Deepness of the human experience

>>9021035
yes, its more than that

thats the thought that kept coming back while on mushrooms thinking about math/physics

had just finished physics undergrad and tried them for the first (and probably only) time

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reminder to smoke salvia

>>9021035
>take psychedelic
>hallucinate profundity
>guys guys psychedelics are super important, I FEEL it
Please fuck off already

>>9021035
They are studying it in imperial college london using imaging etc and studying its uses in ment healtj. Ultimately though the introspective approach is too subjective to gain anything other than personal meaning. I also dont think it van solve anything about qualia

>>9021035
>Why isn't this a valid, scientific way to analyze the nature of consciousness? It is repeatable and anyone can try it.

I mean it is but that's like saying why isn't having pets the same as studying animal behavior. Yeah, it's similar but they have very clear differences.

>>9021035
I think consciousness arising from inorganic material is fascinating, but in no way contradicts Newtonian mechanics or Quantum theory.

I do not think there is "something else" out there, beyond materialism.

I have taken psychedelics, and I had a bad (but educational and valuable) trip. I learned where my emotions come from.

Another time, I had taken a strong pot brownie and I was playing with a small kitten. I was poking it and petting it and observing its reactions.

I learned to think of humans as simply inputs and outputs, behavior as simply reactions to current stimuli. Reactions that have been chosen, through billions of years of error, to lead to the best possible chance of survival and reproduction.

>>9021684
the psychedelic I took was shrooms.

acid is still on the bucket list

>>9021469
>obviously is not interested in this topic
>still feels the need to shit post in this thread

Get a job and stop pretending you know anything you fat NEET. Don't pull the "haha serves you right, I'm a grad student" card because I know that you are not.

>>9021685
Shrooms definitely hold more potential as a teacher while LSD is definitely more of a recreational experience. You can learn stuff from both and they are both equally worth trying, but I just kind of like shrooms better.

>>9021458
>be me
>smoke 10x extract, whole gram into the bong
>first puff, hold half a minute
>second puff, hold as long as i can
>there are three spacecrafts leaving the earth and one of them is next to me
>there is a family that i kicked out from our universe long time ago and they are trying to drill their way back into our universe
>stand up, but it's hard to keep balance, because im on a christopher-colombus-style-ship which is about to be capsized
>realize there is an entity there with me
>remember that i have met this entity before
>ask "is this your reality or my reality?" pointing to a green gluish substance that i'm holding
>dont remember the rest

Because people are ignorant and have a knee jerk reaction to small shit like cannabis.

Because why would the government, or whoever is in power, want the people to be self aware and try to get more awareness out of the world around them.

>do psys
>have extreme magical thinking
>assign rational meaning to it

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

It's the drugs friendo

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>>9022129
So are you denying the hard problem of consciousness, and the fact that psychs modify consciousness in extreme ways?

This is no magical thinking, consciousness has been a philosophical problem for thousands of years. Consciousness is the most immediate aspect of our personal realities yet when people talk about it they're ridiculed for quasi-spiritual thinking

I don't mean any of this in some spiritual or supernatural way, but rather in a scientific way entirely. Psychs are the best way to personally analyze the nature and quirks of consciousness. So I think there will be profound scientific value when we get near cracking the hard problem of consciousness.

This is a topic where a quick skim can make it seem pseudointellectual and metaphysical and all of that spiritual nonsense, but actually this stuff is all real. We can experience it therefore it is "real" in the sense that it is observable.

Are there any organisms who live in a constant state of ecstasy? Why can't there be apart from the fact that evolution wouldn't have caused this to happen because it's not advantageous

In the future when we can generate arbitrary biological beings, can we create conscious blob-brains that live in eternal heavens or hells? I believe so. Why not?

>>9021685

fuck acid, lasts far too long.

See a therapist

>>9021697
>pretends to know I don't have a job when I do
>pretends to know I'm a fat NEET when I'm not
Wow you sure showed me how stupid it is to pretend to know something. Fucking moron.

>>9021705
>Shrooms definitely hold more potential as a teacher while LSD is definitely more of a recreational experience.

Having some experience with both, I have to disagree. Both psilocin an LSD can be very valuable as learning tools as well as recreational drugs, but I really don't think that one is globally superior to the other. While psilocin in high doses tends to be more "profound" and encompassing, it is also quite chaotic and unpredictable (like most tryptamines), whereas LSD tends to produce a smoother trip that is easier to work with and integrate (in my experience). It is true that a spectacular breakthrough is harder to achieve on lysergamides than it is on tryptamines, however the information you can obtain on a mild to moderate LSD trip is more likely to remain in your memory and help you in sober life than the very intense but utterly alien and forgettable information you would get from a full plunge in hyperspace on mushrooms (although the latter can also be an enlightening experience in its own way).

>>9022148

why do you think psychedelics are going to solve the hard problem of consciousness? if we cant solve it in normal consciousness then how can we with psychedelics?

>>9022148
>So are you denying the hard problem of consciousness, and the fact that psychs modify consciousness in extreme ways?
No i'm trying to lead you to the answer that magical thoughts are maladaptive and while they can be fun you should leave it at that.

Experience reality for awhile and explore what mental illness looks like in young people. In some cases it's very similar to the thoughts you are having.

Take a homeless man who once told me that you could boil a specific leaf(i dont remember what one) for a exact amount of time, and drink the result to achieve eternal life, but that it was near impossible to create the potion successfully.

According to you
>We can experience it therefore it is "real" in the sense that it is observable.
In his mind, he meets all of the above criteria. THAT is magical thinking. Just like you, except his is permanent and yours is drug related.

>Psychs are the best way to personally analyze the nature and quirks of consciousness.
Absolutely not. Distorting qualia and thinking they have more meaning while distorted makes zero sense. You can analyze the nature of consciousness without drugs, i just don't think you will find it as interesting as analyzing the nature of consciousness ON drugs. Ghandi didnt need to do shrooms to understand the role unnecessary "wanting" played in suffering. Freud and Jung didnt drop acid to come up with their ideas.

You are just handwaving that there is something greater to be discovered by these hallucinations, which is just a part of the hallucination itself. You've not given one example of it, you have simply alluded to it over and over again.

As for the last two parts, that came out of nowhere and is completely unrelated?

>>9021035
don't stop looking

>>9022266
because adding a new perspective to a subject is how you learn more about it. is it really not that obvious?

>>9021035
I've done a lot of psychadelics and you're full of shit lmao

These drugs literally just make you dumber. They make you happy because its easy to be happy when you're dumb and they make you think you're being insightful and all connected because you massively overvalue very simple realizations and thoughts.

They are a fun experience, a better version of being drunk some might say, but that is all.

>>9021684
Yeah, but why does qualia exist?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelics_in_problem-solving_experiment

>>9022549
I'm not saying it makes you smarter while you're on it...

>>9022540

but how does that make any difference to the hard problem? unless you don't understand the hard problem.

>>9022561

i dont see the problem with qualia desu. what is the problem with it?

>>9022597
You can observe the formation of qualia and the framework of the perceptive process. Or do it the old fashioned way as reported in the Abhidhamma or the works of Abhinavagupta such as the Tantraloka.

>>9022633
we are observing qualia now though... you are not observing the formation of qualia, just seeing it change just as your perception changes when you turn around and look behind you...

>>9022674
You are not observing the formation of qualia, people on massive doses of psychedelics are, as well as contemplatives.

>>9022681
no they are not, they are just experiencing a change in perception because of a change in connectivity in their brains.

>>9022687
And doesn't a change in perception necessitate a change in qualia that can be observed? What's to stop you from observing the formation of qualia?

>>9022707

yes but we are doing this all the time... and theres no reason to think psychedelics is observing the formation of qualia in anyway that is different from our normal experience.

>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.

>>9022561
becuase a greater awareness lead to greater chance of survival

replaying stimuli (memory)
predicting future stimuli
a stress reaction to perceived stimuli (worrying about the future)

consciousness can be broken down into parts that have evolved over time. And ulimately, look around the world to see how successful the evolution of consciousness was. Successful enough to let us build cities, politics, etc

Scientists theorize (taken from Born to Run, the book) that much of consciousness evolved while hunting prey.

Predicting where prey would be, remembering the past habits of prey, putting yourself in the head of and thinking like that of a prey animal.

All these lead up to fully functioning consciousness.

>>9022807

Your'e confusing qualia and consciousness (or cognition in general I'd say)

>>9022605
It seems to me that the interplay between a conscious observer and qualia is irrelevant to a lifeform's survival and reproduction, and thus its existence isn't explained by evolution. I think a brain should work like a complex machine, where there is no need for qualia.

Look up the hard problem of consciousness, P-zombies, solipsism, or brain in a vat if you actually want to know more.

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>>9022976
>>9022148
Have you not read Dan Dennett my dude? Obviously there is no hard problem because qualia doesn't exist.

:^)

>>9022988

>where there is no need for qualia.

>>9021035
>Why do people dismiss this as hippy nonsense, as "just a drug"? It is "just a drug", but it's also a drug and also a good way to legitimately experience the result of a scientific experiment into the nature of the self
only materialists have faith in drugs

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So mkultra, foia, and remote viewing is all bullshit?

>>9021035
I've read that part of how acid works is that it makes every thought/experience/perception seem "novel," i.e. you experience everything as if you're experiencing it for the first time and nothing is being filtered out because you're used to it, and this is supposed to be responsible for the feeling of childlike wonder you get on a trip.

I don't know where I'm going with this, I just find the mechanisms of psychedelics super interesting.

>>9021035
Are you the faggot who has been making the worthless DMT threads for the past couple years?

>>9021705
I feel the opposite way honestly. My few LSD trips have been rough at times but valuable. The one time I took shrooms I watched two autistic guys get interviewed by Conan O'Brien and laughed for hours. But you know, set and setting and individual differences and all.

>I know psychedelics are just drugs, but why is it that discussions of psychedelics in particular seem to me to most accurately describe the human experience in its most animal, physical, immediate form?

It's what you expect the human experience to be.

>Psychedelics are jamming a screw driver in the gears of one's consciousness and seeing what happens. Why isn't this a valid, scientific way to analyze the nature of consciousness? It is repeatable and anyone can try it.

You are expecting science to be able to gather data from anecdotal descriptions of personal experiences, muddied by personal beliefs and biases.

>Why do people dismiss this as hippy nonsense, as "just a drug"?

Well, it could be medicine, but even if that's the case, it's still "just a drug."

>I don't know what I'm saying.
indeed.

>LITERALLY all we have for sure is qualia.
Wrong, we do have some objective truths, some we can not explain, like the laws of physics. N matter how subjective you make them, they work for everyone.

>>9023410
>N matter how subjective you make them, they work for everyone.

**No matter how subjective you make them, they work for everyone.

>>9022549
You're neglecting the beneficial long term effects they could have on your mood as a result of the thought patterns you develop on them which can be life changing.

>>9023410
>Wrong, we do have some objective truths, some we can not explain, like the laws of physics. N matter how subjective you make them, they work for everyone.
No actually you never personally verified Newtonian Mechanics you just have memories of the qualia of reading books about it

I'll spell this out in sperg language for you.

Altered consciousness mean there is a foreign agent affecting your ability to function normally. Colloquially, that is a "Drug." Not all drugs affect consciousness, but hallucination inducing drugs do.

Altered states of consciousness are no matter. They are sometimes enjoyable and a sneak peak into the mental operations of a nonoperational mind.

These drugs are a way to experience what can not be experienced normally. Whether it be shrooms, lsd or scorpion venom. It's all just different ways to experience your mind behaving differently.

Trust me, its better for your psyche to go hiking in the mountains for a few weeks alone and sober than to do drugs for a short lived and incredibly intense high.

>>9023415
Without proving Descrates-esque arguments like the evil demon, prove the laws are physics are wrong. Go

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>>9023415
lol everything is subjective if you think about it

>>9023414
u guys always forget that thousands of people get no benefit at all even when theyre told they would. then they start chhasing dragons

>>9023425
Laws of physics are conceptual models people have created. They are rules that have been abstracted from data gathered in the past. They are not necessarily objective truths.

Furthermore, he is right in that any knowledge gained by inductive reasoning presupposes the validity of one's own memories. And a memory can only be accessed in "the present" via qualia.

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>>9021685
>>9021705
>>9021035
I've studied neurobiology/ physiology as well as neuropsych and pathopsych for the last good few years in multiple majors/minors, looking to get a phd in clinical neuropsych. I've also been an artist and musician for most my life.

I've taken a bunch of acid and shrooms after having lost sincere and seemingly fruitful lifelong fundamentalist Faith, and acid is the closest thing to being spiritually born again that I have ever experienced.

There's a certain haze to shrooms as opposed to an intense rawness in acid. Shrooms kicks ass but doesn't come remotely close to providing an appreciation for the experience itself of which structure and physics conceptualize. There's a clear reason why it defined the cultural revolution of the 60s, and why it coincided with a cognitive revolution that merged eastern mindfulness with western philosophy of mind.

>>9021469
You're a fucking idiot. The greatest mediators and thinkers of mind and metaphysics for millennia practically worshipped psychedelics. Get your fuckin head put your ass.

>>9023470
>Laws of physics are conceptual models people have created.
Wrong, we can't even explain most of them.

> They are rules that have been abstracted from data gathered in the past.
Exactly.

>They are not necessarily objective truths.
No matter how much you feel or believe or want gravity to stop existing, it still exists and we are subject to it. Same for electromagnetism. No matter how high you get on mushrooms or morning glory seeds, magnets will continue to work as they are when you are sober.

>a memory can only be accessed in "the present"

Some things do not require memory or perception in order for them to occur.

Look at the pure astonishment this guy is experiencing. The pure sense of profundity. Yeah it's drug-induced, but when you feel it, it feels real. It's indescribable. It feels so important, so significant, so all-encompassing that it's literally impossible to describe with words accurately, that's why he's just saying "Holy fucking shit" over and over again.

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

Mushrooms just get you high. Sure, they can help as medicine for introspective therapy, but they are just medicine. The "epiphanies" you have on psychedelics are just your imagination running wild with a dose of gratification from dopamine and serotonin. You are being poisoned by a relatively harmless substance that fucks you up to the point that you believe most things that come into your altered mind.

You are fucking of your rocker when you take shrooms and that can be good and bad.

Because of talk like this I had a completely wrong expectation of what would happen. It didn't make me enlightened or unlock some hidden consciousness or anything, it made me fucking stupid. It was pretty fun but there's nothing magical about it, it just breaks your brain for a little while

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>>9023484
>There's a clear reason why it defined the cultural revolution of the 60s

...And how did that work out, in the long run?

Alternate theory: psychedelics permanently fuck up your interpretation of values and relationships pertinent to the material world, and you're permanently stuck in a nonsense happy land, where you think complicated issues have a simple resolution.

>>9023485
>No matter how much you feel or believe or want gravity to stop existing, it still exists and we are subject to it.

Maybe. But our current theory of gravity is not proven. If tomorrow gravity acted in an unexpected way, our scientific models would need to be reexamined. The fact that gravity has acted a certain way in the past does not prove that it will continue to act that way in the future. Imagine that our universe is a simulation. A modification of a variable by a programmer could drastically change how gravity acts. No matter how much you might feel or believe or want the old model of gravity to continue existing, it would have changed.

>Some things do not require memory or perception in order for them to occur.

Maybe, but the only way one could come to that conclusion is via sensory data perceived via qualia. And personally, I can't come to that conclusion without making a leap of faith. Literally everything I have ever experienced in my has been qualia.

>>9023508

why do you feel the need to separate qualia from the mechanics of the brain as if its a separate process with separate causes.

>>9023484
>flashes credentials
>yeah actually im here to clear things up
>proceeds to spout anecdotal balogena
>oh and other people who are the greatest swear by them to

who do you think you are fooling?

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>>9023508
>But our current theory of gravity is not proven.

Our fundamental understanding of gravity and its relationship to the overall structure of the universe and its associated forces isn't thoroughly understood.

It's a tad proven, however. Galileo, Newton and Kepler are famous for a reason.

>>9023535

very true, anon should understand that science is alot more complicated than prove/disprove statements.

Qualia may be the byproduct of the mechanics of the brain, but I can think of possible explanations of reality where it is not. The existence of qualia is self evident and undeniable. If you take a extreme Descartes-esque skepticism towards reality, you can deny that the existence of your own physical brain is fact. Some examples of similar extreme skeptical views that you can find on wikipedia are the brain in the vat thought experiment, Russell's five-minute hypothesis, and the dream argument.

>>9023535
>It's a tad proven
So in other words, it isn't proven. The pythagorean theorem, or any other math theorem for that matter, isn't a tad proven, it has been proven. Inductive evidence is crucial for the scientific method, and has helped humans predict things, but it doesn't prove things.

>>9023557
actually, id say that science often repeatedly flies in the face of inductive evidence

>>9023557
what are yout explanations?

>>9023575
I just started dreaming 2 minutes ago. When I think about the human brain, the memories that flood my mind about learning how the brain works during biology class in school are being fabricated on the fly by my dreaming subconscious mind, and are fictitious. When I wake up from my dream, I may not even be human.

That scenario sounds fanciful, but I can imagine it, and I can't disprove it, so I consider it a possible reality. The point I was trying to make was that I can't imagine any situation in which qualia is not real, and that is a subtle, but real difference between qualia and the byproduct of the human brain's mechanisms(which I can imagine as not real).

>>9023606

how is that valid? and obviously you cant imagine qualia not being real if you imagine things through your experience... "can something exist without being percieved?"

you should look up george berkeley. he makes a fantastically convincing effort at trying to prove that that the material world doesnt exist.

http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/3dialogues/

we know there is a mapping between the brain and experience though. i dont think qualia needs to be made into a separate thing. qualia is redundant. it has no implications in the world that can't be explained through the brain.

>>9021458
>salvia
>never again

>be me
>be drunk
>friend offers me salvia
>fuckken why not?
>take the whole bowl as was intended
>hold the hit, as is required
>blow it out
>whole vision fades to black
>rectangular spiral: red, yellow, and blue
>there's a face at the end of the tunnel
>its the fucking devil
>I have at this point completely forgotten that I am on drugs
>pretty much accepted tricolor spiral as my NATIVE reality
>I try to scream
>I HAVE NO MOUTH WITH WHICH TO SCREAM
>regain my senses

>never again

>>9021685
>>9022186
It lasts as long as is required.

what I'm saying is...

~14 hours. set a day and the next morning aside for it.

>>9022221
sounds like something a NEET would say

>>9023621
I think extreme skepticism is a valid philosophical position, and it is useful if only because it forces us to sort the things we can and can't prove, which I think is fruitful for humbling oneself and getting a better understanding of the world.

In regards to qualia, I think it is useful in the role it plays in skepticism. It could also be a term applied to animals and computers in the future when discussing animal rights and artificial intelligence rights in the future. Whether or not a computer program can feel pain is a question about qualia.

>>9023529
>flashes credentials
OP asked whether or not drugs are a respectable form of studying the mind. I was giving relevant background info regarding my personal study of mind and psychedelics. Stay butthurt NEET

>yeah actually im here to clear things up
Butthurt like a mofo

>proceeds to spout anecdotal balogena
I was describing a personal experience in response to a question regarding personal experience. Christ man you sound retarded

>oh and other people who are the greatest swear by them to
You just might be a retard

>who do you think you are fooling?
Alright lol

>>9023624
>pretty much accepted tricolor spiral as my NATIVE reality
Holy shit LOL

I know that feel

>Wait a minute, that whole thing where I went to school and had parents and a family and had arms and stuff was all fake. I'm actually just a squirly line thing in this floating area. Shit. This is the uncomfortable truth I've been avoiding my whole (((life)))

>>9023505
It did tremendous good and bad. Also not the point at all.

You're alternative theory is not only pulled out of your ass seemingly in desperate attempt to dismiss something you're uncomfortable and ignorant of, but contradicts countless established relevant intellectuals and meditators who've studied the issue appropriately.

>>9023643
but it cant be applied since we cannot validate whether an animal or computer has qualia

>>9023529
Also, your incessant use of green text to beg the question instead of actually making a direct point is Trump tier shit, which total props for if trolling.

>>9023671
>>9023690
you win all the marbles

>>9023671
>>9023690
holy shit are you 12
this is an anonymous board you don't need to shipost and fuck up the board just to try and win the internet argument

>>9023484
>The greatest mediators and thinkers of mind and metaphysics for millennia practically worshipped psychedelics
You are so lost kid, I hope you said that ironically.

>>9023704
are you being ironic?

>>9023681
>intellectual
>meditators
M Y S I D E S
Y

S
I
D
E
S

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>>9024333
checked

>>9023751
Hey man it's chill I'm a great thinker of mind and metaphysics I flunked out of community college cause the system doesn't be facilitate REAL creativity man I went to half the classes (all on acid) and slept thru my finals cause I was up all night on acid but I'm SO CLOSE to figuring out the universe like no one has before I'm working fast food rn but one day I'm gonna be great and famous mediator

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This dude talked about his reasoning why he thins that in the mushroom state there is contact with the other like an alien or something that is not you maybe its extraterestrial or some kind of gaian mind or the collective unconscious. What do you guys think about this?

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>>9024348
top kekerino neighborino