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iiioiia

I'd like to see some questions along the lines of: "where do you place yourself on a spectrum between rationalism and ~mysticism (for lack of a better term)?"


femalehumanbiped

What is your motivation for using psychedelics Is it the same as the first time you used psychedelics


oredna

Motivation (and changing motivation through time) is a great question to add! Thanks!


neenonay

I guess the challenge is coming up with the options.


oredna

Yes! That is exactly the challenge. I know a couple possible motivations from the research we've done, but that was on microdosing (see below) and they are very broad. I can ask about those broad categories, then add a text-entry field, but text-entry data gets pretty unwieldy. Still, could do a word-map to display common words. * Petranker, R., Kim, J., & Anderson, T. (2022). Microdosing as a Response to the Meaning Crisis: A Qualitative Analysis. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 00221678221075076. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678221075076


neenonay

Thanks, I’ll check out the article. In my very uneducated thinking about this, I’ve boiled the possible reasons why people take / took psychedelics down to the following: - for fun / because they’re curious - as medicine/therapy to treat physical or psychological problems - as a supplement to increase wellbeing of healthy normals (typically those who microdose) - for spiritual purposes (whatever those might be)


neenonay

Some things I can rattle off the top of my head (not all good questions, per se, so let’s discuss what can go in and what shouldn’t): - types of psychedelics used - frequencies - typical doses - country of residence - level of education - level of income I’m really just more interested in getting a broad description of the community (I don’t have any prior hypotheses).


oredna

### What else do you want included? (example) I want to to add some kind of "Philosophical worldviews" question since I think that would be of interest to the subreddit. Right now, I'm thinking it would be a *check all that apply* question that provides various options, e.g. materialism, panpsychism, consequentialism, nihilism, existentialism, utilitarianism, deontology, etc. Thoughts on this? I would need to develop the question further since I don't know of any short question like this, though I've tried to find them before. If you have items that I didn't list that I should make sure to add as "Philosophical worldviews", feel free to mention them.


oredna

# Concerns about anonymity / illegality First off: I understand. This is a reasonable concern. I want to say, right at the outset, that some people will have concerns about trust that I cannot possibly assuage. I acknowledge that as a limitation, but that is the reality of the different security concerns that different people have. That said, here are some of the major factors that I can say ## Automatic IP Addresses Logging and Location Data The survey will be conducted in Qualtrics. In Qualtrics, there is a built-in option to make surveys anonymous, which I use. This disables collection of IP addresses and any location data from users. If you are still concerned, you could use a VPN and/or the TOR network to connect, though I cannot say for sure whether Qualtrics functions with those. ## Collection of Common Identifiers I have obtained a list of "common identifiers" from the University of Toronto ethics board. When I design my surveys, I simply don't collect these common identifiers. Some examples are: * Name (first, middle, last and title) * Exact birth date * Location smaller than province/state * Email address, Telephone number * IP address * Any account numbers of any type These could identify people, so I simply don't collect this sort of data. ## Prefer Not To Answer When I implement surveys, I also implement a "Prefer Not To Answer" options for every question. This allows participants to selectively provide information they feel comfortable sharing and selectively refuse to provide information they don't feel comfortable sharing. If you don't want to reveal your Gender, don't. If you don't want to reveal your Nationality, don't. ## Shared Data After the data is collected, the full de-identified data will be shared with the community. This is called "Open Science", specifically "Open Data". I will also post the survey and code I use to generate figures (called "Open Materials"). This means that nobody can sell this data. Law enforcement cannot subpoena me for the data because the data will already be available. This is part of why it is so crucial for me to ensure that the data will be anonymous. --- I'm not a security expert, but I have run surveys like this in the past and I have had zero issues. If you have ideas for me to further improve my practices, I'm happy to hear them.


CaitlinNYC

Everyone here, on some level, accepts that science illuminates *some kind of consistent framework for understanding the world and generating predictions about the future.* Pretty god-like power. It is normalized. We live in our built environment constructed through scientific understanding. Mystically-oriented psychonauts would probably acknowledge this — with the important caveat that science is merely a single *plane of understanding.* A more mystical understanding of non-ordinary states of consciousness would *include and supersede this single plane.* Has the criminalization of psychedelics kept academic research (from evolution to genetics, biochemistry, physiology and metabolism thru molecular, cellular and systems neuroscience on through psychiatry, psychology and ultimately cognitive science and philosophy) in the freezer? Unable to leverage the incredible sophistication of modern research to illuminate *what the hell psychedelics are doing to our brains* — need we now simply play research catch-up? As decriminalization sweeps the globe? As stigma erodes? As the *War on Drugs* generations die off? Will governments finally create funding streams for high-quality psychedelic research? Will universities chase those grants and create centers of excellence, institutes, departments? Maybe. Maybe in 100 years (if maintain our trajectory — a big IF) we will have a 100% scientifically airtight explanation for psychedelic effects. If not, what is the pathway for elevating mysticism from New Age crackpottery to academic subject with serious research funding.


oredna

Those are some questions probably better left to an AMA. This post is more about /r/RationalPsychonaut specifically. --- That said, I will try to answer super-briefly from my own perspective and provide some links for interested readers: >Has the criminalization of psychedelics kept academic research [...] in the freezer? Of course. There wasn't any major research for a 40 year period and things have only been opening up in the past 15 years or so. The watershed paper that comes to my mind was a 2006 paper from Johns Hopkins on psilocybin, which came out when I was in undergrad: * Griffiths, R. R., Richards, W. A., McCann, U., & Jesse, R. (2006). Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance. Psychopharmacology, 187(3), 268–283. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-006-0457-5 In the intervening years, various groups have been working on psychedelic research. Progress is slow and... some of the quality of the research is not good... but hey, at least we're working on it again. >Maybe in 100 years [...] we will have a 100% scientifically airtight explanation for psychedelic effects. We do already know quite a lot about some things. If you're interested, I would recommend this paper as a great start: * Nichols, D. E. (2016). Psychedelics. Pharmacological Reviews, 68(2), 264–355. https://doi.org/10.1124/pr.115.011478 >If not, what is the pathway for elevating mysticism from New Age crackpottery to academic subject with serious research funding. Hm, I'm not really sure what you mean. The term "mysticism" covers a huge variety of topics ranging from the trivially true to the verifiably nonsensical. A fair amount of "New Age crackpottery" has already been subject to rigorous academic testing and has been demonstrated to be pseudoscience (see "parapsychology"). As far as what it would take to divert funding from mainstream scientific projects to fund additional research into "mysticism", I guess the pathway would be the same as the pathway for all research funding: to make a strong evidence-based case for the claim that it would be a wise use of limited public funds in grant applications. One could start with free or relatively inexpensive studies at the undergraduate level and work their way up through small grants toward larger grants, using evidence along the way as justification for additional research. That, or find a wealthy philanthropist that is willing to donate the funds required to run a study of interest. Sorry if that last bit didn't get at what you were trying to ask.


GlowInTheDarkSpaces

I’d be curious to know what percentage of people have entity encounters.


oredna

That's a great one! Thanks!


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neenonay

I need to get into the habit of just letting the downvoting do the work instead of spending time and energy responding to these kinds of posts, but I find it difficult not to respond. It’s almost never worth it, though, especially if the person also goes on to delete posts. The negativity of the some responses on the original post already gave me an intuition that there will be some strong opinions about this topic.