I think psychiatry is in for an interesting surprise soon when it discovers that the information it lacks has already been uncovered through an extensive series of informal experiments being conducted in a collective, ad-hoc, slapdash fashion through a seemingly unrelated field - that is, the world of recreational psychedelics. There's a whole global community of pioneers who have been quietly working hard at understanding the insides of their own brains for at least two generations now, and they've made a lot of progress. To make things even more interesting, many of these people are connected with the world of technology and computing, which has been expanding rapidly into an understanding of consciousness through the work on neural networks, deep learning, and artificial intelligence. All of these worlds are about to collide, in the next 10-20 years, and something really interesting is about to happen.
Not to diminish the spirit of your post which I very much suport, I would however like to point to the fact that psychiatry is very much aware of psychadelics and is engaging more and more in formal research using it for all kinds of very promising applications, PTSD therapy with MDMA and Psilocybin for instance. I am sure is just as influenced by the recreational experiences of people in this field as in others.
Additionaly, though I give psychedelics much credit, if we are going to point to the value and promise of subjective first person research into the nature of the mind, its worth mentioning meditation and mindfulness, another subject area that is widely studied by psychologists, psychiatrists and neuroscientists and is also gaining wide spread adoption clinically, for instance in the treatmentment of depression and anxiety.
Additionally, though both psychadelics and meditation have only really been studied widely in the west recently (you mentioned two generations, might be a bit more) they are both built upon long traditions of study in cultures around the world. I would argue that budhism contains one of the most in depth, analytical and methodological studies of the mind from a direct and subjective first person experience amongst millions of practioners for thousands of years. I am truly inspired by the synergetic results of combining the scientific and emperical tools of science with the considerable knowledge and tools of these traditions.
It seems to me that the biggest problem in tapping into these worlds is that science just doesn't like self reported subjective studies, it really likes to measure things objectively, hence all the brain imaging etc. However, it seems as though with a system as complex as the brain, it might just be that the best tool to measure and understand the mind we have is our own mind. I hope that the scientific pardigm can shift to make use of it.
Can you point us in a direction on this? I have never read a lucid attempt to describe the "anatomy of the psyche" on "psychonaut" websites, just a lot of people who may have had some personal experience of enlightenment but don't describe it super well. The closest thing I can think of is Jung whose description of the psyche was heavily influenced by mystical experiences he had, sans drugs.
I can't comment on the parts about psychiatry and recreational drug use. However, machine learning and other AI technologies have nothing to do with the study and understanding of the human mind at this point, beyond a very vague metaphor.
While in theory AI could have been explored as a science, trying perhaps to simulate human or animal thought processes in hopes of understanding them and perhaps coming up with useful abstractions that could help us reason about them, the field has never really evolved in that direction.
Perhaps you're right - I'm no scientist and I'm not involved in research, I'm just an engineer working on building machine learning tools. Maybe I'm reaching too far. From where I sit, though, the concepts I hear people talking about when we discuss the design of machine learning systems, especially the sort of cutting edge research on concepts like attention and adversarial networks, sounds a whole hell of a lot like the ideas and techniques that come up when people try to sort out the conflicts and malfunctions that occur in the pattern-matching and story-telling mechanisms inside their own brains. Metaphors they may be, but they seem to work, and that tells me that we're on to something. I look forward to learning more about what's going on as this work proceeds.
Nonsense. I have Bipolar. Psychedelic microdosing consistently triggers a manic episode. Extreme trips are known to trigger psychosis in those with related mental conditions. There is very little empirical evidence that microdosing has any benefits at all. James Fadiman is a serial fabulist. The original creativity study he was involved with (and I use the term involved very loosely), and constantly keeps harping on about, was a terribly conducted farce. Just keep that in mind.
I'm sorry to hear about your struggle. These things can be difficult and not every tool works for everyone. Keeping one's mind in balance and on track can be a lot of work. I don't know who James Fadiman is and I can't speak to the science involved, but from what I've seen in the experiences of people around me who have had mental health struggles, a mild form of mania can be a really useful state of mind for getting lots of work done. Mania becomes a problem when people get so wrapped up in the storm of thoughts that they can no longer communicate effectively with the people around them, but as long as people stay grounded and keep some empathy open, being in a state of mind where you feel full of energy and connected to the big picture really helps in motivating yourself toward productive action. Nothing lasts forever, people need space and time to rest and recharge, but nudging yourself a bit in that direction isn't necessarily harmful if you have some work to do.
