On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 2:39 AM, Pierz <[email protected]> wrote: > I agree with you, up to the point when you start advocating (on the other > thread?) the notion that drink driving should be legal. The key point > relates to harm caused. If you choose to smoke tobacco and thereby ruin > your lungs and put yourself at risk of lung cancer, it's your body, your > choice. But I support the right of others around you not to have to > passively inhale your drug and thereby suffer harm for *your* choices. >
I inhale pollution every day from large city traffic. Have lived in million citizen smog bowl cities around the globe. But people's irritation to passive smoke always amuses me: let's make driving and fossil fuel use illegal then. I mean sure, there is no arguing against long term exposure to smoking, say in some work environment, where in some close enclosure you are to tolerate the boss' chronic cigar smoke at 2 feet distance. But for Jazz bars and outdoor venues etc, I think prohibiting smoking for passive smoking harms just makes people more nervous with their hands fumbling around, conversation gets so functionally boring, and the whole event looks like some children's party for adults. Oh, and the "but my clothes smell funny" whine... like we haven't invented washing machines; or like those whiners never wash their clothes (which is really gross and raises more of a red flag than somebody lighting up whatever it is that they are inhaling next to me). Give me a break, there are greater threats to humans than passive smoke. > Same goes for drink driving. It'd be fine if others weren't affected, but > they are, and the fact is that many people lack responsibility, so to try > to make them be responsible for themselves is as pointless as trying to > make a three year old be responsible for him or herself. > You assume people will never change. Speak for yourself, but I wouldn't impose that on others, because I simply don't know. > When I worked as a counsellor with offenders, we used to run a program > called "consequential thinking" in which we tried to drum into the minds of > prisoners the simple notion that actions have consequences that they might > like to think about before doing something. Wasted breath, much of the > time. > You can't relate something as complex as responsibility by telling people about it. > The main point of the law is to prevent and/or minimize the harm we cause > night cause others through our ignorance, unregulated emotion, selfishness > etc. > This is paternalistic though. Who says you are certainly ignorant, cannot regulate your emotions, and are default selfish? > It should not be paternalistically concerned with the harm we cause > ourselves, because then we get into the realm of all kinds of problematic > judgements (like 'sinful' sexual practices) - we can't trust "society" to > know what's best for us. > Again, I wouldn't presume to know what or what not we can trust society with. > Wearing a bike helmet or seatbelt is a grey area because arguably the > costs to society/the health system etc of our sustaining a serious traffic > injury are a significant 'harm' to others, and so in any society in which > everyone pays to provide services for all, we must weight up questions of > personal liberty against the responsibility to limit the extent to which we > prevail upon the support of the health system due to bad choices. This of > course also could be argument for banning smoking, but that's where the > heavy taxation of tobacco comes in - you pay a disproportionate tax in > order to support the health system that you're more likely to need. > You are arguing pro NSA big brother plus implementation and observation of vice control mechanisms and penalties, implicitly here. > > On another subject, we know that swiy likes salvia. I wonder if he has > tried DMT? Swim has, and he tells me it was pretty terrifying, whereas he > enjoys salvia. With salvia he almost feels a sense of homecoming, a relief > to be reunited with something transcendent, whereas with DMT it's like > being shot down the barrel of a cannon into some bizarre cartoon-world > ruled by a maniacal god hell bent on busting his sanity. Or maybe he's just > not hitting the salvia hard enough... ;) > There are thousands of experience reports out there. I'd say Sally smells much better, than Dimitri who smells like morbid grave. But right on the edge of that morbid grave cloud of death smell, there are, upon closer inspection with the right kind of nose: gardens of Eden and palaces of infinite... oh, never mind. Correct dose finding, can this be? PGC > > > > On Saturday, April 19, 2014 1:34:23 AM UTC+10, Bruno Marchal wrote: > >> >> On 18 Apr 2014, at 04:40, Kim Jones wrote: >> >> PGC - you have spoken some great wisdom in this post. Personally I can >> see the time quickly arriving when it will become the self evident >> responsibility of education to provide young people with the knowledge to >> recreate with drugs responsibly. If anybody thinks that drugs in society >> are going to go away, they need to complete their education by a crash >> course run by the plant teachers themselves. The single most pressing issue >> involves the skill of self-moderation, something that humans don't seem to >> learn easily. This is why Hancock in that TED talk is right on the money >> when he says that psychedelics should not be used recreationally. To do so >> trivialises their use and degrades them to the level of a cheap binge on >> alcohol "that most BORING of drugs." Use of the plant teachers needs to be >> ritualised. You need to know why you are taking them, for what purpose, and >> what you are trying to achieve. Then you need to bring the treasures >> thereby attained back into the baseline state of consciousness and assess >> their value. >> >> >> There are no drugs, only medication. Then some treatment can be daily and >> repetitive, with varying degree depending of the illness or the stress to >> survive the struggling of life. The illness can be existential, spiritual, >> mental, or physical. >> >> I asked my friend Swim why do you do drug? Here is what he answered to me: >> >> I do coffee, in the early morning, to accelerate the awakening, >> I do tobacco, at work, to enhance concentration and alertness, >> I do alcohol, at noon, to digest more easily the cheese, >> I do cannabis in the evening, to relax and sleep well, >> I do salvia divinorum, the week-end, to discuss metaphysics with the >> Virgin Mary. >> >> I pay my taxes. I don't aggress people, nor even me (I stop inhaling the >> tobacco, there are many form of consumption), so who are you to judge my >> medication? And who are you who seem to accept that some other can think >> better than you for how you feel? >> >> Drugs don't exist. There are only medication made illegal by gangsters to >> develop an underground market. >> Once illegal, the gangsters and their criminalized victims can sell them >> at every corner of every streets, and indeed, all the study shows that >> illegality is the main contributing factors in the consumption augmentation >> and spreading of drugs. >> >> Legalize all drugs, and tax them perhaps proportionally to the real >> problems they generate: you will see alcohol and smoked-tobacco price grow, >> and you will see the life insurance company encouraging you to medicate >> yourself with cannabinoids and salvinorin, efficacious and cheap. >> >> The drugs you take concerns only you, and your possible relation with >> your shaman, doctor, priest, whatever. >> >> It does not concern at all the government. >> >> *You* are the one who has the right to say "no" to the doctor, not the >> government. >> >> Bruno >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Kim >> >> >> On 18 Apr 2014, at 11:02 am, Platonist Guitar Cowboy < >> [email protected]> wrote: >> >> >> >> >> On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 10:21 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> On 4/16/2014 6:38 AM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: >>> >>> If you say psychedelics are trivial, did nothing for research in >>> medicine, resulted in nothing, check maps.org or for concrete articles: >>> >>> >>> But the question was whether the produced useful ideas in those who took >>> them - not in whether they were useful for studying brains function, which >>> seems to be what all these papers are about. >>> >>> >> Depends of course on what you consider "useful". I'll give the effects >> question another personal shot for those interested, so if you're not its >> ot: >> >> One thing that the NYT article picked up concerning effect: increased >> capacity to relate, which translates into the "I feel more, but I am more >> vulnerable. But I'd rather feel than merely function," of the quoted >> research subject. >> >> Trivially, the increased capacity to relate, given correct dosage, >> administration, settings etc, is brought about by some perturbation of >> brain chemistry. >> >> Comp as some loose, not sanctioned by Bruno's high standards, metaphor >> offers a good dinner cocktail explanation: Let the first person experience >> be some stream of input and output values on an unspecified number of >> channels. These days I like a huge virtual sound mixing board as an image: >> you get input all manner of external signals or programs, which can be >> output, limited, compressed, blended into buses, routed internally, >> convoluted, processed, and effected in various ways. Master output is then >> subject's first person experience. >> >> The mechanisms of psychedelics on brain chemistry level differ in >> function of subject and the molecule, its receptor sites, dopamine >> regulation, inhibition + stimulation of different receptor pathways and so >> on. What distinguishes them from other consciousness altering agent, is >> their particularity: not merely euphoric stimulation of some sort (cocaine >> or coffee to some degree) or sedation (opiates and sleep medication) or >> even both at once (tobacco), but all channels of our mixing bord being >> altered in very particular ways. As if another sound mixing engineer had >> come in overnight and changed the entire mixing studio of the subject in >> very particular ways. >> >> Albert Hofmann noted about LSD in "My Problem Child", that remarkably >> memory of the extreme alterations of experience stays largely intact, which >> was counter intuitive to him given "the extreme degree of inebriation". And >> the awareness of the extreme degree, its perturbing horror trip anxiety >> aspect, is proof that the subject becomes aware of where "normal" is to >> them, and how peculiarly strange and relativistic their notion of "true >> normality" is. >> >> The upside of this perturbing weirdness is the subject learns more about >> relating to a more complete weirdness of their mixing desk: The overnight >> engineer might have made some valid points in that say: molecule x at >> dosage y increases tactile response, sexual appetite, general mood >> parameters etc. before it starts to impede on motricity, while attention >> span and focus of things sexual is increased with less daily clutter >> evaluations, master value of orgasm is 7 out of 10 on these parameters, >> time dilation favorable etc. >> >> That would be horny engineer's settings. What about all other kinds of >> experiences and engineers? "What would be output then?" which is the >> central driver for kids trying something weird, not merely naively but >> openly and hopefully seeking new experiences, and the central question of >> scientists like Shulgin, pushing the envelope to develop new psychedelic >> molecules with this open ended mystical quest. Because the particularity of >> subject is multiplied by particularities of the molecule in question, one >> trips for a few minutes to a few days. >> >> The connection with creativity is not somehow artificially restricted to >> art and entertainment, but to the entire faculty of whatever it is that we >> are; and since most creativity is derived by combining at least two ideas >> (e.g. horseless + carriage; not that Benz tripped but even Jobs himself >> made such a statement "creativity is just connecting things that nobody >> thought of connecting/relating") in some original fashion, the prevalence >> of weird ideas and their combinations is increased when conditions are >> favorable and this sort of multiplication is applied. >> >> If something like a Nobel prize could be conceived without all the >> political bs, Shulgin would deserve one; not just for his advances in >> pharmacology of these substances, but because he was a careful composer: >> developing some molecule from a good pharmacological perspective, deriving >> structure and properties from known substances and trying to optimize them, >> had one huge benefit: The man tasted all his own works first. >> >> On a daily basis, starting 10 to 1000 times below the active dose of the >> closest derivative he would increase the dosage level in tiny increments >> until he hit "activity" or gave up. Why Nobel prize again, one could ask: >> his molecular designs are one of the main sources for blueprints of >> everybody wanting to make a quick buck from an unscheduled designer >> substance. So his daily practice and diaries, the choices that led to them, >> the dosage results are to me centrally responsible for keeping these >> designer substances "relatively safe" in that we don't see tons of kids and >> people dying from use of unregulated substances due to prohibition. Most of >> the drug reports I read of concerning designer substances, are mostly his >> work, or structurally derivative. So our kids had that margin of error >> working in their favor, despite prohibition. >> >> Unfortunately, publication wise, we seem on our own now without his kind >> of work, and I'm starting to see structures revert to seemingly more toxic >> tries on solvents, stimulants etc. as everything marginally safe in this >> area is already scheduled. The analog laws penned in too many countries >> can't be taken seriously. I haven't to this day seen convincing criteria of >> what constitutes a parallel or analogous substance, and what doesn't. It >> just seems like helpless legislation to get whatever is on the dance floors >> and streets swept under the rug so that more toxicity/uncertainty is thrown >> into the mix. >> >> Public safety is a useful idea it would seem to me, beside all the >> crossovers between say science fiction and science, to which prohibition is >> completely opposed. If Jobs had been truly hip, he'd sue the US government >> with his army of lawyers for that failure in public safety and education >> resulting in millions of deaths for the money of a few; instead of just >> using them to scavenge the world's databases for copyright infringements. >> Give the types of Shulgin some of the cash and PR means; and this education >> might not save our children, but at least make them party safer if they so >> choose. PGC >> >> >>> >>> https://www.erowid.org/references/refs.php?C=Hof >>> >>> >>> Brent >>> >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>> Groups "Everything List" group. >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >>> an email to [email protected]. >>> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >>> >>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >>> >> >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> >> >> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ >> >> >> >> -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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