[ExI] Psychedelics/was Re: Religious Idiocy Triumphs Over Science Yet Again

[Will Steinberg]

No, I'm just viscerally comfortable with it, and I wasn't before.

But I don't really get how exactly you can argue against it.  It's like,
using the metaphor before, telling me chocolate isn't as delicious as I say
it is when you haven't tried it.

Some insights I don't have the words to explain, I've just worked them into
my life.  Many forgotten.  On one trip, in the shower, I suddenly
remembered a truth of the universe I realized I had remembered on many
trips before.  It was perfect, it explained everything, and it was
familiar.  And I promptly forgot it a second later.  That one made me break
out in laughter, great summation of the experience.

And it's not all objective scientific insights.  Social bonding or empathy,
appreciation of art and artifacts (museums a favorite choice for my
experiences), superb visual entertainment, cosmic jokes that make you laugh
for hours (one time spent with my friend's wonderful aunt with Alzheimer's,
she was so happy to have us there and she said the most beautiful
post-profound non sequiturs that made me laugh with joy and completely
unable to feel anything but total gratitude for my life.)

Very valuable and fun experiences, interspersed with very difficult or
scary times which were also valuable.  Psychedelics are like a boiled down
human life concentrate.  Love, hate, joy, sadness, terror, anticipation,
war and peace, language, culture, science, tastes and sounds and lights and
teleology and aesthetics and--holy shit, that was all from watching ants on
a tree for five seconds?!
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