Comment by stinos | Hacker News Reader

Comment by stinos | Hacker News Reader

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Note I'm not claiming the filtration theory is true or false - I also have doubts about it - I'm just saying your rejection of it based on 'we don't see such effects because of brain damage ergo the theory doesn't hold' isn't exactly sound. Actually I'm not sure you can use brain damage to prove anything here. It's also too general of a term for me. As far as I'm concerned a serious head trauma where part of the brain is removed as well as a lesion applied locally for the purpose of neurophysiological research are both brain damage.

If the hypothesis was true, we would expect the effects of brain damage to reliably create a richer and more psychedelic experience for the sufferer.

Why 'reliably'? Not all brain damage is the same. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the theory but I don't think it argues that, nor is it what happens in reality.

Also, why at all? Why would certain brain damage not be able to create a less rich experience? The theory doesn't say that is impossible I think?

I'm not saying that filtration theory is false, I'm saying it seems less likely to me than the following alternative: The chemical composition of a sober persons brain causes us to have the usual experience, but taking a substance like psilocybin alters the chemical balance and therefore makes us have unusual experiences. It seems like I have to suppose more assumptions under filtration theory, and that those new assumptions are unfounded and that the consequences of accepting filtration theory leads to predictions that aren't true (vis a vis brain damage).

Which brings us to why I tried to make the point about brain damage. Since we are working with the idea that psychedelic experience is the default but that the brain is filtering out most of it, it seems to follow that strategically damaging the filter should allow psychedelic experiences to flow through. You're right, not all brain damage is the same, but enough people suffer similar brain damage that I believe we ought to have seen by now some subset of patients with certain types of trauma reliably report psychedelic experiences as part of their symptoms. If such a subset exists, then I stand corrected.

The brain damage caused by psychedelics is extremely specific. By your logic, tonsillitis shouldn't be curable by removing the tonsils, because if it were, then shooting someone in the mouth with a shotgun ought to produce similar effects to performing a tonsillectomy.

Sorry but I don't see how that follows from my logic at all. Would you please care to clarify how you reached that conclusion starting from some assumption I made?

enough people suffer similar brain damage

Problem is that is quite hard to assess if it is sufficiently similar. That alone warrants an entire range of experiments. Also I don't know the literature enough to figure out if certain types of trauma reliably lead to similar experiences but I do think that is the case. For example electrical stimulation (not 'damage' per se but definitely altering the normal brain operation in subjects) has been repeatedly used to treat a myriad of problems like tinitus, tremors, ... And I know for a fact that during surgery, when attempting to find the right position for the electorde, it is not uncommon for patients to experience hallucinations/strong feelings of disgust/... because stimulating in the 'wrong' area instead of the proper target area. Also look at lobotomy for instance: quite a lot of similar symptoms in the unlucky subjects. Again: doesn't really prove filtration, but does indicate what you think doesn't happen (ie.strategical damage causing similar experiences) does in fact happen so it's imo not a good measure to reject the hypothesis.

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