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Michael Pollan reluctantly embraces the 'new science' of psychedelics

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Re: Michael Pollan reluctantly embraces the 'new science' of psychedelics

#181

Post by monetus »

Jedi72 wrote: post #179
monetus wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly suggest reading 'Why god won't go away' by Andrew Newberg, Eugene D'Aquili, and Vince Rause. IIRC, the posterior superior parietal lobe essentially orients your body within your consciousness. When people have religious experiences this part of the brain has extra activity. If that activity was blocking that part of the brain from properly orienting your body, wouldn't a feeling of 'oneness' make a lot of se…

Your comment took me quite a while to parse, but it's actually incredible. I had never considered that somewhere deep down I have a sensation of "being" inside my body, which I guess some part of the brain is responsible for. Our senses can be fooled as we all know - if this sense became confused, it seems plausible that one could experience the sensation of "being" - in the sense of, their phyisical geometric locati…

    consider the possibility that our experience which we call vision is actually not the raw data feed, but actually is calculated/derived from both the raw data feed and our internal sense of geometrical viewpoint. If this were the case, then someone who had their sense of geometrical viewpoint displaced (but was still taking in raw data from their eyes, which do have a fixed real-world location) would experience a sense of vision, from the viewpoint inside the world wherever their sense of geometrical viewpoint has been displaced to.
It seems that is the case. In that same book I recommended, the ways the senses are processed are described and the phenomenon of 'blind sight' is touched upon. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight

The info your senses take in is processed in multiple stages. The stages can be accessible to your consciousness, despite damage or interference.

So, signals from your eyes go to a primary receptive area, which likely processes shapes and colors. Then a secondary receptive area tries to figure out what exactly is being gazed upon and gives you a more concrete image. Finally, the visual association part of the brain adds in context; memory, emotion, other sensory input, etc..

I kind of view the consciousness as a super-organism of consciousnesses, with all but a few of the last stages of processing considered our subconscious.

Re: Michael Pollan reluctantly embraces the 'new science' of psychedelics

#182

Post by ThrustVectoring »

komali2 wrote: post #77
empath75 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There aren’t many drug experiences more entertaining than a half dozen people on mushrooms trying to have a conversation.

Reminds me of a reddit thread I saved a couple days after they decriminalized weed in Washington: https://i.imgur.com/9HQ2Si7_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&f...

Note that "Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like" is a copy-pasted text meme.

Re: Michael Pollan reluctantly embraces the 'new science' of psychedelics

#183

Post by mr_overalls »

Lewton wrote: post #116
taneq wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this very interesting because I had precisely the opposite reaction once when I tried psylocibin. Despite being pretty solidly materialist and agnostic, I'd always held a bit of a soft spot for Cartesian duelism and a bit of a "but it'd be cool if..." What I didn't expect was that the effects wouldn't just "feel real" or "be convincing", they were real. Subjectively, it wasn't inside my head, it was the actual…

LSD made me go from your run of the mill nihilist to being convinced that even consciousness is a complete illusion and all philosophy is built on this ridiculous lie. It's like solipsism taken one step further, no I'm not the only thing that exists because -I- don't really exist in any meaningful way either. We're all just P-zombies. Qualia is nonsense If you thought relating to normal people as a nihilist was hard.…

Just curious if you have looked into Mahayana Buddhist formulations of emptiness? They sound very similar to what you're describing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhyamaka

Re: Michael Pollan reluctantly embraces the 'new science' of psychedelics

#184

Post by tgamba »

JackFr wrote: post #65
some_account wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got it all backwards. What you think is a crack in sanity is actually a crack in the illusion that the physical world is all there is. But to each their own.

Indeed. Dogmatic materialism is the real mind-virus.

Yes. Sticking only to the realm of hard science, the frontiers keep expanding (e.g. dark matter and energy). When it comes to our subjective perceptions and how the the brain assembles them into consciousness, we've barely a clue.

Scientific apparatuses have allowed us to "see" the complete elecromagnetic spectrum, the cell, the quasar... psychedelics may be an apparatus allowing us to see dimensions of reality heretofore unquantified.

Re: Michael Pollan reluctantly embraces the 'new science' of psychedelics

#186

Post by monktastic1 »

komali2 wrote: post #73
some_account wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got it all backwards. What you think is a crack in sanity is actually a crack in the illusion that the physical world is all there is. But to each their own.

But drugs are a physical-world object exerting physical changes on a meat brain, causing perception shift. How could something of the simulation let you "peek behind the curtain?"

Imagine you're in a dream. In that dream, eating a certain substance causes the dream to warp in funny ways. You could say this is a proof that the substance causes perception shift, but both the substance and the apparent world are being generated by something deeper. It is possible to know this directly (as in lucid dreaming). It may sound preposterous to suggest the same is happening here, but it's the best analogy I can think of.

Re: Michael Pollan reluctantly embraces the 'new science' of psychedelics

#187

Post by monktastic1 »

koverstreet wrote: post #3

> The way [psilocybin is] being used is in a very controlled or guided setting. ... They don't just give you a pill and send you home; you're in a room. You're with two guides, one male, one female. You're lying down on a comfortable couch. You're wearing headphones listening to a really carefully curated playlist of music — instrumental compositions for the most part — and you're wearing eyeshades, all of which is t…

Having experienced many trips in both settings, I would suggest that neither is really better. Being alone with your own mind can be terrifying, of course, but it can also be much more effective at reaching and healing deep traumas. Perhaps similar to how meditation and socializing have distinct purposes in sober life.

Re: Michael Pollan reluctantly embraces the 'new science' of psychedelics

#188

Post by dang »

bfuller wrote: post #103
heracles wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't you see it as a indication of the opposite of what we typically call God? That instead of there being an external entity outside our universe interacting with you, you talked to something God-like inside yourself. This might be what you share with every person in history that ever have received divine inspiration. That same experience motivated them. Just like we can share experience with other people when we a…

This person was unwilling or unable to assimilate their experience and now they are blaming LSD. Funny enough, if he kept taking LSD and exploring his spirituality he could deal with the feelings of believing in science but being shaken by the possibility of the supernatural. That's actually pretty straightforward. But he is choosing to close the book on it, and now is blaming the drug when really its himself. An act…

Can you please not take HN threads further into flamewar and personal attack? That's the wrong way down a one-way street.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Michael Pollan reluctantly embraces the 'new science' of psychedelics

#189

Post by monktastic1 »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #87
gepi79 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish people would stop the unhealthy and irresponsible and dangerous life-destroying hype and promotion of psychedelics including cannabis. All medical experts warn against the use of drugs and psychedelics except as medical tools of medical experts. Drugs and psychedelics can trigger all kinds of long term mental disorders that even the best experts might not be able to heal. Medical science and psychology are sti…

It's pretty clear from your comment that you don't know anything about magic mushrooms. I could understand your response if the parent were speaking about LSD or bath salts or something else that have been known to give people bad, destructive trips. But shrooms? Psilocybin is known as the gentlest and most enjoyable psychedelic there is. Adverse reactions are rare, and as far as I know nobody has ever come out of a…

I've witnessed a close friend have a horrifying trip that left him with an anxiety disorder. No known predisposition or family history, either.

And I say this as a strong proponent (and former frequent user) of the medicine.

Re: Michael Pollan reluctantly embraces the 'new science' of psychedelics

#190

Post by didibus »

enkephalin wrote: post #124
dolzenko wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you just called all the (millions) of religions people insane?

well, technically the only thing stopping the medical world from calling a very religious person delusional, is the fact that religious people are specifically exempt from receiving that diagnosis, for no medical reason whatsoever.

I think medically, most mental disorders are characterised by a kind of normal functioning and quality of life metric.

So you're only delusional if it impairs your ability to function normally within the context of your society. Or if it negatively affect your quality of life, like, say it prevents you from sleeping, makes you overly anxious, etc.

In that sense, I think most common believer of a religion aren't affected in their normal functioning within society, and don't feel negatively affected by their beliefs. But some are, and those could be called out as having mental disorders.

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