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Desrtopa comments on The benefits of madness: A positive account of arationality - Less Wrong
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This was an interesting read but I'm not really sure what you're claiming to have achieved with your flirtations with "arationality." Personally all my encounters with so-called "altered states of consciousness" - especially drugs (and drug users) - have led me to believe the effects are rather mundane. For the most part they appear to blunt rather than aid creativity. Perhaps some artists have found inspiration in them but I think that says more about the artists pre-existing ability to translate experiences in an interesting way than the creative potential of a given altered state. Surely the great majority of people experience altered states and go on to do nothing with them.
The great majority of people do nothing in any event.
For some reason, diet coke basically makes me high. Sometimes it also just happens at random. As such, altered states are fairly mundane to me. I've found that, just like melatonin helps with insomnia, and valium helps with pain, I can use this to help manage depression.
So, I'd agree with "mundane" but I don't think that disqualifies them as useful. It feels rather dismissive to say that "says more about the artists pre-existing ability". Some people, yes, have different talents and skills, and some people struggle against various neurological limits as well. If something helps, even if it's just bringing someone up to "average" functionality, I'd consider that a positive.
Unfortunately even those substances that do have potential are abused rather than used.
People abuse painkillers and antibiotics, but we still find those useful. It doesn't really seem to follow to me, that people abusing drugs suggests that drugs are therefore not useful.
That seems to be the point I just made, if I parsed your negatives correctly. I assume someone objected.
Ahhh, apologies. I am used to parsing "These substances are sometimes abused" as being shorthand for "I disapprove of illegal drugs, because some people abuse them; therefore they should be shunned as being categorically evil."
My own personal stance is that drugs are a useful tool, as long as you're careful with the risk factors they involve. I feel quite a lot of illegal drugs have fairly high utility and low risks, at least compared to our social acceptance of risk in other areas.
Pardon me, illusion of transparency. This is an area I am interested in and have investigated enough that my default language and expression will be decidedly non-mainstream.
Absolutely. MDMA and psyclobin come to mind as good examples of things which could have positive uses in the right circumstances. And ketamine is damn near miraculous if used right. THC on the other hand could perhaps deserve a worse reputation than what it has. It is terrible stuff. All those IQ points lost and mood destabilisation. Yet even that can be useful in the right circumstances. Those circumstances being when F@#%ing up your brain is a good thing. In particular if I had a massively traumatic experience I would administer some pot to myself as soon as possible in order to reduce (bad) memory consolidation. (If I recall correctly some benefits can be observed even after the onset of PTSD.)
For my part I haven't bothered with illegal stuff (except for maybe being a little flexible regarding whether or not I happened to have a prescription at the time). There is just too much available that isn't illegal. Even for recreational purposes the big name street drugs aren't really the optimal way to get high. The same way alcohol was a good drug for its time. That is, about 4,000 years ago.
Would you be interested in writing up the results of your investigations? A structured article on tested useful drugs, if only with a terse summary of what each of them is good for, would be an interesting starting point for studying this topic further. Most such resources on the Internet seem to focus mainly on illegal drugs, which makes their use somewhat problematic.
May I ask what you mean by "useful"?
My own feeling - as a user of various illegal drugs - is that fun itself is enough use alone, but I don't know if that's quite what folk are meaning here.
Given the current state of mental health support, at least in the US, I consider them a useful tool for some people to self-medicate. Fun is also a nice perk :)
Yeah, that's definitely true. And also, of course, cannabis is a marvelous painkiller.