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Regarding Michael Pollan’s New Book This Is Your Mind on Plants

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Re: Regarding Michael Pollan’s New Book This Is Your Mind on Plants

#31

Post by teknopaul »

pmoriarty wrote: post #21
Animats wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman". Feynman was convinced by Dr. Timothy Leary, in the 1960s, to try LSD. Feynman then thought he'd solved some problem he was working on. But when he went to give a talk on the problem, he realized that he had not solved the problem. He had only hallucinated that he had solved the problem. After which Feynman didn't try LSD again. "I like to think. I don't want to break the machi…

I love that book, and find Feynman eloquent, likeable, and funny. He was also incredibly smart and highly accomplished.. in his own field. But Feynman, like many other intelligent, famous people, had a bad habit of opining on and dismissing out of hand subjects he knew little about. He did this with philosophy and with psychedelics. At least he tried LSD, but he was clearly not an authority on LSD, and his experience…

To say Feynmam knew "nothing about" a drug he actually personally experienced is a hard sell.

"Feynman was either completely ignorant of his potential or chose to ignore it". [citation needed]

IMHO he did rather well i his limited time on the planet.

Re: Regarding Michael Pollan’s New Book This Is Your Mind on Plants

#32

Post by galaxyLogic »

IgorPartola wrote: post #27
teknopaul wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do study pyschadelics. A lot. Cool stuff about ketamine is coming out o HN, turns out the trick is not to take 5 grammes a day. ;) I have been involved in publicly funded recreational drug research, it does happen. Trouble is drugs takers don't like the results, which unfortunately are not entirely positive. e.g. huge numbers of people in mental institutions in the Uk had their episode triggered by recreationa…

Per NIH/NAS [1]: > Despite these changes in state policy and the increasing prevalence of cannabis use and its implications for population health, the federal government has not legalized cannabis and continues to enforce restrictive policies and regulations on research into the health harms or benefits of cannabis products that are available to consumers in a majority of states. As a result, research on the health e…

Clearly something is terribly wrong if law or policy dictates scientists can not study a specific subject, based on political reasons

Re: Regarding Michael Pollan’s New Book This Is Your Mind on Plants

#34

Post by pmoriarty »

teknopaul wrote: post #31
pmoriarty wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love that book, and find Feynman eloquent, likeable, and funny. He was also incredibly smart and highly accomplished.. in his own field. But Feynman, like many other intelligent, famous people, had a bad habit of opining on and dismissing out of hand subjects he knew little about. He did this with philosophy and with psychedelics. At least he tried LSD, but he was clearly not an authority on LSD, and his experience…

To say Feynmam knew "nothing about" a drug he actually personally experienced is a hard sell. "Feynman was either completely ignorant of his potential or chose to ignore it". [citation needed] IMHO he did rather well i his limited time on the planet.

It's interesting that you quote me as saying that Feynman knew "nothing about" LSD, when I actually said he knew "little about" it.

Not the same.

Having one trip does not make you an expert. It makes you a novice with still a lot to learn. Feynman, as smart as he was, could not become an authority on LSD after a single trip.

Re: Regarding Michael Pollan’s New Book This Is Your Mind on Plants

#35

Post by dillondoyle »

Perhaps too off topic, but given how easy it is get get opiates from poppy 'milk' - as shown from the original unpublished article - I've wondered why we don't see more of it from fairly tame occasional use like Pollan to addicts going around scoring and milking poppy bulbs in the neighborhood.

Poppies seem to grow really easily in a lot of places. You don't have to be a fancy chemist to just smoke or shoot the gunk.

Here's a typical Vice story on this, big headline, fairly unsatisfying reality lol.

https://video.vice.com/en_uk/video/heroin-holiday-in-the-cze...

Re: Regarding Michael Pollan’s New Book This Is Your Mind on Plants

#38

Post by jonstewart »

I saw Michael Pollan speak many years ago, ~2005?, at the LA public library, about _The Omnivore’s Dilemma_. He talked about nostalgia for family farms; I grew up in Iowa on a family farm, and in 2005 I knew that rural America had been depopulated and small family farms were few and far between. I asked him how that “density” could be restored, to recreate what he wanted. He had nothing to say, nor had much to say about the forces that had led to the current state of agriculture.

It was an extremely unsatisfying answer as part of an unsatisfying talk. He struck me as an unserious person.

Re: Regarding Michael Pollan’s New Book This Is Your Mind on Plants

#39

Post by teknopaul »

IgorPartola wrote: post #27
teknopaul wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do study pyschadelics. A lot. Cool stuff about ketamine is coming out o HN, turns out the trick is not to take 5 grammes a day. ;) I have been involved in publicly funded recreational drug research, it does happen. Trouble is drugs takers don't like the results, which unfortunately are not entirely positive. e.g. huge numbers of people in mental institutions in the Uk had their episode triggered by recreationa…

Per NIH/NAS [1]: > Despite these changes in state policy and the increasing prevalence of cannabis use and its implications for population health, the federal government has not legalized cannabis and continues to enforce restrictive policies and regulations on research into the health harms or benefits of cannabis products that are available to consumers in a majority of states. As a result, research on the health e…

I live in Europe. There is plenty of work done on health risks of canabis. Smoking is strongly associated with lung cancer, yes weed too. That should not be surprising. If you think otherwise you are reading the wrong Internet. Smoking is also strongly associated with mental disorders. There is a lot of evidence. Huge numbers. If you smoke weed you _must_ have friends that's have had a bad one on weed at some point, even if you never have yourself, which I doubt, if you are over 18 and live in the US I would be very surprised to hear you have no anacdotal evidence of mental health effects. If you really don't go talk to a psychiatrist and ask them what they do all day. Weed is part of the culture we all know it's ups and downs. I am in favour of legalization but you have to be honest to discuss it. If _you_ have a lack of evidence about the effects of weed read more, ask your friends, about 70% of my friends smoke weed regularly. Those that do don't have regular issues with it, naturally, but that is a long way from saying there is no evidence of health effects or the lack of evidence itself _is_ the health risk. That's crazy talk. Depression and demotivation is normal, and documented. Of course, if you smoke, you don't need a doctor to tell you that. Smoking weed is so common the numbers are very good.

Large numbers make good averages.

Psych health care workers deal with people with drug problems on a daily basis, that's pretty much all they do. Psychs know _which_ drug each patient has issues with. A huge percentage of psychiatric work is related to drugs and alcohol. The percentage that is weed is well known.

If you deny that, no one will ever take anything you say seriously because everyone one else is basing health care policy on these numbers.

Your trouble is probably that you are looking for a study that says that weed is good for mental health, and there isn't one.

It's fun, you get high, but it does have negative health consequences. That is essentially it, no one has yet found a control group that got better exam results from smoking bifters in the park.

The difference between high thc weed and weed as gaia intended exacerbates the issue, modified indoor weed does most of the damage. Natural weed has anti-psychotics and skunk messed up the balance.

Re: Regarding Michael Pollan’s New Book This Is Your Mind on Plants

#40

Post by steve_adams_86 »

lc9er wrote: post #24
LargeWu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons I stopped listening to Ferris’s podcast is that he’s a totally uncritical interviewer. His guests are allowed to blatantly self promote

Ferris is kind of a grifter. If he were to probe deeply, then others might do the same to him.

I try to remind myself that Ferris started out in marketing (as I recall) and it shows - he’s an aggressive self promoter. Even so, some of his guests are excellent and I enjoy his themes and topics.
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