[ExI] Open Individualism

[William Flynn Wallace]

Please do not say 'Bill' without saying'bill k' or 'bill w' - thanks!  bill
w

On Fri, Jan 5, 2024 at 9:22 PM ilsa via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Hi Jason, can you jump off this and have a conversation with me about this
> and that? My favorite LSD story is when I was under 16 and walked into a
> meeting of the doctor's at the London hospital that was using LSD to cure
> alcoholics which is I believe how The Harvard connection got into the LSC
> research. So I heard from these doctors how they had formulated the
> language to label the experience. And in my older years that I sit here cuz
> I'm not 16 anymore It has given me an opportunity to notice how people
> label things that they don't understand. But that's another story.
> The current interest by the medical community in the psychedelic
> experience interests me greatly. I know young people who are growing
> mushrooms and making preparations and doing all sorts of chemical hoo-ha.
> So I am very interested in talking with you about everything that you said
> in this marvelous post.
> I went off to study theology because of that experience and others that I
> had as a young person to see how these experiences happen naturally.
> Smile, ilsa
>
> On Fri, Jan 5, 2024, 6:24 PM Henry Rivera via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jan 5, 2024, at 8:49 AM, Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>> …
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 4, 2024, 9:12 PM Henry Rivera via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>> It’s metaphysical.
>>>
>>> …
>>>
>> A takeaway for me is that this suggests that we can promote peace and
>>> unity and the benefits noted in Bill‘s moral prescription post by promoting
>>> ego-loss/psychedelic experiences.
>>>
>>
>> Do most people have the experience of ego-loss in your experience? And
>> does it happen reliably for those it happens to?
>>
>> Jason
>>
>>
>> It’s highly dose-dependent for most psychedelics, LSD being the prototype
>> and most studied. DMT and ketamine for example will have a different slope
>> relative to most other psychedelics in a graph of the relationship between
>> dose and “depth” of a psychedelic experience and also ego-loss, but there
>> is still causal relationship there.
>>
>>
>> You can see the dose-dependent relationship in the charts
>> in “Dose-response relationships of LSD-induced subjective experiences in
>> humans“ (2023) in Neuropsychopharmocology at
>> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-023-01588-2
>>
>>
>> In particular, notice the charts for Dread of Ego Dissolution and
>> Experience of Unity (full res image of the charts here
>> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-023-01588-2/figures/1)
>>
>>
>> I’d say a threshold dose of 100 micrograms needs to be passed
>> to experience some degree of ego-loss.
>>
>>
>> The Ego-Dissolution Inventory <https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27378878/>,
>> which highly correlates with the “Unity” factor of the Mystical
>> Experience Questionnaire
>> <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5203697/>, is often used
>> to examine the depth of ego loss that a participant has felt. This has been
>> used to document the dose dependence I’ve described with psilocybin use as
>> well. See “Psilocybin occasioned mystical-type experiences: immediate and
>> persisting dose-related effects” (2011).
>> https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21674151/
>>
>>
>> Here’s a nice quote that captures the connection between ego-loss and
>> open individualism I think:
>>
>>
>> “What is Ego Dissolution on Psychedelics Like?
>>
>> According to our good friends at DoubleBlind,
>> <https://doubleblindmag.com/ego-death/> the ego death or ego dissolution
>> experience is described as being: “You are fully “in the moment
>> <https://doubleblindmag.com/what-does-it-mean-to-be-here-now/>” and able
>> to see things from a macroscopic, more objective perspective. You are no
>> longer an individual isolated from life as it takes place around you, but
>> rather feel interconnected with the universe and all its inhabitants,
>> experiencing intense feelings of love, euphoria, and unity while the self
>> is temporarily forgotten. This state of selflessness and subsequent
>> feelings of connectivity with the universe are often referred to as “ego
>> death.””
>> https://psychedelic.support/resources/ego-dissolution-during-psychedelic-experiences/
>>
>>
>> As this also came up in this thread, if anyone is interested, here is an
>> article that argues that “Ego dissolution experiences reveal that the
>> self-model plays an important binding function in cognitive processing, but
>> the self does not exist.”
>> https://academic.oup.com/nc/article/2017/1/nix016/3916730?login=false
>>
>> Provocative, I know. I haven’t read that one yet incidentally.
>>
>>
>> Take care
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