LSD 'microdosing' is trending in Silicon Valley

There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. Yes, meditation is legal, and yes there is some control over the meditation experience (though how much control varies from person to person.. some people do seem to have negative experiences and have meditation bring up material they are not ready to deal with, especially without a guide).

On the other hand, most people agree that to get serious results from meditation you have to put in a lot of effort and practice it for a relatively long time. For many people that amount of effort and dedication is unrealistic, especially if all they have to go on to believe that it will eventually pay off is somebody else's word.

Psychedelics, on the other hand, provide virtually instant results. They are also relatively easily available to anyone, requiring almost no effort and no dedication to a long-term regimen of practice. There's no free lunch, however, and so psychedelics do come with their own risks -- risks that can be mitigated to a great extent by thorough preparation, having an experienced sitter, having the proper mind set, etc. But the risks can not be eliminated altogether.

Further, while a psychedelic experience can be profound, it is usually short-lived unless the insights gained during the experience are integrated constructively and put in to practice somehow in one's life -- something most people are not trained to do or even realizing they could/should be doing. A long term meditative practice, on the other hand, will almost by definition have long-term effects.

Another potential benefit of psychedelics is that the access they provide to non-ordinary states of consciousness and mystical experience, and the very real questions they pose about the nature of reality could ignite in the prepared mind a need to seek and perhaps to be open to trying things like meditation. They could also give a glimpse of what could finally be attained through long, hard practice, and some even continue to use psychedelics to enhance their meditative or spiritual practices.

I know in my own case, my experience with psychedelics ignited a life-long, deep interest in philosophy, religion, meditation, other means of attaining altered states of consciousness, and in what lies beyond the appearance of reality. Would I have gotten interested in those things otherwise? Possibly, but I doubt they would have been as important to me had I not had the glimpses of other worlds and other possibilities that psychedelics provided. I know I am far from the only on in feeling this way. I've heard many others credit their psychedelic experiences in similar ways.

From meditation I've learned to deal better with stress, to relax more, and not to get caught up so much in my emotions. Those are great skills to have, but not even remotely close to a psychedelic experience. Some long-time practitioners have reported "enlightenment" or "kensho" experiences with meditation, but there's no guarantee you'll ever have one, and not likely that it'll happen without a ton of practice (some say many lifetime's worth). Even then, those types of experiences in meditation are considered merely another step on the path, a very, very long path.

All in all, this is a complicated subject, without clear cut answers regarding which approach is "better".

> and then attack each other for apparently including unjustified assumptions in those general statements

So, are the assumptions unjustified or not? polarization is self-fulfilling, if people believe that it is "us" vs "them", then it is "us" vs "them".

> Do you disagree?

Disagree with what? The statement is very general.

The statement "some things are True, some things are not True" is tautologically true, and utterly unproductive.

but I think you've missed the point, the intersection of the two:

> it's well known that our perceptions are often wrong

If this is an example of a "generalizations across large groups of people", then you claim to believe that it "degrades our ability to see the nuance and diversity of opinion and perspective that clearly exists".

You can't be exact about large groups of people to absolute resolution, there is always a degree of generality. Your own statements show that, either a) there are some statements, perhaps due to their passivity, can be made about large groups of people (but as a result, say very little) OR b) there is some acceptable level of generality when talking about large groups of people.

My conclusion is that either, there is a correct level of generality (that you don't establish), or that you can never talk about large groups of people, or at least say anything productive about them.

> I didn't think my initial comment was going to result in this contentious thread

I think everyone speaks at some level of generality about many things, whether they realise it or not; so simply language policing others on that basis begs a lot of questions.

Thank you for taking the time to dive so deeply into my comment. For my own edification, I'd appreciate it if you would go a bit further. Assuming I have a point that I actually believe, what point is it that you think I'm trying to make? Regardless of whether you agree with it, how would you express that point more clearly? You point out, for example, that part of it was tautologically true and utterly unproductive. How can it be improved?

That's good to know, but at typical LSD dosages the 2C variants wouldn't be the ones I'd be worried about. Are there any kits to tell LSD from drugs like bromo-dragonfly?

Thank you for confirming. I sincerely wish you the best.