[ExI] Religious Idiocy Triumphs Over Science Yet Again

Tue Dec 15 15:34:06 UTC 2015

On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 4:40 AM, Max More <max at maxmore.com> wrote:

> Adrian: It's hard for me to assess your dismissive claim about insights
> while under the influence of drugs, partly because it's not clear to me
> whether you are talking about one or two drugs that you are most familiar
> with, or all drugs. (There are *hundreds* of mind-altering drugs, if not
> thousands, that we already know of.)
>
> These days, I have too many and too consistent and persistent
> responsibilities to experiment with major mind-altering substances. In my
> 20s and early 30s, however, I became very "experienced" (in the Jim
> Morrison sense). Back in April 1989, I wrote a (now) slightly embarrassing
> and over-enthusiastic piece called "Psychedelics and Mind Expansion",
> published in *Extropy *#3. (Good luck googling that. Pre-Web!) I'm pretty
> sure that you are *mostly* correct. I do recall two separate LSD
> experiences. In one, I "realized" that the core of reality is unity. In
> another, I "realized" that the core of reality is duality.
>
> On the other hand, I can say for sure that LSD enabled me to experience
> things (music, interactions with people, and interactions with nature) in
> ways I never had before, and that have continued to have (positive if
> occasional) effects since. For instance, I found myself (contrary to my
> then-highly reserved nature) talking to and *seeing* people like the
> postman and a grocery store clerk in ways that I never had before. In
> addition, while I would not recommend over-indulgence with THC, I have no
> doubt that it enabled me to overcome some deep-rooted emotional blockages
> that led me to talk to someone very close to me about a critical issue that
> I never been able to broach before. (Again, this was late-1980s/early 90s.)
> That opening up has had long-lasting benefits.
>
> So, I think your comments are mostly but not entirely true. We may be able
> to gain more value (apart from simple enjoyment/joy/engagement -- also
> worthy outcomes) from mind-altering drugs if we (a) could design them with
> greater specificity, and (b) had a much better understanding of how they
> would affect any specific individual.
>
> On the latter: Many people apparently have wonderfully enjoyable
> experiences on MDMA (unless they overdose or combine in stupid ways). I did
> not. In fact, I had some truly emotionally horrible experiences on the few
> occasions that I tried it. (Was it the substance? Was it the time in my
> life? I don't know.) That's interesting, because my LSD experiences were
> almost all good to fantastically great, with only one or two not-good (but
> not bad) occasions. (I think the least enjoyable was going to a Grateful
> Dead concert in LA -- I was not familiar with their music -- at a time when
> I really wasn't in a good mood.)
>
> I'm surprised I'm commenting at this length... The topic takes me back.
> [Not a flashback!]
>
> --Max
>

If you have not had any experience with Attribution Theory, in my area of
social psychology, look into it a bit.  There appear to be numerous ways in
which we can go wrong in assessing the personalities and intentions of
other people we observe.

  Then there's self-attribution: the many ways in which what we attribute
our own actions and thoughts to can become irrational or just plain wrong.
We look for causes for our own behaviors as well as the behaviors of others
and can make the same mistakes. Also look into state-dependent memory:
the ability to recall correctly a memory can heavily depend on the chemical
state of your brain when the memory was implanted.  Example:  the best time
to remember a dream is either immediately when you wake up, or when you are
going to sleep the next night - your brain is returning to the state when
the experience happened.  Can't remember what happened when you were
drunk?  Get drunk again and try.

So - trying to recall just what you thought or even did when your brain is
in a very different state than normal, becomes a problem at the very
least.  You are adding to the usual problems of memory recall, which are
legion.  (I won't ask you to
Google these, as they are just too numerous to take in)
Now I am not contradicting Max or anyone else.  I am just saying that
there are huge problems here of making sense of everyday experience, much
less experiences on drugs (or even 'normal' highs), and even more
problematic when you try to piece together events of years past.  The
memory changes every time you recall it.  Ever go to a high school reunion
and argue about who did what to whom and why?  It's a laugh.

All of these things are proved in hundreds of studies.

Could it have been?  Yes.  It also could have been something entirely
different.

bill w

On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 12:26 AM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 8:08 AM, William Flynn Wallace <
>> foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I don't think that is anything invalid about these, except that insights
>>> regarding understanding of the universe usually turn out to be as Adrian
>>> says:  nothing brilliant.
>>> Often wacky.  Disappointing compared to our feelings for them when
>>> stoned.
>>>
>>
>> Exactly right.  And I'm not suggesting they're invalid: the sensory
>> impressions are indeed more vivid.  Just...they don't actually produce
>> better results for anything you want to matter to anyone outside your own
>> mind.
>>
>> Assuming radiotelepathy (brain to brain communication at some level
>> deeper than language, via electronics wired to the brain and linked via
>> radio/wire/whatever electronic bridge) was a thing, what would happen if
>> one of a pair of linked minds were to trip while the other did not,
>> assuming they are sharing full sensory impressions with each other and
>> started the experiment already used to this connection?
>>
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>>
>
>
> --
>
> Max More, PhD
> Strategic Philosopher
> Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader*
>
> http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader
> President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation
>
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