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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)

#211

Post by CamperBob2 »

gboudrias wrote: post #209
CamperBob2 wrote: post #191

Wow. From the article: On my first trip to Nepal, I took a rowboat out on Phewa Lake in Pokhara, which offers a stunning view of the Annapurna range. It was early morning, and I was alone. As the sun rose over the water, I ingested 400 micrograms of LSD I can't imagine what it must be like to be someone who would do something like that. I just... can't. Is that a sign of good judgment, or of cowardice?

Why would that be cowardice?

I've never taken LSD, but as I understand it:

1) It may impair your ability to operate a boat

2) It may impair your ability to swim

3) In many/most Asian countries, getting caught with drugs is taken about as seriously as gunning down a convent full of nuns and five-year-old orphans would be treated here in the US

4) It may impair your ability to talk your way out of situation (3) above after the authorities rescue you from situations (1) and/or (2)

Clearly Harris wasn't afraid of any of these consequences, so that makes him either much braver than I am, or much dumber. He doesn't seem dumber.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#212

Post by ramblerman »

hristov wrote: post #124

It is really annoying that drugs proponents ignore the obvious negative effects of drugs. Pretending that LSD is harmless is utter utter bulshit. There are so many cases of serious mental problems including permanent insanity caused by psychadelics. And of course there are also the thousands of people that are not exactly insane but have their brains pretty much fried and are just not very good for anything useful an…

"Pretending that LSD is harmless is utter utter bulshit."

You obviously didn't read the full essay if that is what you came away with. The book you cite is about amphetamines. Throwing Amphetamines and Psychedelics into the general "drugs" category really betrays your complete lack of any knowledge on this subject.

Finally I agree that pro-drug advocates will certainly be biased but you are on the other end of the spectrum. You seem to claim author's aren't truthful about their experiences with drugs unless it's negative?

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#213

Post by ramblerman »

sublimit wrote: post #88
Nursie wrote: post #80

Earlier 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.

I think you missed the point. "Drug" isn't a meaningful classification. Which is highlighted by the fact that coffee, cigarettes and alcohol are all drugs, thins most people have tried and can at least understand as 3 completely different entities in effect on mind and health.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#214

Post by anigbrowl »

Alex3917 wrote: post #170
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The methodology effectively reflected the divide between experts' and policy makers' views on the relative harms of various substances. Given the nuances involved and our limited understanding I agree with the decision to use a committee of experts versus a more precise mathematical specification. Not only do I think it is meaningful to compare the harm done by drugs as they are actually used, it is necessary. Nutt's…

"Not only do I think it is meaningful to compare the harm done by drugs as they are actually used, it is necessary. Nutt's research is from society's perspective - that's why it spends more time on how people actually use drugs than how much harm would be done if they used them appropriately." The problem is that how drugs are used is almost entirely dependent on the public policy surrounding them. E.g. when coffee w…

when coffee was an illegal drug, you had many people abusing it similar to what we think of as a stereotypical heroin addict today

Highly questionable. Coffee was made illegal in the Ottoman empire because people in coffee shops were suspected of sedition, not because they were having caffeine ODs and dying. Comparing it to heroin is just silly, and I say that as a supporter of legalization.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#215

Post by eightyone »

cnp wrote: post #196
eightyone wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Haloperidol and olanzapine, two common prescriptions for schizophrenia, have been demonstrated to reduce the effects of LSD. That is such a bullshit statement. A wide array of pharmaceuticals reduce the effects of LSD as well as other drugs for that matter.

Number 1 rule: If you're having a bad LSD trip head straight for the liquor; that'll kill your trip good and fast. What's your point? Dont mean to be rude, but I'm calling out your schizophrenia association as wild-eyed bullshit, too.

I think you've misunderstood my comment. The angle bracket part was me quoting the parent comment. I'm telling him that it's bullshit to try and draw some sort of conclusion between LSD and schizophrenia simply because schizophrenia medication dampers the effects of LSD because all sorts of medications damper the effects of LSD. I probably should have used quotes, my bad. I'm just so used to using the angle bracket to signify a quotation.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#216

Post by tonywok »

Nursie wrote: post #145
sanoli wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As someone with direct experience of the stuff a number of times (all a long time ago now) let me just say.... spot on. I think the psychedelic experience at most produces an unwarranted sense of the profound. You may feel like revelations have occurred, but really they were nothing. Like those dreams when you figure it all out but when you wake up it's gone, or it was something about wearing your trousers backwards…

Anything that causes a connection or association of ideas that wouldn't have otherwise been formed holds the potential to facilitate a deeper understanding of ones' self or the universe.

Even in my limited experimentation with drugs, I feel as though I've experienced thought outside the realm of regularity.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#217

Post by btilly »

Alex3917 wrote: post #170
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The methodology effectively reflected the divide between experts' and policy makers' views on the relative harms of various substances. Given the nuances involved and our limited understanding I agree with the decision to use a committee of experts versus a more precise mathematical specification. Not only do I think it is meaningful to compare the harm done by drugs as they are actually used, it is necessary. Nutt's…

"Not only do I think it is meaningful to compare the harm done by drugs as they are actually used, it is necessary. Nutt's research is from society's perspective - that's why it spends more time on how people actually use drugs than how much harm would be done if they used them appropriately." The problem is that how drugs are used is almost entirely dependent on the public policy surrounding them. E.g. when coffee w…

...when coffee was an illegal drug, you had many people abusing it similar to what we think of as a stereotypical heroin addict today...

Did you mean tobacco?

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#218

Post by Udo »

cristianpascu wrote: post #171
Udo wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Notice that I said the first millenium, not the first century. I would go even further and assert that delineation efforts continue to this day. But I might be wrong, since I don't really know a lot about Christianity beyond what's in the news. > If you state it is the brain, as I take it to be the default naturalistic/atheist option, than the problem is still not solved. So it's still a problem, something that nee…

This article contains some bits on this topic. http://rationalist.org.uk/articles/4203/thinking-machine-an-... Search for this passage: "The idealists, following philosopher of mind David Chalmers (who also comes in for some rough treatment from Dennett), say there is a “hard problem” with consciousness. While accepting that much about consciousness is amenable to explanation by an evolutionary perspective and neuros…

Leaving aside the issue that this still contains no credible explanation why there is supposed to be a problem, I simply don't agree with this philosopher. There is no "hard problem" with consciousness, and just because not all facts are known (or knowable) doesn't mean the supernatural is required to fill in the blanks.

For example, I'm looking at my coffee maker right now, it's in the process of making coffee. As an atheist, my "default naturalistic option" as you put it, would be to say that I fundamentally understand how the coffee maker works and that it's using electricity to heat the water which then courses through its pipes.

If I understand correctly, you're saying something analogous to: "wait, there is a hard problem with coffee making. You don't know exactly how the thing is wired, and even if you did you could never know the exact position and trajectory of every single water molecule. Therefore, it's obvious that there is some kind of dualism required for the coffee maker to work: a supernatural effect that makes the whole of it possible."

My problem with this perspective is that a diety is supposed to be necessary to drive the thing, whereas I content there is no need (and indeed not a single piece of evidence, not even a hint) for a supernatural entity. In fact, it always utterly astounds me why people keep conjuring up this need. Just because there is some information currently missing about the internals of the coffee maker, and because it's beyond me to know and monitor all of its internal information, doesn't mean the coffee making itself poses a hard problem that can't be explained by materialism.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#219

Post by ohwp »

hristov wrote: post #124

It is really annoying that drugs proponents ignore the obvious negative effects of drugs. Pretending that LSD is harmless is utter utter bulshit. There are so many cases of serious mental problems including permanent insanity caused by psychadelics. And of course there are also the thousands of people that are not exactly insane but have their brains pretty much fried and are just not very good for anything useful an…

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/drugs_caus...

LSD is indeed harmful but not as harmful as you might think.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#220

Post by bencollier49 »

Alex3917 wrote: post #66
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…

>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

Whoah, libel alert! Worth looking into this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law

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