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For babies, life may be like an LSD trip

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Re: For babies, life may be like an LSD trip

#61

Post by s-shellfish »

callesgg wrote: post #53
s-shellfish wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just feel like comparing a baby's experience to someone on lsd would likely mean language/models don't exist, therefore self doesn't exist, logic doesn't exist therefore cause and effect don't exist, or at least everything our natural vocabulary/modeling structures allows us to connect with, like you are saying. Lots of our reasoning is necessary for individual survival, but it's something we build up and learn fro…

I would assume that cause and effect is one of the few things that a baby does understand. One one level: It might be that the baby does not understand cause and effect, but it certainly acts in relation to it. "I cry cause i know that will cause me to feel better." The baby don't understand the sub components of why one thing causes the other. (On a deep level neither do we, but as adults we do have a richer collect…

What I'm talking about for humans starts on the very high levels of abstraction we tend to do it. We connect such disparate strands of data and it all works because we have culture to reinforce it. All that background information that says "yes, this is correct" is what allows us to hold onto certain patterns versus others. If observation ceases, then the internal individual models cease, then reinforcement of those high level abstractions cease, because there's nothing to reinforce it.

So honestly, I'm really not sure if a baby reasons that way. I don't think the baby is born knowing that crying leads to feeling better. I think the baby just does it, the same way a cat meows when it's hungry. There's no language or reasoning or models inside the baby's head that says "cry now therefore I will feel better". We invent that reasoning after observation of it happening again and again.

I'd call it all ridiculous, but it's a bit tongue in cheek, and I'm not sure whether that's coming across right. Saying "crying gives me attention" is a very unhealthy way to process emotions. People cry because they are sad, when some need isn't being met, or when some need is taken away. We aren't much different from babies in that regard.

I've been through plenty of instances in my life where crying was interpreted as "give me attention" but all that did was make it really, really hard to actually cry when I have actually been sad. Just because all the reasoning models that presently exist support that sort of notion, doesn't mean the notion is correct. It is important to be able to cry. Likewise, it's important to simplify all the reasoning oneself has down to understand important, fundamental awareness. Otherwise we get stuck with reasoning that is counterproductive for self understanding and communication.

Re: For babies, life may be like an LSD trip

#62

Post by veli_joza »

Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #16
thinkingemote wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also read a study that images the brain on LSD which shows that there's less activity in perception which kind of goes against the folk story of LSD opening one up to input. What happens is that some input gets stopped and so, common to all illusions, the brain creates stuff to fill in the gaps. This might be just to do with hallucinations though. In other words, LSD closes the doors of perception rather than op…

It's just weird how persistent the halucinations are.. Like if you look at a painting it will look totally different than normal, you will probably see shapes of weird things a bit like Deep Dream's terrifying faces and dogs but a bit different. You can then leave said painting for 2 hours and come back to find the painting has the exact alterations from reality as before. Because of this i'm more inclined to think t…

The common denominator seems that recognition patterns have much lower threshold for firing. In that sense, there is less cognitive filtering, but perhaps more sensory filtering?

Multiple results are competing for attention, which creates the sensation of rushing thoughts. Connections across widely different concepts are made, which makes for 'woah, everything is connected' moments. Visual patterns are recognized over-zealously, which creates hallucinations.

It doesn't seem weird to me that pattern recognition machine that's been trained for 15+ years will recognize same patterns for same input few hours later.

Note I have never taken lsd, so I don't really know what I'm talking about.

Re: For babies, life may be like an LSD trip

#63

Post by toast_coder »

krageon wrote: post #23
hkai wrote: post #8

>Blake thought that the doors on perception are artificially kept semi-closed for cultural reasons - i.e. the ability to focus and do work for the enrichment of the powers that be. Statements like that sound a bit political and make me doubt what he is writing.

Is it really political to stop and think about what you are doing for the pure gain of someone else? I should think that's just critical thinking at work.

Yes, it really is.

Re: For babies, life may be like an LSD trip

#64

Post by blubb-fish »

ryanmercer wrote: post #3

Hmmmmm... Seems like "I found these few studies, it must mean babies are super humans that are tripping constantly!" Or healing happens faster because cell-division has a greater impact given the greater impact it has on total number of cells, and an abundance of stem cells still present as they develop helps with healing alongside growth and development. Then the fact that MOST things they encounter in the world are…

there is nothing about babies being super humans and also nothing about cell-division or anything about healing ... did you even bother reading the post?

Re: For babies, life may be like an LSD trip

#65

Post by Uberphallus »

wool_gather wrote: post #39
senorjazz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can confirm. Same with many of my friends. All heavy weed smokers, all used psychedelics. A worrying % went on to have some mental health issues. Now I know all the pro-weed people say "yeah but it is those pre-disposed to having schizophrenic episodes". Perhaps, but at the sample rate in my experience and others who have met later on the % is far higher than I would have expected to be. Same for just weed smoking. I…

You're putting the temporal cart before the causal horse. With or without drugs, mental health issues can be latent or unacknowledged for years. And without defending marijuana use, naïve -- even unconscious -- self-medication is a very simple explanation for what you're describing.

Yeah, I particularly like two counter examples.

Example 1: We have prevalence of schizophrenia of 1-2% both in countries with extremely high use (Australia, 25-30% last year) and extremely low (Japan, Example 2: The countries with the absolute biggest rates of tobacco prevalence are hovering around 40-50%, the US is sitting at around 20%. Among schizophrenics, though, it goes around 75-90%. But funnily enough, you don't see anyone claiming tobacco causes schizophrenia!

Re: For babies, life may be like an LSD trip

#66

Post by jgalvez »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #14

If you're not familiar with Ray Peat, here's what the Peatarian diet looks like: - 1 L milk (add salt and sugar) - 1 L orange juice (add salt and sugar) - 1 raw carrot - bone broth - NO PUFA (Omega 3/6)

This is an absurd over simplification.

His eating guidelines are much, much more extensive:

https://raypeatforum.com/community/threads/ray-peat-diet-foo...

Re: For babies, life may be like an LSD trip

#67

Post by blubb-fish »

clevershot wrote: post #58
Nursie wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few people end up taking it habitually. That's not to say none do. I had it when I was a late teen, enjoyed it, took it again a number of times (7/8?) into my early 20s, but by the last time I just found it boring. I think most people have some fun with it and move on.

What is the worst that could happen? You hear all these stories Asking for a friend.

a bad trip, psychosis and maybe even PTSD. I take LSD and other psychedelics on a regular basis and if you know how to prepare for a trip then bad experiences are unlikely. but a bad experience on LSD can be really unsettling. this concept of set and setting is true after all.

Re: For babies, life may be like an LSD trip

#68

Post by blubb-fish »

hkai wrote: post #8

>Blake thought that the doors on perception are artificially kept semi-closed for cultural reasons - i.e. the ability to focus and do work for the enrichment of the powers that be. Statements like that sound a bit political and make me doubt what he is writing.

it's true though - society and culture collectively create taboos of various kinds to organize group behavior according to goals like wealth maximization, power and hierarchy conservation.

Re: For babies, life may be like an LSD trip

#70

Post by callesgg »

s-shellfish wrote: post #61
callesgg wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would assume that cause and effect is one of the few things that a baby does understand. One one level: It might be that the baby does not understand cause and effect, but it certainly acts in relation to it. "I cry cause i know that will cause me to feel better." The baby don't understand the sub components of why one thing causes the other. (On a deep level neither do we, but as adults we do have a richer collect…

What I'm talking about for humans starts on the very high levels of abstraction we tend to do it. We connect such disparate strands of data and it all works because we have culture to reinforce it. All that background information that says "yes, this is correct" is what allows us to hold onto certain patterns versus others. If observation ceases, then the internal individual models cease, then reinforcement of those…

> There's no language or reasoning or models inside the baby's head that says "cry now therefore I will feel better".

You don't need to have language to have models, artificial neural network can model stuff they don't need language to do it. The text "I cry cause i know that will cause me to feel better." is simply my explanation of the models behavior.

> Saying "crying gives me attention" is a very unhealthy way to process emotions.

I definitely agree :) But that does not mean that it is not true.

Here is just a question to you that popped up when reading your text :)

Do you think that babies/animals are conscious?

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