drugs - idiocy or insight?

cheers guys, interesting debate but I gotta go to work. I wish I could stay at home and get stoned instead.

 

It's true I was generalising, I made that statement myself. I also made clear I was talking about 'psychoactive substances', drugs which change patterns of thought. 'Performance enhancing' drugs in thinking would be stimulants, not psychotropic compounds which actually alter brain activity, perception and the effects of neurotransmitters.

I doubt this is true. He may well have used the experience to retard his brain, allowing him ultimately to think new things in new ways. But actually figuring out the structure of the DNA molecule? Doing that hard, logical, detailed, complex work? No. He would not have done that while in the middle of an LSD trip. He may well have done it just afterwards, using the experience by the processes I've already outlined to feed into his thinking by helping him to break patterns of thought and have new ideas, but that's not the same thing.

 

Interestingly all I can find on the Crick / LSD thing are anecdotes about him running about yelling "I've discovered the meaning of life!" He certainly used LSD, it may have been an aid in the paradigm-shifting sense I've described, but to move from that to a statement such as "he discovered the structure of the DNA molecule while on LSD" is rather a large step...

 

Hey guys! check it out! I can actually log in from the office! I thought they would have an internet block on forums like this. Anyway, I think you need to blur the boundary between being 'on' LSD and being straight. The effect of these experiences can stay with you and alter your paradigm for ever. So, I don't see as it really matters whether Crick was actually tripping his nuts off at the exact moment he made his breakthrough or not. We can't simply claim 'look! drugs make you clever', because that's clearly not the case for everybody. What I will say is this, How come all the best music is made by or for people who are high. ;P

 

I'm sure this is true, but LSD is a chemical compound which has known effects on brain function, and when levels of the compound in the bloodstream fall away 'normal' brain function usually returns. So I think you can make a distinction between when someone is "on" LSD and when they are not, even though some of the effects may last.

 

As logical as you are being, lithium, you are still assuming that the ability to form rational judgments is inherently more desirable than whatever happens when these synapses are closed off, or whatever happens. You cannot devalue any 'insight' people believe to have had in scientific terms, because they have had an intensely personal experience which they can interprete in any way they see fit. If (and i know this is a big if) there are no objective truths, because our lives are all filtered through our senses, then drugs are just widening the realms of our experience of the world - in other words, we can't talk about an insight as if it is the recognition of some objective truth (the way people have been using it) because there is no truth to understand. If you believe this, and i know lots of you won't, then trips are just another, more markedly different experience, just as our experience of life (perception and processing of sense-data) will change minutely if we've just had a coffee, or run a race.

I don't think i've argued this very well - please tear it apart to save me from having to look through it and strengthen it, and then i'll respond - the idea is all sorted in my head, if not on the page.

 

discovery is half art/imagination, half science, right? hell, i've never done hallucinogens, terrified of them. but te biggest geniuses i've ever stumbled across have done well with very occaisional use. though they were a little scary.

 

I see what you're saying jay, but the kind of insight I think we're talking about are ones which are (or claim to be) a discovery of something objectively truthful about the world. The structure of DNA is a very good example of a real insight, a real discovery about the way something really works.

Of course you can argue that nothing is objectively true, but in practical terms we don't really think like that, we are prepared to accept knowledge if it is supported by evidence, and to deduce real facts about real reality from logical reasoning.

I don't think rational thinking is necessarily more "desirable" but it is more "truthful" in terms of discovering how things actually work as nearly as we can. In terms of widening experience and playing with perception, that's what drugs are good for, but it's really this idea that you can use them to get closer to the truth that bothers me.

Yes yes, there is no such thing as objective truth, but I'd say you will probably accept that New Zealand is a country or that Noel Edmonds is a twat based on evidence. If you take a substance that makes you think that New Zealand is a fish or Noel Edmonds is a top bloke, then those experiences, no matter how true they may seem, are demonstrably and provably wrong according to the standards of evidence we understand are required.

 

I know this is poncy to talk about getting deep into a trip, being spiritual and seeing a world that feels, looks and sounds different when on mushrooms. But for me it's about accepting that we just don't know; and when talking about objective or empirical evidence its as if we are watching the world as shadows cast on the wall so we aren't seeing true reality, and I really have a strong belief that mushrooms have taken me close to that ulitmate state of reality. OK. Yeah, man fare out. OK.

 

I would'nt argue about fish or Noel Edmonds or whatever. Consensus reality demonstrates observable characteristics which can be verified to create rules, which are suitable for purpose within that consensus reality. Drugs can't change that (Unless, maybe Noel Edmonds took the drugs).

Paradoxically, I think that both sides of the argument so far presented are actually true, by their own qualification of that term. Drugs may inhibit, or bypass the constraints of rational thinking, but rationality may not actually be equipped to percieve truth.

I actually believe that there IS an objective truth about the nature of the universe, but this cannot be perceived by cognitive rational thinking. The truth is that time and space do not exist and that the apparent multiplicity and separation, both of mind and body that we percieve in the consensus reality is an illusion. Realisation of the non existance of time and space is a conceptual leap too far for the rational mind, which is itself, created from a perception of time and space.

If, as I believe, the ultimate objective truth is that time and space are illusions then the breakdown of this mental framework through the action of psychotropic drugs may actually facilitate that realisation. The universe is weirder than you can actually imagine. To percieve objective truth, you have to leave your rational mind at the door because that is only a product of subjective truths. I believe that psychoactive drugs allow the mind to explore ideas which are not supported by sensory experience within a newtonian paradigm, but which are, nevertheless, or even by definition more 'real'

 

I can remember every realisation I had on ecstasy for months even years after, but they are quite personal realisations nothing earth shattering to anyonelse, but to me they meant a lot, I learned how to personally progress through it and to temper ambition with reality, and to expect less of other people, and how to achieve what I wanted to achieve, all because of those fundamental awarenesses self realisations I had on ecstasy.

I also saw how the human world was just as beautiful as the natural world, because the human world is part of the natural world. I saw cities from a distance that looked like a galaxy of stars, and a festival that from a distance looked like an alien space ship had landed

it was genius stuff alright that ecstasy and yeah drugs give you self insight but no huge answers that will solve all your problems or the worlds problems, just a few solutions not many and not all

 

Some interesting points, this is a fascinating discussion

While you are right that the universe is weirder than we can possibly imagine, and that our perception is incredibly limited and partial, I think you are begging the question by assuming that drugs somehow are capable of providing a "key" to a truer reality than you otherwise have access to. You certainly experience a "weird" reality, but why assume this weirdness is anything to do with the actual objective weirdness of the universe that we are coming to understand through quantum physics? There seems to me no basis for that assumption. Why assume the version of reality you perceive when twatted off your nut is any more real or accurate than the one you perceive while sober - isn't it by your logic just a different kind of inaccuracy?

And by my logic, it's a different kind of inaccuracy coupled with an impairment of the only faculties we have for overcoming the subjective partiality of our senses - rational inquiry.

 

I am pretty sure it is true. At least, that it is true that he said he did, but I can think of any reason that he would say that, being the respected scientist that he was. What said was that he figured out the double-helix structure to dna while on lsd, he had been working on the problem for some amount of time and knew the chemicals involved but not how they fit together. Upon later analysis of his chemical model, it was proven to be correct. http://www.miqel.com/entheogens/francis_crick_dna_lsd.html

I am not sure why you think that any "psychoactive" necessarily causes the brain to work less efficiently or "retarded". Many psychoactive chemical are very similar chemically to endogenous brain chemicals, and some like dmt and harmaline, nature occur in the brain, so it is not something foreign to it. The exact nature of how psychedelics work in brain has not been scientifically figured out, so their really isn't a scientific basis to your argument. If you look around the world, most people don't act rationally in the first place(even without the use of drugs) nor have realization and insights at all. If using one's imagination (whether stimulated by drugs or naturally) is "retarded" then we might as well go back to living in caves.

Dr Kary MullisNobel Prize Winner for Chemistry in 1993 and inventor of PCR, a method for detecting even the smallest amount of DNA in ancient materials. "Would I have invented PCR if I hadn't taken LSD? I seriously doubt it," he says. "I could sit on a DNA molecule and watch the polymers go by. I learnt that partly on psychedelic drugs."


Richard Feynman, also a Noble Prize winner had been know to use LSD.

You may also find this interesting http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/grofnnth.htm
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/staf3.htm

 

the only 'key' to my understanding about all this is that the entire universe, including you, me and all the inorganic matter and chemicals in it is one boundless sentient being. you and I may have our own sentience, but the universe as a whole contains both of these and more. Therefore, one singular human mind, acting alone, is incapable of accessing the self-aware universal consciousness, but dd3 raises the interesting point that many of these chemicals are similar, the same, or can substitute for those that naturally occur in the human brain. If the truth is that we are all parts of a universal interconnected whole, then the human brain, which is confined to the cranium is not the complete universal brain, but only a tiny little bit of it. Our true brain system extends throughout the universe and uses all of the psychoactive chemicals in it. Even the recent artificial ones like LSD etc. created by humans. We are part of nature and the apparent evolution of the living universe too.

 

That is possibly one of the biggest "ifs" I have ever seen! Making assumptions about the universe being a sentient being is a huge leap of reasoning (the kind you may well make while on drugs) which has no rational basis, and again you beg the question. You claim that drugs in some way bring you closer to this realisation, but I'd suggest it works in the same way as religious revelation - this is a simplistic assumption (an apparently complex one) you may like to make, which appeals, but really it does none of the actual work of explaining anything! And therefore, I would suggest, is not an "insight".

 

An interesting post. But what I repeatedly see being demonstrated is that the use of hallucinogens is being used as a tool to liberate the mind from preconceptions, not a vehicle for insight. Again we return to the question of whether someone who had not spent months or years studying any particular question would have had any kind of "insight" after taking LSD if they had not had the rational faculties to do so in the first place along with the extensive scientific knowledge required. The question seems to elicit an obvious "no".

Quotes like this:
"Cambridge academics used LSD in tiny amounts as a thinking tool, to liberate them from preconceptions and let their genius wander freely to new ideas."
Demonstrate the point I make, that drugs may well be useful in the sense of shifting frames, disrupting the thinking process (demonstrably a useful tool in "lateral" thinking), but in themselves they provide nothing more than this. This is a different claim from the one I'm questioning, the commonplace assumption that drug taking is capable of making you have deeper or more insightful thoughts. The idea that they enhance thinking is flawed (an interesting coincidence that only geniuses seem to benefit!), but what they can do is defamiliarise thinking.

Defamiliarising thinking may well be the cause of the common belief that the things you think are profound when on drugs - when in fact they are usually nothing of the sort - and it is this observed effect which made me use the idea of idiocy or retardation. This defamiliarisation if employed in the sense of a lateral perspective may well be valuable, but to have profound thoughts following such defamiliarisation it seems you need to be a genius in the first place. And any such insights are only ever a consequence of rational cognition - the lateral defamiliarisation feeding into this rational process by allowing someone perhaps to break patterns of thinking and employ their rationality in a fresh way following the unfamiliar experience. So can we really say that it is the drugs that provided the insights we're talking about where scientists may have used them as a "thinking tool"? No, I don't think we can. What the drugs did in these rare cases was make the world strange and unfamiliar, helped them to apply imagination to the thinking process, but it was the application of these gifted individuals' rationality which resulted in insight.

 

Yeh i make sure sense but i don't have a reason to be helping with the drugs policy as it makes me shit myself with my gf and i don't like people who are all the time taking drugs and making a tit of themselves like me when i take drugs, some of them.

 

That the universe is one unified sentient being is not in doubt for me. I know it because I am it. It just depends if you are able to percieve it or not and obviously you are not. Oh well, I tried. Have it your own way, I don't care, I'm going to live forever

It may sound like my views are getting more and more abstract and complicated in order for me to make a point, but what I'm saying couldn't be more simple, which is, in fact, the nature of truth. Everything is one and that explains everything. It is only the rational mind which makes everything seem complicated because it is born out of untruths.

Anyway, live long and prosper, or whatever...

 

Sorry, I can't hack the collective consciousness thing - all that 19th century german philosophy is great, but i've never been able to connect with it. I'd like to understand it the way you do, just for 10 minutes, just to see what it's like.

Well-argued lithium, your infernal pragmatism is very difficult to combat. Just in case anyone's forgotten, this (although fascinating) is not the real issue - it doesn't matter whether it's idiocy or insight if you're having fun. It all boils down to individual happiness and ensuring the happiness of others, and if drugs are pleasurable for you, and you believe that the benefits outweigh any perceived dangers, then go out into the world and trip.

 

Hah, I like the "infernal pragmatism". 'Eternal pragmatist' should go on my tombstone. It's a fascinating discussion with great points made on all sides. I'm quite proud It's by encountering other people's thoughts that we are better able to refine our own thinking and discover new ideas.

And I agree entirely with you, having fun might well be the meaning of life. Either that or Prince Philip really is God as that tribe in Vanuatu seem to think...