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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)

#201

Post by 7Figures2Commas »

tptacek wrote: post #183
7Figures2Commas wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm sorry, but the published science is very clear: acrylamide is the product of cooking at high temperatures. According to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12368845, it has not been found in food prepared at less than 120 degrees C. Furthermore, the foods found to be most susceptible to acrylamide formation are starchy foods someone with a healthy diet would probably be consuming in low quantities anyway.

In any case, this has become a forest from the trees debate. You can enjoy your grapes fermented, I can enjoy mine off the vine and hopefully it won't be the potatoes that do us in. Bon appetit!

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#202

Post by rarrrrrr »

tptacek wrote: post #183
7Figures2Commas wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you happen to recall where you learned that acrylamide is found in raw foods, I'm curious to read about it. My understanding was that it was associated with the maillard reaction (i.e. cooking above 120F)

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#203

Post by aestetix »

I'm kind of amazed nobody has mentioned MAPS yet (http://www.maps.org).

Psychedelics are a tool like any other. There is no such thing as "safe" use, which is why organizations like MAPS, DanceSafe, Erowid, etc all encourage the phrase "drug harm reduction." I have personally witnessed LSD destroy someone's life, and yet I have witnessed the same with alcohol (and am happy we have AA) and tobacco (cancer). The key, as with anything, is moderation and education.

That said, there has been a long trend of disinformation in the US, that has permeated all over the world. As a starting point, if people want to learn more about the crusade against cannabis (marijuana), check out Hank Anslinger and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_J._Anslinger). For a more recent example, take a look at Rep Jared Polis questioning DEA Administrator Leonhart about why some drugs are illegal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFgrB2Wmh5s.

With regards to scientific inquiry into measuring the effects of these drugs, thanks to the efforts of Roland Griffith at Johns Hopkins (and others), we're beginning to overturn 40 years of prohibition with studies into the effects of psilocybin (shrooms) and MDMA (ecstacy) for end of life experience and PTSD therapy.

Some links to that research: http://www.maps.org/research/mdma/ http://www.maps.org/research/psilo-lsd/

If this interests you and you ask "why hasn't this been done before?", I recommend searching for interviews with Rick Doblin, PhD (founder of MAPS) where he explains his long battle with the DEA, and how they eventually turned to the FDA, which focuses more on the science than the politics.

So yes, it is fair to say that there hasn't been much scientific research done into this, but to no fault of the scientists. I look forward to the next few years as the results of these studies come out and the US hopefully begins to permit these substances to be used in therapy.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#204

Post by alexhill »

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…

I think it's pretty inaccurate to say this article ignores the negative effects of drugs or pretends that LSD is harmless. Quoting verbatim:

This is not to say that everyone should take psychedelics. As I will make clear below, these drugs pose certain dangers. Undoubtedly, there are people who cannot afford to give the anchor of sanity even the slightest tug.

and

Even if drugs like LSD are biologically safe, the potential for extremely unpleasant and destabilizing experiences presents its own risks. I believe I was positively affected for weeks and months by my good trips, and negatively affected by the bad ones. Given these roulette-like odds, one can only recommend these experiences with caution.

and

But as the peaks are high, the valleys are deep. My “bad trips” were, without question, the most harrowing hours I have ever suffered—and they make the notion of hell, as a metaphor if not a destination, seem perfectly apt.

It's pretty even-handed, overall.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#205

Post by Amadou »

chrischen wrote: post #192
Amadou wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Go ahead and try the experiment. Lock two people in two rooms and give one a choice of food or cocaine every day and the other just food. What do you think will happen? It's pretty clear the one with cocaine will be slightly less nourished than the one without cocaine. The cocaine doesn't offer any benefit except a surge of dopamine. Maybe you could argue the guy has ADHD, and the cocaine helps him function normally,…

I'm sorry but locking two people in a room really has nothing to do with the way the vast majority of people live their lives. You are again assuming the initial point and working backwards from that belief. It seems pretty clear this is a matter of faith for you, so not much point in continuing to debate it.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#206

Post by alexhill »

Xcelerate wrote: post #90
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.

> 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?

I really think you should re-read that paragraph - using "drugs" to include caffeine, nicotine and alcohol is exactly the point. I'll cite it.

The first sentences: I have a daughter who will one day take drugs. Of course, I will do everything in my power to see that she chooses her drugs wisely, but a life without drugs is neither foreseeable, nor, I think, desirable.

The first example of how taking drugs might be desirable, in the very next sentence: "Someday, I hope she enjoys a morning cup of tea or coffee as much as I do."

He continues with other example of his position on various drugs she might take: alcohol, nicotine, cannabis, psychedelics, narcotics. In the paragraph, "drugs" encompasses all of them.

The point is that the only line between what people call "drugs" and other mind-altering substances that people don't call "drugs" is a largely arbitrary legal one.

So I'm curious about your stance - being "simply apathetic about the whole experience". What experience exactly are you apathetic about? You said you know people who "don't even drink", so I assume you aren't one of them and do drink. You like Monster. So what's the distinguishing factor that only "drugs" offer that you are apathetic towards?

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#207

Post by _yosefk »

ignostic wrote: post #53
_yosefk wrote: post #35

"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…

A self-printing program that opens its source code file is an example where there's no disregard for anyone's well-being, and where a programming trick is used; the trick, however, misses the point of writing a self-printing program - that point being the use of a different kind of trick.

My point was not to say that drug use is immoral because you cheat, just that our goals generally aren't to observe a signal but rather to achieve something of which the signal is a symptom. Perhaps printing out the wrong account balance on your home printer and happily staring at that, without hacking into the bank, would have been a better example.

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#208

Post by diydsp »

Nursie wrote: post #126
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…

>> 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 anymore. I get to meet a lot of those in LA. Do you have numbers and studies on this? Was it just LSD or have they been chronic multi-drug users…

During an undergrad research project in a hospital, I had access to a medical library and found a few articles on persistent visual tracers following LSD use. I can't find them now, but I turned this up in the British Journal of Psychiatry

"A chronic impairment of colour vision in users of LSD." http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/140/5/518.short

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#209

Post by gboudrias »

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?

Re: Drugs and the Meaning of Life (2011)

#210

Post by alexhill »

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 honestly don't perceive many mental effects from caffeine at all, besides jitters if I have too much, so I much prefer to use alcohol as the example.

The majority of people have felt the effects of alcohol, and most of those have been properly drunk at some point - so they know what it's like to take something which profoundly and very noticeably affects their consciousness.

If a drinker says "I just don't understand the appeal in taking drugs", the implication is that there's some property common to illegal drugs that alcohol doesn't share. There's not; the only characteristic common to all illegal drugs is that they alter consciousness, and they absolutely share that characteristic with legal substances like alcohol, caffeine, etc.

The argument is not meant to equate LSD with caffeine; just to demonstrate that taking illegal drugs is not some categorically different thing to taking legal drugs. Once you break down that distinction, what's left to argue about is the pros and cons of each individual substance, which is IMO a Good Thing.

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