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Messages - sciborg2

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1096
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You may sense a slight bitterness to my post. I'm just suffering from Junkie bias: being surrounded by dim witted hedonists and new age hippies for so long one becomes desensitised to the correlation between stupid enthusiasm for narcotics and the rate of psych ward institutionalizations and wrecked lives.

Having said all that I hope to see the day when a sound understanding of the possible therapeutic effects of certain drugs becomes uncontroversial.

Actually, I'm glad to have you in this thread. It's easy to become so optimistic about a treatment you miss the other side. I've a friend who strongly feels people should be able to self-medicate with psychedelics and I'm very much against that.

I also lack personal experience because I've not done any recreational drug save alcohol, and even then I've never been drunk. I'm just looking at the potential for treatment.

For example:

Mind-altering drug could offer life free of heroin

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Several clinical trials have shown that low doses of ibogaine taken over the course of a few weeks can greatly reduce cravings for heroin and other drugs. There was extensive research on it in the 1990s, with good evidence of safety in animals and a handful of studies in humans. The US National Institute on Drug Abuse invested over $1 million, but then abandoned the project in 1995. A study had shown that at high doses, ibogaine caused some brain cell degeneration in rats. Lower doses similar to those used in human addiction trials showed no such effect, however....

But anecdotal accounts suggest that a single treatment is just as effective as multiple low doses. The dose is much higher, although still nowhere near the levels found to cause harm in rats. A single treatment is less expensive than standard addiction therapies, and the intensity of the experience is not a recreational high that users seem to want to repeat....

"There have been claims by the government that there's a high potential for abuse and no medical use, and claims from ibogaine advocates that one dose is a miracle cure. We're trying to gather some scientific evidence to better evaluate it," says Rick Doblin, executive director of MAPS. A similar study is also being carried out in New Zealand.

1097
Philosophy & Science / The Therapeutic Value of Psychedelics and other drugs
« on: September 13, 2013, 04:20:10 am »
I mentioned in the Hungry Ghosts thread that I'd make a new thread to talk about the actual therapeutic value of psychedelics.

I wanted to step away from the paranormal aspects, though I'll try to find some stuff about the life review process that occurs in some (many?) ayahuasca and ibogaine cases. People seem to be guided in these reviews by entities, but discussion about the nature of said entities is better left to the ghost thread.

Knowledge from all spheres welcome, as well as any contrary evidence that these drugs are bad. Just note that we aren't talking about recreational use here, though a discussion about self-medicating does fit.

Why Doctors Can't Give You LSD (But Maybe They Should)

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Part of the problem with studying psychedelics--and other illicit drugs, such as marijuana--for medical use, is simply that they're not high-tech, and no pharmaceutical company needs or wants to get involved. There's no money in it for them. Though drugs like LSD and psilocybin are relatively easy to make in the lab, as MAPS founder Rick Doblin pointed out in a 2012 interview, "psychedelics are off-patent, can’t be monopolized, and compete with other psychiatric medications that people take daily."

"My colleagues say to me, in these days of nanotechology and targeted therapy, what are you doing?" says Donald Abrams, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco who has done research on medical marijuana. "We live in the 21st century. Studying plants as medicine is not where most investigators are putting their money."

And without the outside funding to continue researching, a scientist's career goes nowhere, so even fewer scientists want to get involved.

1098
Richard Dawkins defends 'mild pedophilia': Teacher putting hands down my shorts didn?t do ?lasting harm? | The Raw Story

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Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins refused to condemn sexual abuse he admitted to having suffered as a child in an interview with The Times magazine of England, Religion News Service reported on Tuesday.

While he told the Times that an unidentified schoolmaster “pulled me on his knee and put his hand inside my shorts” when he was a child, he argued that he did not think the abuse — which he referred to as a “mild touching up” — against himself and other children in his class “did any of us lasting harm.”

1099
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I lol'd because I find life's random connections humorous. Though, Pinchbeck has certainly behaved and espoused beliefs, which a number of people do ridicule.

Ah gotcha. I recall some stuff involving the Evolver network but never paid too much attention to it.

I probably should take a second look.

I actually came across a book that is similar in certain aspects,it is called"A Psychonaut's Guide to the Invisible Landscape" by Dan Carpenter.He used psychedelics to communicate with so called entities,and he too killed himself.

For whatever reason, I'm more willing to trust in the likely fictional entities people meet using psychedelics rather than the likely fictional entities people meet using mediums.  ;D

Part of that is because I don't think the life review process is seen as negative. The use of mediums seems more creepy and suspect to me, likely due to cultural conditioning.

1100
Philosophy & Science / Re: Rupert Sheldrake
« on: September 11, 2013, 02:41:09 pm »
Sorry, wasn't trying to attack you. And I got your name wrong. Apologies  :-[

I'm just thinking more and more about discourse, and how it gets cluttered. I didn't mean to say you're a bad person or anything like that, I just thought an example of the imprecision you're noting in the discussion would help.

I think demanding a high standard is not only fine but something I know I'd like to approach, but without something concrete to note it's hard to pin down what anyone means when they critique dialogue.

1101
The White-Luck Warrior / Re: Dunyain and Nonmen
« on: September 11, 2013, 04:18:08 am »
You just blew my mind

+1. It even ties into the Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts thread, with spirits deciding what to reveal to mortals.

*shiver*

1102
Philosophy & Science / Re: Rupert Sheldrake
« on: September 11, 2013, 02:03:28 am »
sure it is, everyone likes a little ego boost. you're far to cynical.

But Kellian's post was addressed to Anor's interlocutors - I'm supposing you and Royce? Maybe me as well, though my position, I suspect, leaves me in partial contention with both sides depending on what else Anor believes in unworthy of public funding.

So saying, "Anor's arguments are better than yours, it brings all the boys to the yard", doesn't really offer any persuasive additions to the debate.

It doesn't help us to decide anything, unless you plan to reevaluate your entire understanding of science and research on account of some person named Kellian on the internet.

1103
So I'll probably make another thread on the therapeutic value of psychedelics, as I think it's a topic that is of interest even to those who may not care about ghosts.

But on the subject of entities, Richard Strassman is the guy who injected people with DMT. From what I've gathered, he was expecting people to have spiritual feelings that related to some ideas in Zen Buddhism. Instead people who'd been injected started talking about meeting beings in other realities.

Seems to me the challenge here is to parse how likely such shared trip experiences would be among people who have some common cultural expectations.

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Just started on this one,and this will most likely scare me shitless ;D

It's the author committing suicide that makes it creepy. Though I've been told the ghosts in the story really come off as con-artists rather than representatives of some kind of Platonic Evil.

@Madness: Why the Lol-ing against Pinchbeck? Mind you I've only read about 2/3 of Breaking Open the Head and checked in on his blog long ago.

The value of ibogaine in the treatment of addiction was the thing that caught my interest, as well as the apparently common experience of a life review.

1104
Philosophy & Science / Re: Rupert Sheldrake
« on: September 10, 2013, 08:30:53 pm »
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Kellais was probably just wondering if anyone actually knew what they where talking about  :P

But coming into a discussion and randomly stating how you like one poster over the others isn't really useful to the interlocutors involved.

And I say that as someone who would not want to see public funding given to Psi studies. But then I'm wary about where tax payer money goes in a whole host of different areas.

1105
Philosophy & Science / Re: Rupert Sheldrake
« on: September 10, 2013, 05:47:01 pm »
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I agree with you there... But can you imagine, at least in America, letting the public decide what research is important and what is not? .... I shudder just thinking about it.

Oh, I think whatever left over funding people want to use for Psi or Space should be left to public decision. More practical considerations should have more input from experts.

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To me.... thats just insane. Why spend thousands of dollars sending some guy to vacation in Europe (sure he'll do some work, but you don't go backpacking around Europe just because of the research opportunities)  rather than fund potentially groundbreaking studies into biofuel?

Oh, I have a huge problem with what I see as excessive funding for the humanities. Not exactly money down the drain but sometimes you have to wonder how much time is possibly wasted in the school curriculum that could be better spent.

But that seems like a particularly egregious example.

1106
Philosophy & Science / Re: Rupert Sheldrake
« on: September 10, 2013, 04:45:59 pm »
No! Space must live! Watch this inspirational (if not somewhat biased) video about how awesome space is.
Actually, don't bother lol it won't change your mind, they just make me happy.

In all seriousness though, I think it raises some interesting points and some interesting facts that I didn't know before I watched it. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts about the clips.

2 short parts :P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbIZU8cQWXc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFO2usVjfQc

Oh, I think space research is interesting (thanks for the links!), but is it really the best use of funding if we're trying to be pragmatic?

I should qualify my desire to cut linguistic funding out - linguistics related to education should be kept, but there are studies that seem to be based around satisfaction of curiosity. [Probably a host of studies we can cut in a variety of fields, not to mention we should also consider tax payer money going into public universities.]

What I'm really getting at is if the public at large is more interested in Psi than space, do government appointed experts have the right to say one is more valuable to us than the other? I suppose you can try and justify space programs by noting possibly colonization benefits?

Seems like research into urban farming, or this Soylent stuff, [or computer science], would be of more immediate use than learning about the cosmos or trying to pin down what miniscule amount of telekinetic power may exist. [In those cases experts can supersede public opinion, but deciding whether money goes to space or Psi might be better put to referendums of some sort.]

1107
Philosophy & Science / Re: Rupert Sheldrake
« on: September 10, 2013, 02:28:31 pm »
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2) how many of you are just playing advocatus diaboli in here?

*raises hand*

Though I think it's not very helpful to critique an ongoing thread without offering some issues that you had with people's posts. It's too easy to simply dismiss you by saying you're biased against Psi...and possibly Sci.  ;)

1108
The Forum of Interesting Things / Re: The Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts
« on: September 10, 2013, 12:20:46 am »
DMT Machine Elves :o?

I'm interested in the similarities between 'trips.'

Sorry, off topic, just wanted to respond.

No reason to stay on topic, I think this is the kind of thread that benefits from digression.

I recall Sam Harris of all people talking about the similarities between the trips of different users taking DMT.

I've not really found a good source of evidence that shows this occurring. And how would you even devise a good way to test something like that?

eta:

@Royce:

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Are they hallucinating while in these states,or are they actually experiencing another reality/dimension? I sure don`t have a fucking clue what is going on here ;D

Bought that book for my kindle by the way ;)

I tend to lean toward the pragmatic, agnostic view - that people have the right to explore their own consciousness via drugs and that there does seem to be therapeutic benefits to ingestion of certain drugs.

A friend of mine is working on a cancer anxiety study where they give shrooms to terminally ill cancer patients. Apparently tripping on mushrooms reduces the fear of death. There's also evidence that LSD can be incredibly therapeutic, and some doctors are using ibogaine to treat heroin addiction. The latter figures prominently for the first part of Pinchbeck's Breaking Open the Head.

And , heh, I'm debating buying the book. Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts is a good title...and if nothing else it seems like it'd be a good horror read...

1109
Philosophy & Science / Re: Rupert Sheldrake
« on: September 09, 2013, 09:47:42 pm »
If we are going to rate every area in science,and decide which deserve funding or not,this will most likely be the longest discussion ever :)

Just dump the space program, linguistics research save for that covered by military funding, and any other research that is driven more by curiosity than direct applicability.

So rank the research projects in terms of lowest immediate utility and line the worst the most "useless" at the chopping block.

1110
Philosophy & Science / Re: Rupert Sheldrake
« on: September 09, 2013, 06:51:59 pm »
Is the argument against Psi research that it is - according to the current paradigm - unlikely to bear fruit or is it that there is better stuff to research?

Because if it's the former - there seem to be lots of potential dead ends in research.

If it's the latter - then we shouldn't waste money on a space program.

In fact, personally I'd say there is better stuff than both Psi and Space to worry about and neither really deserves public funding at this time.

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