Since I assume Ben, as well as a lot of the rest of us, want the AGI movement to receive respectability in the academic and particularly in the funding community, it is probably best that other than brain-science- or AGI-focused discussions of the effects of drugs should not become too common on the AGI list itself. Ben, of course, is the ultimate decider of that.
I remember the excitement I had over 3 to 4 decades ago when I experimented with psychedelics (although at relatively low dosages), so I can sympathize with the enthusiasms of current experimenters. And I find some of the written accounts of such experiments that I have read on the web to be very thoughtful, at time reminiscent, and very interesting from a brain science/AGI point of view. But right now I am sufficiently busy with more concrete realities that I am not in the market for such encounters. I do think psychedelic experiences can shed valuable light on the extent to which all perception is hallucination, just normally it is well turned and controlled hallucination. For example, the experiences some have reported, including off list in this discussion, of the sense of 3+1 D spacetime being shattered, or being perceived as very different, is not a surprise if one considers that your normal perception of space and time is an extremely complex and carefully controlled hallucination. If you substantially remove that control, it is not surprising that, for example, a cubist-like deconstruction of special perception might occur. After all, your mind has to stitch together its normal visual continuousness of 3D spatial reality from stereographic projections onto V1, which because of jerky saccades of the eye, are a rapid, disjointed, succession of grossly fish-eyed projections. So when psychedelics interfere with the normal process of stitching together projections from V1 and/or V2 and from remembered matching patterns of shapes and objects --- each having their own set of dimensions --- it is not surprising that a very different perception of space could arise, including a perception of a dis-joint set of many more than than 3+1 dimensions. With regard to perceptions of direct communicating with a myriad of other consciousnesses, such as elves, this is not surprising either, since the concept of unity of consciousness is also a construct generated by mental behavior and mental models, as is the construct of 3D space. Your brain is capable of generating many voices, many senses of awareness at once. But it normally works best, for generating behavior that helps humans survive, to have a greater, more distinct divide between what is conscious and what is kept in the subconscious, so that greater focus on the problems and behaviors at hand can be achieved. I am not, in any way trying to belittle the importance, nor "realness" of psychedelic experiences, but I am saying that my study of brain science and my own experiences decades ago with psychedelics make me think that one cannot always trust one's perceptions, particularly when one is on psychedelics. All perception can be considered hallucinations, that is, constructs of the brain --- but some hallucinations are more valuable for certain tasks than others. I think psychedelics, if properly used, can be of sufficient worth, in helping humans better understand our own minds and spirits and their relationship to reality --- that --- if our society were more rational --- it probably should have some limited ritualized used of psychedelics, as have many primitive societies. But it is not clear to me yet how rational our society is capable of being, particularly if drug use is too widely spread. Our society is changing so rapidly that much of traditional folk wisdom is out of date, and much of what has replaced it has be generated by commercially driven culture, that is, by its very nature exploitative. I think such drugs can have great danger of removing people from important aspects of reality. As humanity starts spiraling ever faster into the wormhole of the singularity, and as the world becomes more and more crowded, polluted, and competitive, and the have-nots increasingly have more power, and as the media can provide increasingly seductive non-realities, and as machine superintelligences increasingly decrease the relative value of human work and human thought, I fear that truly mind-altering drugs, if use too widely, could increase, rather than decrease, the chance that humanity will fare well --- as civilization, as we know it, is increasingly and more rapidly distorted by the momentus changes that face us. But I am 60 years old, so maybe my viewpoint is out of date. Ed Porter ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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