Absolutely different. But, in ways we have barely touched upon, potentially complementary. War required both strategies PLUS some means of meaningful interaction.
Challenge: I have tried and failed, so far, but can you pose the exact same set of metaphors but absent the military/violence words?
> Dave,
>
> I dunno, Dave. I still think we're different. I lay siege to large
> cities; you send cavalry deep behind enemy lines.
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
> Clark University
>
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [mailto:
[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Prof David West
> Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2019 4:37 PM
> To:
[hidden email]
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction
>
> while typing my last response, the conversation took an interesting
> turn, prompting the following.
>
> I went to college intending to become a quantum chromodynamicist. Before
> college I had read every 'popular' science book on Physics and Cosmology
> (Asimov, etc,) and monographs used in graduate classes on physics.
> Physics 101 was so dull, I quit.
>
> What had attracted me to physics and cosmology were the "big" questions,
> the "how" questions, the "why" questions, the interpretation
> (philosophical) questions.
>
> Serendipitously, I was taking an Asian Philosophy class the same first
> semester of freshman year. The philosophical questions raised were, like
> the speculative questions of quantum interpretation and cosmology, so
> interesting I was hooked. I became a 'philosopher' instead of a
> 'physicist'.
>
> I wanted (still want) to know everything there is to know about the
> mind, including altered states of consciousness. My research included
> being hooked up to a computer and measuring brain waves, multiple forms
> of meditation, all of the seven forms of classical Yoga, and psychedelic
> drugs. LSD was still legal and my supply came through the auspices of
> the Psychology Department. Other experiments included LSD, psylicibin,
> and mescaline (not all at once) in a sensory-deprivation tank. Since
> then I have experimented with every psychoactive drug.
>
> Never to get high.
>
> The most serious side effect (other than my obvious insanity) is
> extreme isolation/loneliness; and/or, if I have the temerity to raise
> the subject among my intellectual friends, ostracism.
>
> Gillian posted recently about the psychedelic effects of incense. It was
> demonstrated long ago that not only does the incense but the ritual of
> church affects the same areas of the brain and induces the same effects
> as "augmented meditation" (microdoses of certain types of hallucinogen
> like ayahuasca. The context of the research was the Catholic Mass in
> Latin and the silent meditation of the Quakers.
>
> There is such a huge area of interesting, at least to me, research, and
> not just for therapeutic use, here that it annoys me when a combination
> of puritan morality and scientific elitism dismisses the entire subject.
>
> davew
>
> On Wed, Jan 2, 2019, at 12:50 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> > I claim the answer to your 2 questions is yes. As Marcus (with the
> > usage classes) and Steve (with behavioral "drugs") point out, the
> > reason people engage in such things is to make their lives *better*
> > (according to some definition of "better"). To think anything else is
> > to risk the madness of morons like Nancy Reagan or those who think
> > alcoholics suffer from a moral failing, rather than a physiochemical one.
> >
> > You want your insulin pump to make your life better than it would be
> > without it. Simple. Rational.
> >
> > As Dave pointed out, though, we have some very promising therapeutic
> > agents that we've ignored because we've been hoodwinked by the moral
> > proselytizing of anti-science nutbags who think like Scientologists --
> > Clear Body, Clear Mind and all that.
> >
> > On 1/2/19 11:33 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> > > So is THAT the spirit in which people take psilocybin? Is that the spirit in which people welcome the legalization of LSD? I fear I may have wronged them horribly. To be so far from a moderately happy life to want to derange one's entire experience for even only a few hours, seems like a terrible thing to me. I regard sanity as an achievement, not a state of affairs into which life naturally folds. I would no more take LSD than crumple up a piece of paper before I put it in the printer.
> >
> > --
> > ☣ uǝlƃ
> >
> > ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe
> > at St. John's College to unsubscribe
> >
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by Dr. Strangelove