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

81–90 of 278 posts

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#81

Post by jaxytee »

StandardFuture wrote: post #58

I don't think people are fully reading this article looking at the top comment... >There is nothing that one can experience on a drug that is not, at some level, an expression of the brain’s potential. Hence, whatever one has experienced after ingesting a drug like LSD is likely to have been experienced, by someone, somewhere, without it. >I cannot account for why my adventures with psychedelics were uniformly pleasa…

I have personally experienced both spectrums with my psychedelic experiences.

One positive experience involved me sitting on a hill near a road only to get lost in a the almost musical sound of cars whooshing by. Afterwards I returned to my apartment and experienced amazing closed eye visuals of some kind of fused technological/organic robots trees. The onset was seeing the walls of my apartment melt before my very eyes.

One negative experience involved me pacing back and forth furiously in my apartment for hours while crying hysterically. If felt as if the weight of everything (good or bad) humanity has done and would do in the future was crushing me. I think tripping alone may have added to this experience.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#82

Post by [deleted] »

StandardFuture wrote: post #58

I don't think people are fully reading this article looking at the top comment... >There is nothing that one can experience on a drug that is not, at some level, an expression of the brain’s potential. Hence, whatever one has experienced after ingesting a drug like LSD is likely to have been experienced, by someone, somewhere, without it. >I cannot account for why my adventures with psychedelics were uniformly pleasa…

[deleted]

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#83

Post by Nursie »

StandardFuture wrote: post #62
Nursie wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alcohol has a greater potential for harm than a variety of other recreational substances, legal or otherwise. That's basically it AFAICT. It has significant addiction potential, people do abuse, and there are long term harms associated with that abuse.

>greater potential for harm than ... other substances Uh ... this style of description would need more parameters for a proper classification of alcohol's 'abilities' in relation to other substances. >significant addiction potential This is PURELY on an individual basis i.e. that potential is relative per person. >long term harms associated with ... abuse Yep, very true. It's also true of almost ANY type of abuse. ED…

>> Although, I do realize that this is just another: "Come on, marijuana is not any worse than alcohol" style argument. And for that singular case I would say: yeah sure your case holds up alright.

NO, It is absolutely not a "come on MJ is no worse that alcohol" argument. I'm not even making an argument here, I'm trying to tell you about the relative harms of alcohol, which you asked about.

The addiction potential, short term and long term physical harm profiles for alcohol are much worse than for things like ecstasy, LSD and various others.

I'm not trying to make an ideological point here. I'm not arguing for legalisation of everything, I'm not arguing at all. I'm just trying to answer your question, but you seem to want to cling to denial.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#84

Post by cristianpascu »

md224 wrote: post #39
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…

> However, without a conscious soul, meaning itself loses meaning. What's the ontological support for meaning to rise on? I sort of understand what you mean here, but at the same time I don't. Are you specifically referring to intrinsic meaning, as opposed to socially-constructed meaning? As an agnostic that rejects supernatural explanations, I don't feel a conflict between the ability of human beings to ascribe mean…

My point is that there is no intrinsic meaning in the bits that make the computer I am using right now. It's all atoms. The causal connections that transform my typing on a keyboard to pixels on the screen, it's all physics.

The same way, the brain is a whole made of parts. They may be causally interconnected, but just that. You have different physical states over time, and in different parts of the brain. But understanding and awareness and phenomenological experiences are not there. Or, better said, it's puzzling to see how they are there when there's no clue of how they occur.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#85

Post by Xcelerate »

makeset wrote: post #2

I'd never mess with mind-altering drugs. You don't tweak a Ferrari. EDIT: Guys, relax. It was a joke. You think anyone goes and calls their own mind a Ferrari seriously? Jeez.

Upvoted you because I find it humorous that so many go off the defensive deep end with regard to your little joke.

My own opinion regarding the matter is that there are plenty of mind and body altering effects that we encounter every day. I'm a chemical engineer, and anyone who is involved with chemistry or biology can tell you that all but the simplest mechanisms are difficult to understand. There can be repercussions you would never predict from some compound. Heck, even ordinary food items (high fructose corn syrup, margarine) are constantly under debate because of the unknown long-term effects. With a system as complex as the human body, it's difficult to tell what subtle effects may exist.

But you can't avoid it. As a whole, people are living longer and healthier than they were in the past (well, maybe that second point is debatable in some countries). I think the best philosophy is to weigh the risks and go with what you ultimately think will be the best route for yourself. Someone who has terminal cancer may be willing to try a new drug that isn't well understood at all, but that's because the possible benefits far outweigh any risk.

So it comes down to an individual decision of what you find to be an acceptable risk. And I think it should be a right to make personal decisions like that. For me personally, I'm not going to try illegal drugs because I believe they have a higher probability of causing negative long term effects. Do they actually? Who knows; you could debate this ad nauseum. And science isn't anywhere near a stage to definitively confirm or refute it. But it's not a risk I'm interested in taking. In fact, I find it funny that out of all the unconventional things that Feynman tried in his life, the thing that embarrassed him was the time he tried LSD (he was worried about any unknown effects it might have on his brain).

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#86

Post by Xcelerate »

JacksonGariety wrote: post #77
Xcelerate wrote: post #73

I find it odd that the author of the article assumes his daughter is going to try drugs one day. Personally, I never have, and never plan to (23 years old). In fact, there's plenty of people I know who don't even drink -- not because of any moral or legal reason, but simply because they aren't interested in it. To clarify, I don't care what things other people try (I encourage everyone to make their own decisions), b…

You should re-read the essay. You may think you've never used drugs but you have, you just don't understand the meaning of the word. I'd try and think of "drugs" less like substances and more like vices. If you've ever used a vice to help yourself emotionally or physically you've taken drugs.

No, I clearly understood what he meant by "drug". In fact another comment I made on here elaborates on that usage.

But he specifically mentioned alcohol and marijuana, to which I was referring.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#87

Post by icebraining »

[deleted] wrote: post #75
simonster wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LSD probably did not assist Francis Crick in discovering the double helix. Although LSD was available in 1953, it wasn't widely known or used until the 60s, and there's no evidence Crick would have had access to it (see the excerpt from Matt Ridley's book at http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6835/was-francis... ). This story seems to have originated with a Mail article published after Crick's death ( http:/…

[deleted]

The difference is that simonster actually presented facts, while your post was just "nu-uh".

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#88

Post by sublimit »

Nursie wrote: post #80
Xcelerate wrote: post #73

I find it odd that the author of the article assumes his daughter is going to try drugs one day. Personally, I never have, and never plan to (23 years old). In fact, there's plenty of people I know who don't even drink -- not because of any moral or legal reason, but simply because they aren't interested in it. To clarify, I don't care what things other people try (I encourage everyone to make their own decisions), b…

If you've had a beer, or a cup of coffee, you've tried mind altering drugs. That was part of the point of the article.

This is such a dumb argument. People say "drug" isn't a meaningful classification because it mixes different categories of substances, and in the next sentence they're equating coffee with LSD, apparently to defend the use of the latter.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#89

Post by Nursie »

[deleted] wrote: post #75
simonster wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LSD probably did not assist Francis Crick in discovering the double helix. Although LSD was available in 1953, it wasn't widely known or used until the 60s, and there's no evidence Crick would have had access to it (see the excerpt from Matt Ridley's book at http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6835/was-francis... ). This story seems to have originated with a Mail article published after Crick's death ( http:/…

[deleted]

No, it's how strongly people object to your dismissal of a couple of great scientists expressing an appreciation of LSD as somehow false, and your assertions that you obviously know better than them.

A dismissal, I might add, with absolutely no argument behind it, simply an arrogant statement.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#90

Post by Xcelerate »

Nursie wrote: post #80
Xcelerate wrote: post #73

I find it odd that the author of the article assumes his daughter is going to try drugs one day. Personally, I never have, and never plan to (23 years old). In fact, there's plenty of people I know who don't even drink -- not because of any moral or legal reason, but simply because they aren't interested in it. To clarify, I don't care what things other people try (I encourage everyone to make their own decisions), b…

If you've had a beer, or a cup of coffee, you've tried mind altering drugs. That was part of the point of the article.

> That was part of the point of the article.

Yes, it was. But that wasn't the point of the paragraph I was referring to. Shall I cite it?

Post reply on HN