erict@flatline.UUCP (eric townsend) (04/06/88)
Wow. This is going to be fun to reference... In article <2959@sfsup.UUCP>, glg@sfsup.UUCP (G.Gleason) writes: > ...I use the word "experimentation" correctly, in the > research sense. Leary among others takes the view that the researcher > must have first hand experience with his tools to understand what is > being produced (especially when subjective experience is involved). Dr. John Lilly rarely gets mentioned at this point. Dr. Lilly did some increadibly amazing work with _Programing_and_Metaprogramming in_the_Human_Biocomputer_. Before you (collective) blow the book off as mad rantings of just another wierdo, read 1/2 or 2/3 of the book. It's some amazingly insightful stuff. After reading it, I realised that a lot of ideas I had as a 9 year old about "Hey, my brain is just like a reallly huge TRS-80 Model I" were right on target. Only Lilly goes on to show methods to allow you to change these 'programs'. Too bad the only people that pay attention to him are goofy new agers. :-) > This carries with it the ethic that you should not use treatments that > you would not be willing to apply to yourself. This should be applied to a larger construct. People that declare wars should have to fight them. People that want to ban drugs should not be allowed to drink alcohol, smoke cigarrettes, consume caffiene. That cup or two of coffee you have to "get you going" in the morning? Not any more... People that write things like WordStar should be forced to use them: all the time. :-) > I don't think there would be as many inhumane treatments such as > electro-shock therapy, etc. if more scientists practiced this ethic. Probably so. However, I wouldn't want to make myself schizophrenic just to see if my latest anti-schizo drug works. It's still a good basic concept, though. In message something or another, Dr. Nethack writes: >Good choice, if I had been here at school the night he was here to promote >himself, I think I would have at least burned some of his books, just >to make him mad, then I would have asked him to pay my cousin's rehab bill >for the time he spent recovering from drug experimentation. >(yes this was due to the environment that T.L. helped create in the '60's) Boy, there's an intellegent response to somebody you disagree with. Burn their books. While we're at it, why don't we round them up and put them in special camps? Also, I think Leary would probably laugh at you. You spent good $$$ on his books (of which he gets a share) and then burned them up without reading them. [Reference to Mind Mirror, a psychological modeling program that uses some interesting theories of psychological mapping.] >Yeah, I always wanted to meet my future self, defined by a binary stucture >put together by a man who messed up a great deal of people by advocating >they use such fantasticly healthy things like LSD-25. You don't seem to mind meeting other people, represented by binary structures. You'd probably belive that atmospheric modeling is a valid idea. Or modeling of big, complex structures -- which is what the brain is. -- ... They'll take the place apart -- Any minute now -- I've seen it happen before on Mercury where we put out a Cool Issue -- And the law is moving in fast -- Nova Heat -- Not locals, boss -- This is *Nova Heat* -- Well boss?" -- from _The_Ticket_That_Exploded_, William S. Burroughs J. Eric Townsend ->uunet!nuchat!flatline!erict smail:511Parker#2,Hstn,Tx,77007