We do drugs itt. - by The Alchemist
Swiss Mercenary on 23/8/2006 at 02:30
Gotta love the 'taxes, and telling kids that money doesn't mean happiness == totalitarianism!' in the third link TGGP.
Tocky on 23/8/2006 at 03:04
I'm curious as to whether anyone has ever known anyone who has ever had a flashback. It's a bit like a bigfoot. I've heard tell of them but never actually known anyone who knew anyone who had them.
Perhaps minor visuals like tracers were reported as such although I think anyone by varying thier visual focus in artificial lighting could attain something similar as the brain seeks to stop the blur and retain a more steadfast image to commit to memory. Wagon wheels don't truly turn backward as they appear at a certain speed either. Same thing though.
Anyone seen this boogeyman? Timothy Leary aint talkin. He also wouldn't know the difference or care if he was alive. The dropout.
Chimpy Chompy on 23/8/2006 at 06:03
Are you citing crackpot blogs again?
Paz on 23/8/2006 at 11:33
Quote Posted by Strontium Dog
Nevertheless, even assuming it was the "neo-fascists" in our government who came up with these results, I fail to see why their conclusions on this matter should not be trusted.
Come on, use your imagination a bit.
Keeping a doped and malleable population is quite early in the Dystopian Government handbook. It stops people from thinking too much. Presumably this could be achieved by perpetuating a belief in the safety of their evil mind-warping pills. Fabricated scientific results would be stage 1.3 of this plot.
Conspiracy achieved!
PigLick on 23/8/2006 at 11:44
Yeh, the whole flashback thing is a crock of wang, I have taken a shitload of drugs in my time so my body should be one fatty drug deposit of biblical proportions.
Vigil on 23/8/2006 at 11:59
I'm glad you brought this up actually Pig, because none of us really exist. In fact, it's 1994 and you've been hallucinating for 26 hours in a hotel bathroom in a pool of your own urine.
jimjack on 23/8/2006 at 15:33
Well I do value experience and learning:cheeky: but my personal experience with those elders who have taken hallucinogenics were so full of shite saying he feels benefitted psychologicaly but at the same time he was alienated from society in attaining it. He told me to step lightly as the brain is not fully formed till the age of 21 (in males anyway) and all the psycho, physio and emotional development I'm going through could go sideways...and on the other hand taking them later on will likely bring on a poor experience as opposed to just enjoying the pretty lights and swirling patterns. But to not try is missing out on an exploration of the workings of the mind..He is old and sensible (ish) read old hand herm...but saying he believed the whole "psychedelic experience" would set him free to a better way of life, re-connecting back to what artificial life ahs dis-connected him from. I grew up hearing this from the sages in my life, a mix of revelations and warnings..
I just figure hallucinogenic usage leads to circular arguments and beating heads against walls of frustration. I'm still attempting to get past the inane giggling fits and paranoid jags of the occasional spliff.
Tocky on 24/8/2006 at 02:20
Quote Posted by Paz
Keeping a doped and malleable population is quite early in the Dystopian Government handbook.
Ironically Huxleys BRAVE NEW WORLD.
In another irony, when asked what LSD had taught him Jerry Garcia said "you don't get something without giving something up". If you want to learn something cracking a book is still the way to go. Unless you just want to play crappy music.
TheGreatGodPan on 24/8/2006 at 02:25
Quote Posted by Chimpy Chompy
Are you citing crackpot blogs again?
Are all blogs by their nature crackpot? Econlog is run by Arnold Kling and Bryan Caplan, who are both economics professors at George Mason University and published authors (Caplan's book, "The Myth of the Rational Voter" hasn't actually come out yet, but he does have a publishing deal and it should be out soon). That by itself doesn't mean they aren't crackpots, but I'd say it makes for a significantly lower probability than bloggers in general.
I think the "totalitarianism" comment is a reflection of Kling's belief that happiness is inherently subjective on the part of individuals and that the government cannot "scientifically" determine how to make us optimally happy, and subsequently that any attempt to cannot succeed in anything other than increasing the power of the state and decreasing that of the individual. I personally think it's just a smoke screen put up so when the country performs poorly on certain indicators they can just say "We don't care about stuff like that, we're aiming for happiness" and not have any sort of aggregate objective stat to be called on. The idea reminds me the most of "Brave New World", which I'm not sure if I'd lump in with totalitarianism given the far higher complicity of the populace and much lower degree of coercion.
I (
http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2006/07/according-to-foot-vote-european.html) haven't been able to find it, but what I would (
http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2006/07/there-are-more-american-indian-than.html) really like to see is a ranking of net migration, which would show where people "vote with their feet" to say is the best place to live. I suppose it would be possible for there to be net migration from A to B, from B to C and from C to A, but that doesn't seem too likely.
Shug on 27/8/2006 at 16:21
Being a published author involves having something that will make your work sell - it's not a ringing endorsement for sanity or rationality
