I am part of an online community centered on practicing rationality to better know the truth and achieve one’s goals. Psychedelics are increasingly a social activity in the rationalist community and a prescription for what ails ye, so I wrote this post
Jul 13, 2022·edited Jul 13, 2022Liked by Holly Elmore
I read the book "Right Concentration". It's a meditation book (which definitely seems like it's done the rounds in the broader rationalist-adjacent subculture) which covers the 8 jhanas, a progressive series of meditation experiences that are supposed to sharpen your mind for insight practice. (They sound fake but I'll vouch that at least the first two exist as described.)
I was struck by the following description of the sixth jhana, where you experience a sense that your consciousness expands infinitely outward:
"'There's this infinite consciousness and it's me; I must now have achieved union with atman, right?' Wrong, it's just an experience. You have put your brain/nervous system into an altered state, such that what you are experiencing is perceived by you as having an infinite consciousness -- that's all."
He's willing to take this very pragmatic and cynical perspective when critiquing Hindu views on meditation. But then the rest of the book seemingly accepts at face value that Buddhist insight/emptiness experiences are just 100% real.
I really enjoy your insights into these sorts of squishy non-rational things from a rationalist lens.
Mind-altering substances and meditation have such a profound emotional effect that they can jog us out of emotional patterns that get in the way of clear thinking. E.g., I've had real, meaningful moments of insight as a result of meditation, which enabled me to break maladaptive thought patterns. I was able to think, "oh my god, I've been so entrenched in thinking of X situation in terms of my anxiety and fear reactions that I've been preventing myself from seeing it in any other way. This is dumb and I should explore that other way of framing the situation."
But the emotional effect of meditation and substances can be super distracting; I 100% agree with you there. While there's not a highly defined line between emotion and thought, it seems to me like mind-altering practices or substances make that line even fuzzier.
This is such an important distinction. Thank you for putting it so clearly, it's a helpful way of thinking about it as someone who messed myself up a bit with my mindfulness practice.
It seems to me that we have let our discovery of these tools lead us into an assumption that they can do more than they actually can - which I suspect may be a tendency with discovering new tools in general, though I haven't looked into that yet.
Wow, I really enjoyed this article. This puts into words what I felt in my last acid trip. I was feeling like I could easily end up in a circlejerk of sorts, detached from reality, looking at beautiful insights that made sense in my head which I could not communicate.
It is very crucial any insights be tested against reality when sober and result in real functional improvements in life for it to be given an epistemic stamp of approval.
I very much agree! And I think psychedelics and meditation – which I think of as being _very_ similar – are possibly fun and 'internally insightful' (or capable of 'unlocking' _access_ to some insights).
I think mindfulness and psychedelics can allow you a much better understanding of your mental models and biases, which otherwise are unconscious processes. It seems to me that this is quintessential to understanding yourself and your connection to reality, for example by allowing you to correct for your own perceptual distortions. Do you find this to be a useful truth? And if so, without psychedelics and mindfulness – and setting aside their possible harmful side effects – how do you propose to achieve that understanding?
Hi, Love all your stuff Holly. I am a veteran of the atheist/theist debates that went on for many decades, and the atheists back then were probably the precursors to the more contemporary Rationalist movement. I think that debate kind of dying down may have made a space for you guys to carry on just thinking about being a rationalist without needing to debate the theists anymore. (not a historian on this but just guessing). Interestingly, I was a theist back then, and now I'm half theist/half atheist depending on how I feel that day. Actually I never really loved the debate, but I was kind of forced into it as a theist who liked hanging out with smart people who tended to be atheists.
One thing I find interesting about your piece is that you don't ever use the words subjective and objective, though you totally describe that dichotomy. Actually I love that you didn't use those words.
it's really exactly the same argument as asking if religious faith can bring you to the truth...and we would say it can give you subjective insights, and rationalist atheists would say just as you do that objective hypothesis based reason, repeatable, observable is the only way to discover actual truth. So yes all good and totally agree...except...
...and this is where we would always end up in those old debates...that there are areas of human experience that are not able to be approached rationally or scientifically...for example, love and art and beauty and emotions and spirituality...and so then we would usually say Ok cool, just approach those things with your subjective hat on and go crazy and have fun, and just always know it's your subjective truth, because we can't put that stuff in a test tube and test it and repeat it. And usually that suffices and everyone is happy.
But that leaves me a little unsatisfied. Because if you use that thinking, then for example, the whole of psychology is almost all unprovable and relegated to subjective groups believing what they want, but then that becomes unhelpful when designing public policy and government budgets to pay for healthcare where we want objective science to guide things. So that's where social sciences find ways to measure these things across populations, and even though we don't know what's actually happening in mental health therapy we can see it makes a positive difference to the population.
And so I think we have to have a broader understanding of truth beyond just rational and scientific...to ask what actually produces good results in groups of people and even though we can't actually know what's happening we know it's a good result. I do believe religion actually produces a lot of goodness in populations, even though bad things happen to. I like psychology. I am hopeful that our new openness and interest in psychedelics will produce wonderful societal results...so even though 1000 people have subjective Psilocybin trips, and we don't know what happened, and all their insights might not be able to come together in one unified insight, over time and with study and experience, I think it's possible to find some actual truth. Truth that is measured not in a test tube, but truth that is like when you know someone is being kind to you or not being kind to you. What do you think?
I pretty much totally agree with you view on psychedelics. But i will say that cannabis is sometimes bad for mental health (mood) in certain people and leads to depression in some cases. But i feel depression as a mood is the most profound for discovering truths. As pretty much most pessimistic philosophers were depressed to some degree, and imo had the most realistic veiwpoint on the world. They didnt smoke cannabis mind you. So cannabis can prime you for rational thinking but at a terrible cost to yourself.
But i still dont know whay rationaloty really is. Less wrong gang aside thinking wrong is hard to rpove unless you apply it in the real world and the result dont work.
I think psychedelics are more oversold than mindfulness / meditation, primarily because the former is very easy to do and people take the experiences they have while tripping very seriously because they are so extreme. My impression is that very few reach the point in meditation that you apparently did, where you had novel and addictive sensory experiences, which can indeed backfire.
So I guess I'd say I agree with your analysis of the harms, but for most meditators most of the time it's not something they need to worry much about.
I'm reminding myself of an old Scott Alexander book review, from which I took away that
(a) if you meditate too far, there's a cliff you don't come back from,
(b) things get better the closer you are to that cliff,
(c) almost nobody is anywhere near that cliff, but also
(d) you don't see the cliff coming, it just hits you suddenly.
I read the book "Right Concentration". It's a meditation book (which definitely seems like it's done the rounds in the broader rationalist-adjacent subculture) which covers the 8 jhanas, a progressive series of meditation experiences that are supposed to sharpen your mind for insight practice. (They sound fake but I'll vouch that at least the first two exist as described.)
I was struck by the following description of the sixth jhana, where you experience a sense that your consciousness expands infinitely outward:
"'There's this infinite consciousness and it's me; I must now have achieved union with atman, right?' Wrong, it's just an experience. You have put your brain/nervous system into an altered state, such that what you are experiencing is perceived by you as having an infinite consciousness -- that's all."
He's willing to take this very pragmatic and cynical perspective when critiquing Hindu views on meditation. But then the rest of the book seemingly accepts at face value that Buddhist insight/emptiness experiences are just 100% real.
I really enjoy your insights into these sorts of squishy non-rational things from a rationalist lens.
Mind-altering substances and meditation have such a profound emotional effect that they can jog us out of emotional patterns that get in the way of clear thinking. E.g., I've had real, meaningful moments of insight as a result of meditation, which enabled me to break maladaptive thought patterns. I was able to think, "oh my god, I've been so entrenched in thinking of X situation in terms of my anxiety and fear reactions that I've been preventing myself from seeing it in any other way. This is dumb and I should explore that other way of framing the situation."
But the emotional effect of meditation and substances can be super distracting; I 100% agree with you there. While there's not a highly defined line between emotion and thought, it seems to me like mind-altering practices or substances make that line even fuzzier.
This is such an important distinction. Thank you for putting it so clearly, it's a helpful way of thinking about it as someone who messed myself up a bit with my mindfulness practice.
It seems to me that we have let our discovery of these tools lead us into an assumption that they can do more than they actually can - which I suspect may be a tendency with discovering new tools in general, though I haven't looked into that yet.
Wow, I really enjoyed this article. This puts into words what I felt in my last acid trip. I was feeling like I could easily end up in a circlejerk of sorts, detached from reality, looking at beautiful insights that made sense in my head which I could not communicate.
It is very crucial any insights be tested against reality when sober and result in real functional improvements in life for it to be given an epistemic stamp of approval.
Firmly agree here. In fact, exercise may be a way of getting to the truth if you do it rightly. The guys at Manifold Markets understand this.
I very much agree! And I think psychedelics and meditation – which I think of as being _very_ similar – are possibly fun and 'internally insightful' (or capable of 'unlocking' _access_ to some insights).
I think mindfulness and psychedelics can allow you a much better understanding of your mental models and biases, which otherwise are unconscious processes. It seems to me that this is quintessential to understanding yourself and your connection to reality, for example by allowing you to correct for your own perceptual distortions. Do you find this to be a useful truth? And if so, without psychedelics and mindfulness – and setting aside their possible harmful side effects – how do you propose to achieve that understanding?
Hi, Love all your stuff Holly. I am a veteran of the atheist/theist debates that went on for many decades, and the atheists back then were probably the precursors to the more contemporary Rationalist movement. I think that debate kind of dying down may have made a space for you guys to carry on just thinking about being a rationalist without needing to debate the theists anymore. (not a historian on this but just guessing). Interestingly, I was a theist back then, and now I'm half theist/half atheist depending on how I feel that day. Actually I never really loved the debate, but I was kind of forced into it as a theist who liked hanging out with smart people who tended to be atheists.
One thing I find interesting about your piece is that you don't ever use the words subjective and objective, though you totally describe that dichotomy. Actually I love that you didn't use those words.
it's really exactly the same argument as asking if religious faith can bring you to the truth...and we would say it can give you subjective insights, and rationalist atheists would say just as you do that objective hypothesis based reason, repeatable, observable is the only way to discover actual truth. So yes all good and totally agree...except...
...and this is where we would always end up in those old debates...that there are areas of human experience that are not able to be approached rationally or scientifically...for example, love and art and beauty and emotions and spirituality...and so then we would usually say Ok cool, just approach those things with your subjective hat on and go crazy and have fun, and just always know it's your subjective truth, because we can't put that stuff in a test tube and test it and repeat it. And usually that suffices and everyone is happy.
But that leaves me a little unsatisfied. Because if you use that thinking, then for example, the whole of psychology is almost all unprovable and relegated to subjective groups believing what they want, but then that becomes unhelpful when designing public policy and government budgets to pay for healthcare where we want objective science to guide things. So that's where social sciences find ways to measure these things across populations, and even though we don't know what's actually happening in mental health therapy we can see it makes a positive difference to the population.
And so I think we have to have a broader understanding of truth beyond just rational and scientific...to ask what actually produces good results in groups of people and even though we can't actually know what's happening we know it's a good result. I do believe religion actually produces a lot of goodness in populations, even though bad things happen to. I like psychology. I am hopeful that our new openness and interest in psychedelics will produce wonderful societal results...so even though 1000 people have subjective Psilocybin trips, and we don't know what happened, and all their insights might not be able to come together in one unified insight, over time and with study and experience, I think it's possible to find some actual truth. Truth that is measured not in a test tube, but truth that is like when you know someone is being kind to you or not being kind to you. What do you think?
I pretty much totally agree with you view on psychedelics. But i will say that cannabis is sometimes bad for mental health (mood) in certain people and leads to depression in some cases. But i feel depression as a mood is the most profound for discovering truths. As pretty much most pessimistic philosophers were depressed to some degree, and imo had the most realistic veiwpoint on the world. They didnt smoke cannabis mind you. So cannabis can prime you for rational thinking but at a terrible cost to yourself.
But i still dont know whay rationaloty really is. Less wrong gang aside thinking wrong is hard to rpove unless you apply it in the real world and the result dont work.
I think psychedelics are more oversold than mindfulness / meditation, primarily because the former is very easy to do and people take the experiences they have while tripping very seriously because they are so extreme. My impression is that very few reach the point in meditation that you apparently did, where you had novel and addictive sensory experiences, which can indeed backfire.
So I guess I'd say I agree with your analysis of the harms, but for most meditators most of the time it's not something they need to worry much about.
I'm reminding myself of an old Scott Alexander book review, from which I took away that
(a) if you meditate too far, there's a cliff you don't come back from,
(b) things get better the closer you are to that cliff,
(c) almost nobody is anywhere near that cliff, but also
(d) you don't see the cliff coming, it just hits you suddenly.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/18/book-review-mastering-the-core-teachings-of-the-buddha/
So, caveat meditator I guess?
EDIT: after rereading my comment it felt mansplain-y so I’ve removed it