After mentioning in November my discovery of the secret of the universe at the dentist, and my struggle to retrieve it, Tully Hansen, poet, dropped me a note to say that my experience is not unique!
This story has been told variously about nitrous, ether, and chloroform, but here’s a version from an 1870 lecture by Oliver Wendell Holmes: I once inhaled a pretty full dose of ether, with the determination to put on record, at the earliest moment of regaining consciousness, the thought I should find uppermost in my mind.
And so:
The veil of eternity was lifted. The one great truth which underlies all human experience, and is the key to all the mysteries that philosophy has sought in vain to solve, flashed upon me in a sudden revelation. Henceforth all was clear: a few words had lifted my intelligence to the level of the knowledge of the cherubim. As my natural condition returned, I remembered my resolution; and, staggering to my desk, I wrote, in ill-shaped, straggling characters, the all-embracing truth still glimmering in my consciousness. The words were these (children may smile; the wise will ponder): “A strong smell of turpentine prevails throughout.”
So: a class of inhaled anaesthetics triggers an experience of revelation, struggle to recall, and a mundane truth – and this experience is individual yet shared.
I think what catches me by surprise, about this trip to the dentist, is how intensely personal and subjective it felt… yet that’s simply something that nitrous produces, reliably.
RELATED: a reliable effect of salvia is to witness the layers of reality; a reliable effect of DMT is to encounter beings called by Terence Mckenna self-transforming machine elves.
Reliability. Way back in 2007 I was going on about the book Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved which documents the effects of 179 different compounds – and asking why we didn’t already have reliable smart drugs.
I didn’t mean smart drugs like Omega-3s, which apparently boost cognitive performance in a low level and generalised way as a diet supplement, but instead highly targeted, functional, reliable psychoactives: Why don’t we have abstraction modifier drugs now? Why are there no drugs to help me think in hierarchies, or with models, or to make cross connections?
I’m not sure I’d take any, but I still wonder about this.
I wish I could remember where, but I remember reading that the breakthrough with Viagra was getting “erectile dysfunction” listed as a pathology. There’s a book of official pathologies. Once something is in that book, drugs can be developed (with research costs offset against tax); drugs can be marketed and proscribed and bought with insurance, and so on.
So could you pathologise “lack of lateral thinking,” or “dysfunction in authoring structured PowerPoint”, or “inability to consult with the machine elves” – and produce a little blue pharmaceutical to deal with the issue, a blister pack full of 60 minute perspectives, epiphanies, and corporate strategy skills?
I guess I’m looking back at my posts from this year, including this one thinking about using the GPT-3 AI as a creative collaborator, and imagining a different future, one based on molecular biochemistry not machine learning; rather than looking to computers to provide mental prostheses and automate jobs, we instead extend the gamut of human ability with cognitive interventions?
What would it mean to have utilitarian psychoactives? How would the world change?
The mundane consequences:
Right next to the “Out of Office” email setting for when you’re on vacation, a button that turns off your inbox and sets the auto reply just for a single morning, clearing the decks for your weekly creative consultation with the machine elves.
A vacuum cleaner with flashing light patterns specifically designed to capture your attention when you’re on a deep clean trip, absolutely and happily and regularly and chemically fixated on getting your chores done.
‘Yes, we’ll see them together some Saturday afternoon then,’ she said. ‘I won’t have any hand in your not going to Cathedral on Sunday morning. I suppose we must be getting back. What time was it when you looked at your watch just now?’ "In China and some other countries it is not considered necessary to give the girls any education; but in Japan it is not so. The girls are educated here, though not so much as the boys; and of late years they have established schools where they receive what we call the higher branches of instruction. Every year new schools for girls are opened; and a great many of the Japanese who formerly would not be seen in public with their wives have adopted the Western idea, and bring their wives into society. The marriage laws have been arranged so as to allow the different classes to marry among[Pg 258] each other, and the government is doing all it can to improve the condition of the women. They were better off before than the women of any other Eastern country; and if things go on as they are now going, they will be still better in a few years. The world moves. "Frank and Fred." She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she looked at me with her eyes very blue and said "You'll see him about it, won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!" Her eyes began forewith. Lawrence laughed silently. He seemed to be intensely amused about something. He took a flat brown paper parcel from his pocket. making a notable addition to American literature. I did truly. "Surely," said the minister, "surely." There might have been men who would have remembered that Mrs. Lawton was a tough woman, even for a mining town, and who would in the names of their own wives have refused to let her cross the threshold of their homes. But he saw that she was ill, and he did not so much as hesitate. "I feel awful sorry for you sir," said the Lieutenant, much moved. "And if I had it in my power you should go. But I have got my orders, and I must obey them. I musn't allow anybody not actually be longing to the army to pass on across the river on the train." "Throw a piece o' that fat pine on the fire. Shorty," said the Deacon, "and let's see what I've got." "Further admonitions," continued the Lieutenant, "had the same result, and I was about to call a guard to put him under arrest, when I happened to notice a pair of field-glasses that the prisoner had picked up, and was evidently intending to appropriate to his own use, and not account for them. This was confirmed by his approaching me in a menacing manner, insolently demanding their return, and threatening me in a loud voice if I did not give them up, which I properly refused to do, and ordered a Sergeant who had come up to seize and buck-and-gag him. The Sergeant, against whom I shall appear later, did not obey my orders, but seemed to abet his companion's gross insubordination. The scene finally culminated, in the presence of a number of enlisted men, in the prisoner's wrenching the field-glasses away from me by main force, and would have struck me had not the Sergeant prevented this. It was such an act as in any other army in the world would have subjected the offender to instant execution. It was only possible in—" "Don't soft-soap me," the old woman snapped. "I'm too old for it and I'm too tough for it. I want to look at some facts, and I want you to look at them, too." She paused, and nobody said a word. "I want to start with a simple statement. We're in trouble." RE: Fruyling's World "MACDONALD'S GATE" "Read me some of it." "Well, I want something better than that." HoME大香蕉第一时间
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After mentioning in November my discovery of the secret of the universe at the dentist, and my struggle to retrieve it, Tully Hansen, poet, dropped me a note to say that my experience is not unique!
This story has been told variously about nitrous, ether, and chloroform, but here’s a version from an 1870 lecture by Oliver Wendell Holmes:
And so:
So: a class of inhaled anaesthetics triggers an experience of revelation, struggle to recall, and a mundane truth – and this experience is individual yet shared.
I think what catches me by surprise, about this trip to the dentist, is how intensely personal and subjective it felt… yet that’s simply something that nitrous produces, reliably.
RELATED: a reliable effect of salvia is to witness the layers of reality; a reliable effect of DMT is to encounter beings called by Terence Mckenna self-transforming machine elves.
Reliability. Way back in 2007 I was going on about the book Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved which documents the effects of 179 different compounds – and asking why we didn’t already have reliable smart drugs.
I didn’t mean smart drugs like Omega-3s, which apparently boost cognitive performance in a low level and generalised way as a diet supplement, but instead highly targeted, functional, reliable psychoactives:
I’m not sure I’d take any, but I still wonder about this.
I wish I could remember where, but I remember reading that the breakthrough with Viagra was getting “erectile dysfunction” listed as a pathology. There’s a book of official pathologies. Once something is in that book, drugs can be developed (with research costs offset against tax); drugs can be marketed and proscribed and bought with insurance, and so on.
So could you pathologise “lack of lateral thinking,” or “dysfunction in authoring structured PowerPoint”, or “inability to consult with the machine elves” – and produce a little blue pharmaceutical to deal with the issue, a blister pack full of 60 minute perspectives, epiphanies, and corporate strategy skills?
I guess I’m looking back at my posts from this year, including this one thinking about using the GPT-3 AI as a creative collaborator, and imagining a different future, one based on molecular biochemistry not machine learning; rather than looking to computers to provide mental prostheses and automate jobs, we instead extend the gamut of human ability with cognitive interventions?
What would it mean to have utilitarian psychoactives? How would the world change?
The mundane consequences:
Right next to the “Out of Office” email setting for when you’re on vacation, a button that turns off your inbox and sets the auto reply just for a single morning, clearing the decks for your weekly creative consultation with the machine elves.
A vacuum cleaner with flashing light patterns specifically designed to capture your attention when you’re on a deep clean trip, absolutely and happily and regularly and chemically fixated on getting your chores done.
A transcranial magnetic stimulation helmet that takes over your legs for your 30 minute commute so you can avoid crowded trains, get your 10,000 steps in, and catch up on your TV shows.