[ExI] video which changed my perspective

[Will Steinberg]

@Adrian: I'm not really sure you have a foot to stand on here.  The science
is clear, the anecdotes are clear, everything is clear--psychedelics are
massively useful tools for lots of things.  For helping in therapy with
trauma, end-of-life fear for cancer patients, depression, anxiety, etc.
For helping productivity.  For gaining insight on scientific/engineering
problems.  You can say all you want "well but maybe it's an illusion!!!!"
but to me you're the one sitting in a grey, drab room, yelling through the
door that the room I'm on in is probably grey and drab too, and it's all
just an illusion.  Meanwhile I am sitting in a multicolored room with
frankincense in a ceiling-mounted censer, silken floor pillows, and persian
rugs.  A string quartet plays softly in the corner, while a beautiful woman
wearing jewed-adorned linens feeds me honeydew and Iberian ham by hand.  In
the room are various scientists, academics, philosophers, businesspeople,
and bohemians, who have all independently verified the room is indeed real,
and the scientists have even taken it upon themselves to write numerous
papers proving the existence of the room beyond a shadow of a doubt.  They,
too, are confused why so many people who claim to appreciate science and
learning are still sitting in the fucking grey room and shouting that
everyone in the nice room is crazy.

Yes, you DO need psychedelics to do what they do.  You are not going to
reach that point by yourself, period.  Why is it so crazy to think we might
only plausibly be able to reach certain brain states using drugs?  That is
fully in line with all known physics and biology.  You can say you don't
care about having these experiences, but it is a guarantee that you will
not have these experiences without trying the drugs.  That's it.

No offense, but what you have observed is a sliver of the truth and is
wrong.  The effects and benefits of psychedelics are not an illusion, and
science agrees heartily.

"You say propaganda, I say observed evidence.  In my case this includes
personally observed evidence, though I grant that most people don't have
that.":  I think by "includes" you mean "solely comprises" because the
science disagrees with you.

I do dream.  I've been perfecting lucid dreaming since I started doing it
at around 5 years old.  I can generally do whatever I want in a dream, fly,
make objects appear, teleport, etc.

On Mon, Mar 28, 2022 at 10:12 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 28, 2022 at 5:43 PM Will Steinberg via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> Like I also said, it makes you think more expansively.  You can think
>> multiple things at once, think faster, in more intuitive and strange ways.
>>
>
> I don't need psychedelics to do that, and I doubt most people need them to
> do that.
>
> You can comprehend entire ideas that would take hours to even begin to
>> think about sober.
>>
>
> From what I have observed of other people under the influence, you gain
> the illusion of being able to do so, without actually being able to do so.
>
> The illusion can be doggedly persistent - the part of your brain that
> believes whether or not you know a thing insists that the knowledge is
> there, coming up with all manner of justifications as to why the knowledge
> can't be used right now in the particular way you happen to be trying to
> use it at this instant, or that the inability is unimportant and can be
> ignored - but it remains an illusion.
>
> By analogy, someone under the influence might think, and declare, that
> they suddenly know kung fu.  They mean "know" as in "grok", not as in "are
> a master of", but they do not quite understand the difference.  Someone
> else asks them to demonstrate on a training dummy.  The person makes a weak
> and sloppy punch.  Subconsciously they know that was not nearly what they
> meant to do, so they make a second punch - which is better, but still not
> master grade.  They shrug, thinking the point proven, and turn their
> attention to other matters - but their audience has seen no understanding
> demonstrated.  The next day, when the effect has passed from their system,
> they might have a dim memory of having thought they understood, but there
> is rarely enough remaining to grab onto and analyze, let alone to achieve
> or re-achieve any sort of understanding beyond what they had before they
> went under the influence.
>
> Why otherwise intelligent people reject just this one incredibly useful
>> tool is, again, a testament to how effective propaganda is
>>
>
> You say propaganda, I say observed evidence.  In my case this includes
> personally observed evidence, though I grant that most people don't have
> that.
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