[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 6:10 PM
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] Religious Idiocy Triumphs Over Science Yet Again

 

>…But Spike, have you ever seen smart people do drugs?  There were quite a bit at the school I went to, it's one of the top 5 in the country.  Lots of kids I know who dropped acid are now working in consulting, labs, etc…

Sure, smart people do things like this for fun.  I just don’t think smart people do their smart things while stoned.  Again I am no expert on this topic, but these people did their smartest stuff while sober.

I did think of an example of something vaguely like what you are saying: Jack Kerouac writing On the Road.  It is so distant from my world in every way, but I loved OtR once I realized what Jack was doing: the literature counterpart of jazz music.  He did some terrific riffs with words, innovative rhythms and beat.

There is one passage in OtR but I don’t know where it is and have only a hard copy.  If you have a soft copy, perhaps you can find it, what I call the “Ah dream passage” because Jack is describing being in San Francisco with so little money he was hungry most of the time.  He was sponging off of local friends who were nearly starving themselves, but would feed him because he was an interesting guest.  He described walking down the street (near where Lawrence Ferlinghetti *still* lives and occasionally shows up at his City Lights bookstore for beat hipsters (Ferlinghetti will be 97 in the spring)) describing the smells wafting from the bakeries and restaurants, in his San Francisco ah-dream.  Kerouac fasted to become hungry enough to do a terrific job of describing being hungry.

Anyone here have a soft copy of On the Road?  

>…Honestly if you are gonna choose something to take at 80, make it psychedelics, not pot.  Pot is ok, fun, goofy, lame insights.  Psychedelics will light up your brain with the seething foaming fractal nature of reality, everything becomes a metaphor for everything else, lights dance, you see new colors, etc…

OK well remind me please.  I have a quarter of a century before I reach that milestone.  I hope we have plenty of data by then, in a forum which I can access.

spike

 

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