[FRIAM] Abduction

[Prof David West]

Nick,

Absolutely different. But, in ways we have barely touched upon, potentially complementary. War required both strategies PLUS some means of meaningful interaction.

Challenge: I have tried and failed, so far, but can you pose the exact same set of metaphors but absent the military/violence words?

davew


On Wed, Jan 2, 2019, at 6:05 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Dave, 
> 
> I dunno, Dave.  I still think we're different. I lay siege to large 
> cities; you send cavalry deep behind enemy lines.  
> 
> Nick 
> 
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
> Clark University
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Prof David West
> Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2019 4:37 PM
> To: friam at redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction
> 
> while typing my last response, the conversation took an interesting 
> turn, prompting the following.
> 
> I went to college intending to become a quantum chromodynamicist. Before 
> college I had read every 'popular' science book on Physics and Cosmology 
> (Asimov, etc,) and monographs used in graduate classes on physics. 
> Physics 101 was so dull, I quit.
> 
> What had attracted me to physics and cosmology were the "big" questions, 
> the "how" questions, the "why" questions, the interpretation 
> (philosophical) questions.
> 
> Serendipitously, I was taking an Asian Philosophy class the same first 
> semester of freshman year. The philosophical questions raised were, like 
> the speculative questions of quantum interpretation and cosmology,  so 
> interesting I was hooked. I became a 'philosopher' instead of a 
> 'physicist'.
> 
>  I wanted (still want) to know everything there is to know about the 
> mind, including altered states of consciousness. My research included 
> being hooked up to a computer and measuring brain waves, multiple forms 
> of meditation, all of the seven forms of classical Yoga, and psychedelic 
> drugs. LSD was still legal and my supply came through the auspices of 
> the Psychology Department. Other experiments included LSD, psylicibin, 
> and mescaline (not all at once) in a sensory-deprivation tank. Since 
> then I have experimented with every psychoactive drug.
> 
> Never to get high.
> 
> The most serious side effect (other than  my obvious insanity) is 
> extreme isolation/loneliness; and/or, if I have the temerity to raise 
> the subject among my intellectual friends, ostracism.
> 
> Gillian posted recently about the psychedelic effects of incense. It was 
> demonstrated long ago that not only does the incense but the ritual of 
> church affects the same areas of the brain and induces the same effects 
> as "augmented meditation" (microdoses of certain types of hallucinogen 
> like ayahuasca. The context of the research was the Catholic Mass in 
> Latin and the silent meditation of the Quakers.
> 
> There is such a huge area of interesting, at least to me, research, and 
> not just for therapeutic use, here that it annoys me when a combination 
> of puritan morality and scientific elitism dismisses the entire subject.
> 
> davew
> 
> On Wed, Jan 2, 2019, at 12:50 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> > I claim the answer to your 2 questions is yes.  As Marcus (with the 
> > usage classes) and Steve (with behavioral "drugs") point out, the 
> > reason people engage in such things is to make their lives *better* 
> > (according to some definition of "better").  To think anything else is 
> > to risk the madness of morons like Nancy Reagan or those who think 
> > alcoholics suffer from a moral failing, rather than a physiochemical one.
> > 
> > You want your insulin pump to make your life better than it would be 
> > without it.  Simple.  Rational.
> > 
> > As Dave pointed out, though, we have some very promising therapeutic 
> > agents that we've ignored because we've been hoodwinked by the moral 
> > proselytizing of anti-science nutbags who think like Scientologists -- 
> > Clear Body, Clear Mind and all that.
> > 
> > On 1/2/19 11:33 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> > > So is THAT the spirit in which people take psilocybin?  Is that the spirit in which people welcome the legalization of LSD?  I fear I may have wronged them horribly.  To be so far from a moderately happy life to want to derange one's entire experience for even only a few hours, seems like  a terrible thing to me.  I regard sanity as an achievement, not a state of affairs into which life naturally folds.  I would no more take LSD than crumple up a piece of paper before I put it in the printer.  
> > 
> > --
> > ☣ uǝlƃ
> > 
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