I agree with you re: the "Nature is Good" dogma. In spirit, it was meant to convey respect for the cycle of life, diversity of the biosphere, etc. Gets seriously problematic if extended to, I dunno, the Polio virus and…
(Ex-CAW member here; have been out of it for more than a decade. Posting anonymously for professional reasons, but I used to be personally well-acquainted with both the founders of Church of All Worlds and Robert Anton…
Nailed it! ;-)
Primarily it instilled that love of math, where previously there had been anxiety and ennui. This was sufficient to get me actually complete the work -- and do some extra work for fun -- which was more than enough to…
Oh yes, I'm aware of that stuff. If somebody reasonably competent wanted to resolve my real name from this dummy account, I have no doubt that they'd be able to do it. My concern, however, is not that malign people…
I personally haven't had any adverse effects aside from a sore jaw and a mild ~36-hour serotonin depression following a trip. In the company I took it -- fellow "psychonauts" who always made a serious effort to control…
See here for the details of the trip: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8247965 The critical thing is to understand that the opposite of fear, hate, and indifference is love. If you truly love something, you'll…
Counterfactuals are always difficult, but in this case I am sure that the answer is somewhere between "no" and "after years of hard work". Certainly it wouldn't have happened overnight -- whereas with psychedelics it…
Well, I'd always had a love of fractals, without ever truly comprehending how the underlying maths worked. Same goes for cosmology -- utterly fascinated by the outputs, but didn't really understand the actual mechanisms…
Good grief, yes, thanks for catching that! It's late in my timezone... [editing my post now...]
Yes, this is a dummy account; my regular account here has 4497 karma, but is linked to my real name. The conservatism of some of my clients -- and the fairly public role I sometimes must play -- is such that I'd rather…
Myself, I used LSD to learn calculus -- or rather, to overcome a lifelong crippling phobia/anxiety of mathematics, which allowed me to rapidly learn calculus. When I was 21, I encountered John Lilly's theories of…
I agree with you re: the "Nature is Good" dogma. In spirit, it was meant to convey respect for the cycle of life, diversity of the biosphere, etc. Gets seriously problematic if extended to, I dunno, the Polio virus and…
(Ex-CAW member here; have been out of it for more than a decade. Posting anonymously for professional reasons, but I used to be personally well-acquainted with both the founders of Church of All Worlds and Robert Anton…
Nailed it! ;-)
Primarily it instilled that love of math, where previously there had been anxiety and ennui. This was sufficient to get me actually complete the work -- and do some extra work for fun -- which was more than enough to…
Oh yes, I'm aware of that stuff. If somebody reasonably competent wanted to resolve my real name from this dummy account, I have no doubt that they'd be able to do it. My concern, however, is not that malign people…
I personally haven't had any adverse effects aside from a sore jaw and a mild ~36-hour serotonin depression following a trip. In the company I took it -- fellow "psychonauts" who always made a serious effort to control…
See here for the details of the trip: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8247965 The critical thing is to understand that the opposite of fear, hate, and indifference is love. If you truly love something, you'll…
Counterfactuals are always difficult, but in this case I am sure that the answer is somewhere between "no" and "after years of hard work". Certainly it wouldn't have happened overnight -- whereas with psychedelics it…
Well, I'd always had a love of fractals, without ever truly comprehending how the underlying maths worked. Same goes for cosmology -- utterly fascinated by the outputs, but didn't really understand the actual mechanisms…
Good grief, yes, thanks for catching that! It's late in my timezone... [editing my post now...]
Yes, this is a dummy account; my regular account here has 4497 karma, but is linked to my real name. The conservatism of some of my clients -- and the fairly public role I sometimes must play -- is such that I'd rather…
Myself, I used LSD to learn calculus -- or rather, to overcome a lifelong crippling phobia/anxiety of mathematics, which allowed me to rapidly learn calculus. When I was 21, I encountered John Lilly's theories of…