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'1) Just so, and I didn't mean to imply that I personally believe the shamans' version of how their medicine works. Regardless of their beliefs, mine, or anyone else's, however, it does; there's no way people would continue to come back, over millennia, to what can be one of the most harrowing experiences I can conceive, if it didn't. 2) Moreover, there are documented studies, done by genuine lab-coat-wearing scientist types, with measured doses and control groups and everything, that detail its effects, and its unambiguous efficacy. It's only the prevailing sentiment towards psychedelic compounds, and the restrictions on their study that engenders, that have prevented the kind of exploration I think we'd both like to see -- which is the point TFA was making in the first place.' 1) You're talking about a very small number of people, relatively speaking, over a very long period of time, compounded with a lot of mostly second hand, passed down knowledge that has absolutely no recorded data, ie: at best a ton of correlation without causation (correct me if I'm wrong). Humans have been wrong many times before like this, and for just as long, under similar circumstances. 2) You're talking about something very specific, reproducible, and testable. I don't mean to be culturally insensitive, but there is a very real and demonstrably greater value to this kind of information. |