[peatfreak]

I was taking this article seriously until I arrived at the Terrence McKenna bit. His opinions are highly subjective, based on personal experience with drugs, and they aren't a compelling, testable, or comparable line of thought. Not to mention that TM is pretentious as hell and basis his whole outlook on life on doing loads of DMT (he hardly talks about anything else).

[bandyaboot]

> I was taking this article seriously until I arrived at the Terrence McKenna bit.

Is possible to think some parts are good and other parts not so good?

[travisjungroth]

That's not fair, he also talked about doing loads of mushrooms.

Quote is in number 14 if anyone wants to read it themselves. You'll also see that the Ayn Rand quote mentioned in the sibling comment comes with critical commentary.

Re: testability

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf0fLKjCKHA&t=73s

"So then the people who don't do psychedelics say 'well this is something it's like channeling or all this other stuff'. No it isn't, because we are not like those people. I mean, I maintain this rigorously, that our bit is intellectual rigor, not airheadedness. We're willing to put as much pressure on the ideas as you want we just believe in fairness. So, that it's not ipso facto that there's no such thing as elves. It's that if you think there are elves, prove it to me! Well, then the problem is that the skeptic, the critic, says, 'well the notion that are elves is just, you know, you're sadly deluded. You're living in your own private Idaho.' But then, you say, 'well, the proof of the pudding is a 15-minute DMT trip. Are you willing to carry on this criticism after having made the experiment, sir?' I mean, we're not like UFO enthusiasts. We're not telling you to stand in cornfields in the dead of night and pray. No, no, this will work! This will work on you, you the reductionist, you the doubter, you the constipated egomaniacal father-dominator. It'll work! And they say at that point 'You know, you are a menace, is what you are!'.

[snapplebobapple]

The bullshit jobs and authenticity reference wasn't enough to write the guy off as a butthurt marxist doing more harm than good because he won't be pushing the actual incremental improvements we need for our system of free markets that actually works relatively well? He is going to have some grandiose reimagining of the system from some base principles (that are wrong).