Science vs. Psychedelics??

[psygnisfive]

Sometimes I hear hardcore psychedelics proponents say that science has got it all wrong, etc. What I'm wondering is what precisely do you/they think has been gotten wrong by science?

Surely it can't be the fundamentals of mechanics, thermodynamics, chemistry, etc. otherwise the descriptions should allow us to do things like build buildings, design car engines, and fly rockets to the moon. Theories like quantum mechanics, while incorporating an element of randomness (in most people's views), is never wrong in the statistical distribution of events that it predicts, nor does general relativity show itself to be flawed in its description of gravitation and the apparent warping of spacetime.

So what are we talking about when the issue of science comes up?

[Szifers]

Yes, I think that there seems to be some typical "psychedelic" issues with science.

According to my experience, "we" are mostly talking about ideologies and not science as a tool, when the issue comes up.

Scientism, scientific reductionism, the idea that usefulness equals truth, the masculine striving for intellectual closure, and so on.

Psychedelics are among others anti-ideology agents. And so the use of psychedelics promote a critical view of all unrooted ideologies that are only supported by emotional needs for solidity, intellectual security, self-assurance, etc.

[max_freakout]

The problem Terence Mckenna had with science was that it uses inductive principles all the time, without any regard whatsoever to the philosophical validity of inductive method, because of the success of science at creating technology, scientists have not needed to address the question

and it assumes that the 'mystery' is an unsolved problem, ie epistemologically, they have assumed that the universe is 'knowable'

and science seems to be trying to create a coherent worldmodel which utterly lacks the concept of teleology or purpose, Mckenna said that if scientists did eventually succeed in completely mapping the human brain and seeing how it all works, that would be the 'final alienation of mankind'

[max_freakout]

Psychedelics are among others anti-ideology agents. And so the use of psychedelics promote a critical view of all unrooted ideologies that are only supported by emotional needs for solidity, intellectual security, self-assurance, etc.

Leary said they are 'deconditioning agents'

generally speaking i think they make people care more about what the truth is

[psygnisfive]

and it assumes that the 'mystery' is an unsolved problem, ie epistemologically, they have assumed that the universe is 'knowable'

What is "the mystery"? If by mystery you mean that there are things we don't know, well that's a simple thing and not much of an issue with science, since even most scientists don't think we'll know _absolutely_ _everything_.

and science seems to be trying to create a coherent worldmodel which utterly lacks the concept of teleology or purpose, Mckenna said that if scientists did eventually succeed in completely mapping the human brain and seeing how it all works, that would be the 'final alienation of mankind'

In my view, teleology and causality are mirror images of one another, and anything you can describe by one can be described inversely by the other.

[hajimumtaz]

I have no problem with science as a tool. I object to the fact that a useful theory is often considered a True (with a capital T) theory. Oftentimes, when science forays into the realms of philosophy (especially cosmology), I find unnecessarily reified, counterintuitive and flat-out bizarre theories in its wake. Or, to put it another way, physics is not metaphysics.

I also object to the sort of knee jerk arrogance and condescending tone one can expect to encounter when one questions a "proven theory". After all, the use of science regularly proves older scientific theories incorrect.

But this is certainly not a problem with science per se; rather it is a problem with overzealous science-users.

Best, haji.

[psygnisfive]

I have no problem with science as a tool. I object to the fact that a useful theory is often considered a True (with a capital T) theory. Oftentimes, when science forays into the realms of philosophy (especially cosmology), I find unnecessarily reified, counterintuitive and flat-out bizarre theories in its wake. Or, to put it another way, physics is not metaphysics.

When have you encountered a scientist claiming a theory is True with a capital T?

And what sort of bizarre theories do you find in cosmology?

I also object to the sort of knee jerk arrogance and condescending tone one can expect to encounter when one questions a "proven theory". After all, the use of science regularly proves older scientific theories incorrect.

Again, I'd have to ask what scientist you've met that does this and in what context.

But this is certainly not a problem with science per se; rather it is a problem with overzealous science-users.

Maybe it's the circle of scientists I'm familiar with, but I've never encountered a scientist (or philosopher) who rejects something outright and insists that the current way of doing things is absolutely correct period end of story. Maybe it's because the people I'm familiar with tend to be theoreticians who're inherently working on edge stuff (Pinker and Ramachandran on Mind, Smolin et al. on Physics).

[hajimumtaz]

I made it a point to use the term "science-users" instead of "scientists" since I am not sure which -- if any -- of my encounters were with professional scientists. I doubt many of them were; instead, it's usually in the context of a pseudo-intellectual conversation about God, (meta)physics, cosmology, etc.

Part of the problem is this: I am certainly and admittedly under-educated and over-interested in physics, etc. But rather than calmly and patiently explain (or point me to literature that explains) to me why, eg, Lorentzian Relativity (intuitive, at least to me) is clearly inferior to Einsteinian Relativity (counterintuitive, at least to me), they carry on about how Einstein's theory has been proven to be True and that it is the height of ignorance to suppose otherwise, and so on.

[hajimumtaz]

By the way, this scientist's post illustrates what I was referring to:

http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/09/bad-physicists-and-populism.html

He did have some reasonable points, but the tone of his post and some of the content was just... caustic, sanctimonious and arrogant.

[psygnisfive]

In other words, Einstein was the exact mirror image of the people who like to use Einstein's name for populist purposes, e.g. Lee Smolin. Smolin dislikes established results of science, he doesn't understand them, he hates mathematics and the concept of mathematical beauty, and 90+ percent of his papers are pure junk. Still, he likes when people call him a "new Einstein". What an irony.

I find this especially humorous, given that Smolin has worked seriously on established science, contributed greatly to them, and has written critiques of some unification theories because of their mathematical ugliness and inelegance. Maybe this isn't the same Lee Smolin, ey? lol.

The author of this piece has good points, but he really, REALLY hates Lee Smolin. Not in the "his theories are bad" sort of way, but rather in the "I HATE HIM THE ASS HOLE HE'S MORE POPULAR THAN ME GRR" sort of way. Not surprisingly, the guy is a big fan of string theory, which Smolin (not alone in this regard) is skeptical of.

What's more, the author says things about modern theoretical physics that the fucking theoretical physicists don't even hold to be true! Quite hilarious. This guy is not a scientist, he's a know-it-all asshole who hasn't even bothered to look at the things he's talking about. If this is the kind of person you're basing your opinion of SCIENCE on, I can only say tsk tsk, you should know better than you judge a field by a bunch of fools who know nothing about it. If you want to know about science, ask a scientist, not his cracked out fanboys.

[hajimumtaz]

That author was the author of the article[1] that was used as pseudo-reference material for the article you linked to to show that the "surfer dude" might be a full of shit.

In any case, he seems to be -- or at least recently was -- a member of the establishment scientific community. Wikipedia claims that he is a "Czech theoretical physicist who works on string theory and conceptual problems of quantum gravity."[2].

I was more interested in his treatment of the excited French guy than in his treatment of Smolin, only because it seems that the French guy is an amateur (and I mean that in the literal sense) that is being derided for his (perhaps misguided, who knows?) position.

Finally, I tried to differentiate between science per se, and overzealous science-use as I have encountered it. But I only stumbled upon this very clear example by happening to follow a link today -- I am pretty sure we could find near limitless examples of this sort of crap.

Best!

[1] http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071117-upon-further-review-surfers-new-theory-of-everything-severely-deficient.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lubo%C5%A1_Motl

[max_freakout]

What is "the mystery"? If by mystery you mean that there are things we don't know, well that's a simple thing and not much of an issue with science, since even most scientists don't think we'll know _absolutely_ _everything_.


By 'the mystery' i just simply mean 'existence', or the basic, fundamental philosophical questions like why are we here? Why does anything exist?

There is a very crucial distinction between a mystery and an unsolved problem, they are NOT the same thing, science has erroneously assumed that the mystery is an unsolved problem, the word 'science' comes from the Greek word for 'knowledge'


In my view, teleology and causality are mirror images of one another, and anything you can describe by one can be described inversely by the other.


yes absolutely, they are mirror images of each other, but they are not the same thing

the question is, in which direction does causality work in time? Causality assumes that it works forwards, teleology assumes that it works backwards (roughly speaking), the scientific model of forward moving causality renders the whole question of 'purpose' meaningless, there is no purpose, because the big bang was the first thing that ever happened, it didnt happen for any reason, and everything that has ever happened since is simply an inevitable consequence of it

[psygnisfive]

I understand the teleological perspective's uniqueness in its treatment of why things happen, but consider these questions:

What is the ultimate purpose?
Why that purpose?
How do things in the world get moved towards that end?

We get the same problem with the teleological view as with the deist view: if you need purpose for the purpose, and purpose for that, ad infinitum. If we say that the purpose was random, then all we have is an inverse big bang, and the theories are ultimately equivalent.

[Szifers]

I understand the teleological perspective's uniqueness in its treatment of why things happen, but consider these questions:

What is the ultimate purpose?
Why that purpose?
How do things in the world get moved towards that end?

We get the same problem with the teleological view as with the deist view: if you need purpose for the purpose, and purpose for that, ad infinitum. If we say that the purpose was random, then all we have is an inverse big bang, and the theories are ultimately equivalent.

If teleology is just the mirror image of causality, then maybe you can find the ultimate purpose by simply remembering it.

Our conceptual memory of the past is due to unique human neural characteristics. Noone else has that. Maybe a similar memory of the future is also just a question of neural configuration.

What if the ultimate purpose manifests itself at the end of time in the form of absolute transcendence, the definer and creator of the Universe, thus becoming the ultimate cause as well?

How could anyone get any answers to questions like that other than going out there into the external dimensions and looking around for the bigger picture? We are really living in the really big universe, it's just that our perspective is extremely narrow. If there are any overarching patterns over and accross the dimension of time, it must be observable by directing our mental focus toward orthogonal directions.