Silk Road forums
Discussion => Philosophy, Economics and Justice => Topic started by: LordBiron on April 09, 2013, 03:02 am
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Hello Silk Road, I am stoned as holy fuck right now and I went to Oxford, so I want to pose an intellectual debate. The things we see when we ingest the wonders of psychedelics we see things. Things that change our lives, now these are chemicals in our brain that produce these images right? Or are these chemicals something far more interesting then we thought, what if these chemicals were a bridge to another dimension or a parallel universe. I know it's farfetched but let me pose this point, those of us who have done DMT we've all interacted with Machine Elves.....
Talk and debate
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In the sense you seem to be asking, I'd argue, "No"
The visions we see are distortions from within our minds, we recognize the physical world remains constant even when we trip. This doesn't mean those visions are any less profound or able to give us insight; we just shouldn't confuse their origin with something other than our own brain's firings.
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In the sense you seem to be asking, I'd argue, "No"
The visions we see are distortions from within our minds, we recognize the physical world remains constant even when we trip. This doesn't mean those visions are any less profound or able to give us insight; we just shouldn't confuse their origin with something other than our own brain's firings.
But... But the bridges!
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I mean, maybe. But these chemicals (or at least our ability to refine and imbibe oh so many of them) came about as a result of our understanding of science, and you're suggesting a sort of mysticism to the universe that runs in the face of most of that science.
I'm not saying their un-reality makes them any less significant, in fact, they show us that some things are far more important in their own context, than in whatever rigid rules we try to use to come up with a single "theory that explains everything"
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Yes, they are real, to each his own, I enjoy them
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curiositymatrix and AllDayLong, I well and truly LOLd at your responses and contra-valing demeanor, and I felt you to be, my true friends.
I am also as high as fuck, however. It is possible that you are not my true friends. However, you did make me LOL. A +1 to both you kind sirs, and good day.
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simply put, what psychedelics do is they remove the filters through which we view everyday reality. now, that's not to say everything you see is "real," but a great deal of it is. i had one "bad trip" and noticed it mimicked the effects of schizophrenia... that's the only time i've hallucinated on psychedelics. everyone's brain chemistry is different, however, and some people are just more prone to getting caught up in fantasies.
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There may be a "profundity center" in the brain, some region that makes you think things are profound when it is activated. Psychedelics seem to trigger that, but talk to someone who is tripping while you are sober. Their insights seem fairly mundane.
I'm a hardened materialist, though.
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There may be a "profundity center" in the brain, some region that makes you think things are profound when it is activated. Psychedelics seem to trigger that, but talk to someone who is tripping while you are sober. Their insights seem fairly mundane.
I'm a hardened materialist, though.
^ What I've noticed as well. I'd like to hear a psychological approach as to why. My trips seem to have made permanent connections in this "center" of the brain, to the point where little details are beautiful and intensely profound. Funny because this mindset is common amongst those terminally ill or approaching death
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There may be a "profundity center" in the brain, some region that makes you think things are profound when it is activated. Psychedelics seem to trigger that, but talk to someone who is tripping while you are sober. Their insights seem fairly mundane.
I'm a hardened materialist, though.
*shrug* No issue with materialism, for me. You're perceiving your environment, you have conscious and unconscious processes (whether or not entirely the product of the brain; I say they are), and there are insights to be gained. For me, the kind of insight (or delusion/deception, as the case may be) is definitely tied to the drug in question. There are some drugs that - and a more youthful oldtoby would think this is crazy - I trust myself completely on. As in, I would happily write advice to myself, and on sobering up, follow it or at least give it some serious thought. In those states, I feel very centred, very aware of my values and what is important to me, with all the bullshit stripped away. Subjectively, I feel... complete. Like I've bridged conscious and subconscious selves, and therefore can give the truest answers to questions. It is the most "me" I can be.
On other drugs, I am still sussing this stuff out. I don't know the space well enough yet, don't trust the ideas. I am skeptical, careful. But this is also my reflexive response to any drug that puts me in an altered state but *doesn't* increase my sense of empathy. Hopefully, I will learn all of these spaces (well, the ones I want to get to know) and they can be lenses through which I can view the world, myself, and life.,
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(i did not read the other answers so mine is not effected by them.)
Reality is a software. running in your wetware. your brain. Its running inside your memory. Everything you experience now is coming from you memory.
The outside stimuli we receive does not influence reality instantly. There is a processing time. a measurable lag.
The sensory information analyzer running in your brain has to translate it into another language so it can be processed by the reality software.
I think psychedelics affect the preloaded information about faces, colors, feelings, smells, etc that we stored up long ago and saved.
The programing of the human mind is based on :
Genetic programing coming from your DNA and learned information coming from processed outside stimuli. (processing of this is originally based on genetic info)
The psychedelic experience is the result of minor failure/misfiring due to hardware error. The brain is a computer based on chemical interactions on a molecular level. When the brain chemistry is disturbed the software its running is disrupted.
I realized this when i saw myself tripping in the mirror. I saw in my face every face i can ever see. My facial recognition software was going crazy. Lips, nose, eyes, ears...colors, shapes.. Everything was changing till it founds the right one.
I came to the conclusion that the way i see faces is more based on my memory than my outside stimuli. This is why stereotypes exist. in every category.
I think ego is connected to the body. When the mind looses the body it looses the ego.
And it desperately starts searching for one.
The entities we see in states of heavy trance are the images of scrambled foreign bodies. The ego of others in our memory. The body of others in our memory. The conscious brain craves for them. There is no point of existence for the brain if a body it can control or interact with is not present.
So we search for one. Inside and Outside.
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There's what is going on in your head, which is one kind of 'reality', and there is what is going on out in the rest of the universe, which is another kind of 'reality'. We are wired and conditioned to see both of these 'realities' in a certain context, and that skews our perception. I think that the true reality of what is existence and reality is outside of our brain's ability to comprehend. We are wired to see reality as a continuous stream of cause and effect and to see location as definite, hard concept. I don't believe that either of these things fully encompass what reality is. On a local level, these concepts work fine, but they are far too simplistic to describe ture reality (if, in fact, that even is a 'thing').
There is a very strong and consistent theory that everything we see around us and everything that happens is a hologram of actual events that are happening on a two dimensional boundary at the edge of the universe. There is also a very strong and consistent theory that we, and the universe we perceive, are actually a simulation running on a computer in some other universe.
So to your question - I would argue that psychedelics untether your mind from the 'normal' context within which we perceive reality. When you are tripping, you are seeing the universe with an entirely different set of assumptions. Is this reality? Is your 'normal' mental state reality? Neither are and both are - that's the nature of reality that we cannot fathom. Psychedelics are very useful at allowing receptive users to perceive and think about what reality is in a broader context than is normally possible.
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I have a rather Kantian view of reality. Cognition is the apparatus to survive in the environment in the best way that it can. It's reductive in the sense that it focuses our attention on the basics of human survival -sleeping/ recovery, eating and desires/ procreating. Some people find schooling difficult because our intelligence is lazy and our brain often reduces things that burn calories in order to survive; your brain is the first organ to consume calories and it consumes 25% of all our calories. So you can see how the subconscious can switch this off during breakfast, lunch and dinner time when we should be searching for food rather than philosophising about ethics or whatever.
According to Kant there exists out there (empiricists) and the mind (rationalists). Kant bridges the gap between these two extreme schools of thought and says that we see what our mind wants us to see, in order to maximise survival. In other words there exists both "out there" and inner mind. They are equally real. Our minds are inhabitants on the environment but we do not have the mental apparatus to see things as they are "in themselves", ie the true essence of things is impossible for us to perceive. This is because we shouldn't concern ourselves with things in themselves because we only need to survive, that's the only concern for us. This makes sense. There's no need for us to see the atoms in the air or to store every single percept we see in order to survive. We merely see what is immediately important to us and nothing more. I call this the reductionist valve in our brain. For Kant we do not have the mental apparatus to find the answers to the question of God, when the world first began/ will end, do we have free will, etc. although our rationality will lead us astray and fill in gaps to suit itself. This filling in of the gaps is not reality but an illusion of the mind.
So what happens when we consume drugs and what effect does this have on the reductionist valve? Well this is my theory. It completely reverts our basic elements of survival -eating, sleeping and desires are either no longer important or they radically change. Our mental apparatus used to perceive the world changes. The reductionist valve explodes into different channels that are normally not available/ not interested to us by our basic cognition. No longer do we have an appetite for food when we are on lsd but we desire to consume knowledge and an understanding of the things "in themselves" as they really are. Why should we waste our limited time on mundane things like eating and sleeping?
This theory leaves us with two possible conclusions.
1) Either we are closer to seeing things as they really are when we trip. Hallucinations are actually what things are when we aren't militantly (and misleadingly) only concerned about order and structure. Psychedelics introduce us to the world as it is without our need to maximise survival and it allows us to experience reality as it might be to nonhumans or animals that have larger intellect.
2) Psychedelics rewire our internal cognition and allows our imagination run wild so what we now perceive is merely the effect of our own mentality and it does not reflect any external reality.
I would like to believe in the first option. At least I think drugs changes our attention and allows us to focus on things that should be priority to us (philosophy, sociology and science) but aren't because our basic desires get in the way (eating, making money, etc.). I would like if people could help me to dispute the second theory -has anyone shared an identical trip with another person while on psychedelics? This could possibly show that what one sees on psychedelics is real because it is shared. Personally I have shared amazing things with other people on MDMA and it certainly changes ones ability to be more empathetic to others, perhaps more moral, etc. Yet somehow I think psychedelics provide an even more deeper alteration of reality. I can't answer this because the only psychedelic I have taken has been mushrooms and my visual perceptions didn't change considerably. I would like to experiment with LSD sometime to understand my theory more. Until now I've been waiting until I reach my intellectual capacity (age of 25 for most people) to experiment with harder drugs but perhaps lsd should be consumed before my intellectual limit hits?
Hello Silk Road, I am stoned as holy fuck right now and I went to Oxford, so I want to pose an intellectual debate
Cool, do you mind if I ask what you studied during your time at Oxford? I'm a philosophy graduate and I am considering doing a PhD sometime in the near future. Knowledge is power. It's also universal and should be free. I love exchanging in philosophical discourse :)
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I believe in a somewhat shamanistic interpretation- that it's more than chemical hay-wiring of the brain causing it's perception to alter. Even if you observe it from 1000 different angles, cross-eyed, or however: It never changes- it remains reality. you just experienced it in a new way.
I beleive that some drugs enable us to interact with what is spiritual in nature. Theres more to this existence than we can imagine, att least that's what Ive gathered from my experiences.
I dont talk much on this matter with others. It is too easily scoffed, And so hard to explain when I understand so little of myself.But if it's crazy,.....regardless...it's still my experience.
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I don't know about you folks, but when I trip ( I have only made it to LSD, no DMT as of yet) and feel that I connect with a different type of world, it makes me understand this material world better and how to navigate it, how it works. It's beautiful, however I have been debating whether its all in my head. I really can't answer that or come across anyone who can. Until I am proven wrong I will continue to hold onto my definition of what it all means, which I have seen explained on these forums a few times, so its not just me!
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I don't know about you folks, but when I trip ( I have only made it to LSD, no DMT as of yet) and feel that I connect with a different type of world, it makes me understand this material world better and how to navigate it, how it works. It's beautiful, however I have been debating whether its all in my head. I really can't answer that or come across anyone who can. Until I am proven wrong I will continue to hold onto my definition of what it all means, which I have seen explained on these forums a few times, so its not just me!
It's always a question with me - if my perception of something with a real but unknown answer (not how happy I should be, which is entirely subjective, but, say, how much danger I'm in) varies whether I'm on or off a given substance, which is the more correct view? Which perception should I trust?
This is going to sound... a little odd (on SR forums? No!), but do you ever watch Star Trek? You know how the engineers are all about running diagnostics of the ship. Well, this is what I sometimes try to do with myself on various substances. The difficulty being that unless it's math or a logic game or the like, you're dealing with subjective assessments again and can't know the real answer. But I quiz myself on various beliefs and then review what I know to be true, and see whether my beliefs are justified or unjustified (not a bad thing for people to do, sober or not). It was a bit of a eureka moment to realize, on careful review, that my confidence in a particular belief while tripping simply could not be justified. I was deluded, which is common enough (both off and on drugs), but more importantly, I was able to determine that I was deluded. It's a work in progress.
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Hello Silk Road, I am stoned as holy fuck right now and I went to Oxford, so I want to pose an intellectual debate. The things we see when we ingest the wonders of psychedelics we see things. Things that change our lives, now these are chemicals in our brain that produce these images right? Or are these chemicals something far more interesting then we thought, what if these chemicals were a bridge to another dimension or a parallel universe. I know it's farfetched but let me pose this point, those of us who have done DMT we've all interacted with Machine Elves.....
Talk and debate
if you've interacted with intelligent life but you still question its legitimacy.... ???
in all seriousness my first psychedelic experience was dmt, and i consider it a very real experience.
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I don't know about you folks, but when I trip ( I have only made it to LSD, no DMT as of yet) and feel that I connect with a different type of world, it makes me understand this material world better and how to navigate it, how it works. It's beautiful, however I have been debating whether its all in my head. I really can't answer that or come across anyone who can. Until I am proven wrong I will continue to hold onto my definition of what it all means, which I have seen explained on these forums a few times, so its not just me!
It's always a question with me - if my perception of something with a real but unknown answer (not how happy I should be, which is entirely subjective, but, say, how much danger I'm in) varies whether I'm on or off a given substance, which is the more correct view? Which perception should I trust?
This is going to sound... a little odd (on SR forums? No!), but do you ever watch Star Trek? You know how the engineers are all about running diagnostics of the ship. Well, this is what I sometimes try to do with myself on various substances. The difficulty being that unless it's math or a logic game or the like, you're dealing with subjective assessments again and can't know the real answer. But I quiz myself on various beliefs and then review what I know to be true, and see whether my beliefs are justified or unjustified (not a bad thing for people to do, sober or not). It was a bit of a eureka moment to realize, on careful review, that my confidence in a particular belief while tripping simply could not be justified. I was deluded, which is common enough (both off and on drugs), but more importantly, I was able to determine that I was deluded. It's a work in progress.
I know exactly what you mean; that's what I love about psychedelics. It's like like popping a maintenance panel off the hull and watching the parts inside move, gradually learning "how" you think and what that makes you.
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I don't know about you folks, but when I trip ( I have only made it to LSD, no DMT as of yet) and feel that I connect with a different type of world, it makes me understand this material world better and how to navigate it, how it works. It's beautiful, however I have been debating whether its all in my head. I really can't answer that or come across anyone who can. Until I am proven wrong I will continue to hold onto my definition of what it all means, which I have seen explained on these forums a few times, so its not just me!
It's always a question with me - if my perception of something with a real but unknown answer (not how happy I should be, which is entirely subjective, but, say, how much danger I'm in) varies whether I'm on or off a given substance, which is the more correct view? Which perception should I trust?
This is going to sound... a little odd (on SR forums? No!), but do you ever watch Star Trek? You know how the engineers are all about running diagnostics of the ship. Well, this is what I sometimes try to do with myself on various substances. The difficulty being that unless it's math or a logic game or the like, you're dealing with subjective assessments again and can't know the real answer. But I quiz myself on various beliefs and then review what I know to be true, and see whether my beliefs are justified or unjustified (not a bad thing for people to do, sober or not). It was a bit of a eureka moment to realize, on careful review, that my confidence in a particular belief while tripping simply could not be justified. I was deluded, which is common enough (both off and on drugs), but more importantly, I was able to determine that I was deluded. It's a work in progress.
I know exactly what you mean; that's what I love about psychedelics. It's like like popping a maintenance panel off the hull and watching the parts inside move, gradually learning "how" you think and what that makes you.
Ha! +1 Delighted with that phrasing.
Someone in another thread talked about meta-programming. I think it's that, too. You take that panel off, spend some time figuring out what coloured wires are what, and get busy re-wiring things more to your satisfaction. :)
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I'll let you know, I can already hear them whispering around about that corner just up ahead ---
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This is going to sound... a little odd (on SR forums? No!), but do you ever watch Star Trek? You know how the engineers are all about running diagnostics of the ship. Well, this is what I sometimes try to do with myself on various substances. The difficulty being that unless it's math or a logic game or the like, you're dealing with subjective assessments again and can't know the real answer. But I quiz myself on various beliefs and then review what I know to be true, and see whether my beliefs are justified or unjustified (not a bad thing for people to do, sober or not). It was a bit of a eureka moment to realize, on careful review, that my confidence in a particular belief while tripping simply could not be justified. I was deluded, which is common enough (both off and on drugs), but more importantly, I was able to determine that I was deluded. It's a work in progress.
Sure I think that's a really important intellectual task. Descartes wrote about this in dialectic form in his Meditations. I recommend reading it. Personally I think metaphysics is a subject everyone should be introduced to in school. I can understand how you can accomplish it more easily with the aid drugs, I often characterise my cannabis use as a sort of meditation. If I get worked up about something it allows me to think more clearly by completely removing my own point of view and truly see in the eyes of the other person. The ego needs to be re evaluated from time to time, check yo' self before you wreck yo'self.
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Something I always thought was a mindfuck is the ability for the brain to produce images, sounds, and other senses without actually sensing those things. Like when we dream or hallucinate from chemicals. It doesn't seem possible for something to make those things happen without them actually happening. I hope this makes sense, and unfortunately I am not stoned at the moment. I bet someone is high as shit right now and their mind just exploded after reading all of this...and now they are thinking "Oh my god he is talking about me!" Well I am talking about you...yeah you...the person reading these exact words, hello to you.
*MIND BLOWN*
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After seeing the things I have seen from breaking through on DMT, it's very difficult for me to believe there isn't some sort of alternate reality that truly is real.
Simply put, the things/places/beings I have seen while on DMT are so far beyond conception, and so incredibly detailed and intricate and frakking real, I find it very difficult to believe it's all just being produced in the mind. (Who knows for sure, but damn, I'm sure some of you understand what I'm saying).
I find it interesting that DMT dosage tends to work inversely compared to most other drugs.. As in, with virtually any drug out there, the higher the dose you take, your experience becomes fuzzier, hazier, more abstract, more confusing (with some drugs you could call this getting more fucked up). DMT is the opposite. The higher the dose of DMT you take, the more clear, detailed, intricate, and real the experience becomes, almost as if it's allowing you to see something that's really there that you couldn't see before.
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LordBiron
I'm sorry this has been buggin me, but.
Who gives a fuck if you went to Oxford?
I know this gives your intellect something to stand behind, but my question, more of a statement is.
Intellect does not need anything to stand behind it.
It stands on its on!
No one gives a fuck if you went to Oxford!
Correction
I don't give a fuck where you went. Just my opinion!