[jules]

This kind of philosophy just muddies the waters. This article is recommending using drugs for entrepreneurs. Most human beings spend >99% of the time in their normal state of consciousness rather than a mushroom state of consciousness. So from a practical perspective, the question whether the insights actually produced something tangible in the real world is perfectly legitimate. At least to me, the (obvious) question of whether perhaps in some altered state of consciousness we would evaluate the results of the high differently is quite theoretical and uninteresting, since I do not want to spend my life on a high.

A couple of years ago I went a few days without sleeping, and I had hallucinations and I felt like my mind was ultra-sharp. Just like the author of this article with his 9 mile walk, certain things had happened that I had no memory of. Later when I'd gotten some sleep, it turned out that the sleep deprived state of mind wasn't so sharp after all, it was just an illusion. This is why I'm always a bit skeptical of these kind of claims.

[anigbrowl]

If you put on a pair of polarizing sunglasses, things look different, and you'll notice things that you might not notice otherwise. Some thinngs are just artifacts of teh polarization, other things are actual characteristics of what you're looking at that were always there but weren't as easy to see. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarizing_filter_(photography)

It's not so much a question of being sharp or not - whether from lack of sleep or drugs, if you're tripping you may feel great but your actual performance on any objective measurement is probably going to be well below optimal. I mean, take a look at this art: http://flyeschool.com/content/repetition-rhythm-and-pattern Very little of this addresses reality, but that doesn't mean it's not interesting.

[gnosis]

"Most human beings spend >99% of the time in their normal state of consciousness rather than a mushroom state of consciousness. So from a practical perspective, the question whether the insights actually produced something tangible in the real world is perfectly legitimate."

But the very question of "whether the insights actually produced something tangible in the real world" can itself be evaluated from many different perspectives and states of consciousness.

Sure, the question itself is perfectly legitimate. I'm just not sure how to evaluate the answers.