Psychedelics and critical thinking.

[Foreigner]

Saying that psychs make people less logical is no different than saying psychs make all people go insane. The OP is a troll attempt and nothing more. If you have really been spending all your time scouring the web looking for anecdotal reports of people's flights of fancy in order to prove your ignorant theory, then you yourself have fallen prey to the logical fallacy of confirmation bias. Real research is showing that psychs contain immense healing potential, and may have even been a factor in human evolution. But you wouldn't know that because you're too busy looking for delusional thinking. Well, you will always find what you're looking for, if you look hard enough.

Usually when people post their trip reports, they are not trying to be scientific, so calling it pseudoscience is just an arrogant way of dismissing another's experience. Humans have been using psychedelics for thousands of years to engage in non-linear thought processes. Tell me, do you also think that artists and creative people are delusional because they cannot justify their creations scientifically?

I am tired of hardwired left-brained people showing up in discussions and writing off the whole world because their holier-than-thou institutionalism has incorrectly informed them that they are the sole arbiters of truth. It's based on a staunch individualist modern world view and nothing else. Creative people don't deserve to be attacked for whatever reality they choose to live.

 

[infantannihilator]

I think the pseudoscience thing was jabbed at propositions such as impure lsd causing stiff fingers, or neurons misfiring and collapsing causing hppd symptoms and so on.. total baseless 'theories' passed off as truth liek "yeayeah I know what im talking about"

The OP isn't entirely dismissing psychedelics, he clearly does his own fair share. Neither does he seem to be dismissing people for the reasons they use psychadelics.. there was no jab to 'right brained' people or anything of the sort. The thread isn't about dismissing the experiences people have, nor really the 'reality' they choose to live.. however if your reality involves believing shit like the aforementioned then well.. you need a reality check, and this has nothing to do with using one part of your brain more or less than the other.

I do agree that the theory is as bunk as the pseudoscience examples though.

 

[Anon0631]

I should point out that I've been taking psychedelics for almost 25 years.

 

[kidklmx]

Anon I've been a part of internet communities ever since I learned a bit of English (and actually got my English to a decent level because of those communities, when I told people I was young and foreign they turned out to be really helpful :D) and, based on the levels-of-shit I've seen, BL doesn't rank nearly as bad. Take a look at Shroomery or Drugs-Forum or whatever, the amounts of gibberish on there is clearly higher then here. And that's not exclusive to drug communities either, generally speaking they're fairly intelligent. When you dabble in nerd-topics like video games or consumer electronics (phones, computers, whatever) then 90% of the discussion is a huge flame-war where intelligent arguments have no place.

Seriously, the internet is a shitty place and BL isn't nearly as bad as you make it out to be

 

[FunctionalOlfactio]

The overall action of psychedelics is as a result of their action at multiple binding sites and the interactions between the cascade of effects which ensue. This study gives an example of the breadth of variation in the aforementioned.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0009019

I always am cautious when interpreting disassociation constant data as it's not inherently indicative of efficacy nor does it have a direct correlation to the metabolic kinetics involved. Furthermore variations in the cloned receptor population used in the analysis in addition to variance in technique used can make this data deceptive. That being said it's safe to say different psychedelics behave differently in the human brain making a universal answer unlikely.

I'm only going to focus on short term effects (two weeks +/-). I will avoid discussion of long term effects on receptor population, structure, and density for the sake of simplicity.

A psychedelic experience with a classical psychedelic last approximately two weeks and occurs in two distinct phases. The first phase usually last less than 24 hours and I define this as the time period when the drug is active in your body. The second phase I define as the period of neuro-chemical changes induced by temporary augmentation in receptor sensitivity that last the remainder of the duration. Though the effects of the second phase are not as apparent they account for the majority of the duration.

The second phase is what I find to be most relevant to this topic as it gives a solid foundation to the hypothesis implicit in Anons' posts: "If a person consumes certain psychedelics their critical thinking ability will become impaired.". Correct me if I am wrong Anon in regards to this inference.

Theoretically the validity of this hypothesis is plausible. Some psychedelics might impair critical thinking in the second phase. I would also add that others might enhance cognition in this regard. Evidence certainly exist to support that a psychedelic experience last longer than the first phase of hallucinations and acute intoxication. I'm fairly confident that the reduction in receptor sensitivity following psychedelic administration is accepted as fact. In the wild this down regulation would mimic the effects of a silent agonist by inhibiting activation by indigenous neuro-chemicals.

I have my theories but do not feel confident enough in my knowledge to discuss specific examples. In general I view the relationship between glutamateric/cholinergic activity and dopaminergic/noroadrenergic is responsible for the more significant phase two effects.


If critical thinking was impaired by a particular chemical would this lead to a deficit in all tasks dependent upon reasoning and judgement such as morality, impulsiveness, and maybe even access to memory?(I add memory to the list because an impairment in judgement might modify the process of associative reasoning involved in the location of long-term memories.) In an extreme example what would the result be? Would this create amoral, impulsive, pathological liars?

What would a psychedelic that did the opposite do?


Regardless, I believe it is important to be humble in regards to incorrect information. I fell into this niche chasing a much more hedonistic path leading to the one I later decided to follow. Ignorance is not a character flaw and can be fixed with education. I look back at my younger self and can't believe how misguided I was. I am confident twenty years from now I will look back at my current self and will see things similarly.

People should always show discretion in how seriously they take information on these forums. Others a rung below me are allowed to be wrong. In doing so they can insult me, harm me, even persecute me. They are allowed to make mistakes and pursue drugs for all the wrong reasons just as I was. I don't mind the burden this places on me and try to do everything in my power to make sure they can do so safely and that they land in a better place than they started. I approach life this way because I hope those a rung above me look at me the same way.

Regardless of the reasons people may demonstrate impaired critical thinking; a wrong answer pursued for the wrong reasons that leads to the correct answer still leads the the correct answer.


I hope we all find the answers we need here.


--------------------

http://www.shulginresearch.org
http://www.freeleonardpickard.org
http://www.maps.org
http://www.erowid.org

 

[Foreigner]

Sorry Anon, I ate your head off prematurely. You can tell that this a sore spot for me.

I agree that a lot of the claims about what psychedelics do to your body, like side effects, are completely false.

 

[weadazoid]

Perhaps it is your skills of persuasion that are not allowing you to successfully get your point across. Personally I see psychedelics in particular as an ego inducing family of drugs that create a fantasy world so strong that it is impossible you the individual to believe it is an illusion.

Then again you are judging philosophical ideas on a forum of drug users. Not everyone who takes psychedelics wants to waste their time debating ideas on the internet.

Strange, I have always felt that what we see in terms of the visual is actually alway there, we simply are not quite in tune with it until we are on the psychadelic. I have never looked at trees the same way since my first trip on LSD where they trully kind of came to life for the first time. I refuse to believe it is simply an illusion, even now as a sober individual.

I feel like psychologically a child who is capable of magical thoughts is really on the same level and see the same things that an adult sees on a psychadelic. I think when we are young we see more aspects of the visual world, and overtime we slowly loose our ability to see every texture, every pattern. As we begin to focus and learn and associate objects with words ect ect.... we lose our ability to see all the patterns in all things.

 

[One Thousand Words]

When those trees talk to you do you honestly think they have the answers of the universe? They haven't even travel around the block for fuck sake.

 

[shimazu]

totally random thought here but ever since I started taking LSD I look at all trees and bushes and immediately picture them as part of a giant marijuana bud

like I still know it's a tree obviously, but I just can't help but imagine it's a giant nugget

kinda weird

 

[GreenMachine]

totally random thought here but ever since I started taking LSD I look at all trees and bushes and immediately picture them as part of a giant marijuana bud

like I still know it's a tree obviously, but I just can't help but imagine it's a giant nugget

kinda weird

LOL

when i was in high school and first started tripping frequently i remember this happening quite a bit.

anyways OP, i think its the other way around. i think people who dont use critical thinking are attracted to psychedelics and psychedelic culture, but some people start somewhat normal and go off the deep end ie--conspiracy theorists.

 

[VoiceoftheTurtle]

I've been a longtime lurker of PD, but since this question was exactly what I've been wrestling with the past few months after taking psychedelics, I registered to reply. Based on nothing but anecdotal experience, my suspicion is either that psychedelics lower your threshold of critical thinking enough to make you believe nonsensical bullshit, or that those without a strong scientific education are those most likely to be attracted to these substances in the first place. I think those two factors together are very significant. However, people, by and large, are unintelligent. What we see might simply be a reflection of this fact, albeit distorted and enlarged, like in a funhouse mirror, by the influence of psychedelic drugs.

Saying that psychs make people less logical is no different than saying psychs make all people go insane.

...What? It's not an obviously very different qualitative statement? Very well...

The OP is a troll attempt and nothing more.

A bit of a personal attack.

If you have really been spending all your time scouring the web looking for anecdotal reports of people's flights of fancy in order to prove your ignorant theory, then you yourself have fallen prey to the logical fallacy of confirmation bias.

Anon stated that he picked examples from the last 24 hours of this exact forum, which is hardly scouring anything. To demonstrate anyone is really suffering from confirmation bias you first have to prove they have specifically cherry-picked information that suits them, and subsequently ignored unfavorable evidence. Given the OP was meant to open up a discussion, with relevant posts included as examples, I'm not sure you have that. To me and my hamfisted textual analysis, he seems quite open to falsification of his ideas. What about you?

Real research is showing that psychs contain immense healing potential,

What's the fake research you're contrasting it with? I don't think anyone is claiming to be doing serious quantitative study here.

and may have even been a factor in human evolution.

The "stoned ape" conjecture is utterly without support from evidence, a neat idea though it may be. People repeating this meme as anything other than a wild and unsubstantiated guess demonstrates exactly the lack of critical thinking we're dealing with here.

But you wouldn't know that because you're too busy looking for delusional thinking. Well, you will always find what you're looking for, if you look hard enough.

That's quite the false dichotomy you're setting up. Surely healing potential is perfectly compatible with hypothetical delusion in all its forms and strengths?

Humans have been using psychedelics for thousands of years to engage in non-linear thought processes.

Irrelevant.

Tell me, do you also think that artists and creative people are delusional because they cannot justify their creations scientifically?

A work of art is not a positive statement about reality, whereas "DMT elves are real" is. I don't think anyone has ever believed the proposition above.

I am tired of hardwired left-brained people

"Left-brained" is in most use-cases, including this one, meaninglessly reductive pop-neurology.

showing up in discussions and writing off the whole world because their holier-than-thou institutionalism has incorrectly informed them that they are the sole arbiters of truth.

I keep rereading this and can't interpret it as anything other than blatant anti-intellectualism. Did you mean something different?

Creative people don't deserve to be attacked for whatever reality they choose to live.

But doesn't it make sense to take a step back and think about some of the ideas they unquestioningly propagate before passing it on yourself?
Foreigner, your post took me aback more than anything. I'm not trying to be hostile, just highlighting some of the points you made that seem a little unfair. Anyway, enough of me and my irritating questions.

 

[What 23]

You also thought it wasn't critical thinking enough when someone proposed that they were reacting to ink on blotters...

 

[Thorns Have Roses]

Proposition: Psychedelics do not adversely affect critical thinking skills, people have the exact same skills they do normally, but they gain the opportunity to develop delusions other than the culturally normative. Or more accurately, psychedelics facilitate metacognition and non-linear thinking, and this leads some to far out beliefs per se. Especially since our socially constructed reality has no place for the psychedelic experience, or ready made interpretation of it besides calling it gibbering madness.

I keep rereading this and can't interpret it as anything other than blatant anti-intellectualism. Did you mean something different?

No, he means what he says, and it isn't anti-intellectual. Believe it or not, empiricism is not the only epistemological theory. There are other ways of thinking about the world, and some of them involve truth claims not linked to description of physical realities (that is not to say they involve aetherial realms or beings), e.g. constructivism. Unfortunately, this sort of thing is not often discussed, and science minded folks are indoctrinated into the religion school of logical positivism, dismissing everyone else as heretics anti-intellectual/irrational.


To provide an illustration for how we might see the world differently, go outside, look at at a tree, and tell me what you see. I see Being as movement in time, the tree before me spreading from a seed like a drop of ink in water, and that drop spread from another drop, and that from another, in an awe[some/ful] fractal manisfestation of divinity/IS-ness.

 

[bloodshed344]

Well Never Knows Best, that is the safest way to go about things when you can't be sure of anything around you. Life is full of problems and guesses and if the one thing you can count on, science, isn't valid then what is?

If people have their spiritual beliefs that make it easier to deal with the world for them then so be it, but putting it on the same level as science is just wrong. The #1 thing to consider when you're thinking of a crazy idea on psychedelics is if science agrees with it.

 

[VoiceoftheTurtle]

No, he means what he says, and it isn't anti-intellectual. Believe it or not, empiricism is not the only epistemological theory.

As I'm well aware, thanks. The strawman of the arrogant ivory tower know-nothings is virulent and widespread enough that I mistook something different entirely for it.

 

[Thorns Have Roses]

I mistook something different entirely for it.

Maybe he did mean it that way, it's hard to tell online. We assume people get where we're coming from when they only see the strictest meaning of the words, or we phrase things precisely and they read between the lines and see insinuation where there is none.

Well Never Knows Best, that is the safest way to go about things when you can't be sure of anything around you. Life is full of problems and guesses and if the one thing you can count on, science, isn't valid then what is?

If people have their spiritual beliefs that make it easier to deal with the world for them then so be it, but putting it on the same level as science is just wrong. The #1 thing to consider when you're thinking of a crazy idea on psychedelics is if science agrees with it.

Who said we had to call science invalid to claim it is not the sole arbiter of truth? When did spirituality become part of the discussion? Empirical data does not necessarily tell us anything useful or meaningful as individuals dealing with the human experience.

Also, just because a phenomenon is described/explained in a way that is not supported by, or in conflict with, empirical reality does not mean the phenomenon itself does not exist, or that the 'errant' theory is without utility, or even that it has less utility than the empirical model.

Yes, I realize how provocative that last clause is.

 

[weadazoid]

ahh One Thousand..... about the Trees

LOL.... never said they talk to me. It's just the way the wind flows through them. Even though that movie The Happening was total crap it kinda reminded me in some ways of how I look at any plant now. I see it as just being far more alive.....

In an odd way one may see my thoughts on this as actually agreeing with your from one stand point. That magical thinking is really at work, and in seeing things through child like perception illusions are far more real.

I think it is the way I define illusion.... I think of some Copperfield shit. to me that isn't trippy in the same sense a movie like the Matrix disects one persons or a set of persons thoughts while on a very strong trip. The idea that the drugs we do some how interupt a CPU program we are in and allow us to see reality for what it trully is really made me think.. that the Matrix may have been and still be the greatest motion picture based on a psychadelic experience the 2nd movie and 3rd movie suck. but I digress I am getting off topic.

If critical thinking is being logical, like solving a mathematics equation, then yes clearly whilst on the drug certain people are going to find it difficult. While others may find themselves right at home. I can remember TEARING it up on Tetris on Nintendo back in the day while tripping face, in an odd kinda way that is an excercise in basic logic.

No I never talked to trees or Rocks, or anything like that. on 10 hits the only thing that ever talked to me that shouldn't have was a dog. We held no conversation it just made a statement to me.

"You look like other dogs" I never have had an out of body experience. Closest I think I ever came to that was when I woke up on shroom trip and I felt like I was on the wall next to my bed instead of in my bed.

 

[bloodshed344]

Maybe he did mean it that way, it's hard to tell online. We assume people get where we're coming from when they only see the strictest meaning of the words, or we phrase things precisely and they read between the lines and see insinuation where there is none.



Who said we had to call science invalid to claim it is not the sole arbiter of truth? When did spirituality become part of the discussion? Empirical data does not necessarily tell us anything useful or meaningful as individuals dealing with the human experience.

Also, just because a phenomenon is described/explained in a way that is not supported by, or in conflict with, empirical reality does not mean the phenomenon itself does not exist, or that the 'errant' theory is without utility, or even that it has less utility than the empirical model.

Yes, I realize how provocative that last clause is.

Understandable I just didn't know this is quite what you meant with the way I read it.

 

[kidklmx]

If people have their spiritual beliefs that make it easier to deal with the world for them then so be it, but putting it on the same level as science is just wrong. The #1 thing to consider when you're thinking of a crazy idea on psychedelics is if science agrees with it.

Spirituality/consciousness doesn't necessarily have to play it's piece in this. I mean look at string theory, it's only disputed by the general scientific community because it needs more than 3-dimensions to work and there is no empirical data to back that up. They think that because we can't see it, it doesn't exist. They think reality is firm. Then there are people who don't think so, and have their own ideas on what reality is.

Psychedelics promote the latter view, realistically or not. Because the general scientific community is, well, the general scientific community they are the main embodiment of rationality, the definers of reality. Never Knows Best and Foreigner put it really well in that if you don't adhere to the same views then you're automagically crooked, while you're maybe only raising very valid questions. It's people like VoiceoftheTurtle (no offence, really) that only want to see a certain viewpoint from people like me ("DMT Elves are real") while there are a ton of interesting ideas to be found if "us weirdos" were taken seriously.

Not to say that there aren't a bunch of idiots, but I'm just saying that far-out thinking doesn't necessarily have to be about we are one. I seriously wonder how people can be so sure about reality, when there's weird stuff like probability going on at the quantum level. When we don't have an accurate description of how our brain works. There's just so many questions that we can't verify with data yet.


[EDIT] Errr, this post feels like an echo-oh-oh-oh

 

[VoiceoftheTurtle]

Maybe he did mean it that way, it's hard to tell online. We assume people get where we're coming from when they only see the strictest meaning of the words, or we phrase things precisely and they read between the lines and see insinuation where there is none.

Exactly.
Also, with regards to the inquiry of the OP, I think there are two phenomena that have to be separated. One type is "I'm sure that impurities caused my bad LSD trip" which is general ignorance and hearsay for the most part, and has decreased with the advent of sites like Bluelight. Well, partially in any case. Sites like BL also allow people to spread misinformation much quicker along with the helpful information. The second kind is along the lines of "Psilocybin mushrooms were engineered by aliens and sent to earth on meteorites" or "VoiceoftheTurtle can control my mind when he's on drugs" (a pet belief of a distant acquaintance who's quite the mushroom aficionado).

It's people like VoiceoftheTurtle (no offence, really) that only want to see a certain viewpoint from people like me ("DMT Elves are real") while there are a ton of interesting ideas to be found if "us weirdos" were taken seriously.

I think you're misrepresenting me. I'm not looking for a certain viewpoint from anyone, really! I consider myself one of the "weirdos". I just think it's good to always question what you think and what you think you know. Sometimes scientific reasoning is the best way to do that.