Can you post references to new mathematical (or philosophical) proofs that you have solved so we can check the assertion that such altered states are beneficial? Have the results been peer reviewed or published (not that them not being peer-reviewed or published makes them any less valid but this gives a baseline of that others have checked your work)?
Also, what was your reasoning for doubting that you exist? How was Descartes proof insufficient?
Also, what was your reasoning for doubting that you exist? How was Descartes proof insufficient?
It’s essentially circular. It assumes an “I” from the start. If you get rid of that assumption, you have to start with “something is thinking.”
That’s been acknowledged in philosophical circles for some time now, but I don’t think many philosophers regard it as an important problem anymore. It’s about as safe an assumption as you can possibly make.
Seconding your main request, I’ve heard more people than I care to recall claim inspiration from altered states of consciousness, but it would be a first to have anyone present one that’s novel and demonstrably true.
Also, what was your reasoning for doubting that you exist? How was Descartes proof insufficient?
It’s essentially circular. It assumes an “I” from the start. If you get rid of that assumption, you have to start with “something is thinking.”
That’s been acknowledged in philosophical circles for some time now, but I don’t think many philosophers regard it as an important problem anymore. It’s about as safe an assumption as you can possibly make.
If anyone wants to google this, keywords are “nonduality” and “Advaita”. It probably deserves a memetic hazard warning, though.
According to his wikipedia page, he claims that he found the use of LSD mind opening, that he believes it helped him come up with the idea for PCR, and that he doubts he would have come up with it if he never used LSD, but it doesn’t say that he came up with it while on LSD, and I would take it as implied that he did not. This does shift my prior in favor of LSD having been useful to him in developing PCR, but not a whole lot, because there’s such an abundance of evidence for people having poor self assessment regarding the propensity of drugs to aid their thinking. Even a non-blinded experiment which compared some measure of intellectual productivity of an experiment group on drugs to a control group that wasn’t would do a lot more to change my assessment (and it is awfully hard to adequately blind subjects to whether or not they’re taking real hallucinogens.)
Do you have a source for that? I remember reading in his book that the idea came to him in a flash while he was driving on the freeway. It could be my memory of what he wrote is mistaken, or he’s just that kind of crazy guy, but driving on the freeway implies not tripping on LSD.
I’ve heard more people than I care to recall claim inspiration from altered states of
consciousness, but it would be a first to have anyone present one that’s novel and
demonstrably true.
Well, I’ve written a few poems and passages of longer prose that came out reasonably well and have joined the collection of “things I’m working on to submit to publishers” while on various drugs. That might just about count.
Also, is fun itself not enough to justify something being a Good Thing?
Provided there’s nothing else to counterbalance it, but if what drugs provide is only fun, then arguing for them on any grounds other than fun is disingenuous.
I have found, in my personal and not at all even a little bit scientific personal experience, that altered states can be very good indeed for what people who write (I don’t paint or practice higher mathematics or any of the other relevant things, so I shan’t presume to comment on them) call the creative process. But then, maybe this isn’t the right place for talking about The Creative Process, which I suppose is a nebulous and rather wanky sort of a term even if it is something very dear to my heart.
Let the people suppose that knowledge means knowing things entirely; the
philosopher must say to himself: When I analyze the process that is expressed in the
sentence, “I think,” I find a whole series of daring assertions that would be difficult,
perhaps impossible, to prove; for example that it is I who think, that there must
necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the
part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an “ego,” and, finally, that it
is already determined what is to be designated by thinking—that I know what
thinking is. For if I had not already decided within myself what it is, by what standard
could I determine whether that which is just happening is not perhaps “willing” or
“feeling”?
The message here doesn’t seem truly novel, but ‘You will survive through sex reassignment surgery’ must at least count as unusual.
The story also illustrates how the word “I” can conceal any number of unsafe assumptions. Clearly part of the author knew more than she thought she did. (And the part about her childhood memories seems credible though not strictly proven.)
I thought the standard answer to this problem was that “think” confers “me-ness”—if you could observe “someone thinks” the way that Descartes observed it (introspection on the thought process) then you are that someone.
The flipside is that you can’t know that others are thinking, because you have no ability to introspect on their thoughts.
It might be more appropriate to say “something appears to be thinking.” Perhaps in the chaotic mass of whatever-exists-ness, a random collision of entities has produced something that feels from the inside like thoughts and memories of a past, but has no continuity.
I suppose you could say that the entity is still “I,” even if it’s divorced from your conception of yourself, but I think a better solution is to not entertain the notion at all.
Yeah, this clarifies what I thought on the matter—although it touches on anthropic reasoning, so I guess it isn’t a standard answer.
For the record, it would look something like:
“Thinking is happening” entails ” “Thinking is happening” is being observed”.
″ “Thinking is happening” is being observed” entails “observing is happening”.
“Observing is happening” entails the existence of an observer (existential claim, can’t find the symbol, would be “There exists an x such that x is an observer”)
Some further work on the concept of “me” or “I” would define it in terms of observer-property, some argument from denying “me”-ness of observer requires multiple observers, etc.
Putting this in formal logic, it only works if “being observed” is defined from the two-place predicate “x is observing y”. We could also use a one-place predicate, “x is observed”. So it’s still not totally free of assumptions, so to speak.
The point is, Decart was supposedly doubting everything; so this particular argument, while decent, is not so unusually decent as to justify being held up as the one undoubted thing.
I feel like the existence of an observer is a necessary condition for “x is observed” to be true—but that is again anthropics, and so fully fleshing out this argument might take more than a comment,
The nonexistence thing was an error of judgment. In retrospect, it originated in an unconscious assumption I was making that there must be some ground to reality, a kind of “bottom level” of which everything else is epiphenomenal. A materialist might look to quantum fields to fill that role, but when I rejected all my former beliefs, that included my belief in an external reality independent of perception. So all I was left with was thought and sensory experience, and as they were interdependently defined, rather than any one aspect taking ontological primacy, I concluded that they—and hence I—must not exist. There are any number of holes in this argument, but that’s how I was thinking at the time.
Unfortunately I’m not yet at the point where I have papers published. For the most part the ideas that come to me in peak states are not specific, easily formalizable facts. In some cases they are directives to do certain things (like the bike trip mentioned in my original post); in other cases, they give a broad direction to my studies. The Tegmark vision is one example: higher category theory seems like it could furnish me with the tools to formally analyze the mathematical universe (or parts thereof) as a topological space; but since my knowledge of category theory is rather patchy, for now I’m simply working on learning some more of the prerequisites (I just finished a course in algebraic topology).
Two cases spring to mind, however, of fairly specific and well-polished ideas that have come from peak experiences. One was a metric on the space of events over a given probability space; it popped into my head as I was waking from a dream during the peak of my mania. If you’re interested: for events A and B, we can define d(A,B)=1-P(A|B)P(B|A). You can check that it satisfies the properties of a metric [EDIT: This doesn’t actually work, as Sniffnoy pointed out below]; couldn’t say for sure whether it’s useful for anything, since I got swine flu shortly after that, at which point it got shelved with the rest of the stuff I’d been working on. A more promising example happened quite recently: it was a game theoretic analysis of the relationship between government and citizen which, as I mentioned, might end up as another post here—probably in the discussion area. If you’d be interested to see it, that’d be all the more reason to write it.
One was a metric on the space of events over a given probability space; it popped into my head as I was waking from a dream during the peak of my mania. If you’re interested: for events A and B, we can define d(A,B)=1-P(A|B)P(B|A).
This doesn’t appear to actually be true. :-/ Say we take our probability space to be [0,1], and we take A=[0,2/3], C=[1/3,1], and B=[0,1]. Then d(A,B)=d(B,C)=1/3, so d(A,B)+d(B,C)=2/3, but d(A,C)=3/4>2/3. Any ideas on how to fix?
(Also strictly speaking it would be a pseudometric on the set of positive probability events, with two events being equivalent if they differ by a set of probability 0, but that’s nitpicking.)
Eeeesh. You’re right. In my defense, I think I checked the properties while I was still half-asleep, and I must have fudged the triangle inequality. I fiddled with it a bit, but couldn’t find any obvious way to make it work. Thanks for your correction.
Happens to the best of us. However, it is worth emphasising that you have provided little evidence with your writing that the actual ideas coming from peak experiences are worth much. You have provided a great deal of indication that the motivational aspect of these ideas is useful, though.
However, it is worth emphasising that you have provided little evidence with your writing that the actual ideas coming from peak experiences are worth much. You have provided a great deal of indication that the motivational aspect of these ideas is useful, though.
You may be right. I will have to think about this. A lot of the imperative ideas (“Go do this!”) that I’ve had while manic have had decidedly positive results—notably my bike trip to Georgia and the decision to devote a lot more of my time and mental energy to mathematics, founding the communal house I currently live in, but I’m going to have to try and remember some concrete examples of declarative ideas that have come to me in that state before I continue to make that claim.
I was thinking about how to calculate a metric on a probability space.
One thing that makes sense is Arccos( P(A|B) P(B|A)) . This is the metric you get if you view events as vectors in a Hilbert space and look at the angle between the two vectors, angle, of course, being a metric. It generalizes to the space of random variables in general, which is where I first discovered it. There you get Arccos ( E(XY)^2/ E(X^2) E(Y^2) )
Just on probability events, I think one thing that also makes sense is—Log (P(A|A or B)P(B|A or B)). This should be a metric and should have geodesics in the space of events. The geodesic between A and B passes through (A or B). But I don’t have as clear an argument as to why this works.
So your idea isn’t actually that far from correct, if you look at my angle idea.
Can you post references to new mathematical (or philosophical) proofs that you have solved so we can check the assertion that such altered states are beneficial? Have the results been peer reviewed or published (not that them not being peer-reviewed or published makes them any less valid but this gives a baseline of that others have checked your work)?
Also, what was your reasoning for doubting that you exist? How was Descartes proof insufficient?
It’s essentially circular. It assumes an “I” from the start. If you get rid of that assumption, you have to start with “something is thinking.”
That’s been acknowledged in philosophical circles for some time now, but I don’t think many philosophers regard it as an important problem anymore. It’s about as safe an assumption as you can possibly make.
Seconding your main request, I’ve heard more people than I care to recall claim inspiration from altered states of consciousness, but it would be a first to have anyone present one that’s novel and demonstrably true.
If anyone wants to google this, keywords are “nonduality” and “Advaita”. It probably deserves a memetic hazard warning, though.
Kary Mullis invented PCR while on LSD
According to his wikipedia page, he claims that he found the use of LSD mind opening, that he believes it helped him come up with the idea for PCR, and that he doubts he would have come up with it if he never used LSD, but it doesn’t say that he came up with it while on LSD, and I would take it as implied that he did not. This does shift my prior in favor of LSD having been useful to him in developing PCR, but not a whole lot, because there’s such an abundance of evidence for people having poor self assessment regarding the propensity of drugs to aid their thinking. Even a non-blinded experiment which compared some measure of intellectual productivity of an experiment group on drugs to a control group that wasn’t would do a lot more to change my assessment (and it is awfully hard to adequately blind subjects to whether or not they’re taking real hallucinogens.)
Do you have a source for that? I remember reading in his book that the idea came to him in a flash while he was driving on the freeway. It could be my memory of what he wrote is mistaken, or he’s just that kind of crazy guy, but driving on the freeway implies not tripping on LSD.
Oh, would that it were so.
Well, I’ve written a few poems and passages of longer prose that came out reasonably well and have joined the collection of “things I’m working on to submit to publishers” while on various drugs. That might just about count.
Also, is fun itself not enough to justify something being a Good Thing?
Provided there’s nothing else to counterbalance it, but if what drugs provide is only fun, then arguing for them on any grounds other than fun is disingenuous.
Yes, that’s very true.
I have found, in my personal and not at all even a little bit scientific personal experience, that altered states can be very good indeed for what people who write (I don’t paint or practice higher mathematics or any of the other relevant things, so I shan’t presume to comment on them) call the creative process. But then, maybe this isn’t the right place for talking about The Creative Process, which I suppose is a nebulous and rather wanky sort of a term even if it is something very dear to my heart.
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 16
The message here doesn’t seem truly novel, but ‘You will survive through sex reassignment surgery’ must at least count as unusual.
The story also illustrates how the word “I” can conceal any number of unsafe assumptions. Clearly part of the author knew more than she thought she did. (And the part about her childhood memories seems credible though not strictly proven.)
I thought the standard answer to this problem was that “think” confers “me-ness”—if you could observe “someone thinks” the way that Descartes observed it (introspection on the thought process) then you are that someone.
The flipside is that you can’t know that others are thinking, because you have no ability to introspect on their thoughts.
It might be more appropriate to say “something appears to be thinking.” Perhaps in the chaotic mass of whatever-exists-ness, a random collision of entities has produced something that feels from the inside like thoughts and memories of a past, but has no continuity.
I suppose you could say that the entity is still “I,” even if it’s divorced from your conception of yourself, but I think a better solution is to not entertain the notion at all.
Try “thinking is happening” and “observing is happening”. No entity required.
Yeah, this clarifies what I thought on the matter—although it touches on anthropic reasoning, so I guess it isn’t a standard answer.
For the record, it would look something like:
“Thinking is happening” entails ” “Thinking is happening” is being observed”.
″ “Thinking is happening” is being observed” entails “observing is happening”.
“Observing is happening” entails the existence of an observer (existential claim, can’t find the symbol, would be “There exists an x such that x is an observer”)
Some further work on the concept of “me” or “I” would define it in terms of observer-property, some argument from denying “me”-ness of observer requires multiple observers, etc.
Putting this in formal logic, it only works if “being observed” is defined from the two-place predicate “x is observing y”. We could also use a one-place predicate, “x is observed”. So it’s still not totally free of assumptions, so to speak.
The point is, Decart was supposedly doubting everything; so this particular argument, while decent, is not so unusually decent as to justify being held up as the one undoubted thing.
I feel like the existence of an observer is a necessary condition for “x is observed” to be true—but that is again anthropics, and so fully fleshing out this argument might take more than a comment,
The nonexistence thing was an error of judgment. In retrospect, it originated in an unconscious assumption I was making that there must be some ground to reality, a kind of “bottom level” of which everything else is epiphenomenal. A materialist might look to quantum fields to fill that role, but when I rejected all my former beliefs, that included my belief in an external reality independent of perception. So all I was left with was thought and sensory experience, and as they were interdependently defined, rather than any one aspect taking ontological primacy, I concluded that they—and hence I—must not exist. There are any number of holes in this argument, but that’s how I was thinking at the time.
Unfortunately I’m not yet at the point where I have papers published. For the most part the ideas that come to me in peak states are not specific, easily formalizable facts. In some cases they are directives to do certain things (like the bike trip mentioned in my original post); in other cases, they give a broad direction to my studies. The Tegmark vision is one example: higher category theory seems like it could furnish me with the tools to formally analyze the mathematical universe (or parts thereof) as a topological space; but since my knowledge of category theory is rather patchy, for now I’m simply working on learning some more of the prerequisites (I just finished a course in algebraic topology).
Two cases spring to mind, however, of fairly specific and well-polished ideas that have come from peak experiences. One was a metric on the space of events over a given probability space; it popped into my head as I was waking from a dream during the peak of my mania. If you’re interested: for events A and B, we can define d(A,B)=1-P(A|B)P(B|A). You can check that it satisfies the properties of a metric [EDIT: This doesn’t actually work, as Sniffnoy pointed out below]; couldn’t say for sure whether it’s useful for anything, since I got swine flu shortly after that, at which point it got shelved with the rest of the stuff I’d been working on. A more promising example happened quite recently: it was a game theoretic analysis of the relationship between government and citizen which, as I mentioned, might end up as another post here—probably in the discussion area. If you’d be interested to see it, that’d be all the more reason to write it.
This doesn’t appear to actually be true. :-/ Say we take our probability space to be [0,1], and we take A=[0,2/3], C=[1/3,1], and B=[0,1]. Then d(A,B)=d(B,C)=1/3, so d(A,B)+d(B,C)=2/3, but d(A,C)=3/4>2/3. Any ideas on how to fix?
(Also strictly speaking it would be a pseudometric on the set of positive probability events, with two events being equivalent if they differ by a set of probability 0, but that’s nitpicking.)
Eeeesh. You’re right. In my defense, I think I checked the properties while I was still half-asleep, and I must have fudged the triangle inequality. I fiddled with it a bit, but couldn’t find any obvious way to make it work. Thanks for your correction.
Happens to the best of us. However, it is worth emphasising that you have provided little evidence with your writing that the actual ideas coming from peak experiences are worth much. You have provided a great deal of indication that the motivational aspect of these ideas is useful, though.
You may be right. I will have to think about this. A lot of the imperative ideas (“Go do this!”) that I’ve had while manic have had decidedly positive results—notably my bike trip to Georgia and the decision to devote a lot more of my time and mental energy to mathematics, founding the communal house I currently live in, but I’m going to have to try and remember some concrete examples of declarative ideas that have come to me in that state before I continue to make that claim.
BTW, I must say I would love to hear about the founding of this communal house, even if this isn’t necessarily the place for it.
I was thinking about how to calculate a metric on a probability space.
One thing that makes sense is Arccos( P(A|B) P(B|A)) . This is the metric you get if you view events as vectors in a Hilbert space and look at the angle between the two vectors, angle, of course, being a metric. It generalizes to the space of random variables in general, which is where I first discovered it. There you get Arccos ( E(XY)^2/ E(X^2) E(Y^2) )
Just on probability events, I think one thing that also makes sense is—Log (P(A|A or B)P(B|A or B)). This should be a metric and should have geodesics in the space of events. The geodesic between A and B passes through (A or B). But I don’t have as clear an argument as to why this works.
So your idea isn’t actually that far from correct, if you look at my angle idea.