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I'm slowly turning into obbe
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2016-09-02 at 4:32 AM UTCI knew it was happening the first time I tried psychedelics. I had this incredible revelatory experience that recast everything I knew in a different light. I said to myself "yeah, I had a cool subjective experience like how you can watch a cool sci-fi movie or read a fantasy book, but no material fact about the world has changed", I contented myself that rationality will always triumph. But I knew it then as I know it now, by the prickling yearning for a deeper spiritual life in my heart, something wicked this way comes. First I decided psychology wasn't as much of a pseudoscience as I had previously thought. I read James' Principles of Psychology with admiration. In my idle moments I'd start coming up with wierd analogies, mostly around how physical processes could be pure functions (but not like modeling, much more abstract, intuitive, kooky). I started taking up arguments against atheists, reductionists, and fat headed physicists. I thought I was just doing it because that's what I do, I argue shit on the internet because whatever, iron sharpens iron or something, but over time I came to actually believe it. I became a vegetarian out of empathy for animals (not like "I feel bad for them", rather I recognized (or claim to recognize) a shared property of consciousness and feel compelled to extend the same impartiality that defines intra-human ethics to them).
All of this I could put aside, I could rationalize. Ultimately my views had not changed all that dramatically, and one ought not police their inner experience too harshly. But just now I read a paper by David Chalmers and found myself nodding along here and there, I acknowledged panpsychism as at least a tentatively viable position. At this moment I realized it had gone too far, I'm seriously entertaining the notion that elementary particles might have some kind of subjectivity.
It's bad man, all that self confidence of reductive materialism has slowly evaporated. The absolute conviction of the atheistic position shook, cracked, and then crumbled under me and left me with a sort of begrudged skepticism. Pre-normative thought became moral righteousness, became shaky motivational arguments trapped between moral error theory and any really solid ethical framework. Slowly but surely the ideological ground I once stood on has eroded away and it's slowly turning me into a fucking neo-hippy. What the fuck have I done to myself? -
2016-09-02 at 4:36 AM UTCi kno rite
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2016-09-02 at 5:10 AM UTCPlease don't turn into obbe. Remember the scientific method, the clarity of logic. The right approximation of the truth is the one that comes with the least assumptions etc.
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2016-09-02 at 6:18 AM UTChahaha fag
SOMEBODY CAN'T HANDLE HIS PSYCHS -
2016-09-02 at 9:27 AM UTCGod is real just take 4x the drugs and you can talk to all kinda of spirits, demons and holy creatures.
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2016-09-02 at 1:13 PM UTC"Oh no, I'm turning into Obbe," you lament, as if you've damaged your brain and are somehow becoming lesser, lower on the totem pole. I know I'm not as smart as some of you, and I know I'm a little more open to the paranormal and spiritual perspectives, but that doesn't mean I'm some sort of clown or joke to be laughed at.
If you are changing hopefully you change into someone who isn't such an asshole. -
2016-09-02 at 2:12 PM UTC
"Oh no, I'm turning into Obbe," you lament, as if you've damaged your brain and are somehow becoming lesser, lower on the totem pole. I know I'm not as smart as some of you, and I know I'm a little more open to the paranormal and spiritual perspectives, but that doesn't mean I'm some sort of clown or joke to be laughed at.
If you are changing hopefully you change into someone who isn't such an asshole.
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2016-09-02 at 2:43 PM UTCIt's cool Lanny made this thread though. He worded exactly what I'm going through. Like, I can "see" now that there's more to life than what meets the eye... but on the other hand, I "know" that there isn't. I don't know what I'm saying. Fuck this.
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2016-09-02 at 2:49 PM UTC
It's cool Lanny made this thread though. He worded exactly what I'm going through. Like, I can "see" now that there's more to life than what meets the eye… but on the other hand, I "know" that there isn't. I don't know what I'm saying. Fuck this.
We can talk about it if that would help. -
2016-09-02 at 3:23 PM UTC
We can talk about it if that would help.
do you have skype or anyting -
2016-09-02 at 3:36 PM UTCNo I don't. You should be able to talk about it with me right here though.
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2016-09-02 at 4:18 PM UTC
Please don't turn into obbe. Remember the scientific method, the clarity of logic. The right approximation of the truth is the one that comes with the least assumptions etc.
I mean the scientific method itself is largely a dogma, a very successful and useful one, but then so were like biblical dietary restrictions or sharia law for a time. Philosophy of science is not a closed book and most working scientists either don't know or don't care about foundational problems with their methodology. Same goes for occam's razor."Oh no, I'm turning into Obbe," you lament, as if you've damaged your brain and are somehow becoming lesser, lower on the totem pole. I know I'm not as smart as some of you, and I know I'm a little more open to the paranormal and spiritual perspectives, but that doesn't mean I'm some sort of clown or joke to be laughed at.
If you are changing hopefully you change into someone who isn't such an asshole.
Aww, don't take it the wrong way blood. I certainly see how you could take that from my post, and I suppose I did mean it in a sort of tongue in cheek sort of way, but really it's the opposite. I'm saying that a lot of your ideas I've previously dismissed as batty I'm starting to become sympathetic to, I'm saying you were right. The I really do hold to the ideas I'm associating you with here, it's just kind of shocking to me since they would have sounded very off the wall in the past, some (in particular, compatibilism and panpsychism) are positions you brought up and I actively argued against. -
2016-09-02 at 5:45 PM UTCOk Lan, you've warmed my heart. I've noticed you seem to be opening up to some things I've talked about, maybe broadening your perspective and expanding your consciousness. Good for you. However I want to say some of the ideas you associate with me aren't really what I would consider to be my ideas, or ideas I believe in or view as truth. Like compatibilism. I enjoy what it brings to the table, but I would not call myself a compatibilist. I do think there are ways of defining "freewill" that make much more sense then the traditional way and that it is acceptable to do so, but at the same time I find the traditional vague sense of freewill most people associate the word with and the apparent impossibility of its existence in our world to be a fascinating topic for discussion.
Let's talk about panpsychism. I don't believe I've ever actually used this word. Let me see what it means
noun: panpsychism- the doctrine or belief that everything material, however small, has an element of individual consciousness.
So I believe I have brought up ideas kind of like this in the past, saying things like "We are all one" but I tend to mean this in a more vague and mystical, almost spiritual sort of way. This panspychism seems to depend on how we define what individual consciousness is, I believe you and I were recently discussing that subject. Remind me again what you believe the core of consciousness to be? If I remember correctly you said something along the lines that the "kernel of personhood" is basically the whole "I think therefore I am" thing. I believe I replied by questioning whether or not consciousness requires thoughts and whether we should consider our thoughts to be a part of our identity or instead to be events that we experience and are conscious of, to which I believe you replied something like word/thoughts are at least required to make the argument or have the position that someone/something exists. I think that makes sense, in order to claim or exclaim you/your consciousness does exist you would need to have a language/words/thoughts used to express what it is like - but what does that tell us about what consciousness is?
Is it like free will? This vague, difficult to describe sense that we feel must exist but upon closer inspection appears to be more illusory then we once felt? Is conscious mind a creation of words, or is there really something deeper? Maybe "consciousness" as you and I experience it is really just a highly complicated and evolved form of the "awareness" that all living things seem to possess. That seems reasonable. So what is awareness? Being aware of your environment, right? Showing that you are aware that something else exists I suppose. Something like that. So how do we know something is aware? It shows a reaction right? Maybe consciousness as you and I experience it is something like a highly complicated, highly evolved way of reacting to the world around us, similar to the very simple and crude way an amoeba might react to electrical stimulation or something like that. But do only living things have reactions to their environment? Some would say this is where the discussion gets a little silly, but seeing how we are discussing panspychism those people will have to bear with me for a moment. Can we admit the line we draw between living things and non living things to be a little bit hazy? Most people will say stuff like a virus is not alive but a virus is still able to evolve, replicate when placed in the right environment, it still reacts to the environment it is in, would it be too much to say that those reactions are like a crude version of the "awareness" we see in more complicated structures like organisms? Where does this end? Do the elementary particles that make up our reality not react to each other in a way which we could metaphorically relate to our own reactions and behaviors?
I don't know. Tell me what your thoughts are Lanny. -
2016-09-03 at 12:23 AM UTCI wonder what happened to ate
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2016-09-03 at 1:26 AM UTC
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2016-09-03 at 1:38 AM UTCITT: Lanny insults Obbe, but incredibly, didn't realize Obbe was actually still here
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2016-09-03 at 2:10 AM UTC
ITT: Lanny insults Obbe, but incredibly, didn't realize Obbe was actually still here
If it isn't our resident agent provocateur, we meet again. -
2016-09-03 at 5:02 AM UTClol this thread is buttfuckingly hilarious
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2016-09-04 at 5:08 AM UTCLanny, IIRC you were using once a week, although I don't know how your usage has varied.
But it's recommended that trips be done with significant gaps in order to fully integrate them. As time goes on, the frequency of trips for personal development greatly reduces for most people.
"Once you get the message, hang up the phone."
If you're using them for recreation or not integrating them properly, you're heading into dangerous territory. How dangerous depends on the individual and some chance. -
2016-09-04 at 5:29 AM UTC
Lanny, IIRC you were using once a week, although I don't know how your usage has varied.
But it's recommended that trips be done with significant gaps in order to fully integrate them. As time goes on, the frequency of trips for personal development greatly reduces for most people.
"Once you get the message, hang up the phone."
If you're using them for recreation or not integrating them properly, you're heading into dangerous territory. How dangerous depends on the individual and some chance.
I'm sure lanny will be fine. He's probably just having a young mans existential crises that he'd probably go through regardless of psychedelics.
Personally for me, I didn't trip for years until the last two and a half months or so. shrooms, 2cb, acid.. and it doesn't really effect me the way it used to when I was younger.
I guess because I've already "gotten the message" been there done that.. and its stuck with me... I just use them for fun, maybe once or a week or every two weeks. And i've actually noticed I've been drinking a lot less and my general paranoia/isolation/anxiety has been a lot better. i don't get caught up in the philisophical nature as much because I feel like these are things I've already understood them for years now.. So I usually just go swimming, hiking, or to concerts and just have a good time.
Maybe lanny is just having anxiety about other things in his life right now.
