A corrections (in all caps) to the second to the last sentence of my below post:
"I fear that truly mind-altering drugs, if use too widely, could DECREASE,
rather than INCREASE, the chance that humanity will fare well --- as
civilization, as we know it, is increasingly and more rapidly distorted by
the momentous changes that face us."
-----Original Message-----
From: Ed Porter [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, November 24, 2008 1:30 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [agi] Entheogins, understainding the brain, and AGI
Since I assume Ben, as well as a lot of the rest of us, want
the AGI movement to receive respectability in the academic and particularly
in the funding community, it is probably best that other than brain-science-
or AGI-focused discussions of the effects of drugs should not become too
common on the AGI list itself. Ben, of course, is the ultimate decider of
that.
I remember the excitement I had over 3 to 4 decades ago when
I experimented with psychedelics (although at relatively low dosages), so I
can sympathize with the enthusiasms of current experimenters. And I find
some of the written accounts of such experiments that I have read on the web
to be very thoughtful, at time reminiscent, and very interesting from a
brain science/AGI point of view. But right now I am sufficiently busy with
more concrete realities that I am not in the market for such encounters.
I do think psychedelic experiences can shed valuable light
on the extent to which all perception is hallucination, just normally it is
well turned and controlled hallucination.
For example, the experiences some have reported, including
off list in this discussion, of the sense of 3+1 D spacetime being
shattered, or being perceived as very different, is not a surprise if one
considers that your normal perception of space and time is an extremely
complex and carefully controlled hallucination. If you substantially remove
that control, it is not surprising that, for example, a cubist-like
deconstruction of special perception might occur. After all, your mind has
to stitch together its normal visual continuousness of 3D spatial reality
from stereographic projections onto V1, which because of jerky saccades of
the eye, are a rapid, disjointed, succession of grossly fish-eyed
projections. So when psychedelics interfere with the normal process of
stitching together projections from V1 and/or V2 and from remembered
matching patterns of shapes and objects --- each having their own set of
dimensions --- it is not surprising that a very different perception of
space could arise, including a perception of a dis-joint set of many more
than than 3+1 dimensions.
With regard to perceptions of direct communicating with a
myriad of other consciousnesses, such as elves, this is not surprising
either, since the concept of unity of consciousness is also a construct
generated by mental behavior and mental models, as is the construct of 3D
space. Your brain is capable of generating many voices, many senses of
awareness at once. But it normally works best, for generating behavior that
helps humans survive, to have a greater, more distinct divide between what
is conscious and what is kept in the subconscious, so that greater focus on
the problems and behaviors at hand can be achieved.
I am not, in any way trying to belittle the importance, nor
"realness" of psychedelic experiences, but I am saying that my study of
brain science and my own experiences decades ago with psychedelics make me
think that one cannot always trust one's perceptions, particularly when one
is on psychedelics.
All perception can be considered hallucinations, that is,
constructs of the brain --- but some hallucinations are more valuable for
certain tasks than others.
I think psychedelics, if properly used, can be of sufficient
worth, in helping humans better understand our own minds and spirits and
their relationship to reality --- that --- if our society were more rational
--- it probably should have some limited ritualized used of psychedelics, as
have many primitive societies. But it is not clear to me yet how rational
our society is capable of being, particularly if drug use is too widely
spread. Our society is changing so rapidly that much of traditional folk
wisdom is out of date, and much of what has replaced it has be generated by
commercially driven culture, that is, by its very nature exploitative.
I think such drugs can have great danger of removing people
from important aspects of reality. As humanity starts spiraling ever faster
into the wormhole of the singularity, and as the world becomes more and more
crowded, polluted, and competitive, and the have-nots increasingly have more
power, and as the media can provide increasingly seductive non-realities,
and as machine superintelligences increasingly decrease the relative value
of human work and human thought, I fear that truly mind-altering drugs, if
use too widely, could increase, rather than decrease, the chance that
humanity will fare well --- as civilization, as we know it, is increasingly
and more rapidly distorted by the momentus changes that face us.
But I am 60 years old, so maybe my viewpoint is out of date.
Ed Porter
-------------------------------------------
agi
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