151–160 of 208 posts
No LSD, nothing at all. 100% placebo.
And people still tripped on them - to the extent that some of them came back and wanted to buy more, telling him how amazing the LSD was.
Perhaps the science is a little less straightforward than it seems.
I'm a Ph.D student in Cognitive Science and I'm currently writing my dissertation on the topic of conscious perception. I think this study is pretty damn interesting because the cingulate cortex (ACC & PCC) along with the thalamus are implicated in states of consciousness (i.e. wake/sleep/coma/vegetation/etc) and also in "access consciousness" (i.e.: “consciousness” in the sense of “I am conscious of such and suc…
Interesting! Is there a brain region related to telling apart results of imagination and our actual perception that would work as a fail-safe mechanism?
Caution, hand-waving abounds in this comment.
I'm a Ph.D student in Cognitive Science and I'm currently writing my dissertation on the topic of conscious perception. I think this study is pretty damn interesting because the cingulate cortex (ACC & PCC) along with the thalamus are implicated in states of consciousness (i.e. wake/sleep/coma/vegetation/etc) and also in "access consciousness" (i.e.: “consciousness” in the sense of “I am conscious of such and suc…
I forgot where I read the idea but some neuroscientists proposed that consciousness in the brain is more a measure of interconnectivity of activated brain regions. Basically, whatever brain region communicates with each other allows for mixed matching, whatever that brain region does (synesthetic people are very concrete examples of this). What do you think? Could this be true? I find it interesting to consider but h…
Interconnectivity in the brain is very stereotyped. Certain areas typically only talk to certain others. The 'connectome' in the brain is being mapped these days and there is a lot to learn, but I think we can say that the connectome is stereotypical. That's good, we can make a road map then!
Consciousness is a tougher nut to crack, though. Many questions arise from disease studies like this one: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12301-man-with-tiny-b... . Obviously from that patient, he lives a normal life (within the IQ standard deviations) and no-one else saw deficits in him worth concern. Other patients report only balance issues and delayed speech with having half of all the body's neurons not develop: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329861-900-woman-of.... Still other people have extreme deficits in short term memory from having comparatively small portions removed : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Molaison .
What I am saying is that the brain is a confounding mystery and we need the help of people in comp-sci. If you have the time, try to volunteer at your local university, we need the help.
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I'm gonna bet you're not addicted to any external substance and that in your case, this was purely a mind expanding experience. One could also say LSD might have unlocked what was already there in the background (i.e. "subconscious") of your mind. I would not consider this a bad trip. More like a rude awakening. Had you gone through something else in real life, major trauma of sorts, you may have experienced exactly…
I'm a fairly introspective person and I wouldn't say that it shook my world view - in the sense that I went in with a scientific world view and came out with one. I do have a better empathetic appreciation for mental illness and psychosis though (read And Then I Thought I was a Fish if you want to scare yourself). A trip makes you realize how incredible differently someone else's mind can perceive the world. The chal…
I think most people don't think about it."
I'm not sure if it helps but one can accept ones mortality and not be afraid of it.
I think about dying usually daily and contently accept it. At least until the time comes, probably. I don't believe in any kind of afterlife (at least the time of death comes, probably).
I think you are mixing up a knowledge of a thing and a fear of a thing.
The difference between knowing one will die one day, and being afraid of dying one day, is similar to the difference of knowing there are mice under ones bed, and being afraid of the mice.
I've had to deal with a shiteload of anxiety issues and seen close family members dead, though, so either there's the stoic acceptance or serious mental issues.
I've had help from stoic philosophy and zen meditation. Would be a total wreck without them probably.
This is sadly anecdotal because I can't find a reference online, but there was a story a decade or two ago about someone who sold completely inert blotting paper tabs at a festival. No LSD, nothing at all. 100% placebo. And people still tripped on them - to the extent that some of them came back and wanted to buy more, telling him how amazing the LSD was. Perhaps the science is a little less straightforward than it s…
That said, the article's link to the paper seems broken. Because there's no correct link to the paper yet in this discussion, my impression that most comments here don't really hold scientific merit gets stronger. I will admit that I don't understand enough of statistics to judge the methods used, if there was any control group at all.
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Personally, I'm not really worried about death at all. Having spent years of my life studying physics and coming to the conclusion that an eternalistic view of (space-)time is more likely correct, as seems to be implied by the theory of relativity, I know that my life here on earth won't disappear as a consequence of death, and this gives me solace. I absolutely detest psychedelic drugs though, they nearly ruined my…
> an eternalistic view of (space-)time is more likely correct, as seems to be implied by the theory of relativity, I know that my life here on earth won't disappear as a consequence of death Can you expand on this? Do you mean to say that your life won't disappear because you'll always exist at a specific point in time space?
In particular, I think that the relativistic concept of simultaneity is a strong argument in favor of this kind of view.
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I tried marijuana and my experience with it was a lot more like what my friends and you describe LSD or similar drugs to be like. Before marijuana I already had mild hallucinations and I was diagnosed with schizophrenia from a mild psychosis. It's definitely made my existing hallucinations much stronger even years after smoking. For me the general feel of the trip was as if some sort of filter had been removed so you…
I'm immediately skeptical of people who claim to have felt "similar" effects to LSD without LSD, but that's a pretty interesting scenario involving weed (how much?!) and schizophrenia. No clue how close you could get to emulating it, but it sounds like at least a few of the common effects of an acid trip.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17944876 http://www.jneurosci.org/content/27/43/11700.abstract
From what I can see, the relationship isn't terribly clear at this time. As dopamine and serotonin systems are linked to schizophrenia, until more is known, I personally think anyone with even mild signs of schizophrenia would do best to avoid chemicals like marijuana, LSD, stimulants, etc.
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> You make it sound like this is a positive thing Meaning only exists between our ears -- it's not some intrinsic attribute of reality. I, for example, experience bouts of depression, where nothing about the world around me has changed, and yet my perception of (and feelings about) it becomes melancholic and devoid of purpose or meaning. If you walk away from an experience with a renewed sense of meaning or purpose,…
No, because it's not real. He felt a connection between himself and the snail. There is no actual connection, but he felt it. If he believes that connection to be real he will act on it, but those actions will not be the right ones because their basis is false. The problem is that it's actually possible to have a real connection, even between a person and a snail, but instead of a real connection you have the feeling…
What makes one experience real and another not real?
You have no idea what someone else is experiencing (you can observer their reaction to it, but you have no idea about the actual experience) so I don't know how you can dismiss one as real and another as not real.
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I did ecstasy and i did LSD. Ecstasy is like a lie in this quote comparison. You get high in the beginning and it brings you down at the end, really awful feeling at the end. LSD is different, i experienced world differently even for couple of days after i took LSD. World seemed different. I knew what was important in life and what not, very clear. I can't describe how you feel on LSD, and people that didn't took LSD…
For a counterpoint to this - I decided to do 150 micrograms of LSD after reading a lot about it on HN, talking with many friends that had tried it or do it fairly regularly and reading as much as I could find (Sam Harris, Huxley, What the Dormouse said etc.). Nothing can really prepare you for it - the dream like state, the visuals and just the capacity of how different things can be. When looking at things I saw the…
That's what I got out of it. When people ask me what it's like, I say it's like those stickers people put on large windows so that birds will realize there's a window there and not fly into them. By introducing this aberration, you become aware of the lens through which you perceive everything and get a sense of how the lens may distort reality.
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Interesting! Is there a brain region related to telling apart results of imagination and our actual perception that would work as a fail-safe mechanism?
The ACC. Brains are squishy and evolved from fish, especially the basal ganglia parts like the ACC. They don't have fail-safe parts. Whatever gets 'routed' is going to synapse regardless of if it is 'real' or not. You cause a neuron to fire and it fires and sends it's signal onwards, it does not care why it fired. Caution, hand-waving abounds in this comment.
> You cause a neuron to fire and it fires
Tautology much?
> it does not care why it fired.
That's not even good English grammar. I mean, it's a very informal style, that I only understand because the information is redundant. Of course there are fail-safe parts. I don't even need to study to see that redundancy is a vital feature of the nervous system. In the same way, the ACC probably isn't the only point of failure for certain perceptions of the environment.