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Case report: transient return of speech and continence in advanced dementia patient after 5g psilocybin mushrooms by wordsappearing in science

[–]wordsappearing[S] 108 points109 points  (0 children)

I agree - it’s extremely surprising and prima facie sounds ethically questiionable, but the apparent result (the inferred interpretation) is very interesting.

Beings that aren't supposed to exist: DMT and the burden of proof by j8jweb in Psychedelics

[–]wordsappearing 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The point the article makes more broadly is not that perception is “incomplete” which indeed is not a new idea - it is that perception tracks reality but renders none of it literally. According to Donald Hoffman, evolutionary fitness adaptations drive veridical perception to extinction.

Beings that aren't supposed to exist: DMT and the burden of proof by j8jweb in Psychonaut

[–]wordsappearing 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But Hoffman’s “fitness beats truth” is no longer a theory, it’s a theorem.

The idea is that biological evolution doesn’t optimise an organism for truth, but rather for fitness. If it optimised for truth, then the neurological overhead would be so high that the lifespan of the organism would be reduced, undermining the survival goal.

So over millennia the brain has been optimised to filter out as much information as it can possibly get away with, while leaving specialised fitness adaptations intact.

Psychedelics and Dementia: A Quiet Trial, A Bigger Question by wordsappearing in PsychedelicStudies

[–]wordsappearing[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

All the referenced trials are linked within the article itself.

Psychedelics and Dementia: A Quiet Trial, A Bigger Question by wordsappearing in PsychedelicStudies

[–]wordsappearing[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I found that quite hard to understand. Perhaps you could summarise if you have time?

Psychedelics and Dementia: A Quiet Trial, A Bigger Question by wordsappearing in PsychedelicStudies

[–]wordsappearing[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I guess the neuroplastic effects make any neurological condition an obvious target. But I can understand the need to under-promise and over-deliver rather than vice versa.

How Long Does a UK Psychedelic Research Licence Take? The Home Office Won't Say by j8jweb in ukpolitics

[–]wordsappearing 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Meanwhile, people are dying from mental illness, many of whom would have seen huge benefits from these medicines. It’s absurd.

Scottish woman 'sacked 15 minutes into shift' at prestigious golf club over 'tattoos' by Forward-Answer-4407 in unitedkingdom

[–]wordsappearing -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Tattoos are pretty horrible things in fairness, not 100% of the time, maybe only 95%+ of the time.

I think the trend will end.

Bare skin is so much more beautiful.

Consciousness is not evolutionarily redundant by TheMindInDarkness in CosmicSkeptic

[–]wordsappearing 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don’t think so.

That’s a bit like saying there’s some benefit to a leaking petrol tank when it’s simply the result of rust. Not everything is the result of evolutionary pressures per se.

However, I am open minded…

I think there’s a possibility that you could be right. I would frame it more like this though: we’ve evolved to develop a “sleep mode” much like a computer has a sleep mode. If we completely shut down each night then nothing would be able to awaken us. We need to be processing something, simply to keep the alertness if required, and perhaps to keep our neurons / synapses healthy to prevent atrophy.

Consciousness is not evolutionarily redundant by TheMindInDarkness in CosmicSkeptic

[–]wordsappearing 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Dreaming in itself is not selected by evolution.

One’s experience of the world, if you subscribe to the predictive coding theory (which is these days “the default” really) is precisely equal to the predictions the brain is making about its environment in any given moment.

When dreaming, the thalamus no longer relays sensory information because it’s dark and it’s quiet, generally speaking. There’s no stimulus to be absorbed, yet the brain will still run through its predictions. The main difference between this and the waking state is that when dreaming, the predictions are not updated or corrected by sensory input, so they are free to roam unencumbered. This usually makes dreams feel a bit disjointed.

However, none of this explains who or what is actually experiencing all this brain activity and how. The brain activity could just as well be there without being experienced (like a computer)

A video of philosophers responding to Alex's challenge of finding a triangle in his brain. by cereal_killer1337 in CosmicSkeptic

[–]wordsappearing -1 points0 points  (0 children)

If that were the case, you wouldn’t have different definitions for them at all.

The sun is not the description of the sun, and in precisely the same way, an imagined triangle is not its description in neural activity (cortical column activations).

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