[FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

[Prof David West]

Steve,

Timothy Leary became a big fan of computer-mediated perception but the whole movement fell apart, because of technical limitations extant for computers at the time, but mostly from a lack of imagination - the "virtual realities" that people tried to create were too solidly grounded in "this reality."

davew


On Mon, Feb 24, 2020, at 9:39 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> *On the Utility of Perception/Mood/Judgement/Inhibition-Altering conditions and Reality*

> It feels as if this subset of FriAM has begun to converge on a common discussion, albeit from different perspectives with different assumptions and different judgements. Let me add my own subroutine to the annealing schedule:

> Re: Dave's communion with a faux Brigham Young in the desert in front of a virtual burning bush (erh... campfire). I think Dave will agree that the specific imagery of one of the most revered elders in the faith-tradition he was raised in is not coincidental for him to "consult" while on a mystical quest to untangle a Gordian knot central to his identity and place in the world. I think he would NOT expect anyone without that embedding to meet Brigham or Joseph. A good friend/colleague a few years my elder likes to make the deliberate mis-statement "too much LDS in the sixties" to describe people whose perceptions are not aligned with his own. 

> Among FriAMsters, there would be some here who would instead meet Peirce or Einstein or Newton or even Aquinas or Aristotle. Sarbajit or Mohammed would more likely meet a character from their own pantheons. Others might commune with Coyote or Raven or a Tree. And rather than a discussion, they might have a wrestling match or flying contest or illicit orgy to work on their Gordian Knot of choice.

> Eric's point that the apocryphal Benzene-as-Ouroboros ultimately yielded insight about circularity/ringness/closedness, while the snake/dragon/worm aspect was discarded as "excess meaning" (to try to use Glen's terminology?). Dave's "vision in the desert mountains" might have lead to insights (loosening/re-arranging of his Gordian Knot regarding the ?pro-female? Ibrahamic religions) and maybe some insights about his own relationship to the Patriarchy in which he was raised, but he would probably NOT prescribe to any of us NOT from the LDS fold to jack up on pain/drugs/breathing and go to that particular arroyo/wash and expect to meet Brigham Young. 

> Dave's metaphor of a sieve with square and triangular holes and whether it passes spheres well if at all is a very loosely applicable one I suppose, if you assume a specific size or shapes that are not symmetric (geometric cross-sections rather than tetrahedra/cubes/spheres). Certainly more complex semi-permeable membranes which select for shape would be yet more apt. 

> I very strongly agree with his analysis that in our multi-scale adaptation to our environment and the threats/opportunities offered against our survival/procreation unction (deeper than, but presented as instincts?) has lead us to have some pretty specific filters. As multicellular, warm-blooded vertebrates with highly developed visual and linguistic neural mechanisms we are both *highly adaptable* and *somewhat specific* at the same time. We probably can't perceive/think very well in the milieu that the great cetaceans do (communication over vast distances, a mostly 3D volumetric domain with relatively "boring-to-them" surfaces, etc.) and vice-versa. 

> Given this, anything that helps us make excursions (excurde?) from the envelopes of perception we have co-created with our environments (built environments, infrastructures, etc.) has the potential for expanding our awareness and admitting qualitatively new insights into "the nature of reality" (assuming there IS such a thing as an objective reality outside of our individual/collective selves). 

> I personally use computer-mediated perception (including simulation models and visual-auditory-haptic synthetic sensoria) to try to achieve this expanded awareness/insight into real-world phenomena, but with a tacit goal of being able to "find my way back" and "lead someone else there", or better yet "kit others out to find their own way".

>  The early "mountain men" of US expansion were perhaps most effective if they *didn't* function well in polite society, or at least were tuned to perform much better *outside of* polite society. But if they didn't bother to come back TO society (recross the Mississippi to the bars/brothels for the dead of winter, profligately spending up their wealth of beaver-pelts or gold nuggets) or were unable to articulate *where* they had been (even through tall tales, but possibly through detailed journals/maps) and what they had seen, then they didn't provide much utility to the rest of us. Similarly opium eaters and other mystics who simply fall into their own navels and/or return from such journeys a raving lunatics (of any amplitude) don't (superficially?) offer us a lot. On the other hand, those of us who can *tolerate* what seem like wild ravings long enough hear the signal in the noise *might* learn something, just as the bar/brothel-keeps who humored/endured/embraced the trappers and lone-prospectors who wintered among them might very well have learned a LOT about the plains and the Rockies and the great basin and Sierras, etc. by listening well and sorting out the tall tales from the factual information, or perhaps more aptly, being able to reduce the colorful descriptions to more mundane ones... knowing when "thousands and thousands" means "hundreds" or when "streams glittering with gold" actually refer to iron pyrite deposits... etc.

> Walter Jon Williams, a successful but not all that famous Science Fiction writer from ABQ (Belen?) wrote a novel in the 90's entitled "HardWired" which was set in the Albuqurque-Flatstaff strip city of the near future. His protaganist was some kind of hardboiled futuristic private detective, but the salient feature was that he had 3 "pumps" (one Red, one White, one Blue) wired into his body, not unlike an insulin pump or a morphine drip. They appeared to be fairly well-accepted future tech, with the unintended side effects of the Red/White/Blue pharmaceuticals being minimal or at least understood. As this character went through his daily routine of seeking out the bad guys or fighting the powers that be (I forget the nature of the antagonists), he would dose himself with "white" to raise his energy and perceptual acuity, or "red" to take the edge off of the last dose of "white" or to allow his body/mind to rest/relax/refresh or counteract his basal biochemistry of adrenals to remain "cool" in a harsh situation. He reserved "blue" for expanding his awareness/sensorium to seek subtle clues or better insight into a problem. It was the first time I had found perception/mood altering drug-use as anything but self-indulgent self-abuse. Of course, the framing in the story was that this was all highly technically defined and controlled and as I remember it the protaganist had a strong sense of his own limits of how far to expand his perception/performance envelope with these drugs. Reducing it to a tristimulus red/white/blue basis vector to convolve with the higher-dimensional biochemical/perceptual/mood space of an unmodified human was a new way of seeing "drug culture" for me. Being of the emerging cyberpunk genre, it nicely mixed the human-enhancement of hard tech with pharmacuetical-tech.

> Another writer (recently deceased), Vonda McIntyre, wrote "Of Mist, Grass, and Sand" with a more biogenic version of this deliberate dosing, though more in the context of healing using three snakes and their venom which they would reformulate after "tasting" their patients... generating appropriate sedatives, anti-biotic/viral/toxins, or hallucinagens according to their "needs". Written in the late 60s, there was a strong overtone of the drug-culture and undercurrent of back-to-nature of the time.

> Ramble,

>  - Steve

> On 2/24/20 9:16 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
>> David,

>> 

>> Well, Peirce begins with the premise that doubt is a painful state and that violation of expectations leads to doubt. Let say, for a moment, that you were wired up so that doubt is a joyful state. That would lead you across the map of experience by a very different route than I am led. Now even Peirce admits that a little bit of doubt can be diverting. He has an example of passing time between connections at a train station by entertaining doubts as to the best route to take from one city to another. So, the doubt-pleasure-doubt-pain thing seems to be a dimension, even in Peirce. Heck, even I enjoy a little bit of doubt in my life. But from my years-ago reading of Castenada and talking to people who enjoyed hallucinogens, I am pretty sure taking drugs would too much doubt for this old apollonian. 

>> 

>> Now this would explain why Peirce is of so little use to you. The test for reality for Peirce is predictability. In my discussion, and perhaps Eric’s, we have been asking you to apply that test to your experiences. I E, if your experiences in extremis don’t lead to a capacity to predict better and experience less doubt, then to hell with them. But if you love doubt, then Peirce’s pragmaticism is of no use to you. Am I getting closer?

>> 

>> But there is another possibility. Konrad Lorenz, the ethologist who won a Nobel with Tinbergen and vonFrisch, loved to talk about the “Innate School Marm”. I think of her as sitting at the head of the room, with a box of tiny but potent candies on her desk. Every time a student does something “good”, she gives him or her one of these little candies. Now, the brain (OH GOD HERE I AM A BEHAVIORIST TALKING ABOUT THE BRAIN) seems to be wired up like the I.S.M. It has at its disposal a pot of pleasure from which it doles out little dollops as we go through our day. When we take drugs, it’s like the day when the bad boys in the class stole the box of candies, locked themselves in the storeroom, and consumed them all at once. You have overthrown the Innate School Marm. 

>> 

>> Nick

>> 

>> 

>> 

>> 

>> 

>> 

>> 

>> Nicholas Thompson

>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

>> Clark University

>> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

>> 

>> 

>> 


>> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Prof David West
>> *Sent:* Monday, February 24, 2020 3:27 AM
>> *To:* friam at redfish.com
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

>> 

>> Nick,

>> 

>> Not dismissive,but definitely skeptical.

>> 

>> A metaphorical account of my problem.

>> 

>> Since the Age of Enlightenment, a host of people interested in knowledge, how we know, what we can know, what we can take as "fact," what might be deemed as "truth," etc. have developed philosophies and methods to answer these questions. Peirce is but one example.

>> 

>> Visualize that all of this thinking resulted in a really fine-grained sieve, through which we could pour our raw "stuff" and have it sort out the useful from the non. Upon close examination we note that the holes in the sieve consist, exclusively, of triangles and squares.

>> 

>> My "stuff" consists of spheres. None of my spheres can pass through the sieve, not because they are absent of, at least potentially, "knowledge" or "fact" or "truth:" but only because they are spherical and the sieve cannot deal with them.

>> 

>> Those responsible for creating the sieve and those who have made careers using the sieve to sift and sort "stuff" tend to hold the attitude that _Our Sieve _is the best sieve that human minds could possibly conceive and therefore anything not Sieve-able is irrelevant and of no possible value.

>> 

>> Peirce has produced a very fine sieve, but it is of no, (or very little), use to me. This was a disappointing discovery, for me, because, at least initially, I thought Peirce admitted a bit of the mystical into his philosophy.

>> 

>> ******

>> 

>> There have been sieve-makers who specialize in circles instead of triangles and squares. I have studied many of them, noting consistencies and differences. I also "know" where one "has got it right" and another "just misses the mark." But how do I "know" this?

>> 

>> Two years ago, I was driving overnight from Salt Lake City to Santa Fe to come to FRIAM. En route, just southeast of Moab, I stopped to have a conversation with Brigham Young. (A combination of pain, drugs, and Hatha Yoga made this possible.) The conversation concerned the reasons and mechanisms responsible for the evolution of very pro-female religions (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Mormonism) to near absolute misogyny. I took notes and later went back to see if Brigham had actually said any of this while he was alive. He did. I had read all of that material decades ago. What was the mechanism that allowed/prompted the mental coalescence of that information into a cogent conversation in a dry wash, sitting naked, next to an imaginary campfire, with Brigham's "presence" in the shadows? Could it be replicated? Could I drop a bit of acid and use the same "method" to write an academic paper — or at least a good first draft of one?

>> 

>> In Buddhism there is no "self." So what is it that reincarnates? I "know" the answer.

>> 

>> Right now I am trying to sort out an amalgam of process philosophy (Bergson, Whitehead), Hermeneutics (Heidegger), quantum interpretations, quantum consciousness, embodied mind and a couple of other threads; and from that mixture craft a "lens" through which I can examine all that I have read about Zen, alchemy, hermetic, Sufism, ... and all the other esoterica (and first hand experience) I have absorbed over the decades.

>> 

>> Open for suggestions.

>> 

>> 

>> [An aside: discounting Kekule's Ouroboros dream would be easier were it not for the fact that his notation and a host of other organic chemistry derived from dreams of atoms dancing, holding hands, and forming chains. Benzene was but one of many instances of his "dream induced chemistry."]

>> 

>> davew

>> 

>> 

>> 

>> On Sun, Feb 23, 2020, at 6:16 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:

>>> Dave,

>>> 

>>> You have indulged me as much as any other human on earth, and so it distresses me to hear you say that I would dismiss experiences in extremis out of hand. Let it be the case that Archimedes solved the king’s crown problem while lolling in a hot bath. Let it be the case that Kerkule solved the benzene problem while lolling in a hot bath. Let it be the case that Watson and Crick were lolling in a hot bath (oh those Brits!) when they discovered the double helix. I would say that, there was SOME grounds (however weak) to suspect that hot bathing led to scientific insight. In fact, it is one of the great advantages of Peirce’s position that weak inductions and abduction have the same *logical* status as strong ones and worthy always to be entertained. I DON’T believe, as I think many do, that extreme experiences have any special claim on wisdom. Dying declarations are attended to NOT because a dying person necessarily has great wisdom, but because we are unlikely to hear from that person again in the future. 

>>> 

>>> I suppose you might ague that the reason to go to extreme states is the same as the reason to go the Antarctic or the moon. There MIGHT be something interesting there, but until you have been there, you will never know, for sure, will you? The crunch comes when you are deciding on how much resources to devote to the exploration of extremes, given that those resources will be subtracted from those devoted to the stuff such known realities as climate change. If it’s a choice of exploring Mars or exploring climate change, you know where my vote would go.

>>> 

>>> But that has no bearing on whether I would encourage or discourage anyone to go with their individual curiosity. One of our number here is interested in exploring a variant of ESP. I say let’s go! 

>>> 

>>> 

>>> Nick

>>> 

>>> Nicholas Thompson

>>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

>>> Clark University

>>> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

>>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

>>> 

>>> 

>>> 

>>> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Prof David West

>>> *Sent:* Sunday, February 23, 2020 4:15 AM

>>> *To:* friam at redfish.com

>>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

>>> 

>>> Eric, Nick, et.al.,

>>> 

>>> "Well, [Dave] here's another nice mess you've gotten me into."

>>> 

>>> My issue/problem/quest — I have a body of "stuff" and I want to determine if there are ways to think about it in a "useful" manner.

>>> 

>>> The "stuff" appears pretty mundane: assertions, observations, conjectures, metaphors and models, even theory. The problem is provenance: directly or indirectly from, loosely defined, altered states of consciousness. Examples of indirect would be reports from enlightened mystics or dream experiences (ala Kekule or Jung). Direct would be psychedelics.

>>> 

>>> Nick might have me dismiss the entire corpus; stating it has the same value as the latest Marvel universe movie.

>>> 

>>> I disagree. But, by what means, what method, can "fact" even "truth" be discovered and shared. Peirce offers no real assistance. Nor does any other school of epistemology I have encountered.

>>> 

>>> Is there an approach to thinking about my "stuff" that would, at minimum, enable more consistent discovery of examples like Eric cites in #8 of his list. Would it not be useful to be able to quickly identify and focus on insights with the potential to "hold up pretty well."

>>> 

>>> Eric states there are reasons to believe (in #7) that altered states are less reliable, but I would argue, in some cases, the exact opposite. Especially with regard the ability to perceive stimuli of which perceive but never consciously "register" because our brain has filtered them out as being irrelevant. Mescaline can be an instrument as revealing as a microscope or a telescope and it would be worthwhile, I think, to learn how to make effective use of it.

>>> 

>>> The crux of my dilemma remains, I think there is gold in them thar hills, but don't have a means of mining and refining.

>>> 

>>> davew

>>> 

>>> 

>>> On Sat, Feb 22, 2020, at 10:41 PM, Eric Charles wrote:

>>>> If we are willing to go back and forth a bit between being philosophers and psychologists for a moment, there are far more interesting things to talk about regarding "altered states".... here are the some of the issues: 

>>>> 

>>>>  1. When someone claims to be responding to something, we should believe they are responding to *something*. 
>>>>  2. People generally suck at stating what they are responding to, even in highly mundane situations. 
>>>>  3. It is worth studying any types of experiences that lead fairly reliably to other certain future experiences, because in such situations one has a chance discover what it is people are *actually *responding to. 
>>>>  4. As we are complex dynamic systems, human development is affected by all sorts of things in non-obvious ways.
>>>>  5. There is no *a priori *reason to discount the insights one experiences under "altered states of consciousness", but also no *a priori* reason to give them special credence. 
>>>>  6. The degree to which a someone has a sense of certainty about something is not generally a reliable measure of how likely that thing is to hold up in the long run, unless many, many, many other assumptions are met.
>>>>  7. There is likely good reason to think that altered states of consciousness are less reliable in general than "regular" states.
>>>>  8. There are many examples that suggest certain insights-that-turn-out-to-hold-up-pretty-well, which were first experienced when under an altered state, were unlikely to have been experienced without that altered state. 
>>>> Is that the type of stuff we were are poking at?

>>>> 

>>>> 

>>>> -----------

>>>> Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.

>>>> Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

>>>> American University - Adjunct Instructor

>>>> 

>>>> 

>>>> 

>>>> 

>>>> On Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 2:30 PM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com> wrote:

>>>>> Agreed

>>>>> 

>>>>> ---

>>>>> Frank C. Wimberly, PhD

>>>>> 505 670-9918

>>>>> Santa Fe, NM

>>>>> 

>>>>> On Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 12:25 PM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com> wrote:

>>>>>> Frank writes:

>>>>>> 

>>>>>> <It would constitute proof that Marcus exists if he were to admit that I was correct in our years-ago argument when I said that gender defines an equivalence relation on the set of people.>

>>>>>> 

>>>>>> Definitions. Notation. Argh, who cares. Where’s that neuralyzer, let me get rid of them.

>>>>>> (That should at least be evidence of continuity!)

>>>>>> 

>>>>>> Marcus

>>>>>> ============================================================

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>>>>> ============================================================

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>>> 

>>> ============================================================

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>>> 

>> 

>> 
>> ============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
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>> 
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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