
First-Ever LSD Microdosing Study Will Pit the Human Brain Against AI - fraqed
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/first-ever-lsd-microdosing-study-will-pit-the-human-brain-against-ai
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adrianN
Gwern did some self-experimentation with LSD and didn't find any significant
effects:
[https://www.gwern.net/LSD%20microdosing](https://www.gwern.net/LSD%20microdosing)

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wslh
Since this is a sample with n=1, that doesn't mean there is not significant
effects in certain population of people.

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Bartweiss
Yeah, Gwern is pretty explicit about the point that he's interested in what
works for him, and makes his data available just in case its interesting.

I tend to assume that when he has positive results it's informative (as an
existence proof at least), but negative results may not be universal.

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danohu
Amanda Feilding, who this article is about, is a fascinating person. In the
70s she drilled a hole in her own skull ("trepanation"), then ran for
political office to promote the benefits of that operation. She's now Countess
of Wemyss and March, married to a similarly-trepanned Earl.

[http://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/28/turner.php](http://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/28/turner.php)

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Baeocystin
'Fascinating' is not the adjective I would use to describe someone enamored
with drilling holes through their skull.

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discombobulate
Why, does the procedure not work?

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adrianN
It works insofar as you have a hole in your skull afterwards. Whether or not
the evil spirits in your skull actually get out is disputed.

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eriknstr
> Feilding wasn’t interested in performing the operation as an extreme form of
> body art, but because she believed it would have a life-changing effect on
> her. She hoped that a hole in her head would increase what she terms
> "cranial compliance," that alleviating the pressure in her skull would allow
> the heart to pump more blood to her brain, thereby giving her a new feeling
> of buoyancy. "If you don’t have that expansibility," she says of the prison
> of inflexible bone that most of us have for skulls, "then the heartbeat
> pushes against the brain cells, which isn’t very good."

She wasn't doing it to get rid of evil spirits.

> Archaeologists have speculated that the operation was performed as a
> religious rite, an initiation into the priestly caste, or as a treatment for
> demonic possession—symptoms we might now diagnose as epilepsy, psychosis, or
> migraine. A hole in the head served as a mouthpiece to the gods, it was
> thought, or as a window that would allow bad spirits to escape.

People might have done it for that reason previously but she wasn't.

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Baeocystin
Her reasoning as quoted is no more based in reality than theirs. Frankly, I
would say it's worse, as the people who did this hundreds of years ago did not
have the benefit of modern medicine to model why it is a bad idea in the first
place.

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darkerside
What makes you so sure your model of reality is more predictive than hers?

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Baeocystin
What testable predictions has she made?

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ggggtez
> drilled a hole in her own head

Ok, you lost me. Anyone willing to do this is clearly outside of human
average, and their anecdata is useless

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metaphorm
Amanda Fielding is certainly an eccentric person. however, she has a decades
long commitment to responsible and scientifically grounded research with
psychedelics.

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vixen99
How frustrating given that the rest of us have no hope of trying anything like
this.

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jborden13
1P-LSD is a "research chemical" that is not scheduled and available for
purchase over the clearnet. You just have to promise not to allow humans to
consume it. Apparently its effects are indistinguishable from LSD-25
(traditional LSD).

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pmoriarty
Even if it's not scheduled that doesn't mean it's not illegal. In the US, it
could fall under the Federal Analogue Act,[1] making it illegal despite not
being specifically scheduled.

There is debate on r/1P-LSD regarding its legal status.[2]

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogue_act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogue_act)

[2] - [https://www.reddit.com/r/1P_LSD/](https://www.reddit.com/r/1P_LSD/)

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dovdovdov
I mean, having science as an excuse to do LSD is a win already.

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biofox
Having previously volunteered for an LSD study, it probably isn't as much fun
as it sounds. The study I was on was conducted on a cold hospital ward with
bright fluorescent lights, and required having vital signs measured throughout
-- not an ideal environment to trip in. One participant in my group stood up
and walked out mid-briefing. Thankfully I wasn't chosen, though everyone there
looked terrified.

The research and campaigning done by the Beckley Foundation [1] and MAPS [2]
is absolutely fantastic though, and I encourage everyone to check out their
work.

[1] [http://beckleyfoundation.org/](http://beckleyfoundation.org/) [2]
[http://www.maps.org/](http://www.maps.org/)

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blacksmith_tb
Hmm, that could just have been a poorly-designed study - most sleep studies
are not conducted in brightly lit rooms, I assume because researchers can
imagine that it wouldn't help anyone sleep; you'd hope that they could bring
similar reasoning to bear on hallucinogens.

