[soulofmischief]

I had a mind-bending Salvia trip at eighteen that went sort of like that.

My mind turned into an infinitely large department store where each aisle was a concurrent branch of thought, and the common ingredient lists above each aisle were populated with words, feelings and concepts related to each branch.

The PA system replaced my internal monologue, which I no longer had, but instead I was hearing my thoughts externally as if they were another person's.

I was able to walk through these aisles and marvel at the immense, fractal, interdependent web of concurrent thought my brain was producing in realtime.

[_rpxpx]

“When I began to navigate psychospace with LSD, I realized that before we were conscious, seemingly self-propelled human beings, many tapes and corridors had been created in our minds and reflexes which were not of our own making. These patterns and tapes laid down in our consciousness are walled off from each other. I see it as a vast labyrinth with high walls sealing off the many directives created by our personal history.

Many of these directives are contradictory. The coexistence of these contradictory programs is what we call inner conflict. This conflict causes us to constantly check ourselves while we are caught in the opposition of polarity. Another metaphor would be like a computer with many programs running simultaneously. The more programs that are running, the slower the computer functions. This is a problem then. With all the programs running that are demanded of our consciousness in this modern world, we have problems finding deep integration.

To complicate matters, the programs are reinforced by fear. Fear separates, love integrates. We find ourselves drawn to love and unity, but afraid to make the leap.

What I found to be the genius of LSD is that it really gets you high, higher than the programs, higher than the walls that mask and blind one to the energy destroying presence of many contradictory but hidden programs. When LSD is used intentionally it enables you to see all the tracks laid down, to explore each one intensely. It also allows you to see the many parallel and redundant programs as well as the contradictory ones.

It allows you to see the underlying unity of all opposites in the magic play of existence. This allows you to edit these programs and recreate superior programs that give you the insight to shake loose the restrictions and conflicts programmed into each one of us by our parents, our religion, our early education, and by society as a whole.”

~ Nick Sand, 2001, Mind States conference, quoted in Casey Hardison's obituary

[wincy]

I feel like if all the things people believe and espouse about hallucinogens were true and not just the effect of permanently damaging your mind, with the illusion of wisdom, we’d be able to point at all the revolutionary scientific breakthroughs and discoveries made under the influence of hallucinogenic substances.

However, everyone I’ve met who admits to having taken hallucinogens seems reduced in some way, rather than enhanced. Like the lights are on but someone else is home.

[LVL96]

This was sort of my experience with LSD. It just broke me. I fell into a deep depression afterward, but the reason was only partly due to damaging my mind. The other part of it was that the LSD made me realize where my life was going, and how completely unfulfilled I'd end up being in 10-20 years. In that way, it helped me course-correct. I'm healthier, more honest with myself, and got back into college because of the experience.

But it did damage my mind. I have mild to moderate anhedonia now. Weed hits me completely differently now (feels more like strong caffeine + brain fog instead of any pleasure). I lost my desire to write creatively.

[bongodongobob]

Unless you did a thumbprint, you're perfectly fine, no damage. Just get your shit together, that seems to be your takeaway. Sounds like it worked. Now you have to keep working on yourself rather than blaming a harmless drug for your problems.

[wizzwizz4]

If a thumbprint can do damage, why can't a lower dose? What's the mechanism?

[bongodongobob]

It's similar to one aspirin vs 10000. Also, people do thumbprints and live normal lives after, I just threw that out as an extreme. LSD is very safe if you're doing normal doses. Most people don't take 10000 doses so I can't really speak to that.

[InvertedRhodium]

Water will kill you if you consume too much of it - almost universally, the poison is in the dose not the substance.

[_rpxpx]

There are lots of examples, you've just decided not to see them. Just for a start, here's an account by Ralph Abraham of the impact of psychedelics on mathematics. http://www.ralph-abraham.org/articles/MS%23124.Maps/maps2.pd...

[antonkar]

There is the Qualia Research Institute, one of the things they do is using dope and making simulations of the experience. They basically found 2 main types of drugs:

1. Most “create more separate personalities” in you

2. One (the “toad poison”) actually makes you feel like a giant place, the feeling is usually pleasant.

So there is either “agentification” of you into more “agents” or “space-ification” into one giant place without any agency in it. I think we can make this static place AI and it’ll be safe by definition because we’re the only agents in it.

P.S. I don’t promote drugs

[gruntbuggly]

A fair observation, but real assumptions about progress, what it means, and what is valuable

[ljsprague]

I don't know if he credits the drug for the inspiration but the inventor of PCR was famously a user of LSD.

[bongodongobob]

It happens all the time. DNA double helix is a good example. You really think people are going to mention their drug use in white papers? I think not. Nothing to gain and everything to lose.

[devmor]

The record of a scientific discovery that is heavily criticized for plagiarism and falsehoods is probably not a good example, actually.

[bongodongobob]

Well here's one: tons of people do drugs. It's not even a question whether or not drugs have inspired discoveries. They obviously have.

[wat10000]

Tons of people eat carrots. That doesn’t imply carrots have inspired discoveries.

[devmor]

Have they? I find it likely, personally, but it doesn’t mean it’s not entirely coincidental either.

[antonkar]

We have our first Neo candidate)

The guy who’ll make the GUI for LLMs is the next Jobs/Gates/Musk and Nobel Prize Winner (I think it’ll solve alignment by having millions of eyes on the internals of LLMs), because computers became popular only after the OS with a GUI appeared. I recently shared how one of its “apps” possibly can look: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43319726

[neom]

If you feel like being a hippie, you can find the "rendering engine for reality" in here: Mandelbrot (1980) – The Mandelbrot Set and fractal geometry Julia (1918) – Memoire sur l'iteration des fonctions rationelles (Julia sets) Meyer (1996) – Quantum Cellular Automata (procedural complexity) Wolfram (1984) – Cellular automata as models of complexity Bak et al. (1987) – Self-organized criticality. Wolfram, Gorard & Crowley (2020) - "A Class of Models with the Potential to Represent Fundamental Physics" - Kari & Culik (2009) - "Universal Pattern Generation by Cellular Automata". Just combine the papers, ofc, that is crazy - but its fun to be a bit crazy sometimes. It's one of my fav thought experiments, just for fun. :)

[antonkar]

I used Wolfram’s physics approach to “model the absolute future and possible ethics of it”, I think it’s direct democratic simulated multiverse, you can find the link in my profile, if interested

[neom]

no need to read it, no disagreement here.