pharmakos
Bluelighter
Yeah crazy! I didn't join BL and meet you on here until maybe 2007 or 2008, but I remembered your name from that report soon as I saw you on the list of PD staff! We've known each other 15 years Xorky!
🌟🌟 Social 🌟🌟 PD Social Thread 2022-2025 v. Year of the Phenethylamine
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Xorkoth
Bluelight Crew
Damn that is crazy. in some ways it seems that long, but in others, like it wasn't so long ago...
Chris Timothy
Bluelighter
@pharmakos
Well non-local-reality only equates nihilism in the pejorative sense if you can't see the value in any but cold hard everlasting Rock of Ages. And you must realize that "nothing is real" is a hyperbole. I mean, if nothing is, then neither is that statement. Another way of putting it is that rather nothing is quite as dead as we would like to suppose on a Monday morning, but is pregnant with the possibilities our cognizance bestows upon it. You can oppose to that from the viewpoint of an inhabitant of the Bethlehem clay pot Universe delegating its livelihood upstairs into the unknown-yet-familial, or you can embrace that from the psychedelic perspective in which everything bleeds into each other and therefore loses absolute particularity but not therefore the fact it is quite real and happening before your eyes as we speak.
Well yeah all collapses could be directed by god, only apparently connected to our own observation but really not. All dinosaur skeletons could be put into the earth by old testament god to test our faith too. Those are theories, but not.. elegant ones.
Can't access your paper alas, although the title and your take on it sound interesting. Do feel free to summarize.
Well non-local-reality only equates nihilism in the pejorative sense if you can't see the value in any but cold hard everlasting Rock of Ages. And you must realize that "nothing is real" is a hyperbole. I mean, if nothing is, then neither is that statement. Another way of putting it is that rather nothing is quite as dead as we would like to suppose on a Monday morning, but is pregnant with the possibilities our cognizance bestows upon it. You can oppose to that from the viewpoint of an inhabitant of the Bethlehem clay pot Universe delegating its livelihood upstairs into the unknown-yet-familial, or you can embrace that from the psychedelic perspective in which everything bleeds into each other and therefore loses absolute particularity but not therefore the fact it is quite real and happening before your eyes as we speak.
Well yeah all collapses could be directed by god, only apparently connected to our own observation but really not. All dinosaur skeletons could be put into the earth by old testament god to test our faith too. Those are theories, but not.. elegant ones.
Can't access your paper alas, although the title and your take on it sound interesting. Do feel free to summarize.
pharmakos
Bluelighter
Here's another source for that Fractal Topology of Time paper:
A Reddit comment I composed the other day that turned into a mini essay, followup on that same CS Lewis quote
"Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can't trust my own thinking, of course I can't trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.". -- CS Lewis
The quote leads to another metaphysical/epistemological question -- where does logic itself come from? Is it merely a human construct or does it somehow exist separate from the trappings of human language?
In either case, our logic has led us to science. Our science, at first, led us to seeing the order/logic in everything. The predictable movement of heavenly bodies. The discrete chunks of radiation coming from atoms. Etc. All examples of using math and logic to make accurate predictions about the nature of our world.
But then as we learned even more, our science has led us to see just how CHAOTIC and UNPREDICTABLE our universe truly is. Einstein was convinced that God doesn't play dice with the universe, but things like Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle), Kurt Godel's Incompleteness Theorems (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel's_incompleteness_theorems), the Three Body Problem (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem), and heck even Alan Turing's Halting Problem (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem -- remember that algorithms have been a concept since before computers, so if nature is math at the basic level, the Halting Problem applies!) all seem to lead to the inherent randomness and unknowability of the world at the fundamental level.
That might be a fine place to end it if one is okay being a nihilist, unconcerned with finding meaning or reason in this world. And I get that, I do -- I spent much of my youth believing that nihilism was the answer to the ultimate question. But if one wants to be a rational thinking person, one then has to wonder why they should trust their own thoughts that led them to their nihilism. If our consciousness just arises from the fundamental chaos that is inherent to the matter that composes our physical forms, then why should we trust it at all?
The best argument for how we could have rational thinking minds in a secular, Godless universe, when considering what we know of modern science, is in the Boltzmann Brain thought experiment (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain)... and it, like Schrodinger's famous cat-in-a-box thought experiment, was originally intended to be a REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM argument! The assumption that we were the lucky primate at the end of a chain of infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters that finally wrote something intelligent, and it propagated from there like a meme (in the Dawkins sense). That's the best argument there is from the secular side as far as I can tell, tho I would really like it if someone proposed any other possibilities.
So considering that, it sees to me that it's hard to say which argument falls on which side of Occam's razor. I don't discredit anyone who sees all that and still favors the godless hypothesis -- we can't disprove it. But to this commenter at least, it genuinely seems a little more absurd to to assume that we are just the lucky children of chaos, than it is to assume that there is a source of logic and rationality that transcends our physical world. And the best name I have for that thing, other than the Platonic Realm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_forms), is just to call it God.
Tl;Dr -- not a single one of us has actually seen a perfect circle or a perfect sphere, and yet every single culture has independently come to an identical and clear concept of what a perfect circle is supposed to be. How could we all agree on what a perfect circle is if we are the ones that came up with the idea in the first place?
A Reddit comment I composed the other day that turned into a mini essay, followup on that same CS Lewis quote
"Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can't trust my own thinking, of course I can't trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.". -- CS Lewis
The quote leads to another metaphysical/epistemological question -- where does logic itself come from? Is it merely a human construct or does it somehow exist separate from the trappings of human language?
In either case, our logic has led us to science. Our science, at first, led us to seeing the order/logic in everything. The predictable movement of heavenly bodies. The discrete chunks of radiation coming from atoms. Etc. All examples of using math and logic to make accurate predictions about the nature of our world.
But then as we learned even more, our science has led us to see just how CHAOTIC and UNPREDICTABLE our universe truly is. Einstein was convinced that God doesn't play dice with the universe, but things like Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle), Kurt Godel's Incompleteness Theorems (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel's_incompleteness_theorems), the Three Body Problem (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem), and heck even Alan Turing's Halting Problem (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem -- remember that algorithms have been a concept since before computers, so if nature is math at the basic level, the Halting Problem applies!) all seem to lead to the inherent randomness and unknowability of the world at the fundamental level.
That might be a fine place to end it if one is okay being a nihilist, unconcerned with finding meaning or reason in this world. And I get that, I do -- I spent much of my youth believing that nihilism was the answer to the ultimate question. But if one wants to be a rational thinking person, one then has to wonder why they should trust their own thoughts that led them to their nihilism. If our consciousness just arises from the fundamental chaos that is inherent to the matter that composes our physical forms, then why should we trust it at all?
The best argument for how we could have rational thinking minds in a secular, Godless universe, when considering what we know of modern science, is in the Boltzmann Brain thought experiment (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain)... and it, like Schrodinger's famous cat-in-a-box thought experiment, was originally intended to be a REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM argument! The assumption that we were the lucky primate at the end of a chain of infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters that finally wrote something intelligent, and it propagated from there like a meme (in the Dawkins sense). That's the best argument there is from the secular side as far as I can tell, tho I would really like it if someone proposed any other possibilities.
So considering that, it sees to me that it's hard to say which argument falls on which side of Occam's razor. I don't discredit anyone who sees all that and still favors the godless hypothesis -- we can't disprove it. But to this commenter at least, it genuinely seems a little more absurd to to assume that we are just the lucky children of chaos, than it is to assume that there is a source of logic and rationality that transcends our physical world. And the best name I have for that thing, other than the Platonic Realm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_forms), is just to call it God.
Tl;Dr -- not a single one of us has actually seen a perfect circle or a perfect sphere, and yet every single culture has independently come to an identical and clear concept of what a perfect circle is supposed to be. How could we all agree on what a perfect circle is if we are the ones that came up with the idea in the first place?
Chris Timothy
Bluelighter
That's a false dichotomy. We can be neither children or chaos, nor a confirmation of the quite contingent belief system we happened be born into. How about the universe is an iteratively self-creating system? That's quite distinct from chaos, and quite distinct from an absolute, managerial product.
(Damn, what's the deal with that link? That's a powerpoint presentation in pdf format, not a paper..)
Re:tldr: that's a great point. If there's any value in religion, it must lie in comparative religion, i.e., religion stripped from merely local concepts.
So as a deist you owe it to yourself to study the religions which don't have that element in common, and derive from it the underlying essence. (Daoism, buddhism, etc..)
(Damn, what's the deal with that link? That's a powerpoint presentation in pdf format, not a paper..)
Re:tldr: that's a great point. If there's any value in religion, it must lie in comparative religion, i.e., religion stripped from merely local concepts.
So as a deist you owe it to yourself to study the religions which don't have that element in common, and derive from it the underlying essence. (Daoism, buddhism, etc..)
pharmakos
Bluelighter
Oh damn I didn't look close enough. Anyway, the paper is available a few places online. Can download it from Scribd with a free 30 day trial. There's also a series of YouTube videos that were recorded when she was presenting it.
Yes as I already said, I am a Gnostic and synthesize elements of Eastern religions into my belief. My beliefs don't hold much in common with mainstream Christianity as it stands in 2023. Read those Carl Jung and CS Lewis links above perhaps.
And I believe in Logos spermatikos -- the Word of God as revealed in all things, even other religions. Early Church writers (before Rome co-opted the religion and distorted it for political control) considered Greeks like Pythagoras and Plato to be "Christians before Christ," those writings have changed me much as well. Essene Jews, of which Christ and John the Baptist likely came from, called themselves "followers of the Way" -- and Chinese translations of the Book of John, instead of referring to Christ as "in the beginning was the Word" or "in the beginning was the Logos," they say "in the beginning was the Tao" -- Tao meaning "Way" of course. It's all connected.
The Logos isn't just logic itself tho -- it's also "the word unspoken." Much like the Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.
Ancient China (thousands of years before Taoism or Gnosticism) even practiced a form of monotheism that was very similar to later Gnostic beliefs -- Shangdi, the unseen eternal God, battling Hundun, the spirit of Chaos.
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Chris Timothy
Bluelighter
You have provided no Carl Jung nor CS Lewis links. Though you have quoted CS Lewis.. but again, that bit is but a false dichotomy.
I don't care about what Christianity is mainstream nowadays, your belief reads as what's stereotypically Christian as derived from its overall history. Zilch Eastern influence. Logos spermatikos, I agree, in principle. But don't therefore just assume that other systems of thought are identical in form and consequence to yours and therefore do not warrant due investigation.
I don't care about what Christianity is mainstream nowadays, your belief reads as what's stereotypically Christian as derived from its overall history. Zilch Eastern influence. Logos spermatikos, I agree, in principle. But don't therefore just assume that other systems of thought are identical in form and consequence to yours and therefore do not warrant due investigation.
pharmakos
Bluelighter
Previous page sorryP.s. I found my faith again but via Gnostic versions of Christian apologetics that synthesize aspects of Eastern religions into their understanding. Especislly the writings of Carl Jung and CS Lewis (who was an atheist for most of his youth as well!). So don't worry. Not an Old Testament Bible thumper.
Answer to Job Revisited : Jung on the Problem of Evil
Answer to Job Revisited : Jung on the Problem of Evil. by David Sedgwick.jungpage.org
"Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can't trust my own thinking, of course I can't trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God." -- CS Lewis
Lewis’s Rejection of Nihilism: The Tao and the Problem of Moral Knowledge
C. S. Lewis published The Abolition of Man in 1944 in the midst of World War II. We can perhaps imagine the ominous and suggestive nature of this timing. But, as readers soon discovered, the book w…www.cslewis.org
The Dalai, the Dinosaur, and the Tao
The teachings of the Dalai Lama stand largely in accord with C.S. Lewis's Tao. Conservative principles should be recognized, even from surprising sources.theimaginativeconservative.org
"You have to be the change that you want to see in the world." -- Mahatma Ghandi
pharmakos
Bluelighter
Also dude. What makes you assume I haven't done my due investigation? Legitimately pretty rude of you. I've read extensively about almost every religion known. I even studied Ancient Middle Eastern religions / history in college. You are making a lot of assumptions. Perhaps you need to learn some of the things I know before judging?
I haven't laid out my entire belief system for you. Would take far more than a few paragraphs to do that.
You don't seem like you're familiar with Gnosticism. Belief in Gnosticism alone makes me a heretic in the eyes of most Christians. Hard to see how that could be considered stereotypically Christian.
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Xorkoth
Bluelight Crew
Tl;Dr -- not a single one of us has actually seen a perfect circle or a perfect sphere, and yet every single culture has independently come to an identical and clear concept of what a perfect circle is supposed to be. How could we all agree on what a perfect circle is if we are the ones that came up with the idea in the first place?
Well, humans all over have the same desire to solve problems and figure out the world. In the course of that, it is necessary to study shapes, and from shapes arises geometry and trigonometry, as you begin to understand the relationships between numbers in shapes. As that understanding evolves to the point that you have developed trigonometry (and you would, because those are the relationships between the numbers... math is fascinating to me because it is one of the few things we can make 100% factual statements with, either directly or abstractly), you would arrive at the concept of a perfect circle. A circle is a shape that everyone has observed, obviously not mathematically perfect circles, necessarily, but every culture will have developed a word to describe that shape that is roughly a circle. And then through the study of math, they will arrive at the concept of a perfect circle. You couldn't do otherwise. Math (in all its forms) is a universal truth that becomes self-evident through observation and study. That's why it arises independently across the world. There isn't another possible way to conceptualize a perfect circle... a culture could not have evolved its sciences enough to have even grappled with the math of shapes, but once they do, they will understand circles.
Interesting thoughts, I appreciate them.
After I make dinner and take a shower and stuff I will read your posts a little more carefully.
Pfafffed
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2015
- Messages
- 1,834
You know, I got a cold this week and almost did the same thing. The only thing that stopped me was that I felt a little too shitty to go to the trouble of getting it out of storage.I had been wondering for a while if I had covid, just because I felt like I was coming down with something after the Christmas traveling. Today I remembered I actually have a couple of at-home tests, so I took one. Seems to be a clear negative, so that's good. I don't really feel sick, but I did wonder if maybe some of what I'm feeling was from that. But... probably not. I guess that's a good thing but in a way I kinda hoped it was.
I did a 10mg bump of MXE a little bit ago. The last time I felt this down I did little bumps periodically for a few days and it cleared up for quite a while, so I'm gonna give that a shot again. It's working quite well so far.
I don't know that I have much faith in the rapid antigen tests working anymore. I caught what I assume to be COVID finally last November (horrible cough, lost sense of smell, etc.) and never tested positive once over the entire course of the sickness. Their false negative rate is now really high. Same with friends that only ever tested positive via PCR. It's a shame that PCR testing isn't widely available and cheap now, but so it goes. With my current cold, I'm just staying home and testing once after I feel better just to be sure.
cosmic charlie
Bluelight Crew
Well im about to shave my head for the first time in quite awhile, been growing my hair out for couple years almost and its pretty much shoulder length. But i have to face reality and im getting older and my hairline is royally fucked. So it is what it is, will be less work too.
Oh man, cant wait till my girlfriend gets here tommorow. Gonna get frisky and take some Carisoprodol and Pregabalin later on. Kinda wondering if maybe i should wait till i get back to the halfway house and i can take it and stay in bed, not sure how fucked up i'll be...feels so good to get high
Oh man, cant wait till my girlfriend gets here tommorow. Gonna get frisky and take some Carisoprodol and Pregabalin later on. Kinda wondering if maybe i should wait till i get back to the halfway house and i can take it and stay in bed, not sure how fucked up i'll be...feels so good to get high
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Pfafffed
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2015
- Messages
- 1,834
If phenomena can be determined to have no inherent existence except when being observed, does this then mean that they can be unobserved? If they can be unobserved, doesn't this in fact disprove the existence of a prime observer (god)?So I just caught this today somehow
The Nobel prize for 2022 went to some people who *proved* that physical objects do not have an existence of their own, but are ONLY the product of being observed.
For a material rationalist, that's as close to proof for God as you can get. For who else can keep the physical universe together, then, but One observer witnessing it all? And foolish of us to be so solipsistic as to think that we are he
How to Prove the Universe Is Not Locally Real
Elegant experiments with entangled light have laid bare a profound mystery at the heart of realitywww.scientificamerican.com
Pioneering Quantum Physicists Win Nobel Prize in Physics | Quanta Magazine
John Clauser, Anton Zeilinger and Alain Aspect have won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for groundbreaking experiments with entangled particles.www.quantamagazine.org
porkstock
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2009
- Messages
- 773
The only time I eyeballed 2ce (aiming for 20 mg), I had some weed near the peak and combined with Pink Floyd's Division Bell, I was convinced that I would never come down. I can't quite recall the details that made me believe that, but it had to do with feeling my mind fragment and drift away. I was probably near but not quite at full ego loss for one of the first times ever.
I remember 2ce pretty fondly - it tended to give me sparkly, crystal like visuals with eyes open (like in the winter the snow at night would look so beautiful - I did it a lot in the winter), and the most fantastic, story like CEVs that would correlate with music that sounded like it was being performed and had been written specifically for me.
Wish the stuff didn't give me such a headache on the comedown and next day
I remember 2ce pretty fondly - it tended to give me sparkly, crystal like visuals with eyes open (like in the winter the snow at night would look so beautiful - I did it a lot in the winter), and the most fantastic, story like CEVs that would correlate with music that sounded like it was being performed and had been written specifically for me.
Wish the stuff didn't give me such a headache on the comedown and next day
ItsAFunThing
Bluelighter
Do you guys too get this annoying leg muscles tension on psychedelics? It seems to follow me whatever psychedelic I take, it's not painful, just.. uncomfortable and I can't fall asleep because of it. I'm starting to think that maybe it's not normal I should get my veins checked or something? Ouch.
I have found citrulline in large quantities (around 20 g) really helps alleviate this feeling and makes trips more pleasant physically in general. I don't see a reason to not use it every time I trip.
I have found citrulline in large quantities (around 20 g) really helps alleviate this feeling and makes trips more pleasant physically in general. I don't see a reason to not use it every time I trip.
cosmic charlie
Bluelight Crew
The Soma/Lyrica/Buprenorphine combo is amazing, like wow. So much euphoria i feel ontop of the world right now. Started out with 1 gram Soma and 500mgs Lyrica and it was so good, then i redosed the same amount 4hrs later.
About to watch some American Horror Story with my girl, perfect day. I gave her a bunch to take home so i dont gobble jt up in few days. She has ten more roughly 500mg gel caps of Pregabalin and ten Soma. So i am set for next week, hope your all having fun
About to watch some American Horror Story with my girl, perfect day. I gave her a bunch to take home so i dont gobble jt up in few days. She has ten more roughly 500mg gel caps of Pregabalin and ten Soma. So i am set for next week, hope your all having fun
cosmic charlie
Bluelight Crew
Been getting high with my friend here, totally blasted. Last night did a gram of Pregabalin and 3 grams of Carisoprodol and was cooking. But im really excited about this morning taking the downers so close to the 4mgs of Buprenorphine.
My biddy was nodding hardcore from two Soma's and 500mgs Pregabalin, was so jealous. I think i just have such a high tolerance to drugs in general. I have to work at 4pm, so im trying to have a warm and fuzzy morning and then pull it together and go cook. Love these drugs, im gonna stock up heavy when i get paid.
My biddy was nodding hardcore from two Soma's and 500mgs Pregabalin, was so jealous. I think i just have such a high tolerance to drugs in general. I have to work at 4pm, so im trying to have a warm and fuzzy morning and then pull it together and go cook. Love these drugs, im gonna stock up heavy when i get paid.
I took some acid the other night when home alone. However my stash kit with the rest of my acid and some 2c-b was.. Put somewhere by tripping me and I don't know where. It's been a few days and I honestly can't think where I put it.
I really really don't want to go pulling all my garbage out of the bin but it's the only place I havnt checked. fuck lol. Surely I didn't throw it in the bin..
I really really don't want to go pulling all my garbage out of the bin but it's the only place I havnt checked. fuck lol. Surely I didn't throw it in the bin..