121–130 of 327 posts
I feel like someone is trying really hard to push public perception of psychedelics towards "acceptable". I don't know who it benefits, but this is a really weird Overton window. I wouldn't say a word if it weren't nth article about psychedelics that appears on HN frontpage. I was quiet the last n-1 times. If you google psilocybin right now, you can see articles that state how it "slows ageing" and "cures depression"…
We need to push to make this stuff legal. I wouldn't go so far as to say lets sell it OTC vape pens at gas stations but a middle ground where you can go to a doctor to have this treatment performed. I personally have never taken DMT though from everything I've read and heard on podcasts it's not something to be taken lightly. I think having a sort of "DMT Clinic" that you can go to would be the best middle ground of…
Well, Ayahuasca (with DMT as the active ingredient) retreats seem more and more common and are for some reasons tolerated more and more in europe. Technically it is illegal, but I can still book them online.
But I won't, as I don't trust the competence of the average new age "shaman".
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It's a joke. People often have conspiracy theories about Big Pharma trying to prevent access to novel drugs that could disrupt their cash cows. The parent was jokingly talking about "Big Reality" as an imaginary group of people who hate to see "reality" disrupted by psychedelic experiences.
When someone has a profound psychedelic experience that shows them the arbitrary nature of many social constructs, or reveals possibilities for consciousness that mainstream science doesn't acknowledge... that's genuinely disruptive to systems built on those constructs. The resistance is real, systematic, and rational (from the perspective of maintaining current power arrangements). Not a joke.
For example, someone might have insights about the interconnectedness of all life and wants to transition to regenerative agriculture or communal land use, but face zoning laws that enforce individual property ownership. Or someone might experience ego dissolution and wants to create more egalitarian workplace structures, but runs into rigid corporate hierarchies.
> His open-source approach democratized psychedelic exploration, shifting power away from costly retreats and elite gatekeepers toward broader accessibility. No surprise that, in keeping with the hacker spirit, Bill wanted to democratize information that is otherwise accessible only to "high" priests.
We need to push to make this stuff legal. I wouldn't go so far as to say lets sell it OTC vape pens at gas stations but a middle ground where you can go to a doctor to have this treatment performed. I personally have never taken DMT though from everything I've read and heard on podcasts it's not something to be taken lightly. I think having a sort of "DMT Clinic" that you can go to would be the best middle ground of…
https://www.oregon.gov/oha/ph/preventionwellness/pages/psilo...
"A client may only access psilocybin at a licensed service center during an administration session in the presence of a trained, licensed facilitator."
What if "dissolving the ego" is bad though?
Ok, where is this psychedelic community found? I must sample their handles for videogame character names.
Off-topic, but I have to... (From the photo caption) "Bill ... with his iphone prototype" Nope. That's a Sony Magic Link, built by Bill (and others, myself included) during his time at General Magic. I feel General Magic is another one of Bill's endeavors that isn't widely understood or appreciated.
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Agree, but the proponents of "Big Reality" really really really fight against its disruption.
Could you explain what you mean by that? Who are the proponents of “big reality”? How do they fight against its disruption?
The point is that western civilization values rationality, order, and progress in a self-justifying way. The values that our culture provides to us form a feedback cycle of myth and virtue. Every argument that assumes this basis, reinforces its truth.
"Order is obviously preferable to chaos", is one of many subjective perspectives. Why should it hold more truth than "Plurality of perspectives are obviously preferable to the fragility of one perspective for the sake of objectivity"? The apparatuses of the state[1] all rely on the same cultural myth and promote it in a way that crowds out all possible alternatives. Thus the myth of necessary order has become synonymous with reality.
Like all deeply rooted cultural myths, this is something that's going to appear obviously true which coincidentally serves as a way of shielding it from honest critique. If there's one thing that I've learned, it's that questioning foundational myths feels like a cultural violation. René Girard’s theory holds; when a community is anxious or unstable, it lashes out most viciously at people who somehow threaten its central, but unspoken, truths or anxieties. The greater the received response that a cultural axiom obviously true; the more certain I am that it reflects a core cultural myth than any semblance of reality.
1. See Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, 1970.
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They are totally OK as long as healthcare is not socialized.
Does that line of reasoning extend to things like fast food and motorcycles in your eyes? Not trying to undermine your point, just genuinely curious.