

"Meditation ... hmmm ... yah, I sat there and stared at the wall for a
while ... just got bored ... guess those Zen masters are all fulla
shit, yep..."  ;-)

Seriously: There is a lot of junk written about psychedelic
experience, and there is a dearth of serious scientific evaluation due
mainly to legal reasons.

And, as a radical transhumanist, I don't find the tweaking of the
current human brain with chemicals to be a maximally interesting
pursuit.  More interesting to go beyond the human brain entirely.

However, there is no doubt in my mind that psychedelics have the
capability to enable human minds to undergo fundamental positive
transformations involving profound insights.  They also have the
capability to drive people nuts, and to bore people or provide people
with shallow entertainment...

They are very crude tools, with a diversity of effects.  One day
someone may create precision psychedelics (hey! there's a nice company
name ;-) but I'm more acutely looking forward to the obsolescence of
the human brain altogether, which will obviously give rise to far more
interesting opportunities for fundamental transformation...

-- BenG



On 11/21/06, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 21, 2006 at 10:53:28AM -0800, Jef Allbright wrote:
>
> > If you google <"changed my life" lsd> you will find many examples of
> > people who believe that it can and did.
>
> I just did, and even as anecdotes, these are pretty thin.
>
> > My experience left me with a lasting appreciation of the malleability of
> > consciousness and identity and how a person's subjective reality is, for
> > all practical purposes their whole reality.
>
> I was not particularly impressed with acid (nor with other
> hallucinogens, for that matter). You see pretty pictures, you
> die, you see God. So what? Nothing but Disney on steroids.
>
> > As a side note, I've observed that people who have done a lot of LSD
> > seem to be overly susceptible to making erroneous mental connections.  I
> > don't know if that's because people with that trait are attracted to LSD
> > or that LSD enhances that trait, but its enough for me to advise
> > restraint.
> >
> > I gained other insights as well, but the really life-changing effect was
> > that I went from someone demonstrating a hardcore insistence on striving
> > toward objective truth, to someone realizing that it's much more
>
> Never was on that particular trip.
>
> > effective to try to understand another person's model of reality and
> > then work on encompassing it with a larger, closer *approximation* to
> > objective reality. Rinse, lather, repeat.
>
> --
> Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
> ______________________________________________________________
> ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
> 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
>
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux)
>
> iD8DBQFFY1PvdbAkQ4sp9r4RApNqAJ4kWA2uqNq544FaOgqq6wV6RA5QUwCfQV0j
> +qUWBQktRUDh4AbsN1sRjRE=
> =gjT1
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
>
>