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u/veryreasonable · 35 pointsr/RationalPsychonaut

As one of the people who commented on that thread, I feel the need to respond to this as rationally as humanly possible.

For starters, let's clear up the difference between fractal mathematics, fractal woo, and what Douglas Hofstadter might call fractal analogy.

  1. From the wiki - Fractal Mathematics would be the study of "natural phenomena or a mathematical sets that exhibits repeating patterns that display at every scale" as well as the study of self similarity and iterated functions. While it has grown complex and vast, the studies of fractals and their geometry started out as literally what you say it isn't: people asking questions about self-similarity in nature and asking how to describe it mathematically.

  2. Fractal Woo would be, as OP said:

    >“Everything big is just like everything small!” they exclaim, “the universe is self-similar!”

    ...and then using such logic to thereby justify whatever silly energy-Reiki-mystical-connectedness-telepathy-de-jour they want.

  3. Fractal Analogy (my term, but run with it) would be seeing patterns in the world which are, indeed, self similar, as tons of stuff in nature is. This includes plant and animal system, as well as consciousness and human experience. The reason I mention Douglas Hofstadter is that he is a PhD physicist who literally used fractal mathematics to predict some pretty nifty real world stuff 35 years before it was confirmed - but Mr. Hofstadter is also an incredibly enjoyable author who muses at length about cognitive science and AI research, often using the analogy of self-similar shapes to help describe what we understand of consciousness in a way that most layman readers can understand. Even if you are not a very capable mathematician, I highly recommend his Godel Escher Bach, which uses fractals and loads of other creative stuff to help conceptualize how the "mind" arises from the brain.

    As well, Chaos Theory - the study of how immensely complex patterns emerge from seemingly simple preconditions - is full of fractal mathematics. Given that the universe is absolutely packed with iterated functions and self-similarity almost everywhere we look, I think you can absolutely take the point of view that the universe is fractal in nature, especially when you are in a self-induced state where your brain makes a lot of connections you might normally overlook or not even bother to think about.

    My point is that discussing things in the universe as self-similar is useful to mathematicians and non-mathematicians alike; using the word "fractal" to describe natural systems that exhibit those familiar patterns might not be perfectly correct, but it's not itself offensive or an affront to reasonable discourse. I manage a business; so what's your problem if I visualize the structure of my company as a fern leaf with departments and employees as branches off the main stem? What would be the issues of discussing how incredible human cellular morphology really is with my biologist roommate, and citing some cool research someone decided to do about fractal geometry in the way our bodies build themselves?

    EDIT: OP's edit makes it more clear his statements were more about irrational folk seeing the universe as a single continuous fractal (that would be the "fractal woo"), and that he is not denying the existence of fractal-like patterns in nature, or that using fractal models can be useful in understanding phenomena. Sorry for any confusion and thanks for the discussion!

    EDIT2: /u/ombortron commented pretty well in regards to the utility of the concept of fractals in scientific discourse and otherwise:

    >The universe itself doesn't have to be a fractal for fractals to be important.

    >Fractals are quite common in our reality, and as a result, that means they are an important facet of reality, and as such they are a legitimate and common topic of discussion amongst people, and this is particularly true of people who do psychedelics.

    >Does this mean the universe is 100% fractal in nature? No.

u/PsychedelicFrontier · 4 pointsr/RationalPsychonaut

Not really a guide but I love The Joyous Cosmology by Watts. Has a bit more woo than a materialist might like, but Watts' brand of woo is palatable and non-dogmatic -- more of a try "try THIS on for size" than a "so THIS is this the way the universe is."

You may also find The Secret Chief Revealed insightful in terms of the therapeutic benefits to tripping, and how to approach psychedelics seriously.

Prometheus Rising, while more of an owner's manual to the human mind than a tripping guide, can help with recognizing your own biases and trying new perspectives -- highly relevant to the psychedelic experience and beloved by many psychonauts.

u/OrbitRock · 2 pointsr/RationalPsychonaut

I've read "What the Robin Knows" by this author, it is some really amazing work.

Since reading that book I've spent a long time studying nature and observing, it was one of a few things that came together and really changed my life quite profoundly, especially in regards to listening to nature.

I got that book together with this one. And while this one here is kind of hyped and 'mythologized' it introduces some really helpful concepts for how to move and observe in a natural environment to where you see so much more.

To be honest I never fully went as far into the 'listening to bird language' thing as I originally intended to when I first read this book. I practiced it a lot for about 2 months at first, and the one thing I identified was that the house sparrows in my yard had a specific vocalization which meant "Look out, Incoming Hawk!". It's a quick "Cheep CHEEP!" with a bit of urgency, then all the birds will dive into cover, and if you look up, sure enough, there will be a hawk overhead.

I realized that the yards in my backyard area was like an interconnected multispecies cooperative network, all devoted to warning each other of incoming hawks, which was a near daily occurrence. On a few occasions I'd see a hawk flying overhead from the front window, and then run out into the backyard to find it in a tree with one of the birds clutched in its claw.

All fascinating stuff to observe. I could go on for hours about this sort of thing.

u/tryptronica · 9 pointsr/RationalPsychonaut

My suggestion would be to get a good understanding of how belief systems work, how humans are hardwired to react to the world and the mechanics of creating and trying out new reality tunnels. The best place to start is with Robert Anton Wilson's Prometheus Rising. He presents an amazing way to approach this whole topic including suggested exercises to make it understood deep in your neurons.

Once all this is clear, you will be able to really start communicating with nearly everyone, not just the hippy-aliens. :)

u/tomrhod · 5 pointsr/RationalPsychonaut

The study of the origin of life is an ongoing process in the scientific community. A reddit comment is hardly the place to summarize an entire area of ongoing scientific study and research.

If you'd like to know more, wikipedia has a page on it which delves into the many competing and conjoining theories on the origin of life as we best understand it now.

There's also the Miller-Urey experiment concerning the so-called primordial soup specifically. That established the kind of conditions in which simpler organic compounds form more complex ones, and how that relates to early earth conditions. It's all really interesting to read about.

Also that's different than evolution. And if we're having an argument as to whether evolution is a real thing, I don't even know where to begin with that. The evidence for it, available from a wide variety of sources, is so voluminous that anyone wanting to seriously learn about the scientific study of the evolution of life can find an abundance of literature discussing evolution of creatures both small and large. Richard Dawkins discusses much of what that is in his book The Greatest Show on Earth.

If you'd like a source from a less controversial figure, Prof Jeffrey Coyne (an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Chicago) has a good book: Why Evolution is True.

u/edubkendo · 6 pointsr/RationalPsychonaut

>I strongly believe consciousness is like a WiFi signal, our personalities are like software and our bodies are the computer. I reject with all my being that consciousness is only a program the computer runs.

I'd suggest (and there's good science supporting this) that the body IS the mind, the computer IS the software. I can highly recommend the book Descartes' Error by Antonio Damasio.

>For anyone to say they know for certain is a lier.

Science doesn't deal in certainties. It forms theories (models of reality) that can make accurate predictions given the evidence we have at the time. When new evidence comes to light, old theories can always be disproven. While it cannot provide certainties, it does provide far more accurate predictions about the universe we live in than any system of knowledge we had before science.

u/fryish · 1 pointr/RationalPsychonaut

Chalmers' philosophical writing on this is actually pretty interesting and accessible, IMO. You might be interested to check out a couple of his classic papers, Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness and Consciousness and its Place in Nature.

The panpsychist view is described in the latter paper under the heading "Type-F Monism." For those interested in this idea, there is a brilliant book length treatment of it by Gregg Rosenberg called A Place for Consciousness.

u/doctorlao · 1 pointr/RationalPsychonaut

> "the sound seemed to have additional reverb, especially in the frequencies below 200Hz, with an impulse response characteristic of a long tunnel, such as the reverb filter you can find in ..."

That strikes a nice example as ideally script-modeled hypothetically i.e. not from an actual IRL case (- ?), but approximating comments of some people, sometimes heard.

Going with scenario of someone articulating their trip report as you've well exemplified, with specific technical-sounding details - question:

Suppose someone - some tough-minded 'critic' type (skeptic, doubting Thomas, whatever) who (let's say) has even had psychedelic experience, nobody lacking their own subjective touchstone (for 'independent' reference) - were to suggest that such testimony especially as detailed, whatever dramatic impressions aside, considerations otherwise notwithstanding - actually wouldn't tell us much of anything theoretically valid (nor could it) about the experience itself per se (whatever it was they were experiencing) - but would instead reflect informatively (as a factor intrinsic to this type narrative evidence) - mainly on the person psychologically - directly telling something specifically about the individual so attesting - any ramifications for the experience they're talking about unclear, inconclusive.

Big Framework being a deep dark question (almost beyond reach of any beam to illuminate adequately) - do we see whatever hallucinations as they are mainly, or in some far more essential sense (realized or not) - as we are, in an inescapably subjective fashion - case by case?

Hell, not just hallucinations - even 'reality' itself? I.e. "It all depends on how we look at things, not how [or what?] things are themselves" - Jung (if memory serves).

Or less Jungianly speaking - more thru a Wm Jamesian lens (and this is close to how I might say it - if I were the 'doubting Thomas' type):

"Whatever it was he experienced, this is clearly a subject of particular intellectual disposition, maybe above avg IQ (wouldn't be surprising) - who displays significant interest not only of these personal experiential 'dimensions' but also certain subject fields - topics like acoustics, physics of sound what with 'pitch' and 'tone' (frequencies, amplitude and such, oscilloscope wave forms, all that - whaddya bet?) whether purely amateur interest (a hobbyist?) or professionally as well - and however educated about such stuff (not being expert in all that myself who can tell?)."

How would you counter that (if you would) especially considering - phenomenology of consciousness is nothing new nor exclusive to psychedelic experience - and that indeed dreams and the phenomenon of dreaming provide an extensive prior methodological, theoretical foundation - with well-known pitfalls and issues that carry over for attempts at analysis or interpretation of any specific psychedelic experience - or the phenomenon of such effects and experiences as induced by LSD-like drugs in general?

Just to cite some lit (I been to 'college' - help) it's been widely noted that study of dreams and the phenomenon of dreaming runs into a snag almost foreshadowing the 'witnessing' neotradition of psychedelic subculture's "Trip Report" methodology - in which testimonials like the hypothetical 'richly-detailed' example you've modeled figure (examples of subcultural discourse and discursive processes):

Hobson JA, EF Pace-Schott & R Stickgold ("Dreaming and the brain: Toward a cognitive neuroscience of conscious states") note 5 major methodological problems in attempted study of dreaming. The first one they cite:

2.3.1. The reduction of psychological states to narrative reports ... the most profound problem in studying conscious states [is] reliance on verbal reports - reduction of conscious experience to prose ... To describe mental states closer to dreaming than to waking mentation [e.g. religious conversion, near-death experience, functional psychosis, delirium, drug-induced conditions and other altered states of consciousness] verbal retrospective reports are often considered inadequate. https://www.amazon.com/Sleep-Dreaming-Scientific-Advances-Reconsiderations/dp/0521008697

As usual no obligation and not to prevail upon anyone. Merely idle curiosity on my part - what your rebuttal might be to such basic perspective from phenomenology of consciousness - despite what such did to some cat. Curiosity that is - not phenomenology.

u/grimeMuted · 1 pointr/RationalPsychonaut

A direct agonist can bypass various feedback loops and interactions that are present with endogenous neurotransmitters. For example, serotonin stimulates 5-HT1A autoreceptors which inhibit further release of serotonin, but LSD isn't dependent on that loop. And there's also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_selectivity.

A lot of visual clues are in intro cogsci, like this book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262514273. But the Psychedelic Information Theory website and book linked later in the thread probably go through most of the relevant bits.

Also linguistics and the self in schizophrenia are relevant to dissociatives, which bear some important similarities to psychosis. And the glutamate hypothesis of schizophrenia.

This thing I made [MASSIVE SEIZURE WARNING] simulates certain aspects of simple CEVs quite well for me when I stare at it for awhile or move my head back/forward: https://gfycat.com/SleepyWigglyAfricanpiedkingfisher

Pressure-induced phosphenes, by pressing your fingers into your eyes, also bear similarities. (If you want to see something really wild, try pressing your eyes as you take a hit of nitrous while tripping on a psychedelic.)

u/theotherduke · 4 pointsr/RationalPsychonaut

I highly recommend you read The Chemical Muse. It's very much about this subject, and the prevalence of drugs in ancient Greece and Rome. The author asserts that much of the acceptance of drug use in that time has been whitewashed. It's a fascinating and well-researched book.

u/McHanzie · 3 pointsr/RationalPsychonaut

As /u/Das_Erlebnis said, there's tons of literature in the philosophy of mind. Check out some books, e.g. Chalmer's [The Conscious Mind] (https://www.amazon.com/Conscious-Mind-Search-Fundamental-Philosophy/dp/0195117891/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8) and Dennett's [Consciousness Explained] (https://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Explained-Daniel-C-Dennett/dp/0316180661/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=MK07ERGEZ7B8NBW6JBS1).

Edit: I'll add Nagel's essay [What is it like to be a bat?] (http://organizations.utep.edu/portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf) to the list.

u/ItsAConspiracy · 5 pointsr/RationalPsychonaut

See the book The Mind Illuminated, by long-time meditator and neuroscientist John Yates. He explains how meditation exercises your brain so you're like this most of the time, and specifically how to meditate to accomplish that.

u/plaidHumanity · 2 pointsr/RationalPsychonaut

>^(~)^(Chaos)^(.)

Entropy: Jeremy Rifkin

The Tao of Physics: Fritjof Capra

These two help with a bit of a framework to ford the physicl/metaphysical gulf.

u/fatty2cent · 1 pointr/RationalPsychonaut

I picked up a used copy of Rational Mysticism at Half priced books but haven't started to read it yet. It might be down your ally. Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks and the Psychedelic Explorers Guide by James Fadiman may also be what you are looking for

u/hcd11 · 1 pointr/RationalPsychonaut

Heads: A Biography oh Psychedelic America https://www.amazon.com/Heads-Biography-Psychedelic-Jesse-Jarnow/dp/0306921987/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?keywords=Heads&qid=1571264595&sr=8-4
does much more than repeat the old stories we all know about Hoffman, Kesey, Bear and the rest. Now I know where my blotter was coming from in the late 70’s and early 80’s.

u/Lilyo · 3 pointsr/RationalPsychonaut

Just wanted to clear something up here, but Hameroff's theory on microtubules is baseless of actual facts and the connection he is making between quantum mechanics (or whatever he interprets it as) and the AC measurements (the vibrations he's talking about) is purely pseudo-science and not grounded on any actual experiments or data, and it also ignores previous criticisms regarding quantum decoherence occurring much too fast to effect nerve impulses. The Orch OR model of "quantum mind" is disregarded by any serious neuroscientists and physicist today, and there's many papers outlining it's many flaws.

>And in the case of those that believe that the brain makes consciousness, we don't have any empirical evidence to substantiate their belief. So it's still just a belief at present, but a very dogmatic one.. which is tantamount to religious conviction.

Where are you coming from with this? The entire field of biology and neurology is based around the fact that consciousness emerges in the brain. If you take a rock you won't find its consciousness because there is no biological space to store the data of any sensory interaction, nor any nervous system to have such sensory input. A rock is just a bunch of minerals/ mineraloid particles, and there's nothing more to "being a rock" than its immediate physical chemical bonds. On the other hand, consciousness can be observed in a myriad of organisms with a biological brain to store the data in and be able to interact with. Just to clear this up, the entirety of neurological evidence suggest that consciousness arises in the brain, as defined by neural correlates throughout hundreds of studies and experiments (Dehaene has a great book on this).

> It's quite clear that whatever consciousness is, it's not purely physical. Consider, do your thoughts and emotions possess physical attributes (mass, velocity, weight, shape, color, etc)? No.

This is simply wrong and a ridiculous claim. Your thoughts and emotions DO have physical attributes as they are physically constituted of neurons which are physical electrically excitable cells interacting across further physical synapses and other nervous system structures. The moment your brain activity is stopped, or certain key parts and functions impaired, your consciousness vanishes, and there is no evidence to support otherwise.

Furthermore, every single behavioral and cognitive attribute you posses is based on the interaction of the instinctual reptilian and mammalian complex and the more complex and abstract functions of the neocortex. In order to talk about consciousness you need to talk about its emergence along phylogenesis in evolution, and more importantly how brain development from species to species constitutes the development of brain functions. Acting overly perplexed and dumbfounded of scientific knowledge regarding consciousness is no different than invoking ideas of intelligent design based around assumptions such as the seeming complexity of eyeballs.

>Thus, when you look at the thoughts and emotions themselves..directly.. experientially, you find that they are distinct from physical objects which possess physical attributes. That's why contemplative neuroscience is a very interesting research field.. because they're looking at how the brain can be modulated by modulating consciousness directly.. subjectively.. and the effects that that has on the brain and biology (e.g., neuroplasticity, palcebo, epigenetics).

You're confused about what you're experiencing during a conscious state. Every single thought, emotion, perception, analysis, instinct, and state of consciousness you experience is manifested as such through the physical networking and cascading information in many different areas of the brain, each in charge of very different tasks that overall attribute a perceptually unified consciousness, which of course is not true at all. Hemispheric lateralization and split brain patient studies clearly demonstrate the division of cognitive perception along networks of individualized mechanisms that have direct psychological correlates. It is entirely possible, and well documented, that certain key functions of consciousness (awareness, memory, perception, self distinction, spatial recognition, internal evaluation, etc.) can be impaired or completely cut off, resulting in a vividly (or not so vivid depending on what function or specific physical network is impaired) different experience, yet still within a conscious perspective. Cut off the corpus callosum that connects the two hemispheres and you end up with two completely separate conscious states depending on which size you find yourself on. A stroke on the left hemisphere will impair language concepts and time perceptions and your perception shifts to the intrinsically broad spectrum of understanding of the right hemisphere which focuses on the present input of information.

>And let's not forget the quantum consciousness model, too, which is just as valid, if not more, than the neuronal theory, since the neuronal theory has no testable predictions, has no theoretical framework to explain how you get "awareness" or "subjectivity" out of matter, and not only that, but it lacks the afforementioned empirical data and cannot even explain "spooky" phenomena that have been consitently reported throughout human history.

Again, there is no real data or grounded study for any of the proposed quantum mind theories. You're literally disregarding the entirety of the very empirical evidence you yourself seem to think is missing, when in actuality neurological theories are entirely grounded, peer-reviewed, well established, highly studied, and rigorously experimented and tested, and there are many emerging studies that discuss consciousness as we should, that being in depth and without linguistic misinterpretations. The vagueness of the term is highly problematic when talking about these topics. A lot of recent studies suggest a global overview of brain activity to build the foundation of consciousness, meaning different aspects of cognition are really just different mechanisms of operation that when complementing each other's outputs allow for the structural emergence of a seemingly unified state of consciousness.

I'm sorry but you don't seem to have much basis and knowledge on this subject unfortunately, please don't act as if you understand these concepts and openly spread misinformation and further strengthen misconceptions if you haven't actually studied these topics extensively, which you obviously haven't as demonstrated by your lack of knowledge of neuroscience, it's bad manner to do so in this subreddit.