>Guru George wrote:
>> Hara Ra <harara@shamanics.com> wrote:
>>
>> >As the psychedelic
>> >occupies the inhibitory sites, the noise level in the brain increases.
>> >Noise when applied to a complex system will evoke whole complexes of
>> >experience, well beyond mere pixillated snow type effects.
>
>> Interesting. I recently posted to the effect that I now don't take
>> trips very seriously anymore <snip> 'Prelude' to 'Consciousness
>> Explained by Daniel > C Dennett, where he talks about dreams and
>> a party game called 'Psychoanalysis' (it has other names too, I think).
>> <major snip describing the game>
>
>Yup. IMHO the noise theory applies well to dreaming. Since the brain has
>numerous kinds of neurotransmitters, different substances, hormones, etc
>will have differing effects.
>
>> Of course, even if this is the correct explanation, there's still room
>> for the possibility of hyperdimensional communications from transcendental
>> machine elves and Psylocybin Powers alongside it! But that would make
>> the job of separating the nonsense from the genuine hyperdimensional
>> stuff very tricky indeed.
>
>Indeed. As one who has traversed realms whose initiation are well
>described by T McKenna, but with wildly differing results, I only
>conclude that one's expectations are grist for the noisy mill. If one is
>concerned with Logos, well, Logos stew for you! And when the
>hyperdimensional stuff comes to some practical uses, then my interest
>increases - till then, just more dreams.
>>
>> At any rate, this explanation of Dennett's had a very 'cooling',
>> Epicurean effect on *my* psychedelic experience!
>>
>One area where noise can be very useful is in perturbing the frozen
>emotional states and responses which all of us acquire during childhood
>and early socialization....
>
Yes, very true. There was (still is, I believe) a psychiatrist called
Stanislav Grof, who was one of the first people to get a hold of LSD for
clinical trials, and has continued to believe in the efficacy of
psychedelics for shaking up the old grey matter. And of course there's
all the marvellous work being done by Shulgin and many others less known,
especially into the use of MDMA as an 'empathogen'.
This is really the area of drugs that connects with Extropianism most, I
think - the clinical use of drugs to alter character long term, to mold
one's own personality. I think right use of drugs (apart from for fun)
would be primarily to balance out your character, like someone who is
emotionally frozen should take MDMA, or there should be a drug that gets
soft heads into some hardcore number crunching or something. And the
main use for psychedelics, as you say, would be to introduce some noiz,
to shake things up a bit, get some random stuff happening, also
revealing one's hidden obsessions of the moment.
Guru George