Information, Assumptions, & Psychedelics

This has been inspired by personal experience and last night's very informational show aired National Geographic regarding LSD. It is being tangentially inspired by the current combination of mixed amphetamine salts and the Carbon Based Lifeforms’ Album World of Sleepers.

This was a particularly interesting clip from the show last night
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/explorer/4094/Overview#tab-...

The word Psychedelic comes from the Greek “mind-manifesting,” but perhaps this is a faulty definition; these substances seems to aid the mind in manifesting a larger swath of Reality. The Greek for “Reality-manifesting” maybe be a more correct definition, because it defines what these substances actually do.

The statement that the human brain receives over 11 million bits of information per second, but the conscious mind can only interpret 200 really struck me as amazing. To overcome the fact that the brain receives so much information, yet can only interpret such a narrow band of it, the brain assimilates new information with pre-conceived notions and concepts (which are based on an incomplete data set to begin with, you can see the feedback loop being created). This gives quantitative credence to the thesis that our current waking reality (little "r" reality) is just a sliver of total Reality (big "R" reality), where Reality is defined by all available information, and reality is defined by information that can be readily interpreted by the conscious mind.

What if the means existed to decrease the impact of preconceived notions, decrease biased assumptions (all assumptions are intrinsically biased because of the small sliver of R which we can readily interpret), while simultaneously allowing more information to be interpreted? Under these conditions, we would be allowed to attack problems at an entirely novel angle, by using what I’ll call “pre-concept consciousness,” or a consciousness that places more emphasis on raw data rather than conditioned response. We could potentially build better and more complete assumptions by integrating a more robust data set.

Would you rather be using assumptions based on more data or less data? It doesn’t matter whether the data is “correct” or “incorrect”; these concepts are constructions and come about ex post facto, they apply to whether data meshes well with what we observe. On the other hand, if you can increase what is observable (as defined by data volume) while using a more broadly defined lens (creating assumptions by using a larger data set), you can ultimately create a more “correct” construction because it is more inclusive of the total amount of available information.

Based on brain scans and anecdotal evidence, it seems that psychedelics may do this very thing. The link between connecting data with preconceptions becomes fuzzy and severed, this why things take on a “novel” feel while under the influence. By decreasing the filters, more “raw” data can enter, and can be interpreted in an unencumbered manner.