Do Psychedelics Just Provide Comforting Delusions? | Hacker News Reader

Do Psychedelics Just Provide Comforting Delusions?

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5 pointspmoriarty7 comments

"The thought experiment says there's an incredibly advanced virtual reality machine that you can hook yourself up to if you want. You can program it to give you the most rich, rewarding, satisfying virtual reality experiences for as long as you like. You don't have to know it's virtual, it can be subjectively indistinguishable from an incredibly wonderful life in the real world. The question some people ask is psychological one of: would you plug in? But the question is actually the normative one: Should you plug in? Would it be a good decision for you to do that?

"Nozick thinks, and a lot of other people have agreed that, no, you shouldn't. Or, at least, that if you did, you would be sacrificing something important--knowledge of reality."

But it's an open question whether in the ordinary state of consciousness itself one knows reality.

There are plenty of philosophies and religions, such as the various forms Buddhism, Hinduism, and Gnosticism, which deny the reality of the ordinary world, and posit a transcendent reality.

There have also been more "scientific" theories about the world being a virtual reality construct, and of philosophical thought experiments which considered the possibility of us being "brains in vats" or of other people being "philosophical zombies", and so on.

Reality is very slippery, and even if Letheby is right that most philosophers are naturalists, that doesn't give them a monopoly on truth.

A sysadmin colleague of mine once put it best: "The trouble with drugs is they make every thought return exit code 0".

I think in a generation or so we will look back to all this positive press drugs get these days and wonder what the hell where people smoking.

Ahh yes, all drugs do the same thing and are all bad right? Caffeine should be banned.

I found that I experienced something similar on stuff as light as adderal/vyvanse/focalin or cigarettes.

As someone who has taken most of the stuff out there I agree with trabant that they help return exit 0, and think it's proportional to the euphoria the drug produces.

I don't think we need to ban them but we need to be honest with ourselves that we're sticking cattle prods in our brains, and to enjoy them for what they are :)

Perhaps I should have included /s Prohibition is not the answer, and while programming comparisons may have their place, comparing thoughts to a program is not accurate, especially when discussing psychoactive compounds. Different drugs do vastly different things in the brain.

That’s just it though, drugs don’t make “every” thought return 0. Psychedelics often reveal the recursive or “loop-y” nature of our thought processes.

Drugs do not reveal anything, they change how signals are processed. Thought loops are a very common effect with 5ht agonists and nmda antagonists.

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