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Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

samharris.org

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Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#181

Post by mreid »

sanoli wrote: post #141
mreid wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there evidence to support the claim that Van Gogh believed cutting his ear off was important to his life and work? If not, then this is a very different example to that of Jobs' claim and is an equally poor way of refuting a position.

There's no evidence to that. From my personal experience (yes, anecdotal etc) with dozens of LSD taking friends over the course of many many years, they all end up attributing huge importance to their acid trips, and all the insights gained from them. The problem is this is the same with the brilliant friend, and with the do nothing, sit on my couch all day friend. For example: one of my friends, after taking acid, w…

So you are willing to discredit everyone's claim to the importance of their trips based on examples of people who falsely claim that their's was important?

I don't think anyone here is arguing the position that LSD will have a profound impact on anyone who takes it, just that it can give people a different way of looking at the world and sometimes that leads to novel and important insights.

Replace "LSD trip" with "university degree" in your example. Sure, there are many people who take a physics course and feel as though they have had profound insights but actually haven't. However, you can't use those examples to argue that everyone who claims their physics course has inspired their life and work is lying.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#182

Post by derefr »

cristianpascu wrote: post #173
derefr wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/iu/mysterious_answers_to_mysterious_...

Right now "the mind is the brain" theory still uses the magic of brain to explain what we observe. Everytime you hear someone saying "the brain does this or that", they act like it's a known thing and the mind is the brain and the brain has some yet unknown and unexplained properties that give rise to "this or that". So, yeah, magic.

We can create things like brains (Bayes nets) that then react to stimuli like minds do, given all the experimental tests we can devise on "what minds are like." We might not fully understand the human mind, but that is not at all the same thing as having no idea how or why we think or observe or experience.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#183

Post by tptacek »

7Figures2Commas wrote: post #176
tptacek wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm referring to acrylamide.

Acrylamide is found in foods, like potato chips , that have been produced by certain high-temperature cooking techniques such as frying. To suggest that a potato (or three) carries with it the same cancer risk as alcohol, which is considered a Group 1 carcinogen by the World Health Organization, is disingenuous.

No, acrylamide is extremely common, in many cooked foods and in many raw foods. It's a myth that acrylamide is the product of deep frying food.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#184

Post by virtualwhys »

pessimizer wrote: post #146
shantanubala wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LSD does not cause people to be schizophrenic; schizophrenia shows itself during the most likely years for people to be experimenting with drugs. This is very misleading at best. LSD use causes direct symptoms of psychosis, including symptoms of schizophrenia, schizoaffective, and schizophreniform disorders. The effects of LSD resemble schizophrenia so closely, in fact, that it has led to studies on rats using LSD…

I think it's simply misleading to quote studies comparing the effects of acute LSD intoxication to the symptoms that can be seen in psychotic people as evidence that LSD in some way causes schizophrenia. Drunken people share symptoms with schizophrenics too, as well as people who have gone without sleep.

Try taking LSD and then tell me if some aspect of the experience could not be described as schizophrenic. Seriously comparing the state of being drunk with that of one tripping their (rational) mind off is liking comparing apples and moons.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#185

Post by Amadou »

chrischen wrote: post #100
ignostic wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 consta…

> Introducing drugs into this method will shifts the balance to the less optimal side of the reward-effort continuum.

There is absolutely no basis of support for that in your argument.

I think you can reasonably make the argument that using drugs shifts the balance in one direction, but to say that it ends up over-the-line rather than to a potentially more optimal location on that continuum is begging the question.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#186

Post by hcarvalhoalves »

sanoli wrote: post #141
mreid wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there evidence to support the claim that Van Gogh believed cutting his ear off was important to his life and work? If not, then this is a very different example to that of Jobs' claim and is an equally poor way of refuting a position.

There's no evidence to that. From my personal experience (yes, anecdotal etc) with dozens of LSD taking friends over the course of many many years, they all end up attributing huge importance to their acid trips, and all the insights gained from them. The problem is this is the same with the brilliant friend, and with the do nothing, sit on my couch all day friend. For example: one of my friends, after taking acid, w…

That's what the trip produces, a feeling of deep insight of everything. Maybe it trips some "Eureka" area in the brain.

It's not only LSD that does it either, other drugs do it, as do some activities. People with a lot of practice in meditation seem to develop the same feeling, from the way they describe it.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#188

Post by Everlag »

sanoli wrote: post #144
Nursie wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It may be silly, but I bet 99% will understand that he meant the illegal stuff.

Why are things illegal? In the most purely naive idea, it is because government is supposed to prevent us from damaging ourselves. Tobacco and liquor are damaging things, they are literally poisons. Caffeine is also damaging.

I would be personally be much more inclined to believing the scientists whose entire career is the study of these illegal substances rather than the politicians who have to continue pushing the old ideals of "this is the line and we do not move the line because that would be an immoral attack on the fabric of society". Do you know why cannabis is known as marijuana? The reason is the old guard felt that cannabis was not foreign enough and changed it to something a wee bit more scary.

If you can put out a well reasoned argument against legalization then fine. If you will fall back to the standard catch all of 'its illegal!' then we have nothing discuss for you cannot present a reasonable argument.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#189

Post by ygmelnikova »

GuiA wrote: post #152
ygmelnikova wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What for? So some guy sitting at computer in his underwear can pass judgement with his mouse? No thanks.

Reply A: What you describe will happen no matter what, so it would likely be more interesting for everyone involved if your posts were not just talking for talk's sake :) Reply B: Why are you posting at all then?

Ok then, here's one.

One time after dropping some acid, I was lying on the couch and above my head was a rather large asparagus fern hanging over my head. While staring at this plant and pondering the deeper meaning of life, it suddenly began to twitch. The branches were bouncing up and down an inch or two.

From that point on, and for many years later, whenever I looked at that plant from anywhere in the room, the branches would begin dancing around.

I would make visitors look at the plant while I stood across the room looking out the window, and while they watched, I would turn and look at the fern. It did it everytime without failing once. I have at least 100 witnesses.

Now that's one of the nicer stories. But what I would say to anyone considering experimentation, you'll be sorry if you do. Philip K. Dick speaks of spending a 1000 years at the Mountain of Shame. I can so relate.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#190

Post by wildgift »

6d0debc071 wrote: post #158
Nursie wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you can't decide you want to have a go because intellectuals that inspire you had good things to say about it? That's not a valid choice in your opinion?

If one person out of a every thousand who tries it becomes a super-genius and the others end up drooling morons, then it's probably not a good bet. Anecdotes of selected inspirational people shouldn't be a major basis of your decision to tinker with your nogin. It is something in favour of it, I don't think it's productive to pretend otherwise. But good decisions don't result purely from paying attention to what's in…

That's hyperbolic. If 100 people took LSD, some would be negatively affected, some would have life-changing experiences, and most would just experience some profundity and hallucinations. I think even for them it would be life-changing, but not on the order of, say, being in an auto accident, or running a marathon, or raising a child.

People call these things "trips", and I'd say that's about right. (I haven't taken LSD, but have taken psylocibin which is milder.) An extended trip, vagabonding without a goal, going new places and meeting new people, without "pushing" to make things happen, is similar to a "psychedelic" experience. It is profound.

I wouldn't recommend using LSD. I'd recommend using a milder drug like psylocibin, or maybe mescaline extracted from a farmed San Pedro cactus. (Don't go after the peyote - it's going to go extinct.)

Also, I would suggest waiting until you're in your early 20s to 30s, and if possible, not using any alcohol or other drugs prior to it; I think it makes it harder to notice the dosage as its taking effect.

It's been around 20 years since I've last had a trip, but it affected me a lot and made me a less judgmental person. I did eat some around 10 years ago, but it was a tiny amount and had only a mild effect; but having curtailed drinking, it was a much better experience.

I do not know where to get these drugs now, nor am I interested in obtaining any.

Also, if you want a profound experience without chemicals, travel if you can afford it. Do some work with people who have difficulties in life. Work a physical job that leaves you exhausted. Teach something to someone who cannot learn a subject you find easy. If you put yourself in a situation where you're not only helping others, but allowing others to help you, you will have profound experiences often.

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