[ExI] Religious Idiocy Triumphs Over Science Yet Again

[spike]

From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Will Steinberg
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2015 2:54 PM
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] Religious Idiocy Triumphs Over Science Yet Again

 

>…I just don't understand particularly why you would believe that besides cultural bias…Do you have evidence that the insights would be poorer than "sobriety"?  

Ja, plenty of it: I have never seen a stoned person produce a wonderful insight, solve a complicated equation, write a stunning algorithm, make any scientific breakthrough while stoned.  I have seen stoners feel as if they were a hero while stoned, but not actually being a hero while stoned.  I have seen stoners and drunks do some appalling acts of stupidity while stoned or drunk.  One of my own former HS classmates murdered his own twin brother, not during an argument or dispute, but rather just freaked out (I wasn’t there, just heard about it.)  Tim and Tom Thompson.  Tim died, Tom went to the big house.

>…  I honestly suggest you go try some.

Thanks Will; I honestly ain’t going there.  Not now, not later.

I might smoke some grass someday, long after all my life’s decisions are far behind me and one could scarcely tell if I made some poor judgments.  Perhaps for my 80th birthday or something.  I confess to some curiosity over that for which so many of my peers sacrificed their critical young years, allowing the squares to get the hole shot in the old race.

>…I ought to stop self incriminating though.  So, this is all theoretical.  Or a joke.  Or both…

Ja no worries Will.  I will read your book.  Or rather your summaries have told me all I really wanted to know about that topic but was afraid to ask.  I agree that people who experiment with this kind of thing do a service to humanity.  Somebody somewhere has to try everything, then record what happened.  I can easily imagine allowing terminal patients to use these things.  They have little to lose.

spike  

 

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