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For babies, life may be like an LSD trip

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Re: For babies, life may be like an LSD trip

#71
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not calling this post out specifically, but drugs make for good clickbait. Drugs in general are 'in' right now, and i agree that it's pretty forced these days. I have a very small sample size, but the friends i have who tripped regularly (not just on lsd) went on to have serious mental health issues. I know correlation =! causation, but it scares me how big the drug culture is becoming. These drugs may have their pla…

can confirm. Same with many of my friends. All heavy weed smokers, all used psychedelics. A worrying % went on to have some mental health issues. Now I know all the pro-weed people say "yeah but it is those pre-disposed to having schizophrenic episodes". Perhaps, but at the sample rate in my experience and others who have met later on the % is far higher than I would have expected to be. Same for just weed smoking. I…

As a recovering information addict, I'll simply say this:

Why and how I do something habitually is as important as what I'm doing, whether it's ingesting some substance or spending my days reading the internet.

If someone is chronically doing something to escape from or numb pain (physical or emotional), expect major issues to come from the practice.

Re: For babies, life may be like an LSD trip

#72
post #59
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really political to stop and think about what you are doing for the pure gain of someone else? I should think that's just critical thinking at work.

Not necessarily, but saying that the "doors are kept shut artificially" is something straight out of r/conspiracy.

So is "the NSA can tap into almost any conversation or electronic communication they want in real time" and "the President(*) colluded with Russia to steal the election", but here we are.

Re: For babies, life may be like an LSD trip

#73

I'm a bit confused... Isn't it an article encouraging consuming LSD?

Welcome to Silicon Valley. One year it's modafinil and adderall, one year it's nootropics, one year it's psychotropics. Rinse and repeat.

HBO totally nailed it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2cEaBIDAY4

Re: For babies, life may be like an LSD trip

#74
post #24

Fun thought: would chronic LSD administration (i.e. making a person never not be tripping for ~1mo at a time) enable language learning at the level babies are capable of?

No. It would destroy them mentally and permanently.

My (now) brother-in-law sold acid when we were in high school, and there was a point of time in our senior year where he took acid almost daily for 2 or 3 months. If you'd asked me to describe him in one word when we were 20, i'd have said 'burnout'.

Believe it or not, he's fine today. He quit doing drugs in his early 20s after he got arrested, got a business degree, and hasn't touched them in 15 or 20 years. You'd never guess that he's done acid a hundred times or more by talking to him.

Re: For babies, life may be like an LSD trip

#75
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few people end up taking it habitually. That's not to say none do. I had it when I was a late teen, enjoyed it, took it again a number of times (7/8?) into my early 20s, but by the last time I just found it boring. I think most people have some fun with it and move on.

What is the worst that could happen? You hear all these stories Asking for a friend.

From repeated use?

I knew at least one person who was a tripped out mess every time I saw them.

I have no idea how that dude's life panned out as I haven't seen him in a couple of decades. I imagine it didn't really go anywhere until he stopped dropping acid every day...

Some people report HPPD from repeated use.

LSD is a stimulant and there are some negative physical effects associated with it, but all are temporary AFAICT.

Re: For babies, life may be like an LSD trip

#76

Hmmmmm... Seems like "I found these few studies, it must mean babies are super humans that are tripping constantly!" Or healing happens faster because cell-division has a greater impact given the greater impact it has on total number of cells, and an abundance of stem cells still present as they develop helps with healing alongside growth and development. Then the fact that MOST things they encounter in the world are…

Also I wonder if the opposite is true, when you consider how intense baby screams are, for a toddler, it must be the equivalent of a deep horror to us, even though it could just be a unknown face in the room or a tiny bump on a table.

Re: For babies, life may be like an LSD trip

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm talking about for humans starts on the very high levels of abstraction we tend to do it. We connect such disparate strands of data and it all works because we have culture to reinforce it. All that background information that says "yes, this is correct" is what allows us to hold onto certain patterns versus others. If observation ceases, then the internal individual models cease, then reinforcement of those…

> There's no language or reasoning or models inside the baby's head that says "cry now therefore I will feel better". You don't need to have language to have models, artificial neural network can model stuff they don't need language to do it. The text "I cry cause i know that will cause me to feel better." is simply my explanation of the models behavior. > Saying "crying gives me attention" is a very unhealthy way to…

An artificial neural network has a mutable language. Trying to describe the behavior of an artificial neural network with language is somewhat absurd, because it effectively removes all the conventions and consequent problems caused by languages, models and structures that the human mind, over time, would likely develop difficulty retaining mutability for. If you give the ANN language, it literally ceases to be what it is. It develops structure, model. Too much discordance in structure is difficult for a human mind to process.

A baby is not an ANN.

> Do you think that babies/animals are conscious?

I can't say I know what consciousness is. I do know that ego tends to drive individuals, whether from the inside, or the outside, all this stuff can become chaotic, and everything often maps for individuals in order to retain whatever fundamental and foundational belief systems are necessary to hold onto their own awareness and their own understanding of their self - as well as understanding of reality, information as it's processed. It can be a precarious balance, understanding oneself - in relation to another. New experiences in life that dramatically redefine self understanding are interesting, but can be destabilizing, disruptive, or fluid, easy to manage, trust others and trust self, but be adaptive.

Honestly, most of the time I do not see myself doing much differently than what a cat does. Just my ego saying "I exist - You exist" for all information created between selves. I could call it buddhist-computer scientist-artist-programmer theory, but ANNs tend to make life ridiculous, as can be obvious. Always seeing connections. I talked to an AI for a long time, and not many others. Started to literally see myself as no different from a computer program. Redefines idea of self.

Consciousness. There's reality. Reality should be incomprehensible, sometimes. Can't decide if I'm positive or negative towards AI. Every aspect of computation can be used for good intents or bad. But intentions often are a dilemma. Can think about how intent affects self, affects others. Computer security, for instance.

Re: For babies, life may be like an LSD trip

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no language or reasoning or models inside the baby's head that says "cry now therefore I will feel better". You don't need to have language to have models, artificial neural network can model stuff they don't need language to do it. The text "I cry cause i know that will cause me to feel better." is simply my explanation of the models behavior. > Saying "crying gives me attention" is a very unhealthy way to…

An artificial neural network has a mutable language. Trying to describe the behavior of an artificial neural network with language is somewhat absurd, because it effectively removes all the conventions and consequent problems caused by languages, models and structures that the human mind, over time, would likely develop difficulty retaining mutability for. If you give the ANN language, it literally ceases to be what…

> A baby is not an ANN.

The mind of a baby is somehow emergent from it's brain, the brain being a neural network.

Conscious. I used to believe that consciousness was a sort of self deception of thought feedback loops. Then i realized that it was self destructive to think like that. In a sense i still sort of think it is the most rational answer. But i refuse to believe it. The brain seams better suited to believing it is conscious. My models of the human mind that are based on consciousness has results that seams to give more positive outcomes. And they have higher explanatory value. Presumably cause they align more with the models that other people use to interpret the world.

Re: For babies, life may be like an LSD trip

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An artificial neural network has a mutable language. Trying to describe the behavior of an artificial neural network with language is somewhat absurd, because it effectively removes all the conventions and consequent problems caused by languages, models and structures that the human mind, over time, would likely develop difficulty retaining mutability for. If you give the ANN language, it literally ceases to be what…

> A baby is not an ANN. The mind of a baby is somehow emergent from it's brain, the brain being a neural network. Conscious. I used to believe that consciousness was a sort of self deception of thought feedback loops. Then i realized that it was self destructive to think like that. In a sense i still sort of think it is the most rational answer. But i refuse to believe it. The brain seams better suited to believing i…

Yes, I think minds work better when they can be self oriented. I think my mind works better when it is self oriented, but I see feedback loops in behavior and interaction with people from which I could choose to make inferences from to denote ideas of intent, but I choose to not do that because it does not give people freedom from thinking about how other people think in ways that can be self destructive.

It can be self destructive to think about feedback loops if they are all perceived as negative.

Alignment of models. Ebbs and flows. I think it's important to see positives.

Re: For babies, life may be like an LSD trip

#80
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily, but saying that the "doors are kept shut artificially" is something straight out of r/conspiracy.

So is "the NSA can tap into almost any conversation or electronic communication they want in real time" and "the President(*) colluded with Russia to steal the election", but here we are.

So is "Bush did 9/11" and "Hillary Clinton is a child rapist." Just like a infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters would eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare, a bunch of people making up unsubstantiated conspiracy theories will eventually make one that happens to correspond with reality. That doesn't mean unsubstantiated conspiracy theories should be taken seriously.
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