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I can't help but keep rereading this. The statement "I've never done drugs" juxtaposed with "20 and 30 experiments" is kinda funny to me.
”Doing drugs” evokes images of injecting hard drugs with all the unclean nastiness. ”Experimenting with psychedelics” is really, really far from that reality.
At the risk of being "that guy", it has to be said that this kind of study is unreliable. Posting a bunch of messages to r/drugs and r/psychedelics to come take their survey is going to suffer from all sorts of statistical biases. It is still better than the lowest for the study, the sample size of one: "Well this is what I experienced". Yet here I go. I have always been a materialist, and I've also never done drugs…
Didn't it also confirm that what you perceive is not reality, but a model of reality?
Why some people are so eager to alter their mind/brain?
At the risk of being "that guy", it has to be said that this kind of study is unreliable. Posting a bunch of messages to r/drugs and r/psychedelics to come take their survey is going to suffer from all sorts of statistical biases. It is still better than the lowest for the study, the sample size of one: "Well this is what I experienced". Yet here I go. I have always been a materialist, and I've also never done drugs…
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I think the point is that your sober perception exists only in your state of mind. My sober perception of the 'same' experiences you have is almost definitely not going to be the same as yours. So an altered state potentially gives you the realization that your personal experience isn't universal reality. In other words a personal perception of reality is not reality itself. This is why we have philosophy in general.…
This is such a silly conversation. We have cameras and all sorts of equipment that tracks a constant reality. Who gives a shit if people perceive it with varying levels of accuracy? What does it matter that introducing substances to the brain can reduce your ability to perceive it? There is evidence of reality, and childish mind games and semantic debates that it might not. I drop you off in the Gobi desert with no w…
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Psychedelic perception is also repeatable. And sober perception is not reliable.
Same drug, same effects. Cameras can't see your wall melting, but they exactly match what we see in reality Huh, weird.
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Perhaps this is self-delusion on my part, but I've had no trouble integrating materialism/atheism with what you're describing — that kind of psychedelic panpsychism. They don't feel like competing claims.
I don't mean the usual anthropomorphic god. It's just that once you accept that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, it's not a big leap to think that it's god(not in the sense of "god, the creator", but in the sense of "god, the consciousness that is and that experiences the universe").
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This is such a silly conversation. We have cameras and all sorts of equipment that tracks a constant reality. Who gives a shit if people perceive it with varying levels of accuracy? What does it matter that introducing substances to the brain can reduce your ability to perceive it? There is evidence of reality, and childish mind games and semantic debates that it might not. I drop you off in the Gobi desert with no w…
For many things, you are right (or close enough for most purposes). For many, many other things, including the some of the things we care about most, the "true reality" is not so easy to discern.
Despite having had the relevant experience, I've always found it hard to understand why this happens. You know you're taking a drug that reliably induces feelings of "oceanic connectedness". Why should you change your worldview as a result? All kinds of things can change the way you feel temporarily, but most of them don't leave you thinking that you got insight into the way things really are. Maybe it's that psyched…
The similarity in thought I see among different users of psychedelics is just so big. Why should it be a surprise that it's chemical? Opiates can flip a switch in your brain that makes you way more habituated than a natural stimulus with the same level of pleasure(ie heroin users will say they don't like it any more they like spending time with their kids, but still will neglect their kids to do heroin because they can't say no). Marijuana can trigger latent psychological issues in those who are at risk. Maybe psychedelics pushes some switch that makes people think differently, even if they're aware of it and trying to convince themselves otherwise?