April 9. Blisk McQueen comments on The Accidental Universe. He describes his background in reductionist hard science, and how he got in serious trouble for writing a paper pointing out the similarity between DNA and primitive programming languages, which would imply a programmer. Blocked from continuing to study genetics, he switched to neurochemistry, where he still believed "that human consciousness is merely an emergent phenomenon mediated by electrochemical signals" -- until he tried psilocybin mushrooms. Now he thinks science is in "a blind corner" by studying only measurable things and ignoring consciousness.
On the same subject, Embrace the Unexplained: how fantastic stories unlock the nature of consciousness. The author cites examples of unexplained visions related to people dying, but they're hard to study because they cannot be replicated or measured. He speculates that strong psychic phenomena are rare because they require intense emotion, that psychic visions are best viewed as hallucinations that somehow correspond to real events, and that the brain is like a radio tuner for some kind of collective consciousness.
Can you give me a non-circular definition of the difference between "hallucination" and "real"? I've done more thinking on this stuff than on any other subject, and when people say it's easy for science to put consciousness first, they have no idea how deep the rabbit hole goes. This is a book-length subject, and the best book so far, The Trickster and the Paranormal by George Hansen, merely hints at it.
Let me try a scientific metaphor: Newtonian physics is extremely powerful within a certain range, but it would be a mistake to think it can explain everything, because there is a wider range that we can only understand with quantum physics or relativity.
In the same way, science as we know it has given us amazing stuff like space probes and the internet. But it operates under deep philosophical assumptions that are not open for testing, and it is a mistake to think that we can explain everything while continuing to make those assumptions.
If we make a different set of deep assumptions, objective materialist science is not wrong. It remains a valuable shortcut, an intellectual tool that works perfectly well within a certain range. Meanwhile, we can begin to understand experiences that modern science must exclude. We might classify these these under "the paranormal" or "fringe science" or sometimes "conspiracy theory". But even people who explore this stuff with an open mind are rarely using the appropriate core philosophies, so they get frustrated and half-crazy looking for "proof" or "the truth". I think we can explore consciousness with science in the sense that we can make hypotheses and test them, but we won't get anywhere until we abandon the requirement that your perspective and my perspective must be consistent. Do I "believe in ghosts"? Where is the end of the rainbow?
April 14. Sivel comments on psychedelic drugs, describing how your personality gets taken apart and you can put it together differently, how the drug is a tool that can either help you or harm you, and how to reduce the risk of a bad trip.
Psychedelics should be viewed like climbing a mountain. The mountain peak has its appeal with the sublime feeling of standing atop it if one is daring enough to get there. And while some may find the experience meaningful a lot of people will only find themselves way too fucking high on a big rock. But most important is how the mountain does not move, it does not feel or love, and so it does not care if you live or die on it. The only feelings it will give you are the ones you reflect off of its steep faces.
May 5. Recently Paula made what she says is her final post on Mythodrome, about the death of Mike Ruppert, childhood abuse, and the Near Term Extinction movement. She speculates about the dark motivations that would make someone go out of their way to believe that humans are going extinct in this century. I don't think the NTE folks have even made a case for human extinction, only for catastrophic climate change and the inadequacy of the present system to deal with it. In the comments section, check out Dermot's comment. My favorite line: "Comical or tragic? Depends if you're related to or friends with someone who kills themselves as a result."
May 7. Great reddit comment by Erinaceous thinking about the public-private debate in terms of networks. Basically, if there's a physical network with lots of infrastructure, like railroads or the electric grid, then there's an inevitable monopoly because it's too hard to build a competing network, so the government should take it over and make sure it's run for the good of all. But at the lower levels of the network, where competition is easy and more information is required to make good decisions, it's better for stuff to be private.
May 9. I want to explain the barefoot shoe controversy, after the news that Vibram FiveFingers has settled a lawsuit. The journalism on this issue is terrible, compounding Vibram's original error, which was not shoe design but marketing. It's very simple: when walking or especially running, it's good to come down on the balls of your feet so your ankle allows your calf muscle to absorb the impact, and it's bad to come down on your heels and knock the impact up to your knee and hip joints. Sloppy marketing led people to believe that the shoe would do this for them, when really you have to do it yourself, by changing your habits, and the best thing a shoe can do is not get in the way. By the way, if you don't like the articulated toes on FiveFingers, I recommend Merrell barefoot shoes.
May 14. NY Times article on the corporate future of marijuana, The Bud Light-ification of Bud. The main point is that until now the stuff has been wildly inconsistent, and testing and industrial processing will make any given product as reliably similar as two cans of the same beer. The title implies that there will also be a reduction in quality, but the article itself never says that -- but there will be. I'm pretty confident in the following prediction:
1) Big Cannabis will stop using the traditional strain names, like Blue Dream and Sour Diesel, in favor of new names that it can trademark. 2) They will breed new varieties, not for the flavor or the quality of the experience, but for high efficiency and compatibility with large scale industrial production. 3) They will figure out how to extract all the cannabinoids and then put them back in precise amounts, because that's what they do now with nicotine in tobacco. 4) The typical blend of cannabinoids and additives will make people docile and predictable. If they find a cheap way to make a product that's extremely psychoactive, they won't do it, or if someone does, it will be made illegal. 5) At the same time, independent enthusiasts and small businesses will continue to breed and sell high-quality minimally processed particular strains, but they will be more expensive, like single malt whisky is now.