Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

samharris.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 278 posts

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#21

Post by mistercow »

cristianpascu wrote: post #11

"Everything we do is for the purpose of altering consciousness." I very much respect Sam Harris for taking the consciousness problem seriously. It poses a real problem to (his) atheism, and he, obviously, rejects the substance dualism, which would logically lead to a religious view on us. However, without a conscious soul, meaning itself loses meaning. What's the ontological support for meaning to rise on? One thing…

>It poses a real problem to (his) atheism

Theism hardly solves the problem of consciousness. It shuffles the question onto a deity without actually answering it.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#24

Post by Nursie »

tunesmith wrote: post #12

The same complaint he makes about "drugs" can also be applied to terms like "legalization" and "regulation" and "prohibition". People react to the terms without coming to a common understanding of what the terms mean, and the conversation doesn't evolve. For instance, one person can be anti-legalization, and another pro-legalization, and have an argument without realizing that they are both against prison sentences f…

On the subject of biases - do you think perhaps that the selection of people that your medical social worker friends see might, maybe, represent the problem end of the spectrum of users? Rather than a representative cross section?

I don't have any doubt some substances are much worse than others for this, meth and crack spring to mind, but the personal experiences of social workers are IMHO useful to see what can happen when things go wrong, not useful to assess how likely that is.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#25

Post by [deleted] »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #15

I recommend David Nutt's Drugs Without the Hot Air [1] on the subject. Nutt, a British psychiatrist and neuropsychopharmacologist, headed up the U.K.'s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (a British DEA/FDA hybrid). He was canned when he suggested that alcohol may be more damaging than many controlled substances. Amongst the goodies from the book are this chart [2], which plots dependence risk against toxicologis…

[deleted]

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#26

Post by glhaynes »

[deleted] wrote: post #25
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #15

I recommend David Nutt's Drugs Without the Hot Air [1] on the subject. Nutt, a British psychiatrist and neuropsychopharmacologist, headed up the U.K.'s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (a British DEA/FDA hybrid). He was canned when he suggested that alcohol may be more damaging than many controlled substances. Amongst the goodies from the book are this chart [2], which plots dependence risk against toxicologis…

[deleted]

Go on… actually make your case…

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#27

Post by TausAmmer »

cristianpascu wrote: post #11

"Everything we do is for the purpose of altering consciousness." I very much respect Sam Harris for taking the consciousness problem seriously. It poses a real problem to (his) atheism, and he, obviously, rejects the substance dualism, which would logically lead to a religious view on us. However, without a conscious soul, meaning itself loses meaning. What's the ontological support for meaning to rise on? One thing…

You make your own meaning, do you?

Don't you?

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#28

Post by Nursie »

[deleted] wrote: post #25
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #15

I recommend David Nutt's Drugs Without the Hot Air [1] on the subject. Nutt, a British psychiatrist and neuropsychopharmacologist, headed up the U.K.'s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (a British DEA/FDA hybrid). He was canned when he suggested that alcohol may be more damaging than many controlled substances. Amongst the goodies from the book are this chart [2], which plots dependence risk against toxicologis…

[deleted]

That's a bit of a sweeping statement, how can you be so sure?

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#29

Post by flatline »

[deleted] wrote: post #25
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #15

I recommend David Nutt's Drugs Without the Hot Air [1] on the subject. Nutt, a British psychiatrist and neuropsychopharmacologist, headed up the U.K.'s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (a British DEA/FDA hybrid). He was canned when he suggested that alcohol may be more damaging than many controlled substances. Amongst the goodies from the book are this chart [2], which plots dependence risk against toxicologis…

[deleted]

Well, that is certainly a bare assertion. Why claim it did not?

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#30

Post by [deleted] »

[deleted] wrote: post #25
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #15

I recommend David Nutt's Drugs Without the Hot Air [1] on the subject. Nutt, a British psychiatrist and neuropsychopharmacologist, headed up the U.K.'s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (a British DEA/FDA hybrid). He was canned when he suggested that alcohol may be more damaging than many controlled substances. Amongst the goodies from the book are this chart [2], which plots dependence risk against toxicologis…

[deleted]

[deleted]
Post reply on HN