[rcktmrtn]

> Without certain chemicals, you can't have certain thoughts.

Well put and true -- just like machines let us do certain things we couldn't do without them (either extending or repairing our body/mind), the same for chemicals. But I don't agree that this obviously follows:

> Chemistry is what's running the show.

It all depends on what you define as the show. I would prefer to think of the show as something that takes place outside of my head and, even assuming it is reducible to chemistry/physics, it's part of a system way to complex for us to understand with mechanical models and necessitates some sort of framework where each individual is an end unto themselves.

Drugs can go a long way to recreate the sensations similar to sympathy and possibly even jumpstart it, but they can't actually create the intellectual side of the link that creates real living relationship in the real world. Having the tools to decouple the feelings from the meat of the relationship could be a powerful tool in the right hands, but applied by misguided people it will make things worse.

... to put it another way, it seems like the elite and the most poor are both using more drugs. But instead of solidarity it seems there's even more of a disconnect.

[altruios]

> It all depends on what you define as the show

The show is the experience of being.

> I would prefer to think of the show as something that takes place outside of my head

All of your experiences occur in that brain meat-space, your vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, temperature, etc... all of that (experience of) is occurring in your head. We hope it is coordinated with some objective physical reality. There is no guarantee of that.

to quote C.S.Lewis ``` If minds are wholly dependent on brains and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees. ```