i would like to try lsd, but i don't know of a safe, reliable, legal way of doing so. it just occurred to me that perhaps someone here might?
Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)
91–100 of 278 posts
Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
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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.
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Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)
#93I 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…
So you have never had a cup of coffee or tea? I'm not aware of any adult I personally know who hasn't partaken of some substance that alters perception in some way. Though no doubt such individuals exist, such a state of absolute abstinence is not something I'd think of imposing on my children.
Take into account the actual effects and remove social stigma and legal ramifications, and the substances I'd be ok with for my children would be different than current norms.
Also, I've known quite a few people who have never had a drink, smoked pot, etc., and I respect their desires. Bit even they drank coffee or tea, or used other substances that alter mood or perception.
Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
>which means that there was effectively no relationship at all. This is in large part because Nutt's research is entirely fraudulent. C.f. my previous analysis here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4044431
Fraud you say? Perhaps you should inform Imperial College, one of the UK's most prestigious science and engineering institutes, where he currently holds a chair in neuropsychopharmacology.
If you follow Alex3917's link, you'll see he argues that Nutt is intellectually dishonest. That's of course different than being regular dishonest (i.e. fraudulent).
Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
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What about Steve Jobs's similar statement that taking LSD was "one of the two or three most important things [he did] in [his] life." http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2009/07/09/dr-lsd-to-steve-jobs-...
Well, you could extend your argument to state that one of the most important things in Van Gogh's life was to sever his own ear and hand it to a prostitute. Therefore, those who wish to become good painters ought to sever their ear. The fallacy in your argument is simply:
"person x has done y, which led them to achievement z. therefore, if you do y, you will also achieve z, because person x had done so."
I don't think this is a good way of refuting the parent comment, as disingenuous as it is.
Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
worst analogy ever, especially for a post that so thinly veils your misguided feelings of superiority. ferraris were meant to be tweaked, what do you think the entire field of motorsport exists for? from F1 all the way down to the local DE event at the local track, cars are tweaked endlessly, with passion. you won't find any shortage of tweaked exotics at your local autocross, either. if nobody "twaeked" cars, you wo…
it's incredible there are people on HN like you. i'm a little shocked to be honest. Yes, I was also sure this site was populated exclusively with ferrari-tweaking experts. I'm a little shocked, too, but there it is. ;)
oh, yeah i guess i didn't include the porsche people like DHH and his le mans prototypes.
Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Who's equating or defending anything?
I just think that saying "I've never done drugs" while at the same time admitting drinking alcohol is kinda silly.
Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)
#98I 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…
> Wine and beer in moderation is actually perfectly healthy.
The idea that moderate consumption of alcohol is "perfectly healthy" is actually quite debatable. Taking red wine as a an example because of the popular belief that it has notable health benefits when consumed in moderation, a few points:
1. Many of the studies on the supposed health benefits of red wine are inconclusive. For instance, we still can't explain the French Paradox.
2. Last year, it came to light that a researcher who was behind some of the studies on the benefits of resveratrol falsified data. A decent amount of the hype around red wine in recent years was centered on resveratrol and it's important to note that even if there are benefits, the actual relationship between compounds like this and human health are in most cases not yet clearly established.
3. Red wine contains known carcinogens.
4. Even moderate consumption can add significant calories to one's diet. For example, if you're a male and drink two glasses (which is considered a moderate, "healthy" amount) three days a week, you're adding nearly 3,000 calories to your monthly caloric intake. Depending on when and how you drink your wine, you might also consume more food because of wine's impact on hormones associated with appetite. By the way, this is even worse in most cases for beer, where with some major brands, a single can or bottle a day can easily add 4,000+ calories over the course of a month.
5. Many of the potentially beneficial compounds in wine are available through other food sources that come with fewer drawbacks. In other words, you don't need to drink a glass or two of red wine every day to get your antioxidants.
The bottom line: if you're going to enjoy a glass or two of wine (or beer) with a meal, you shouldn't justify it on the belief that it's "perfectly healthy".
Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fraud you say? Perhaps you should inform Imperial College, one of the UK's most prestigious science and engineering institutes, where he currently holds a chair in neuropsychopharmacology.
If you follow Alex3917's link, you'll see he argues that Nutt is intellectually dishonest. That's of course different than being regular dishonest (i.e. fraudulent).
I think if that was really the case then IC would still want to know, I wasn't kidding about them being one of the most prestigious institutions in the UK.
Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)
#100"Everything we do is for the purpose of altering consciousness. We form friendships so that we can feel certain emotions, like love, and avoid others, like loneliness. We eat specific foods to enjoy their fleeting presence on our tongues." We study and work for the purpose of altering the bits representing our bank account balances. Is that equivalent to hacking the bank and altering the bits directly? We make friend…
Your comparisons are all extremely unfair in the same way: they involve unjust disregard for the well-being of others. There are victims in each of your analogies. There are no victims if I safely use a mind-altering drug like LSD. Responsible drug use has more in common with using a neat programming trick to accomplish a personal goal than it does with hacking. Still, I come across this comparison often: like people…
His analogies are apt. His point is that in all those cases the signal itself is meaningless and inconsequential to the end.
The victim, in his examples, is the achievement of the end goal, which becomes a casualty of focusing only on the signal.
It probably applies to stimulant drugs more than it does to drugs like LSD. But like the original essay suggests, there's probably an evolutionary reason why we don't constantly experience life like we do on LSD, because we'd be excited and fascinated by everything.
If the goal of life is to increase our experiences... then the only way to maximize that in the long term is to survive. If you tweak the algorithm to give experience/pleasure without any work (drugs), then you'll no longer have an incentive to work to increase survivability. If you tweak it to give no increase in experience and happiness, and focus only on survivability, you'll have no incentive to survive (no reason to live, because we've defined the goal of life to increase experience and happiness). So the most optimal solution, as nature has converged at, is somewhere in the middle, where we get experience and pleasure but only when we work for it by prolonging survivability. Introducing drugs into this method will shifts the balance to the less optimal side of the reward-effort continuum.
The potential victim is yourself and your progeny, and you're actually shooting yourself in the foot in terms of maximizing experiences/happiness as a species by introducing drugs.