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Comment by HopenHeyHi | Hacker News Reader

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I’ve been disappointed lately by the strategy of some lobbying organizations to use science to push an agenda that has nothing to do with science, and more to do with some spirituality coming as a consequence of individual psychedelic awakenings. The psychedelic community still has a lot of work to do in order to manage noetic insights in a rational manner.

Except there are pretty strong indications of medical benefits to MDMA and psilocybin in therapy for things like PTSD and treatment resistant depression. Studies are frustratingly limited because of the extreme scheduling of the drugs that lasted for decades.

I believe in the medical potential of compounds like MDMA and I don’t think the science is especially flawed. What I’m questioning is the motivation of some lobbying organizations’ members.

But do you believe it because of the science or because you really really want to believe it? That's a serious question. I don't expect a ready answer.

I started with really wanting to believe it, and personal experiences have made it more mixed. I keep believing because of science, but the antiscientific attitude of some of the psychedelic community makes me wary about the future.

Your forgot to mention one more possible case: it is not science because of some political reasons.

Research was made impossible for 30 years but now there’s a thriving literature.

How much time and how many countries are there in your definition of "now"? And how on Earth the Pihkal has been published exactly 30 years ago if the research was "impossible"?

> We just need a Timothy Leary type professor to kick off this decade into what is clearly set to be a repeat of the 1960s.

I registered an account for the day via Tor, I encourage others to do so while that's possible. (In a non-abusive way.)

American Millennial here. Sorry... United States resident. Gotta be mindful 'America' has many countries...

We don't need some professor handing out acid tabs, we need professors who avoid politics entirely but strongly encourage their students to vote, then educate them such that we repeal the bullshit drug laws Nixon passed back during Vietnam as a way to coerce those who wouldn't fight in that travesty.

To be fair, I've actually not tried LSD, the one time I was offered it was the night before I presented at a workshop. (I mistrusted the person, since when I said "Uh, I read on Erowid it lasts for about 8 hours and makes you stay up, maybe tonight's a bad night" they got aggrieved... every other time I just said "hey, I've never tried it before I'm gonna stick to beer but let me know if you need help finding your way out of this techno bunker" and it was very live and let live.)

What we NEED is a relaxation around cannabis. It doesn't... permeate... in the same way tobacco smoke does, it doesn't last as long as psychadelics, and a bad "trip" isn't as intense.

Ever since Google was founded I've seen people be weird about drug use in hiring and firing, paired with the alternate path of "serving your country" in order to trade salary for security.

Why should I go work for the FBI or NSA for a couple years, ignore illegal activity, then quit in a huff having been put through an expensive program, in terms of time and the sense that you are taking a slot away from others who could do useful work if they put them on CSAM instead of drug shit?

For those of us who have a very specific set of skills, the phreaks and weirdos, it's wintry economic climate out there if you don't want to kill brown people with robots, but do want to protect the homeland, because time and time again the folks who claim to want to protect us try to coerce us into weakening the internet, especially if you didn't go to an "elite" school.

A concept that's interesting in our world since for example, Harvard's kinda down there in the ranking for CS. (The times folks refuse to listen to 'the data" are often the biggest tells.)

> we need professors who avoid politics entirely but strongly encourage their students to vote, then educate them such that we repeal the bullshit drug laws Nixon passed back during Vietnam as a way to coerce those who wouldn't fight in that travesty.

I don't understand, because encouraging students to vote and educating them to be anti-strict drug law are both political positions.

> we need professors who avoid politics entirely

We desperately need that, yes. It is much too late, unfortunately.

You mean that we're going back to the Moon? Maybe even Mars?

No, a MK Ultra reboot.

Pretty sure that is happening too. You might even be an unwitting participant right now.

Bet Manson type murders will happen as well. Race riots. A Kennedy type young president will show up and get assassinated. There will be a new space race, this time with China. AI Beatles-type mega band will emerge. A crowdsourced Woodstock some place. Sit ins, sleep ins. People on TV growing out their hair.

Time is a flat circle man. History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

>A Kennedy type young president will show up and get assassinate

RFK Junior, whose father and uncle were killed by the CIA, is literally running for president! And running on an anti-establishment platform too; the CIA must be licking their lips at the chance to take out another Kennedy.

I think we're doing just fine with Rick Doblin at MAPS.

To pull a quote from Hunter S Thompson:

"We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled that 60's. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel."

I love this quote so much . It is rly nailing a certain view of the 60s and explains much of the coming 70s. There is also another quote in the book about reaching the high water mark and the wave coming back….

Awesomeness book about the end of the 60s

the wave speech:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUgs2O7Okqc

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

Thompson was just disillusioned. He most certainly saw everything Leary did. That’s what fed his sardonicism.

Where we’re going now is possibly stranger than Leary imagined. But definitely in line with what he hoped. Check out Andrew Gallimore’s research and writing (Okinawa Institute of Science and Tech)

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