Cream Gravy?
Bluelight Crew
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- Jan 28, 2014
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All psychdelics are 5-HT2A receptor agonists, but not all 5-HT2A receptor agonists are psychdelics.
ALIENS
This cracked me up hahahah, psychedelic humour.
All psychdelics are 5-HT2A receptor agonists, but not all 5-HT2A receptor agonists are psychdelics.
ALIENS
The internet, particularly Bluelight, has become inhospitable to the magical thinker. Reductionist, "show-me-the-double-blind"-type thinking has become the accepted norm.
It's important to keep this in mind when offering up your opinions to the nerdy masses.
Reality is anything but static and inert, hence why I think plant spirit is a much better term. Everything is alive and science is not particularly useful when it comes to making value judgements.
I don't even know what you mean by "outside the brain".
If I look at a tree is it inside my brain or outside? Obviously if you crack open my skull you won't find a tree but is the image not registering in my brain? I simply see the brain as the microcosm of the macrocosm of the physical universe. You see it differently?
I agree that psychedelics are like keys that unlock capacities of the brain, but those capacities include interacting with what have been traditionally called "spirits".
I read that no one knows exactly how psychs alter the brain. They say that it's caused by the 5HT-2A receptor and all, and I believe it on one hand obviously. However, I feel that the effects are so profound and incredible that maybe it's true what the native americans used to say that the plants actually have spirits within them, and the spirits take you on a journey which is the trip. To be honest, they could've been right. I feel this is especially true with DMT, which likely has the machine elves as guiding the experience. I know this may get me branded as a burnout and nut, but I seriously think the effects may be part chemical, but also part supernatural like the native americans said. The same may be said for all drugs, even non psychedelic ones I think.
I know you weren’t relying on reason in your argument, and I didn’t mean to imply that you were using the argument as a last resort, but I’m sure you use logic and evidence based reasoning in all other sorts situations in your everyday life, just not when it comes to believing in magick, plantspirits and all sorts of things for which there is no evidence but your own subjective experience.
Burnout
It’s a Going Nuclear argument because you posit that reality is a dream, which nobody can disprove, and thus any belief is just as irrational/rational as any other belief, no matter the actual evidence.
Thats your interpretation. If every belief is just as irrational/rational as any other than its just as valid to say every belief isn't as rational/irrational as any other.
Anyway, the rationality of beliefs isn't a good road to go down in my opinion. I look at beliefs in terms of their usefulness, rationality is far too subjective. What is completely rational to one person, is completely irrational to another. I have yet to see any objective measure of rationality.
I’m not saying that we know everything about reality, or that we ever will for that matter. But I’m saying that it is nonsense to conclude that anything that one experiences is real, because of that fact. Just because what we call reality in theory could be a dream, it doesn’t mean that we can consider that an argument for all kinds of unfounded and more or less weird theories that one fancies.
All kinds of theories could be made about reality, like it’s all a dream, or we live in a computer simulation matrix, or only I exist and all of you only exist in my mind, etc. etc. But without there being some conclusive repeatable non-subjective evidence for the theory, It’s just navel-gazing philosophical masturbation.
What is non subjective evidence? Evidence collection implies a subject, which implies subjectivity. I dont buy into this non-subjective evidence proposition. Show me the proof.
^^ And no, there are no indications that we are actually living in a dream. It’s just an idea - like so many other ideas - that there is no way of refuting, and just because they can't be refuted, that doesn't neccesarily make them true. That time is relative doesn’t mean that reality is relative, and there are much more plausible and simple explanations to the experiences that drugs induce, than life being a dream. And btw, what people call each other on the DMT-nexus is really of no unimportance to this discussion.
You can't just say that. Show me proof. When you say there are much more plausible explanations, you are simply making an assumption. Prove it. And remember, we are talking about reality here. That means you can't just appeal to one certain type of mindset in your proof.
Also, it’s funny, because if everything was a dream and thus not real, then the plantspirits and the psychedelic experience could also just be a part of the dream, and thus not real. You could argue that some kind of real reality exists, but with your outlook, you have no way of knowing what is real and was is the dream.
Of course the plant spirits are just part of the dream. The universe is like a holographic representation of information. Every part of it, the plant spirits, trrees, chemicals, scientists, rocks, they are all made of energy, which could be said to be the substance dreams are made of.
What you're not understanding, is that these ideas are allegory/metaphor. When you start literally believing the metaphor, you have crossed over into confusion. You must be able to understand metaphor, without interpreting it as literal truth. Unfortunately our education system does not teach people how to do this. People are so brainwashed to believe in a "real" world, with black and white facts, that they can't even begin to understand there might be another way of looking at things.
And I will just add one last thing, it's a huge missunderstanding that the theory of relativity should posit that everything is relative - it doesn't, period.
The relativity of time is not arbitrary - it's fixed! Otherwise engineers would not be able to calculate and adjust the time difference occuring between the GPS sattelites and earth.
Did I claim they couldn't? This, like most of your other arguments is a straw man that completely misses the essence of what I was trying to say. Show me where in my post I said " we can't calculate anything about the physical universe"
“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.”
― Albert Einstein
I'm speaking from the point of view of our experience, which is all we ever have. I am not saying that means there are no rules or laws that govern relationshi]s between aspects of our experience. If that were the case, there would be no point in talking about plant spirits. A game with no rules is not much of a game at all.
I believe the spirits are already within you and psychedelics are but one highly effective way of allowing your brain to witness them. Think about the fact that electrical stimulation of parts of the brain can induce similar feelings and experiences. I don't know what that ultimately means, but it is certainly more evidence for the brain being the creator of supernatural or paranormal states than has ever been decisively demonstrated for the other possibility.
Bear in mind, I have experienced things that I cannot explain completely sober. This includes an experience about 18 months ago where I experienced a sequence of sourcless phenomena such as voices, sounds following me and physical contact. This was in a deserted street at midnight. Following from that, both me and Miss Willow both had other experiences of 'contact' for a few months. With no real reason to think this, this didn't feel spriritual or frightening, but felt more experimenta/tentativel, like something was 'testing' a 'skill' or piece of technology. Or like children playing, and only with a poor grasp of the tool/game they played. It felt like this was happening externally to me, so I have to concede that the unknown exists and (hopefully) always will.
This discussion is getting circular, burnout. Your basic view seems to be that nothing can be proved. This is not a proof of anything. It is a basic philosphical conclusion regarding the limits of knowledge. You can't reasonably use that as an honest rebuttal to anything. If you make a claim, which you are, the burden is on you to prove it. If you can't, that is fine. I don't need you to footnote your statements, but provide something which backs up this plant spirit thing. I made the suggestion that electro-stimulation of the brain can cause a similar effect. Can you demonstrate why plant spirits are a better hypoethesis than the idea that the brain has the same capacity as an inherent function?
I'm not at all interested in replying to your post in detail because I didn't say most of what you are arguing against. You've said I am making assumptions, but that is the pot calling the kettle black.
burnout said:I am simply saying, lets bring our assumptions out into the open and have a look at them.
Yes, but how is plant spirits a better hypothesis? The 'brain' theory has experimental evidence to support it, the plant spirits one has none. People's opinions and speculation is not evidence.
think that's a great idea, and its what I have been doing in this thread. Some people assume that the experiences they have on psychedelics are preternatural. The fact is that science has been able to explain the effects of psychedelics in a much more meaningful way because it doesn't rely on subjective, self-reported opinions- it relies on experimental evidence. This doesn't discount the value of subjective experience, but it simply puts it in its place as being less meaningful than hard data. Simply because the effects of psychedelics appear magical does not mean we need to resort to magical explanations.
There is a fuckload we do not know about the brain and the way drugs effect it and I am of the view that resorting to untestable, magical qualities does not further our understanding remotely.
burnout said:If you want to sit in your armchair and theorize and then support your theories with physical evidence, of course youre going to prefer the scientific appraoch
I just think that it has come much closer to the answer for the action of psychedelic drugs than has the shamanic one