The White House endorses research on psychedelics

Andrew Jacobs, A Long, Strange Trip: How the G.O.P. Came to Embrace Psychedelic Drugs, NYTimes, May 3, 2026.

Mindbending may be just the word to describe the Oval Office ceremony on April 18, when President Trump ordered federal agencies to speed up research into the potential therapeutic uses of illegal psychedelic compounds like LSD, peyote and MDMA.

Here was a law-and-order Republican and lifelong teetotaler championing the hallucinogenic substances that a previous Republican president, Richard Nixon, had condemned as “public enemy No. 1.” [...]

Mr. Trump’s bold efforts to soften the federal government’s stance on certain illegal drugs have been head-spinning — last month, the Justice Department, at the president’s behest, loosened restrictions on medical marijuana, too.

But experts in the field are not entirely surprised.

They note a steady easing of public opposition to psychedelics in recent years, much of it shaped by research that has chipped away at the stigma by demonstrating the drugs’ potential to treat intractable mental health conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and substance abuse.

There's much more at the link.

Michael Pollan believes that A.I. cannot achieve consciousness

David Marchese, The Interview: Michael Pollan Says Humanity Is About to Undergo a Revolutionary Change, NYTimes, Feb. 7, 2026.

Throughout his work — which includes classic books like “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” (2006), about why we eat the way we do, and “How to Change Your Mind” (2018), about the science and uses of psychedelic drugs — Pollan has waded into ideas about the inner workings of the mind. Now, with his forthcoming book, “A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness,” which will arrive this month, he has jumped into the deep end. The book is both a highly personal and expansive multidisciplinary survey of questions around human consciousness — what it is, what causes it, what it’s for and what the possible answers might mean for how we choose to live. And as Pollan explained, with the rise of artificial intelligence as well as the relentless political pressure on our attention (that is, our minds), those questions, already profound, are becoming only more urgent.

Later, in the interview:

Marchese: You are skeptical that A.I. can achieve consciousness. Why?

Pollan: I’m convinced by some of the researchers, including Antonio Damasio and Mark Solms, who made a really compelling case that the origin of consciousness is with feelings, not thoughts. Feelings are the language in which the body talks to the brain. We forget that brains exist to keep bodies alive, and the way the body gets the brain’s attention is with feelings. So if you think feelings are at the center of consciousness, it’s very hard to imagine how a machine could rise to that level to have feelings. The other reason I think we’re not close to it is that everything that machines know, the data set on which they’re trained, is information on the internet. They don’t have friction with nature. They don’t have friction with us. Some of the most important things we know are about person-to-person contact, about contact with nature — this friction that really makes us human. [...]

Marchese: But if an A.I. says: “Michael, I’m conscious. I promise,” how do we know?

Pollan: We don’t, and that is exactly why people are falling deep into these relationships with A.I. We can’t say it’s not conscious when it tells us it is. But we can test it in various ways. It all goes back to this idea of the Turing test — that the test of machine intelligence would be when they can fool us.

Marchese: If the Turing test is the criteria for machine consciousness, then that test has already been passed.

Pollan: Exactly, it has fooled many, many people. Whether it can fool an expert, too, I don’t know, but probably. So we’re in a very weird place where the machines we’re living with are telling us they’re conscious. We can’t dispute it, but we can look at how they’re made and draw the kind of conclusions I’ve drawn. But is that going to persuade everybody? No. We want them to be conscious in some way. Or some of us do. It’s easier to have a relationship with a chatbot than another human. Going back to that friction point, they offer no friction. They just suck up to us and convince us how brilliant we are, and we fall for it.

There's much more at the link.

The state of Texas approves $50M for ibogaine trials

Texas Ibogaine Initiative, Texas Launches Largest Publicly-Funded Psychedelic Research Initiative in History with $50 Million Investment in Ibogaine, CISION PRWeb, May 22, 2025.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 22, 2025 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- In a historic and bipartisan move, the State of Texas has approved $50 million in state funding for drug development trials for ibogaine, a powerful, naturally occurring medicine showing extraordinary promise as a breakthrough treatment for substance use disorder, trauma-related conditions, and traumatic brain injury.

With the passage of House Bill 3717, authored by State Representative Cody Harris (R–Palestine), and Senate Bill 2308, sponsored by State Senator Tan Parker (R–Flower Mound), Texas now leads the country—and the world—in psychedelic research investment. This is the largest publicly funded psychedelic research initiative ever launched by any government worldwide.

"Ibogaine is the Manhattan Project of our time," Bryan Hubbard, Executive Director of the American Ibogaine Initiative and architect of the legislation, said. "We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change the fabric of this country. And mighty Texas, in all its strength and independence, is the first state to stand up and lead a revolution in the treatment of trauma and addiction."

Ibogaine is a psychoactive alkaloid derived from West African botanical sources. Studies have shown that a single treatment can significantly interrupt substance dependence, reduce trauma symptoms, and promote neurological repair. Yet in the U.S., ibogaine remains a Schedule I drug, blocking formal research for decades. Thousands of Americans, particularly Veterans and first responders, have been forced to seek treatment abroad or go without.

After we're given the history of the initiative, financial arrangements:

The $50 million appropriation will help fund FDA-approved clinical trials of ibogaine in partnership with a drug developer, who will assume all financial risk and regulatory responsibility for advancing the treatment through the clinical trial process. Texas retains a financial stake in any future dividends from successful drug development, which could be used to help fund access to ibogaine treatment for Texans in need.

There's more at the link.

H/t Tyler Cowen.

Breaking down monogamy in Baltimore in the early 1970s

Was it the best of times? It certainly wasn’t the worst of times. They were for damned sure interesting times.

But no, “breaking down monogamy” probably didn’t mean whatever you think it means. Not in context. I should know. I was there, in the middle of it.

North Baltimore, near Johns Hopkins

I was living at 2935 N. Calvert St. in Baltimore, two blocks away from the campus of The Johns Hopkins University. I’d finished my undergraduate work there and was now working on a master’s degree while performing alternative service in the Chaplain’s Office at Hopkins. It was during the Vietnam War era, and I’d drawn a 12 in the draft lottery. I’d actually had my preinduction physical exam – the best hearing, off the charts, you wouldn’t believe how good – but didn’t serve in the army. Rather, I’d declared myself to be a conscientious objector to military service and was allowed to perform two years of civilian service, which I did in the Chaplain’s Office.

During that period I often went to Sunday afternoon jazz concerts in the Famous Ballroom. Those concerts, which were sponsored by the Left Bank Jazz Society, were the first time I regularly found myself in a majority black setting. It was during that period that I had my first (and only) LSD trip, which played a crucial, but obscure, role in my work on Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan.” However important those things were, this is not about them.

This is about a community I belonged to. That community was not large – most real communities aren’t – and it was about various things. One of them was something called “breaking down monogamy.” Lots of discussions about that. I listened in on some of them, and maybe I even made a remark or three. But, well, rather than try to explain further, perhaps I should just get on with the story.

Burned Out

As I said, I was living at 2935 N. Calvert St. It was a three-floor brownstone that had been divided into six apartments, two on each floor. I lived in the third-floor rear. One evening there was a fire in the building. I forget whether it was on the first or second floor, or perhaps both, but, while fire didn’t make it the third floor, smoke certainly did. And so did firemen. At least one came in through a rear window and stomped in the middle of my turntable. My apartment was a wreck.

I forget just what happened next. But for the sake of getting on with the story, let’s say that a number of people gathered in front of the building and some of my friends were among them. They invited me to sleep at their place for the night. An invitation I gratefully accepted.

The next day me and my friends, the ones I’d stayed with, but others as well, trooped over to my wreck of an apartment and started moving my stuff into their basement, by which I mean the basement of the place where I’d spent the night. For one thing, my stuff had to go someplace, and so did I. Somehow fate had decided that I would live with my friends for a while. Just how fate channeled that decision through us humans, I don’t remember.

So there we were. We got boxes from some place, carried them to my apartment, and filled them with my books, I had more than a few, and records, ditto. That took a lot of heavy boxes, each carried by one person, down two flights of stairs, out the door, around the corner and over a block to Guilford Ave., and then North two blocks. Since my apartment had been furnished, after a rather cheap fashion (student apartment), I didn’t have any furniture. Just my books, records, clothes, dishes, some paintings, and a bit of this that and the other. Not a whole lot of stuff. But it took us awhile, a half day, a day, I don’t remember. How many of us? A half dozen, maybe one or two more. It was drizzling at least part of the day. Beyond that, I can’t recall.

By the end of the day, I was living on Guildford Ave. in Baltimore, MD. I was now breaking down monogamy. Or at any rate, I was right next to the process.

Monogamy, according to the dictionary on my computer, is “the practice or state of having a sexual relationship with only one partner at a time.” That is a minimal definition. More loosely, it is about child-rearing and living arrangements. A monogamous couple lives with their children in a single dwelling unit, an apartment or a single-family home, that’s monogamy. In this sense, monogamy has been the foundation of Western society since forever. From that you may infer that breaking down monogamy has something to do with questioning the foundations of Western society. Breaking down monogamy as it was understood in this particular community was thus a political act.

The Personal is Political

I was part of a community for whom “the personal is political,” as the phrase goes. Here’s what Wikipedia says about that phrase:

In the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, it was seen as a challenge to the patriarchy, nuclear family and family values. The phrase was popularized by the publication of feminist activist Carol Hanisch's 1969 essay, “The Personal Is Political.” The phrase and idea have been repeatedly described as a defining characterization of second-wave feminism, radical feminism, women's studies, or feminism in general.

I was part of a political community.

You’d probably guessed that, or something like it, when I told you that I was a conscientious objector to military service. This was the Vietnam era. But it was also the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. That counterculture had two strands, broadly considered. There was the anti-war movement, which protested the war in various ways, and there were the hippies, who were in favor of tuning in, which I did (I played in a rock and roll band), turning on (which I did as well), and dropping out, which I never quite managed.

I joined this community through anti-war activity on the Johns Hopkins campus (I had been a member of SDS, Students for a Democratic Society). Those guys had wives and girlfriends. Those women were central to the feminist movement in Baltimore. Among other things, they produced one of the first feminist journals, Women: A Journal of Liberation.

That’s the community I hung out with. Oh, I hung out other places as well, but yes, and looking back, those people were, for lack of a better term, they were my homies. I visited two homes quite frequently, the place where I moved, and another place, I believe it was on the same street, but a couple blocks away. We’d listen to music, get stoned, sometimes we’d dance, but always, always we talked. One thing we talked about was how the women’s movement was a mediating force between the political movement, anti-war but also civil rights (especially in Baltimore), and the cultural, sex, drugs and rock and roll movement.

Breaking down monogamy was about both culture and politics. Why? Because that’s where the family sits. It is both a cultural and a political institution. To question the family, to breakdown monogamy, is to question the whole damn edifice of Western so-called culture. Wham! What was it that Gandhi said when asked what he thought about Western Civilization? “I think it would be a good idea.” That’s what we thought as well. We were trying to make it work.

And thus it came to pass that two families decided to live in one house. I suppose I could give these families fake names, but for some reason I rather like calling them Family Alpha and Family Beta. By living together in one house, Family Alpha and Family Beta became engaged in breaking down monogamy. They took meals together, hung out together in the living room and front parlor, discussed a lot of things together, and... How were household chores distributed between men and women? I don’t remember exactly. But I assume they were more equitably distributed than was conventionally the case. What else did they do together? I suppose that to some limited extent they participated in raising one another kids together. Family Alpha had a boy of about 10 or so while Family Beta had a boy of six months or so. One thing they did NOT do, is swap wives, or swap husbands, depending on your point of view. There was no sexual or romantic adventuring going on.[1] At least not that I was aware of. Who knows what was going on two or three links away from the people I hung out with.

I don’t know what names went on the mortgage and in what roles. It wasn’t any of my business. But it’s my understanding that the Alphas and Betas owned the house jointly.

By entering that home, if only temporarily, I too became engaged in dismantling monogamy. I forget just how I participated in household chores, though I’m not sure how much that should be attributed to breaking down monogamy and how much to simply being a guest. I do remember that I went into a minor panic when I was asked to prepare a salad for an evening meal. Me? A salad? I mean, I’d been cooking for myself for years, but I never made a salad. Anyhow, I managed to rip apart a head of lettuce, do something else as well, slap some dressing on it, and call it a salad. No one complained.

Tommy

While I’m reluctant to name the adults, I can see no harm in calling Family Beta’s son by his name, Tommy. I remember that one day shortly after I’d moved in Mr. Alpha and I were in the front parlor with young Tommy. We’d set up my stereo speakers on the floor, each was about two feet high, and young Tommy was between them in his little rocker. We got a buzz on, started listening to some music, and watched young Tommy rock out.

Wouldn't you know, the ancients used psychedelics. Why am I not surprised?

Alexander Nazaryan, Psychedelic Traces Found on Mug From Ancient Egypt, NYTimes, Nov. 28,2024.

Archaeologists and chemists analyzed the mug and found a big surprise: It contained traces of hallucinogenic plants. As they and Dr. van Oppen wrote this month in Scientific Reports, the mug offered the first chemical evidence that ancient Egyptians ingested hallucinogenic substances, possibly as part of a fertility rite.

The findings add to a growing body of evidence that civilizations in and around the Mediterranean region were just as aware of hallucinogens’ unique properties as their Mesoamerican counterparts. Recent studies have found that the Greeks and Romans may have also ingested plants with psychedelic properties, either to reach elevated spiritual states or as part of medical treatment.

Aware, my ass!

“There’s been a great deal of speculation about the Bes vases and what they were used for,” said Dr. Bob Bianchi, who is chief curator of the Ancient Egyptian Museum in Tokyo and was not involved in the research. He said it was “plausible” that the Egyptians used the mugs for psychedelic rituals.

Egyptians were fond of beer, and written evidence suggests they were aware that some plants had hallucinogenic properties. “They knew what their environment contained,” Dr. Bianchi said. But never before has there been evidence that Egyptians ingested those plants.

There's more at the link. 

* * * * *

The article references the following research paper:

Tanasi, D., van Oppen de Ruiter, B.F., Florian, F. et al. Multianalytical investigation reveals psychotropic substances in a ptolemaic Egyptian vase. Sci Rep 14, 27891 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-78721-8

Abstract: This study presents a comprehensive multimodal analytical study of an Egyptian ritual Bes-vase, of the 2nd century BCE employing cutting-edge proteomics, metabolomics, genetics techniques, and synchrotron radiation-based Fourier Transformed Infrared microSpectroscopy (SR μ-FTIR) to characterize organic residues of its content. We successfully identified the presence of various functional, bioactive, psychotropic, and medicinal substances, shedding light on the diverse components of a liquid concoction used for ritual practices in Ptolemaic Egypt. Using LC-MS/MS with a new methodological approach, we identified key proteins and metabolites, enabling the identification of botanical sources, confirmed by genetic sequences. Our analyses revealed traces of Peganum harmala, Nimphaea nouchali var. caerulea, and a plant of the Cleome genus, all of which are traditionally proven to have psychotropic and medicinal properties. Additionally, the identification of human fluids suggests their direct involvement in these rituals. Furthermore, metabolomics and SR μ-FTIR analyses also revealed the presence of fermented fruit-based liquid and other ingredients such as honey or royal jelly. The identification of specific chemical compounds, such as alkaloids and flavonoids, provides insight into the psychoactive and therapeutic uses of these in ancient ritual practices. This multidisciplinary study highlights the complexity of ancient cultures and their interactions with psychoactive, medicinal, and bioactive substances. These findings contribute to our understanding of ancient belief systems, cultural practices, and the utilization of natural resources, ultimately enhancing our knowledge of past societies and their connection to the natural world.

Psychedelic therapy and breathing

I know that the whole secret of yoga lies in two practices concerning which I have been unable to obtain any guidance from any body else or make any progress myself; control of breathing and meditation.

Of all the functions of the body, breathing is the only involuntary one that can be performed at will. The object is to make it voluntary and take possession of it. Through control of breathing, step by step, one can gain control of other functions. And to will is to know. If you want to know your body from within, this is the rope that goes down into the well.

– Lanza Del Vasto, Return to the Source

Ernesto Londoño, Breathing Their Way to an Altered State, NYTimes, 1.9.23. The opening paragraphs:

The instructions were simple: Lying on cots while wearing eyeshades, participants were directed to take deep belly breaths without pause to the beat of fast-paced music booming from loudspeakers.

The exercise, they were told, had the potential to induce an altered state of consciousness so profound that breathers sometimes describe it as reliving the terrifying moment of their birth. Past participants claim to have caught glimpses of past lives.

A few minutes into the session, which lasted nearly three hours, several participants began to weep. Some shook their limbs wildly, looking possessed. An outsider walking in would have been startled by the scene.

But the dozens of attendees at the recent breathwork workshop in San Francisco were far from hippies or cult initiates. They were health care professionals completing the final step of a certificate program in psychedelic therapy.

The vigorous modality, known as holotropic breathwork, is offered at the end of an eight-month training to provide a lawful taste of the therapeutic potential and pitfalls of altered states of consciousness.

New therapeutics needed:

Mental health experts say that traditional interventions to treat depression, trauma and addiction are failing many patients in the United States, which is grappling with a high suicide rate and an opioid addiction epidemic that killed approximately 75,000 people in 2022.

“In psychiatry and psychology, we’ve hit a brick wall,” said Janis Phelps, the director of the Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research at the California Institute of Integral Studies, the first program of its kind at a university.

Stanislav Grof:

“Psychedelics, used responsibly and with proper caution, would be for psychiatry what the microscope is for biology and medicine or what the telescope is for astronomy,” he wrote in “LSD Psychotherapy,” a book published in 1980.

By then, the war on drugs had stifled the field, prompting Dr. Grof to develop a new breath-based modality that borrowed from ancient Indian and shamanic practices. Holotropic breathwork — a term that blends Greek words that mean moving toward wholeness — became a means to induce altered states of consciousness without drugs. [...]

In an interview, Dr. Grof, 92, said that he had discovered, much to his surprise, that breathwork sessions could be as powerful as psychedelic trips. Altered states, whether breath- or drug-induced, he said, often allow people to unravel the root causes of their suffering quickly, making them more effective than conventional treatments like antidepressants.

There’s more at the link.

Meditation, Psychedelics, Computers, and the Mind

Early in the millennium I had an idea for a book, tentatively entitled, Mind Hacks R Us: Computing & Tripping to the Millennium's End, and I wrote a formal proposal under that title. I was unable to find a taker, but I kept the proposal around.

The rest of this post consists of two sections. The first is the prose introduction to the proposal. The second is a series of queries I put to ChatGPT about meditation, psychedelics, the computers, and the mind. What I’ve got on my mind, obviously, is what the future could hold:

Beyond AI displacing workers, creating new kinds of jobs, and solving all sorts of puzzles and problems, what are the possibilities for the general development of and flourishing of minds?

I’ve written about a Fourth Arena beyond the three arenas that the universe has so far evolved: inanimate matter, life, and culture. That’s where this post is headed. Note that I have a variety of posts under the tags, mhacks, and Arena.

Mind Hacks R Us

During the last half of the 20th century various groups of insiders and outsiders adopted mind-altering drugs and computer technology to create cultural spaces in which we imagined and realized new venues for the human mind. These spaces engaged fundamental issues of freedom and control, of emotion and reason, which have bedeviled humans everywhere, and elaborates them in the through modern science and technology. The psychoactive drugs which, in some sense, free us, have been synthesized through laboratory techniques we have invented, but only recently. The computers which extend our powers of control and order in often surprising ways embody logical forms that date back to Aristotle but where only recently brought to fruition in the late nineteenth century work of George Boole and others. Science and technology thus provide us with objective physical touchstones for the otherwise abstract powers and activities of our hearts and minds.

Taken together with that great Victorian invention, childhood innocence, the technologies of drugs and computers would constitute a cultural arena which served as incubator, nursery, and playground for some of the major lines of development in late twentieth century culture. For, if a society is to progress it needs cultural playgrounds where new ideas can be conceived, tested and developed. Psychedelic drugs and computing – and their associated cultures – functioned as such playgrounds in the latter half of the 20th century. They were, in fact, among the most important cultural playgrounds in America.

Given the fundamental differences between drugs and computers – what they are and how people use them, between Dionysian drugs and Apollonian computers – it is not surprising that different groups of people have been most interested in one or the other. What is most curious is that these people, and their creations, have often interacted, either directly or indirectly. In some cases, drug people and computer people are one and the same, as was the case in the San Francisco-Silicon Valley area during the 1970s.

Well before that, back in the 1950s, the Josiah Macy Foundation sponsored one series of high profile conferences about psychoactive drugs and another about computers. The cybernetics conferences – a series of about a half dozen of them – were chaired by MIT’s Grand Old Man of neuroscience, Warren S. McCulloch, and included such scientific luminaries as John von Neumann, Norbert Wiener, Claude Shanon, Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead. Late in the decade, with the help of money from the CIA, the Foundation sponsored conferences on LSD; Bateson and Mead figured in those conferences as well. Both drugs and computers promised to reveal, in their different ways, the material basis of mind. And both were new in the 1950s, and so held forth only promise – but promise of what?

The answer to that questions depends, of course, on what people were looking for, what they wanted beyond what they knew and understood. In one way or another people looked to drugs and computers for powers beyond the ordinary, for transcendence of the human condition, and, more rarely, for insight into that condition. Thus if we are to understand the way in which drugs and computers have affected our culture over the last 50 years, we have to start with the aspirations we brought to drugs and computers.

Back in 1940s – and before – and continuing through the present. Animated films directed specifically at children (with their parents in tow) is the matrix in which these forces were brought together, a “universal kid space” in which fancy and fantasy are given full-rein. Walt Disney is the key catalytic figure. The images themselves came to depict human movement with a gravity-defying fluid grace heretofore realized only in the abstract designs of music, though shamans have imagined themselves in such flights while under the ritual influence of sacred drugs and sacred music. But the technology required to create those images embodied a relentless assembly-line logic that was new in the scope and precision of its repetitive actions. By directing these animated pictures specifically at children, film-makers freed themselves from the bonds of reality and allowed themselves freely to imagine idealized worlds quite unlike any places that humans had actually seen and inhabited. Disney’s Fantasia is the apotheosis of this cultural movement. It represents a fully-adult imaginative achievement that would have been impossible to those particular adults, raised as they were, without the facilitating guise of a commercial product aimed at children.

Fantasia, then, is the starting point for my main narrative. Psychedelic drugs take the mind to a different dimension, one that is often as more real than the mundane world. So it was with Fantasia. But Fantasia was constructed in a technological matrix which would soon give birth to the digital computer and, along with it, another series of idealized versions of human possibility, of a future in which machines relieved us of further work and toil. That too was part of the Disney vision.

From there I follow the development of computers and the emergence of psychedelic drugs as people use them to explore different ways of solving the same socio-cultural problem: How do you take the best aspects of the child-oriented world of animated films and make it the basis of a way of life? We have to drop the posture that this fantasy world is only for children and find a way to accept and rework selected aspects of it into lived adult reality.

Psychedelic culture dealt with this problem by trying out an ethic of in-the-moment hedonism that also included strains of romantic pastoralism, on the one hand, and Eastern mysticism on the other. Computer culture dealt with the same issues by offering a workplace ethic of libertarian entrepreneurship and dreams of a future where everyone can achieve a technologically-supported nirvana. These lines of cultural development have converged on science fiction, fantasy, and games as common venues for cultural exploration and expression. In either case, life is conceived along different lines than those described in the buttoned-down middle-class combat zone depicted in William Whyte, The Organization Man, David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd, or Vance Packard, The Status Seekers.

This cultural reworking is by no means complete. Nor has it been an easy matter. On the contrary, it has often been confusing, difficult, and painful. As such things always are. Always.

ChatGPT on meditation, psychedelics, the computers, and the mind

What can you tell me about the various styles and practices of meditation?

Meditation encompasses a wide range of practices and styles, each with its unique techniques, goals, and cultural origins. Here are some of the most popular styles and practices of meditation:

1. Mindfulness Meditation (Vipassana):
• Originating from Buddhist traditions, mindfulness meditation involves paying attention to the present moment without judgment. It often focuses on breath awareness and observing thoughts and sensations.
2. Transcendental Meditation (TM):
• TM is a mantra-based meditation technique. Practitioners repeat a specific mantra to achieve a state of relaxed awareness, promoting inner calm and stress reduction. TM has its roots in ancient Vedic traditions.
3. Loving-Kindness Meditation (Metta):
• This form of meditation emphasizes the cultivation of love and compassion. Practitioners focus on sending positive intentions and well-wishes to themselves and others, gradually expanding the circle of compassion.
4. Zen Meditation (Zazen):
• Rooted in Zen Buddhism, Zazen involves sitting in a specific posture and focusing on the breath or a koan (a paradoxical question or statement). The goal is to develop insight and experience a direct, unmediated awareness of existence.
5. Yoga Nidra:
• Also known as yogic sleep, Yoga Nidra is a guided meditation that induces a state of conscious relaxation. It's often used for deep relaxation and stress reduction, allowing practitioners to explore the inner world through guided imagery.
6. Guided Meditation:
• In guided meditation, a teacher or a recording leads participants through a series of visualizations or mental exercises. It can be tailored for various purposes, such as stress relief, personal growth, or healing.
7. Body Scan Meditation:
• This mindfulness-based practice involves systematically bringing attention to different parts of the body. It helps increase body awareness and release tension.
8. Chakra Meditation:
• Derived from Indian spiritual traditions, chakra meditation involves focusing on energy centers (chakras) within the body. Practitioners aim to balance and align these energy centers for overall well-being.
9. Mantra Meditation:
• Beyond TM, various meditation practices involve repeating specific sounds, words, or phrases (mantras). This repetition can help quiet the mind and deepen concentration.
10. Movement-Based Meditation (Tai Chi, Qigong):
• Practices like Tai Chi and Qigong combine meditation with gentle, flowing movements. These aim to cultivate mindfulness, balance, and harmony between mind and body.
11. Breath Awareness Meditation:
• Focusing on the breath is a common element in many meditation practices. Techniques range from simple breath awareness to more structured practices like Anapanasati in Buddhist traditions.

It's important to note that the effectiveness of meditation can vary from person to person, and individuals may find that different styles resonate with them at different times in their lives. Experimenting with various techniques can help you discover what works best for your preferences and goals.

Psychedelics, Meditation, and the Brain | Robert Wright & Kathryn Devaney

0:00 Kati’s very unusual Venn diagram
4:24 Your brain on meditation
10:31 The time Bob’s meditation got weird
16:15 What are the “jhanas”?
25:06 What science tells us about the jhana states
31:25 Are psychedelics gateway drugs to meditation?
40:57 Kati: Here’s how we get “not-self” wrong…
46:22 Psychedelics vs meditation—neuroscientifically
54:31 Heading to Overtime

In Search of Awesome

Ashley Stimpson, Awestruck, Johns Hopkins Magazine, Winter 2023.

The tricky thing about emotions is they're difficult to measure; no one feels 87% happy or 15 kilograms of sadness. A decade ago, scientists measured awe by asking people, simply, if they felt it. The problem with that, according to Yaden, is that "different people have different definitions of the emotion."

So, Yaden assembled a team of researchers to develop a robust way to measure awe.

First, the team scoured previous scientific studies to come up with six core characteristics of the emotion: self-diminishment, time alteration, physical sensations like chills, and a feeling of connectedness, as well as the perception of vastness and the struggle to comprehend it.

Some background:

Awe has gone by a number of names. Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant both wrote about the sublime, while Charles Darwin expounded on wonder. Abraham Maslow introduced the idea of "peak experiences," which he described as "exciting, oceanic, deeply moving, exhilarating, elevating," which is to say: awesome.

Yet, in the early 1990s, when influential psychologist Paul Ekman identified the six basic human emotions (joy, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and surprise), awe was not on the list. It was one of Ekman's students, Dacher Keltner, who brought awe into the scientific conversation.

Keltner, a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life (Penguin Press, January 2023), says he was immersed in awe from a young age, at art museums and on camping trips with his parents. "My dad is a visual artist. My mom taught Romanticism and poetry. I grew up at a really wild time, in Laurel Canyon in the 1960s. So I was always walking around just kind of awe-struck."

Awe is good:

In the meantime, the science of awe has proliferated. Research has shown that people who feel awe more often report higher rates of satisfaction with life and greater feelings of well-being. Awe can help us be less stressed, less materialistic, and less isolated. There's evidence that awe is good for our physical health, too; one study reported that people who experienced the emotion more often had lower levels of cytokines, the proteins that cause inflammation. Awe might also contribute to a more harmonious society. When researchers exposed one group of study participants to an awe-inspiring view of towering eucalyptus trees, and another group to a neutral scene of a building, those who admired the pretty view were more likely to help a stranger pick up something they had dropped afterward. Another study found that awe made people less aggressive.

Nixing the default mode:

There's evidence that awe deactivates what's called the default mode network—the part of the brain associated with self-perception—allowing us to step outside our insular thoughts and ruminations and be wholly present in the moment. Awe also activates the vagus nerves, a braid of nerves running from the brain to the large intestines that is associated with feelings of compassion and altruism. In short, the emotion turns our focus away from ourselves, "providing connectedness and perspective," Yaden says. "Suddenly, our problems no longer feel as big and daunting."

The eight wonders of life:

In a study to determine what causes people to feel awe, Keltner and a research team gathered narratives about the emotion from 26 countries around the world. "Write about a time your mind was blown," he and his collaborators instructed. Using these accounts, Keltner developed what he calls the eight wonders of life: moral beauty, nature, collective movement, music, art, spirituality, big ideas, and mortality. Incorporating these wonders into your life to experience awe is "strikingly easy," Keltner says. In fact, you're probably already doing it.

"Most people experience awe pretty regularly," echoes Yaden. "Most vacations include awe excursions. People climb to the top of mountains, they go to museums, they visit monuments."

There's more at the link.

The Death of Burning Man

Daniel Pinchbeck, How Burning Man Failed, Daniel Pinchbeck's Newsletter, Aug. 29, 2023.

I've known about Burning Man for a long time. When I read about it in Pinchbeck's first book, Breaking Open the Head, I wanted to go, but didn't. Now...?

Pinchbeck notes:

As some readers may recall, I love Burning Man and consider it a massive disappointment. When I first visited back in 2000, I was overcome with enthusiasm, inspiration — many people still feel this, today, when they go for the first time. I still recall that wonderfully intoxicating sense of arriving at a “free” or liberated cultural zone where, in theory, you can recreate yourself in any way you want, express yourself in any way, as long as it doesn’t cause harm to anyone else. [...]

Burning Man seemed to reveal how society, as a whole, could (and, I believed, eventually would) be reconstructed around the psychedelic anarchist vision. The festival showed me it was possible to deprogram people, en masse, from the economic shackles, blind ambitions, and incessant status-seeking of normative culture. In my naive excitement, I saw Burning Man as a porto-revolutionary model for the future— in How Soon Is Now, I joked that the festival was my version of the Paris Communes (1848), a short-lived worker-run experiment eventually crushed by Napoleon III, which inspired Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

But now, he goes on to say:

Over time it became clear — particularly after the death of Larry Harvey, its founder — that the dominant ethos underlying Burning Man was a kind of occult-tinged free market Libertarianism, influenced by transhumanism and the technological Singularity. Back in the early 2000s, Burning Man mocked itself vigorously. It had a hard, Terence McKenna / Robert Anton Wilson edge. We felt we were exploring Chapel Perilous, awaiting the Eschaton.

As Burning Man expanded and became more popular, it lost its self-parodying humor, its self-critical irony, and its encompassing social vision, to a great extent. It started to feel increasingly hollow, shallow, and narcissistic. Much of the art now seems designed to provide a fitting backdrop for Instagram selfies. The outfits and hats became copycats of each other. Burners no longer explore much originality of self-expression. They follow the pre-set script, the round-the-clock EDM schedule. [...]

There was always an innate beauty hierarchy at Burning Man; over time, wealth started to play a greater role in determining the festival’s focus. Wealthy Burners raised millions of dollars for their art cars, sculptures, and mega-domes.

Crank it up, rich tech bros! 

* * * * *

 This just in (73.23):

God, i love Pearlman 😂 Here is his take on the burning man situation and it's spot on.
Back in the 90's that festival was a different experience. Now it's been taken over by rich people LARPing as hippies for a week. pic.twitter.com/6WyKDNiLam

— 🥀_ Imposter_🥀 (@Imposter_Edits) September 3, 2023

Referring to this:  Trapped in Mud, Burning Man Attendees Are Told to Conserve Food, NYTimes, Sept. 9, 2023:

Thousands of attendees at the Burning Man festival in a remote stretch of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada were told on Saturday to conserve food, water and fuel after heavy rainfall trapped them in thick mud.

The event, which takes place in Black Rock City and began on Sunday, was interrupted by heavy rains on Friday night, and organizers directed attendees to shelter in place as rain poured over the area.

The festival site received more than half an inch of rain overnight on Friday, organizers said. While it had stopped for much of Saturday, more was expected in the evening and into Sunday morning, with a slight chance of thunderstorms, they said.

Except for emergency services, vehicles have also been prohibited around Black Rock City.

The fluid mind of ChatGPT

Some time ago I posted a set of notes entitled, From Associative Nets to the Fluid Mind (2013). Here’s the abstract:

We can think of the mind as a network that’s fluid on several scales of viscosity. Some things change very slowly, on a scale of months to years. Other things change rapidly, in milliseconds or seconds. And other processes are in between. The microscale dynamic properties of the mind at any time are context dependent. Under some conditions it will function as a highly structured cognitive network; the details of the network will of course depend on the exact conditions, both internal (including chemical) and external (what’s the “load” on the mind?). Under other conditions the mind will function more like a loose associative net. These notes explore these notions in a very informal way.

This implies that "classical" cognitive networks cannot exhibit these behaviors because they are, by design and construction, "locked in" to rigidly defined behaviors. And THAT's one reason I wanted to probe ChatGPT on these kinds of tasks. To see what it can do that GOFAI semantic nets cannot.

The final section is entitled, “A Half-dozen Associative Clusters,” which I explained thus:

These associations are, of course, mine. I make no general assertions about these clusters. They are here as examples of the sorts of things that can come up through relatively quick associations.

I decided to see how ChatGPT would respond to some of those clusters:

Shakespeare, the Globe theater, Coleridge, “The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner,” James Joyce, Marcel Proust, deconstruction, interpretation, romantic love, Romance of the Rose, La Vita Nuova, Othello, the unconscious, Bleak House

These are all important works, authors, and concepts in the fields of literature and literary theory.

Shakespeare was an English playwright and poet widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language. His works include classics such as "Othello," "Romeo and Juliet," and "Hamlet." The Globe theater, located in London, was one of the most famous playhouses of Shakespeare's time and was the venue for many of his plays.

Coleridge was an English poet, literary critic, and philosopher who was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement. "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is one of his most famous poems.

James Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet who was a key figure in the Modernist movement. He is best known for his novel "Ulysses." Marcel Proust was a French novelist and critic whose most famous work is "In Search of Lost Time."

Deconstruction is a philosophical and literary theory that critiques the stability of meaning in texts. Interpretation is the process of creating meaning from a text, which can involve multiple perspectives and interpretations.

Romantic love refers to the idealized and intense form of love that is often celebrated in romantic literature. The "Romance of the Rose" is a medieval poem that explores the themes of courtly love and desire. "La Vita Nuova" is a collection of poems by Dante Alighieri that tell the story of his love for a woman named Beatrice.

The unconscious refers to the part of the mind that contains thoughts, memories, and impulses that are not currently in conscious awareness. "Bleak House" is a novel by Charles Dickens that critiques the legal system and society in 19th-century England.

atoms, periodic table, bonds, compounds, elements, molecules, reaction, oxidation, acids and bases, reagents, alchemy, changing liquids from one color to another, distilling, condenser, precipitate

These are all concepts in the field of chemistry.

Atoms are the basic building blocks of matter, and they are composed of a nucleus, which contains protons and neutrons, surrounded by electrons. The periodic table is a chart that arranges all of the known elements into a table based on their atomic number, electron configuration, and chemical properties.

Bonds are the forces that hold atoms together in a molecule. Compounds are substances made up of two or more different elements that are chemically bonded together.

Elements are the simplest form of matter and cannot be broken down into simpler substances by chemical means. Molecules are the smallest particle of a substance that retains its chemical properties.

A reaction is a process in which one or more substances are transformed into new substances. Oxidation is a chemical reaction in which a substance loses electrons.

Acids and bases are two types of compounds that play an important role in many chemical reactions. Reagents are substances that are used to cause a chemical reaction.

Alchemy was a medieval philosophy and proto-science that aimed to transform base metals into gold and to discover a universal panacea. Changing liquids from one color to another is a common demonstration of chemical reactions in chemistry classrooms.

Distilling is a process used to purify liquids by heating them to vaporize, collecting the vapor, and condensing it back into a pure liquid. A condenser is a device used in distillation to condense the vapor back into a liquid.

Precipitate refers to a solid that forms from a solution and separates from it, either spontaneously or through the addition of a reagent.

I gave it a cluster on jazz as well, but we can skip it. ChatGPT responded to it the way it did to the literary and chemistry clusters, but giving quick definitions of the various terms.

I decided to “go meta” and see how ChatGPT would respond:

What does it mean to free associate?

Free association is a technique used in psychology and psychotherapy where a person is encouraged to say whatever comes to their mind without censorship or filtering. The idea is that by allowing thoughts and feelings to come to the surface without judgment or control, unconscious or repressed material can be revealed, leading to greater self-awareness and insight.

In free association, a person is typically prompted to start with a word or image, and then to respond with whatever comes to mind, no matter how seemingly random or unrelated it may be. This can result in a stream of consciousness-style narrative that sheds light on the individual's unconscious thoughts, feelings, and desires.

Free association can be a valuable tool for exploring the unconscious mind, resolving emotional conflicts, and gaining insight into one's thoughts and behaviors. It is used in various forms of psychotherapy, including psychoanalysis, and is considered a cornerstone of psychoanalytic theory and practice.

Free associate on “psychedelic popcicle”

Sure! Here are some free associations for "psychedelic popcicle":

• Colorful, trippy, swirls, summer, brain freeze
• 1960s, flower power, Woodstock, peace sign, hippie culture
• Sweet, treat, lick, melt, thirst quencher
• Childhood, innocence, playtime, fun, carefree

Again, these are just examples of free associations, and the actual associations made by an individual may differ based on their experiences and perspectives.

Frankly, those bullets violate the spirit of free association, but I'm going to blame them on the trainers and taskmasters at Open AI rather than on the underlying LLM. The same goes for that annoying final paragraph.

Note that “again.” I’d previously asked it for some free-associations which I’m not uploaded because...well...I can’t upload everything and they don’t add anything to the story.

I then reloaded the page to give me a new chat and I gave it the psychedelic popsicle associations in a list:

Colorful, trippy, swirls, summer, brain freeze, 1960s, flower power, Woodstock, peace sign, hippie culture, Sweet, treat, lick, melt, thirst quencher, Childhood, innocence, playtime, fun, carefree

This description is reminiscent of the classic summer treat, the popsicle! Popsicles are sweet, colorful, and come in a variety of flavors, making them a popular choice for quenching thirst and satisfying a sweet tooth. The 1960s was a time of the flower power and hippie culture movement, with symbols like the peace sign being associated with this era. This aligns with the carefree, fun, and playful nature of eating popsicles, evoking a sense of childhood innocence. The "brain freeze" effect from eating them too quickly is also a common experience, adding to their appeal as a playful treat.

I had no particular expectations on what it would do.

It is interesting that it identified the list with “popsicle” though the word isn’t in the list. Note as well that it didn’t simply take the words in order and add connecting tissue; thus, e.g. while “brain freeze” comes at the beginning of the list, it appears near the end of the paragraph. ChatGPT took the words and composed a mini-essay around them.

How to Change Your Mind [Media Notes 75d] – What's Next?

I’ve watched the last two episodes of How to Change Your Mind, devoted to MDMA, known colloquially as ecstasy, and Mescaline respectfully.

MDMA

The MDMA episode concentrated on therapeutic uses, particularly in connection with PTSD. Much of the footage covered particular cases. MDMA allows you to talk through your traumatic experiences without negative affect and thus facilitates coming to terms with them. Spotlights pioneering independent researcher Alexander Shulgin, Rick Doblin, and the organization he founded, Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which has funded studies conducted by the Department of Veterans Affairs. It noted that MDMA was close to FDA approval for therapeutic use.

Mescaline

Mescaline is the psychoactive ingredient in peyote, which has long been used in Native American communities in the United States and in Latin America. The episode goes into this history and has extensive interviews with contemporary Native Americans, particularly in connection with the Native American Church, which has succeeded in gaining access to peyote for ceremonial use. These interviews explore the therapeutic importance of peyote, but also its broader spiritual significance and its importance in maintaining a sense of cultural identity.

The last third of the episode gives a great deal of attention to the Decriminalize Nature movement, which is active throughout the United States in urging legislation to decriminalize entheogens (the term it has popularized for psychedelics). The goal is not so much to legalize the drugs but for law enforcement to give them low priority. The movement is at odds with those Native Americans who advocate for peyote. In part the issue is one of cultural appropriation, but it is also practical. Peyote is in limited supply because the cactus takes a long time to mature and exists only in a few locations. Native Americans don’t want the limited supply to be all but taken over by others. Consequently the decriminalize movement has excluded peyote from consideration. In a final note, Pollan noted that, for this reason, he chose not to try peyote.

The episode also mentioned the Eleusinian Mysteries of ancient Greece, which may have been mescaline based, though other psychedelics are possible as well. We also have footage from an interview with Aldous Huxley, who had tried mescaline and, in consequence, wrote The Doors of Perception (1953), which I read in my freshman year in college (but not in connection with any course). It has become a classic in the psychedelic literature.

This brings up a split in psychedelic community between populist and elitist theme. The populists, exemplified by Tim Leary advocate giving the drugs to everyone and thereby change the culture. Huxley was more elitist, advocating that use should be confined to “the best and brightest” (a phrase used in the episode) and the benefits would somehow filter down to the rest.

There is a final plea that the use of psychedelics can change our relationship to the natural world, something sorely needed in this time of climate crisis.

Overall?

The series does a good job of presenting the history of psychedelics over the last seven decades. Its strongest case is for therapeutic use. The spiritual and metaphysical case is (much) weaker. The problem, I fear, is with the larger culture. That of course is what the spiritual/metaphysical argument is about. We don’t seem to have the concepts and terms needed to frame a strong argument. Yes, psychedelics and psychedelic research were suppressed. More than that, a whole ‘zone’ of cultural development was impoverished, leaving us with New Age this and that. But that, I fear, is just a middle-class veneer over consumer culture.

It's not clear to me how Pollan could have addressed this.

I have this vague feeling that, when the Metaverse isn’t mostly hype and a way to sell more technology, it represents a desire for something that psychedelic culture was seeking, even promising, but couldn’t deliver – and not because the drugs were suppressed.

Intimations of a Fourth Arena?

I need to think more about this.

How to Change Your Mind [Media Notes 75c] – On the visual style.

Chris Vognar, With ‘How to Change Your Mind,’ Taking a Trip With Michael Pollan, NYTimes, July 25, 2022. I suspected that something like this might be going on:

Tall and bald with the build of a swimmer, Pollan is no Timothy Leary — he isn’t asking anyone to drop out — and the medical trials described and shown in “How to Change Your Mind” shouldn’t be confused with Ken Kesey’s freewheeling acid tests of the ’60s. Back then, when psychedelics left the laboratory and entered the counterculture, the power structure freaked out.

“Kids were going to communes, and American boys were refusing to go to war,” Pollan said. “President Nixon certainly believed that LSD was responsible for a lot of this, and he may well have been right. It was a very disruptive force in society, and that is why I think the media after 1965 turns against it after being incredibly enthusiastic before 1965.”

Junk science spread nonsense about LSD scrambling chromosomes. The drug was made illegal in California in 1967, and then nationally in 1970. Researchers weren’t forbidden from continuing their work with psychedelics, but the stigma made such work very rare until it re-emerged in the 2000s. Today, clinical trials are approved by the F.D.A. and D.E.A.

“From the early ’70s to the early ’90s, there was no approved psychedelic research in human subjects,” said Charles Grob, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at U.C.L.A., who has written widely about psychedelic therapy. “Since then, research development has re-emerged and slowly evolved, until the last few years when professional and public interest in the topic appears to have exploded.”

Given evolving attitudes, one challenge facing the filmmakers, including the directors Alison Ellwood and Lucy Walker, was how to depict the psychedelic experience in a sophisticated way, without stumbling into the territory of a ’60s exploitation movie.

“We didn’t want to fall into the trap of using psychedelic visual tropes — wild colors, rainbow streaks, morphing images,” Ellwood wrote in an email. “We wanted to keep the visual style more personal, intimate and experiential. We wanted people watching the series who have not had their own psychedelic experiences to be able to relate to the visuals.”

One imaginative scene recreates the famous bicycle ride taken by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, who first synthesized LSD in 1936 but didn’t discover its psychedelic effects until 1943 (accidentally). Feeling strange after ingesting 250 micrograms, Hofmann rode his bike during the peak of his trip. In “How to Change Your Mind,” we see the buildings around him bend and waver as he rides. The road beneath him blurs. The tombstones in a graveyard sway.

There’s more at the link.

The Times seems to going all-out on this. Here’s an opinion piece, Dana G. Smith, Taking the Magic Out of Magic Mushrooms. The piece isn’t quite the downer the title suggests. It’s about attempts to engineer drugs that have the therapeutic effects of psychedelics without the consciousness altering sensory effects.

How to Change Your Mind [Media Notes 75b] – Psilocybin brings depth to the series.

As I’ve already indicated, I found the first episode in Michael Pollan’s series, about LSD, to be disappointing. The second one, about psilocybin, is much better. Or at least I found it so.

It was natural to begin the series with LSD, for that’s the drug that brought psychedelics to public consciousness. The story’s simple: 1) Swiss chemist accidentally discovers it, 2) Timothy Leary turns on, tunes in, and urges the world to drop out, and 3) HIPPIES! I more or less lived through this story – I’m a bit older than Michael Pollan, who missed it – so the history wasn’t new to me, and this episode was mostly the history.

The second episode has history as well, the story of how Gordon Wasson, a J.P. Morgan banker and amateur mycologist, traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico, to meet María Sabina, a curandera, and thereby brought knowledge of psilocybin to the 20th century Western world. This brings a new dimension to the story. The story of LSD is a story of 20th century pharmaceuticals. But psilocybin is a naturally occurring substance that has been used by humans for centuries and centuries around the world to take these journeys, these trips, these investigations, making them a facet of humanity that has been sidelined by Western culture.

But that’s not how the episode opened. It opened with the story of an older woman who had been diagnosed with cancer. She took psilocybin (in a clinical setting) to help her overcome her fear of death, which it did. Here we see special effect used to present us with her trip, convincingly but not flamboyantly. This is done, I believe, three more times in the series. Once with Paul Stamets, a mycologist, once with a man suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and finally with Pollan himself. I thought this was quite effective. We also learned about the work done on psychedelics at the Spring Grove Clinic in Baltimore – I was aware of it at the time.

Taken in conjunction with the first episode, on LSD, we now have a much more rounded and fully realized picture of psychedelics. In particular, the first episode makes a connection between psychedelics and computer culture through the figure of Steward Brand, best-known as the creator of the Whole Earth Catalogue. Brand had settled in San Francisco, which was an important center of counter-cultural activity (Haight Ashbury was legendary), but the surrounding area, Silicon Valley to the southeast, was important in computer culture as well. Thus these two pivotal movements matured in close proximity.

In one sense they are very different. Computers are highly complex technology used to facilitate things in the external world. Whatever the chemical complexity of psychedelic drugs, anyone can ingest them, and take an inward journey. Both, however, are mind technologies, one a set of devices for externalizing mental activities, the other a group of drugs for re-ordering one’s own mind. Their physical conjunction is thus important. If we are to understand the course of cultural growth and change since the middle of the 20th century, we need to track the parallel evolution of these two movements.

Here's a brief chronology indicating some of the conjunctions of these two movements. It is derived from a book proposal I’d created, but failed to sell, about the interaction of these developments.

Mind Hacks R Us – Computing & Tripping to the Millennium’s End

I'm bumping this to the top of the queue so it can accompany my ongoing posts on artificial intelligence and my recent post on How to Change Your Mind. Perhaps I'll do another one or two on the series. I'm most of the way through the second episode, on psilocybin, and I like it better than the first. Perhaps the third will be even better. Addendum: It was different.

* * * * *

A bit earlier in this millennium I thought it would be interesting to write a book on the parallel evolution of computer culture and psychedelic culture in the United States from mid-century to the end of the millennium. I wrote up a proposal, called it Dreams of Perfection, and it went nowhere. Subsequently John Markoff and Fred Turner each published parts of the story. Now I’m publishing a slightly revised portion of that old book proposal as an independent document. I’ve cut the marketing portions of the proposal, leaving only the conceptual overview and the chapter summaries. I’d envisioned five longish chapters, one for each decade, each chapter keyed to a different film: Fantasia, Forbidden Planet, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Tron, and The Matrix. I’ve retained that structure in this précis and concluded it with a consolidated chronology is significant dates.

Downloadt Academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/37206924/Mind_Hacks_R_Us_Computing_and_Tripping_to_the_Millenniums_End

Here's the consolidated chronology:

1936: Alan Turing publishes “On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem.” This paper established that some computations were, in principle, impossible to perform.

1936: Avant-garde playwright Antonin Artaud travels to Mexico to try mescaline. Artaud’s writings were very influential among the people who created the “happenings” of the 1960s and 1970s.

1938: LSD was first synthesized at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in Switzerland, though its mind altering properties were not discovered until 1943. LSD, of course, was the major “drug” of the psychedelic 60s.

1945: Vannevar Bush published “As We May Think,” in the Atlantic Monthly. This article, written by a government research administrator, is often regarded as a harbinger of the personal computer revolution of the 1980s.

1945: Hungarian emigrant and polymath John von Neumann wrote “First Report on the Development of EDVAC,” the document that defined the basic scheme used to implement software in digital computers.

1953: Watson and Crick publish the double helix structure of DNA and thus initiate the age of microbiology, initiating biology into the information paradigm.

1954: J. R. R. Tolkein publishes The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers.

1954: Thorazine, the first major tranquilizer, is marketed.

1956: The Bathroom of Tomorrow attraction opens at Disneyland.

1959: John McCarthy proposes time-sharing to MIT’s director of computing; time-sharing would make computers much more accessible.

1960: Robert Heinlein publishes Stranger in a Strange Land, which would become a major point of literary reference in the drug and mystical counter-culture of the 1960s.

1966: LSD and other psychedelics are outlawed, making it illegal for people to take trips.

1966: Original Star Trek series debuts on television, starting an entertainment franchise that would produce offspring for the rest of the century.

1967: The Beatles release Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a triumph of high-tech electronics and the psychedelic imagination.

1968: President Nixon declares war on drugs.

1969: Herbert Simon publishes The Sciences of the Artificial, a collection of essays that makes fundamental insights of the artificial intelligentsia accessible to a larger audience.

1969: Man lands on the moon, the first time we have traveled to another world from ours – in physical reality.

1969: The Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) establishes a nationwide network linking computer researchers to one another. This is the original seed of the internet.

1977: Star Wars became a motion-picture blockbuster, wedding martial arts mysticism with a space opera story and high tech special effects.

1981: William Bennett appointed to head the National Endowment of Humanities, his first government post. This positioned him to declare and lead a culture war. Later he would become “Drug Czar” under President Bush.

1981: Ted Nelson publishes Computer Liberation, in which he describes an elaborate hypertext system he called Project Xanadu (after the kingdom described in Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”).

1984: Apple Computer advertised their new Macintosh in a Super Bowl advertisement that pitched IBM in the role of Big Brother and the Mac as humankind’s liberator.

1984: William Gibson combines video game imagery with reggae music and mythology and sets it in the future, thus placing psychedelia and computing on equal terms in the cyberpunk world of Neuromancer.

1985: Steve Jobs purchases Pixar, from George Lucas, and establishes it as an independent computer graphics company. Pixar would go on to produce the first completely computer-generated motion pictures.

1990: The world-wide-web was proposed by Swiss researchers.

1991: Desert Storm, the first war televised live and in real-time. Now real war is at our fingertips, just like a video game.

1994: Netscape was founded, with its IPO in 1995. This is the first company created by the world-wide-web, and it started the dotcom bubble that was to burst in 2001.

1999: Inventor and businessman turned futurist guru Raymond Kurzweil publishes The Age of Spiritual Machines, a manifesto about a future in which machines will surpass the accomplishments of their human creators.

2000: Detroit Electronic Free Music Festive draws 1.5 million people in its first year and is dedicated to genres of music which cultivate trance states.

2003: Anti-war organizers used the world-wide-web to organize world-wide protests against the American-led war against Iraq.

2003: Two major books about psychedelic drugs and mysticism are published, Rational Mysticism, and Breaking Open the Head.

How to Change Your Mind [Media Notes 75a] – LSD for serious people: Mind-changing is asserted, not shown.

How to Change Your Mind is a four episode miniseries on Netflix based on Michael Pollan’s book of the same name. It has four episodes, each named after a different psychedelic drug: LSD, Psilocybin, MDMA, Mescaline. I’ve watched the first episode. Color me underwhelmed.

Pollan serves as an on-screen guide and narrator, and is appropriately serious. He’s very clear that LSD is a potentially mind-changing and therefore very important drug. But, to be honest, he’s also a bit boring.

Before I get going, however, let me quote from a review of the episode published by James Hallifax in Psychedelic Spotlight News:

Episode 1 of Netflix’s How to Change Your Mind is a great introduction to the topic of LSD for those who don’t already know a lot about the subject. Narrated by Michael Pollan, the show takes us on a journey through the history of the powerful compound, from its discovery and its early medical use, to secret CIA mind-control studies, the counterculture and its banning, and finally to our current renaissance.

From amazing clips of LSD’s inventor Albert Hofmann describing his “Problem Child,” to powerful personal testimonies of individuals who have healed their suffering through LSD, episode 1 is a fun and entertaining refresher on the topic of LSD for even experts in the field.

In short, How to Change Your Mind’s first episode is definitely worth the watch.

My favorite segment came when psychedelic researcher James Fadiman was discussing an early LSD study on its effects on creativity, held at Stanford University in 1960. They recruited 48 senior scientists from various fields, all of whom had been working on a scientific problem to no avail for at least three months. In the study, each scientist was dosed with 100 micrograms of LSD, which can be considered a medium-sized dose.

As Fadiman describes it, “out of the people who came, we had 48 problems and 48 satisfactory solutions.” In other words, the LSD study was a stunning success. The fact that all 48 scientists —who had all been working on their problem for at least 3 months!!!— credited their LSD experience with solving their problem is nothing short of a miracle. True, perhaps this study would not meet the rigid rules of today’s clinical trials, but the results speak for themselves. According to Fadiman, “We had patents, we had publications, and because most of these people worked in industry, we also had products. And eventually the computer world emerged here.”

Despite this amazing story — and many more held within the one-hour premiere — the debut episode was not without its faults. Primary among them is its over-reliance on anecdotal stories, weaving a narrative that is not necessarily always backed up by current scientific study. The best example of this comes towards the end of the episode when Michael Pollan turns towards the subject of microdosing LSD.

About that last paragraph, I’m neither here nor there.

My problem with the episode is a bit different. It’s serious and, on the whole, dull. There’s some nifty special effects used to recreate the legendary bicycle ride taken by Albert Hoffman after he’d taken a substantial dose of LSD, 250 micrograms. There are some special effects scenes as well, and footage from some of Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests from the 1960s. But there was nothing like this:

That’s a mural painted by Bob Hieronimus in Levering Hall on the campus of Johns Hopkins University in 1968-1969. I was a student at Johns Hopkins at the time; I saw that mural being painted. I listened to music played in that room, which functioned as a coffee house on the weekends. I rehearsed with a rock and roll band in a room next to that. That’s what I think of when I think about when I think about LSD.

Mind you, I am not now nor have I ever been an acid head. I’ve only taken LSD twice – which I’ll get to in a minute – but I was there and, if not exactly immersed in the culture, I spent a lot of time at its edges. I read a lot of the scientific literature on LSD and other psychedelics, not to mention a wide variety of material on mystical experience, I listed to the music, wore the clothes. And whatever THAT is, it’s missing from this episode.

The problem is one of technique, of aesthetics. How do you convey THAT while at the same time making it clear that you are not stoned out of your freaking mind? It’s clear that Pollan thinks psychedelics are important, that it’s important that we investigate them, and learn how to use them. He’s also aware that The Establishment, if you will, freaked out and made LSD illegal in 1968, shutting down all research on it. I mean, Pollan writes for The New York Times, fercrissakes, he IS the establishment (almost). He wants to steer clear of all that crazy stuff that freaks people out while at the same time knowing that, considered appropriately, the craziness is the point. It's not crazy, but rather reflects a different order in the universe.

As for my two acid trips, one was in January of 1972 and lasted approximately two weeks and the other was, I believe, in the Spring of 1974 and only lasted several hours. In neither case did I experience the visions and other sensory effects typical of LSD trips. Why, I don’t know. But that first one, that was a trip. Here’s a couple of paragraphs from an article I published in 1975:

What happens on an LSD trip is intimately bound up with one's expectations. I had lots of them. I expected to receive an insight (at least one!) into my study of language which would make it possible to write my masterwork. I had also expected to experience all kinds of nifty sensory effects. None of my expectations were met.

The sensory world remained the same and I spent two weeks living the life of a character in a Thomas Pynchon novel. I was on a quest and every event I faced was a test of my herohood. Nothing was what it appeared to be; everything had a hidden meaning. If I succeeded in my tasks the world would be saved and I would be inducted into the Secret Society of Master Creators (I didn't call it that at the time, but that is what it was) and spend the rest of my life as a Master of Improvisational Musics.

Winter in Baltimore is a dreary rainy affair. But those days in January were like the first days of spring–proof that I had succeeded and the world was being reborn. I received a letter from a friend which was misdated; the year read “1973” rather than “1972.” But I didn't think it was misdated; I merely assumed that self-sacrifice (as in Christ and Oedipus–sometimes I lay in bed at night pressing my palms into my eye sockets wondering if I would be called on to blind myself) had eliminated a year from time and that it was in fact 1973. (I didn't bother checking calendars.)

The account continues in that vein for a half-dozen more paragraphs and concludes:

Many of the people around me surely thought I was going mad. But none of this seemed in the least bit incoherent or confusing to me. And, as my cryptic messages went unanswered, as events refused to follow the course indicated by the signs, I realized that I had been acting out fantasies but that I had not broken free of them. My ego had been inflated, but not transcended. The dance had been exhilarating, but it lacked grace.

During that period I had signed up for trumpet lessons at the Peabody Institute and, as a result, brought my technique up a notch and have continued with the trumpet ever since. As important, perhaps more so, I completed my Master’s Thesis on “Kubla Khan,” and have been pursuing that work ever since. Would I have done those things if I hadn’t taken LSD? I don’t know. The fact is that before that trip I hadn’t played my trumpet in over a year and I was blocked on my thesis.

Pollan surely knows of that. It’s why he wrote the book and undertook this miniseries. I’ve not read the book, though I’ve read a review or two, but something is missing in this first episode. It tends to be strong on the facts, even if only anecdotally, and seems pitched at people who don’t know those facts. If you’ve lived through them, then there’s not much here for you. It jogs your memory, but leaves your imagination untouched.

I’m reminded of some lines from Coleridge’s “Dejection: An Ode”:

Yon crescent Moon, as fixed as if it grew
In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue;
I see them all so excellently fair
I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!

Where’s the feeling? Maybe things will improve in the other episodes. We’ll see.