Your Model of Life Is Wrong

Mod note: for the tl;dr version, skip down to "Circa 1960"

First, some background. I’m going to explain how we got to where we are today in order to frame our place in history and our model of life, so bear with me...

A Long Time Ago B.C.(E.)

A long time ago, human civilization began somewhere in the region of North Africa and the Middle East. Doesn’t matter what you believe about the origins of the world – it was a long time ago, and that’s the agreed upon location. Humans were hunters and gatherers, mostly, and they started spreading across the earth as the ideal ratio of hunting/gathering human to square mile was exceeded within each subsequent square mile. People expanded to the edges of Africa, Europe, and mainland Asia, eventually crossing the Bering strait and populating the Americas as well as traversing the islands of the south Pacific down to Australia. Once the population in a given area couldn’t expand anymore, people were forced to domesticate plants and animals. They experimented with all kinds of wild flora and fauna, domesticating some and ignoring or killing off the rest.

Because the axis of the Eurasia supercontinent ran primarily east to west and fell behind the other continents on geographical barrier count, the plants and animals that were domesticated in one region were quickly spread to other regions, uninhibited for the most part by significant climate changes, deserts, rainforests, or mountains. Other technologies followed a similar pattern. In contrast, the spread of domesticated life and technology were inhibited by the north/south axis of the Americas (too large of a climate change for a plant or animal domesticated in one region to be effective 1,000 miles north or south) and the geographical barriers of the Rockies, Andies, Sahara, Pacific Ocean, and Australian deserts. Domestication and technology provided for division of labor, allowing the rise from tribes to states to nations. Thus, Europe and Asia surpassed the other regions of the world in what we will define loosely as “progress”. The model of life for everyone, however, was still simple: just survive.

Circa 1400-1600 A.D. (C.E.)

After the giant hiccup of the Middle Ages, Europe was a bit behind Asia. However, circumstances were right (i.e. willingness and ability of European monarchs to finance expeditions) for globalization to begin as European explorers began to make contact with the other civilizations of the world. Unfortunately for the other civilizations, Europeans had spent the past few thousand years making their livings from animals that were best kept in large herds (sheep, cattle, etc.), and as such were a far better breeding ground for pathogens than the animals other societies depended on. Furthermore, Europeans lived much more closely with their livestock than other civilizations, leading to the rapid mutation and proliferation of disease from animal to human. As a result, when the cultures met and unwittingly exchanged diseases, a few Europeans died, while other peoples perished by the tens of millions. Americans were wiped out or assimilated, and Europe regained its edge over the Far East. Sub-Saharan Africans and Australians were still somewhat isolated, and the stage was set for the world to become what it is today.

Circa 1800 A.D. (C.E.)

Then the Industrial Revolution came. Until now, technological progression was incremental, but humanity (or at least the luckiest segment of it) had hit the key point in the exponential growth line of technology. With the Industrial Revolution came the most significant milestone since the domestication of plants and animals – the creation of the middle class. Until now, tens or hundreds of millions of Einsteins and Edisons had lived and died farming the rice patties or watching the sheep. Now, for the first time in human history, a large chunk of humanity was given the opportunity to exercise its creativity and ingenuity.

The 19th - 20th Centuries

As the middle class exploded, particularly in the U.S., the resulting technological innovation coupled with individual freedom and the rule of law made the U.S. became the world’s sole superpower. (I acknowledge I am skipping over a host of important geopolitical considerations, but this is the driving force.) Various Western and Far East nations followed a similar path, though helped to a lesser degree by their respective natural resources, geographical locations, and government systems. As a species, we did incredible things – talked to one another though thousands of miles apart, transported ourselves without the use of muscle motion, even flew like birds. The model of life for the middle class then became as follows:

1) Get as much education as you possibly can. Education is the key to opportunity. Try to make it through high school, and do whatever you can to get into college. Get as much as you can for yourself, marry someone who has it, and try to give your kids more than you got, sacrificing whatever you have to in order to get them through college.

2) Get a job with a good company. Work hard, be loyal, and make enough money to buy a house, a car, the comforts of life, and take care of your children. With a combination of intelligence, ambition, and hard work, you can climb the corporate ladder all your life and end up at the top. Retire with a pension and a Social Security check, and live out your days with the peace of a life well lived and the knowledge that you have contributed to society and given your children the opportunity to have an even better life than you had.

Circa 1960

Once the pace of technological advancement hit the creation of the computer and the internet, the already exponential pattern was well on its way, and got a rocket boost. We now possessed data processing power far superior to that of our own minds, and used that data to compile and use information in a manner so rapid that we did things humanity had only ever dreamed of. The human race made more progress from 1960 to today than it had made throughout the rest of history.

We are only a day’s travel from anywhere in the world. We even travel off our own planet. We possess devices that can fit in our pocket and hold the entirety of human knowledge. (Yes, we use it mostly to look at cats and argue about grammar with complete strangers, but man, are we smart.) Unfortunately, the pace of technological advancement has become so rapid as to wildly outpace our ability to adapt our societal structures and institutions to that advancement. (By this I mean economic and governmental systems and processes – not trying to be Marx Jr. here). As a result, we find ourselves at the crux of a few vexing problems:

1) The rate of increase of the cost of education has grown more than twice as quickly as the rate of inflation, and has done so for a very long time. Now most paths of higher education have a negative net present value when compared to the alternative. Curse you, concept of compounding! (Example in defense of my statement: consider the path of a plumber/carpenter/oil & gas technician, etc., against the path of the median traditional four year post-secondary education. Both paths have essentially the same income over a 40-year career, but the post-secondary education has a much higher cost, especially considering the compounded interest on those student loans.)

If costs continue increasing at the current rate, by the time I have kids it will cost over a million dollars to send them to a top college. How many people will have that kind of money? Consider further the ratio of productive vs. unproductive years of our lives. The ideal successful upper middle class professional spends 25 years listening to people talk about how to be successful (5 to learn to walk and talk, 13 in K-12, and about 7 in college – FYI the average time spent to complete just an undergrad degree in the U.S. is 6.5 years.) After that is about 40 years of work, with 15 years of retirement. Simple math – we spend as much time being economically unproductive as we do being productive. How is this supposed to work as a model for society?

2) Oops – when we set up our society’s retirement plans we forgot to ask the actuaries how to account for fluctuations in generational patterns (i.e. number of kids vs. parents) and market returns. Instead of legislating that 6.2% or so of all salaries be put aside to grow tax-free in accounts that were limited to reasonable, low risk-investments, we legislated that our citizens give all that money to the government so the government could borrow to finance its other activities. Now we have hit a) the societal shift where parents have less than 3 kids, b) the peak/trough in the cycle where a baby boom has now eventually resulted in a huge number of retirees, and c) a very big problem with job opportunities for millenials – see 4) below. In a generation, traditional retirement will very likely cease to exist. By the time I am 70, I will need at least a couple million to live comfortably. How many people will be able to save that much?

3) Natural resources are becomingly exponentially more scarce, and the world population continues to rise. Oil used to be right under the ground, but now we have to frac shale and so forth. The same holds true for nearly all other natural resources. Eventually we will reach a point where it takes more energy to extract the resource than the resource is worth. So, we can add fundamentally rising costs to that toxic mix of poor education systems, retirement systems, and job opportunities.

4) The parents told the kids that if they did well in school, they could get into college and find a good job. That how it worked for the parents, so that’s what they told their kids. No one took into account technological advance, job automation, and globalization of competition for jobs. Then the kids grew up and found that in order to get a decent job, they usually needed a specific type of degree (STEM), top-notch grades, some extracurriculars, and some internships. Most didn’t find that out in enough time, and graduated to find that the promised jobs weren’t there. Even graduates in high-demand fields like nursing often have to either relocate or wait for months before getting any opportunity. So, the kids move back in with their parents and struggle with loan payments disproportionate to their income. The houses, cars, and other opportunities their parents had are solidly out of reach, and life is put on hold.

The result is that the coming middle class generation of the privileged world sees the halt of the frontier of human progress. What we wanted was for this group of people to be “better off” than their parents. I’m sure “better off” in most people’s minds means more than just better toys – it means the next logical step in human society, which to me is the ability of its members to spend their productive years in innovation, unshackled more and more from the requirement to spend their time in manual-digital labor. Right now, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen for our generation (i.e. millenials). To me, there are a few logical progressions of the current situations (numbered in tandem with the problems above):

1) The education system gets fixed – eventually. Take a step back for a moment, and imagine a good movie you saw recently. The producers took the script and added some of the world’s best actors, special effects engineers, musical producers, costume designers, etc. And that movie was awesome. What if instead, the producers has distributed the script to local theaters across the world, who hired their own actors, costume designers, etc.? Same script, drastically inferior quality. Why then do we insist on taking this approach with education? Someday soon this will become obvious to society at large.

Take the best dozen teachers in the country in each narrow subject and pay them to produce a series of lectures, assignments, etc. Design a curriculum in each subject and apply the concept of gamification, where students earn a “degree” or “grade level” once they complete a certain number of courses in a subject, thereby drastically increasing motivation to learn through smaller goals and competition. Require a core curriculum, but leave students free to explore where their minds take them. Let students learn at their own paces, and keep the local teachers to provide personalized attention as necessary. Less time spent on preparing lectures and grading tests means more time helping the students learn.

Also, re-institute the apprenticeship system. It worked for thousands of years, then we abandoned it last century in foolish pursuit of “higher learning”. As a result, students spend 25 years “learning” but still have no useful skills. Then it takes another 5-10 years or so to build a skill set that is actually worth something. Why not let kids gain this skill set during ages 8-18 instead of 25-35? Productive years would then start at 18 rather than 25, and best of all, no debt! Fifty years from now, I hope society will have corrected course and adjusted the education system to keep what used to work and harness technology appropriately. I think the increasing focus on internships has already begun to correct that first component. The second is also in process - godspeed to Salman Khan.

2) FICA makes the necessary adjustments – increased retirement age, increased FICA rate, elimination of the contribution ceiling, partial privatization, etc. It’s painful but not earthshattering. Moving on.

3) We get to the point where natural resources are more expensive to procure than they are worth. So, the same thing happens as when humanity ran out of earth to hunt and gather on. We innovate. We mine on Mars, and get our energy from the sun. Again, not a big deal.

4) The world becomes truly globalized over the next century, lifting billions from poverty. This equalization, however, continues to weaken the job opportunities for those who had previously been the lucky few who could afford education. If the middle class of the developed world (previously the driving force behind the advancement of the human race) do not continue to advance, there is nothing for the rest of the world to follow. However, at some point this situation naturally ceases. We find equilibrium, this time with an army of developed world middle class young people 100 times larger than the one before it.

At this point, technology has continued its rate of advancement, with computers being fully integrated into our everyday lives, leaving us free from the worries of many of today’s normal activities. We will have an incredible understanding of the human genome, gotten through the related ethical dilemmas, and used gene splicing to cure most illnesses and give people far better mental and physical abilities. The stage is set for that next step in human advancement, where a huge chunk of humanity can spend its time in innovation and fulfillment of the tip of Maslow’s pyramid.

So how should you then live? How do you see yourself fitting into the big picture?

I leave it to you to venture an answer to that question. Thanks for reading this far – I’d love to hear your thoughts.

EDIT: So to redirect the thread a bit – I wanted to leave it wide open, but was thinking less along the lines of “Do drugs to find your place in the universe” and more along the lines of “With this big-picture view of the trajectory of human progress and our place in it in mind, what do you hope to achieve in life, either as an individual or as a generation, and what impact do you think it will have on the trajectory of human progress?”

Thoughts?

 

I'm surprised that in this epic attempt to figure out life, you still haven't come to realize that our reality is bigger than anything any of us can figure out.

Find some shit that works for you and follow it. Also, I think my model of life is kick-fucking-ass.

in it 2 win it
 
808:

Or go for the Kassad approach and read only the last bold line. I love it.

You needed one more bold line somewhere between 1960s and the end so I know where to start reading

I hate victims who respect their executioners
 
DBCooper:

You should check out psychedelics. Ego death is necessary to figuring out our place in the universe.

PS I'm not a hippy lol

DMT and DXM have been the only psychedelics that have achieved ego death for me. But I think I'm done with that for good.

pussy money weed is still the answer though

Also, the pursuit of living forever.

 
Little Engine Would:
Also, the pursuit of living forever.

I actually think we are only a few generations away from extending human lifespans to at least several hundred years. Get 150 scientists, put 50 in a room to do nothing but study lobsters. Put 50 in a room to study telomeres, and 50 in another room to focus only on the genes of people who live to be 100.

http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/home/lobsters-live-forever.htm http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/traits/telomeres/

 
Little Engine Would:
DBCooper:

You should check out psychedelics. Ego death is necessary to figuring out our place in the universe.
PS I'm not a hippy lol

DMT and DXM have been the only psychedelics that have achieved ego death for me. But I think I'm done with that for good.

pussy money weed is still the answer though

Also, the pursuit of living forever.

DXM is a household favorite around these parts. Highly recommended. DMT is too high maintenance

I hate victims who respect their executioners
 

Has anyone had experience with floatation/isolation tanks? Guys like Joe Rogan tout their benefits. I haven't tried it personally. He's also big into going to Peru and downing Ayahuasca.

Please don't quote Patrick Bateman.
 

Youtube Joe Rogan and dmt. Netflix DMT the spirit molecule. Dmt is a class 1 narcotic. Better hope you don't get caught with a pinch of it. It's also not a party drug. You need to respect it. What fascinates me about dmt is that everyone who takes a high dosage has the same trip. They go someplace and talk to beings. Makes me wonder about parallel universes and who these people might be speaking with. Youtube Terrence McKenna. I've done a hefty amount of fungus but I wouldn't even begin to mess with dmt unless I was feeling on top of the world.

 

Oh yeah, I watched Avatar on like a gram of DXM a few years ago. It was fucking incredible.

Speaking of which, you can also take DXM and DPH together for the most realistic trip you'll ever experience. I took 700mg each, opened a door, and I saw the lushest, most realistic Avatar world. All kinds of crazy shit.

You can do DPH alone, and I've tripped for days at a time on that, but I do not recommend it. It is incredibly uncomfortable physically and totally realistic in that you will not know that you're tripping. And what you see is often terrifying. You'll see swarms of bugs come at you, shadows turn into people you love with blood dripping from them coming at you with knives.

I was sitting alone one night on like 800mg DPH and two trolls started dancing in front of me. One's head turned 180 degrees and he started circumcising the other. This is also incredibly neurotoxic and terrible for your heart (it will race like a fucking Kenyan). Lots of people have killed themselves on accident or died of strokes and shit on this. Don't do it unless you do your research. I was sitting in class freshman year of college one morning after tripping and didn't realize that I was still tripping until the Bio professor grew a second head.

Shrooms are very cool. There was a time when I was selling shrooms and was doing them every night. I had one really shitty trip. I had come home from the gym and was going to a house party. I had a protein shake, two ounces of weed, an ounce of shrooms, a scale, my steamroller, and a few notebooks in my book bag. I drove to the party with my girlfriend at the time and two friends. This was like Junior or Sophomore year of high school and the party was at the house of some kid whose dad was a loser who partied with his kid's friends.

So I ate, I think 18, grams of shrooms. And this dude found out because my buddy asked me how I'm feeling. And he's fucking with me all night. He's always coming up to me, waving his hands in my face, and asking me what I see right now, BRO.

I don't fucking remember what happened, but I ended up in a forest and the protein shake spilled in my bag, soaking into my two ounces of weed because I didn't close the plastic bags after packing a steamroller bowl in the forest where I lost my friends. My scale broke too. I knew that something wasn't right with the bag, but I couldn't figure it out at the time. So I sat there in the dark forest, no idea where I was, picking through this protein-soaked weed and notebook paper trying to figure out what the fuck was going on here and what my next step needed to be. My girlfriend found me in the morning. We got drunk and did burnouts in the snow in a parking lot.

I actually just did shrooms for the first time in like four years a few months ago. I only took an eighth. Wasn't enough to make me trip really, but I just got really introverted. I was upset at my family about something at the time. I found that my attitude going into a trip sort of sets the tone for the whole trip. And I got very analytical as usual. I sat there for like six hours watching CNBC thinking about how I don't need anyone, not even my family. I'm gonna make a bunch of money and fuck this gay earth because we all die alone.

EDIT: Also, DXM makes you MAD horny and you can fuck FOR EVER. and ever

And low doses (like 125mg) of DPH make orgasms super incredible.

 
Little Engine Would:

Oh yeah, I watched Avatar on like a gram of DXM a few years ago. It was fucking incredible.

Speaking of which, you can also take DXM and DPH together for the most realistic trip you'll ever experience. I took 700mg each, opened a door, and I saw the lushest, most realistic Avatar world. All kinds of crazy shit.

You can do DPH alone, and I've tripped for days at a time on that, but I do not recommend it. It is incredibly uncomfortable physically and totally realistic in that you will not know that you're tripping. And what you see is often terrifying. You'll see swarms of bugs come at you, shadows turn into people you love with blood dripping from them coming at you with knives.

I was sitting alone one night on like 800mg DPH and two trolls started dancing in front of me. One's head turned 180 degrees and he started circumcising the other. This is also incredibly neurotoxic and terrible for your heart (it will race like a fucking Kenyan). Lots of people have killed themselves on accident or died of strokes and shit on this. Don't do it unless you do your research. I was sitting in class freshman year of college one morning after tripping and didn't realize that I was still tripping until the Bio professor grew a second head.

Shrooms are very cool. There was a time when I was selling shrooms and was doing them every night. I had one really shitty trip. I had come home from the gym and was going to a house party. I had a protein shake, two ounces of weed, an ounce of shrooms, a scale, my steamroller, and a few notebooks in my book bag. I drove to the party with my girlfriend at the time and two friends. This was like Junior or Sophomore year of high school and the party was at the house of some kid whose dad was a loser who partied with his kid's friends.

So I ate, I think 18, grams of shrooms. And this dude found out because my buddy asked me how I'm feeling. And he's fucking with me all night. He's always coming up to me, waving his hands in my face, and asking me what I see right now, BRO.

I don't fucking remember what happened, but I ended up in a forest and the protein shake spilled in my bag, soaking into my two ounces of weed because I didn't close the plastic bags after packing a steamroller bowl in the forest where I lost my friends. My scale broke too. I knew that something wasn't right with the bag, but I couldn't figure it out at the time. So I sat there in the dark forest, no idea where I was, picking through this protein-soaked weed and notebook paper trying to figure out what the fuck was going on here and what my next step needed to be. My girlfriend found me in the morning. We got drunk and did burnouts in the snow in a parking lot.

I actually just did shrooms for the first time in like four years a few months ago. I only took an eighth. Wasn't enough to make me trip really, but I just got really introverted. I was upset at my family about something at the time. I found that my attitude going into a trip sort of sets the tone for the whole trip. And I got very analytical as usual. I sat there for like six hours watching CNBC thinking about how I don't need anyone, not even my family. I'm gonna make a bunch of money and fuck this gay earth because we all die alone.

EDIT: Also, DXM makes you MAD horny and you can fuck FOR EVER. and ever

And low doses (like 125mg) of DPH make orgasms super incredible.

Jesus christ, am I just that hardened of a druggie or 1) are these effects exaggerated pretty significantly, 2) are you just really susceptible to DPH, and 3) the DXM/DPH mix is counterindicative

I hate victims who respect their executioners
 
BlackHat:
Little Engine Would:

Oh yeah, I watched Avatar on like a gram of DXM a few years ago. It was fucking incredible.
Speaking of which, you can also take DXM and DPH together for the most realistic trip you'll ever experience. I took 700mg each, opened a door, and I saw the lushest, most realistic Avatar world. All kinds of crazy shit.
You can do DPH alone, and I've tripped for days at a time on that, but I do not recommend it. It is incredibly uncomfortable physically and totally realistic in that you will not know that you're tripping. And what you see is often terrifying. You'll see swarms of bugs come at you, shadows turn into people you love with blood dripping from them coming at you with knives.
I was sitting alone one night on like 800mg DPH and two trolls started dancing in front of me. One's head turned 180 degrees and he started circumcising the other. This is also incredibly neurotoxic and terrible for your heart (it will race like a fucking Kenyan). Lots of people have killed themselves on accident or died of strokes and shit on this. Don't do it unless you do your research. I was sitting in class freshman year of college one morning after tripping and didn't realize that I was still tripping until the Bio professor grew a second head.
Shrooms are very cool. There was a time when I was selling shrooms and was doing them every night. I had one really shitty trip. I had come home from the gym and was going to a house party. I had a protein shake, two ounces of weed, an ounce of shrooms, a scale, my steamroller, and a few notebooks in my book bag. I drove to the party with my girlfriend at the time and two friends. This was like Junior or Sophomore year of high school and the party was at the house of some kid whose dad was a loser who partied with his kid's friends.
So I ate, I think 18, grams of shrooms. And this dude found out because my buddy asked me how I'm feeling. And he's fucking with me all night. He's always coming up to me, waving his hands in my face, and asking me what I see right now, BRO.
I don't fucking remember what happened, but I ended up in a forest and the protein shake spilled in my bag, soaking into my two ounces of weed because I didn't close the plastic bags after packing a steamroller bowl in the forest where I lost my friends. My scale broke too. I knew that something wasn't right with the bag, but I couldn't figure it out at the time. So I sat there in the dark forest, no idea where I was, picking through this protein-soaked weed and notebook paper trying to figure out what the fuck was going on here and what my next step needed to be. My girlfriend found me in the morning. We got drunk and did burnouts in the snow in a parking lot.
I actually just did shrooms for the first time in like four years a few months ago. I only took an eighth. Wasn't enough to make me trip really, but I just got really introverted. I was upset at my family about something at the time. I found that my attitude going into a trip sort of sets the tone for the whole trip. And I got very analytical as usual. I sat there for like six hours watching CNBC thinking about how I don't need anyone, not even my family. I'm gonna make a bunch of money and fuck this gay earth because we all die alone.
EDIT: Also, DXM makes you MAD horny and you can fuck FOR EVER. and ever
And low doses (like 125mg) of DPH make orgasms super incredible.

Jesus christ, am I just that hardened of a druggie or 1) are these effects exaggerated pretty significantly, 2) are you just really susceptible to DPH, and 3) the DXM/DPH mix is counterindicative

Have you ever taken said drugs in said dosages? Or even read about the effects?

DPH is a very strong deliriant in 700mg+ dosages. DXM doses work in plateaus of about 300mg increments and DXM is a very strong disassociative. DXM potentiates itself. DPH potentiates DXM. DXM and DPH are synergists.

 
Little Engine Would:

Oh yeah, I watched Avatar on like a gram of DXM a few years ago. It was fucking incredible.

Speaking of which, you can also take DXM and DPH together for the most realistic trip you'll ever experience. I took 700mg each, opened a door, and I saw the lushest, most realistic Avatar world. All kinds of crazy shit.

You can do DPH alone, and I've tripped for days at a time on that, but I do not recommend it. It is incredibly uncomfortable physically and totally realistic in that you will not know that you're tripping. And what you see is often terrifying. You'll see swarms of bugs come at you, shadows turn into people you love with blood dripping from them coming at you with knives.

I was sitting alone one night on like 800mg DPH and two trolls started dancing in front of me. One's head turned 180 degrees and he started circumcising the other. This is also incredibly neurotoxic and terrible for your heart (it will race like a fucking Kenyan). Lots of people have killed themselves on accident or died of strokes and shit on this. Don't do it unless you do your research. I was sitting in class freshman year of college one morning after tripping and didn't realize that I was still tripping until the Bio professor grew a second head.

Shrooms are very cool. There was a time when I was selling shrooms and was doing them every night. I had one really shitty trip. I had come home from the gym and was going to a house party. I had a protein shake, two ounces of weed, an ounce of shrooms, a scale, my steamroller, and a few notebooks in my book bag. I drove to the party with my girlfriend at the time and two friends. This was like Junior or Sophomore year of high school and the party was at the house of some kid whose dad was a loser who partied with his kid's friends.

So I ate, I think 18, grams of shrooms. And this dude found out because my buddy asked me how I'm feeling. And he's fucking with me all night. He's always coming up to me, waving his hands in my face, and asking me what I see right now, BRO.

I don't fucking remember what happened, but I ended up in a forest and the protein shake spilled in my bag, soaking into my two ounces of weed because I didn't close the plastic bags after packing a steamroller bowl in the forest where I lost my friends. My scale broke too. I knew that something wasn't right with the bag, but I couldn't figure it out at the time. So I sat there in the dark forest, no idea where I was, picking through this protein-soaked weed and notebook paper trying to figure out what the fuck was going on here and what my next step needed to be. My girlfriend found me in the morning. We got drunk and did burnouts in the snow in a parking lot.

I actually just did shrooms for the first time in like four years a few months ago. I only took an eighth. Wasn't enough to make me trip really, but I just got really introverted. I was upset at my family about something at the time. I found that my attitude going into a trip sort of sets the tone for the whole trip. And I got very analytical as usual. I sat there for like six hours watching CNBC thinking about how I don't need anyone, not even my family. I'm gonna make a bunch of money and fuck this gay earth because we all die alone.

EDIT: Also, DXM makes you MAD horny and you can fuck FOR EVER. and ever

And low doses (like 125mg) of DPH make orgasms super incredible.

18 grams? Are you fucking kidding me? ....That's insane

 
Maybach:
Little Engine Would:

Oh yeah, I watched Avatar on like a gram of DXM a few years ago. It was fucking incredible.
Speaking of which, you can also take DXM and DPH together for the most realistic trip you'll ever experience. I took 700mg each, opened a door, and I saw the lushest, most realistic Avatar world. All kinds of crazy shit.
You can do DPH alone, and I've tripped for days at a time on that, but I do not recommend it. It is incredibly uncomfortable physically and totally realistic in that you will not know that you're tripping. And what you see is often terrifying. You'll see swarms of bugs come at you, shadows turn into people you love with blood dripping from them coming at you with knives.
I was sitting alone one night on like 800mg DPH and two trolls started dancing in front of me. One's head turned 180 degrees and he started circumcising the other. This is also incredibly neurotoxic and terrible for your heart (it will race like a fucking Kenyan). Lots of people have killed themselves on accident or died of strokes and shit on this. Don't do it unless you do your research. I was sitting in class freshman year of college one morning after tripping and didn't realize that I was still tripping until the Bio professor grew a second head.
Shrooms are very cool. There was a time when I was selling shrooms and was doing them every night. I had one really shitty trip. I had come home from the gym and was going to a house party. I had a protein shake, two ounces of weed, an ounce of shrooms, a scale, my steamroller, and a few notebooks in my book bag. I drove to the party with my girlfriend at the time and two friends. This was like Junior or Sophomore year of high school and the party was at the house of some kid whose dad was a loser who partied with his kid's friends.
So I ate, I think 18, grams of shrooms. And this dude found out because my buddy asked me how I'm feeling. And he's fucking with me all night. He's always coming up to me, waving his hands in my face, and asking me what I see right now, BRO.
I don't fucking remember what happened, but I ended up in a forest and the protein shake spilled in my bag, soaking into my two ounces of weed because I didn't close the plastic bags after packing a steamroller bowl in the forest where I lost my friends. My scale broke too. I knew that something wasn't right with the bag, but I couldn't figure it out at the time. So I sat there in the dark forest, no idea where I was, picking through this protein-soaked weed and notebook paper trying to figure out what the fuck was going on here and what my next step needed to be. My girlfriend found me in the morning. We got drunk and did burnouts in the snow in a parking lot.
I actually just did shrooms for the first time in like four years a few months ago. I only took an eighth. Wasn't enough to make me trip really, but I just got really introverted. I was upset at my family about something at the time. I found that my attitude going into a trip sort of sets the tone for the whole trip. And I got very analytical as usual. I sat there for like six hours watching CNBC thinking about how I don't need anyone, not even my family. I'm gonna make a bunch of money and fuck this gay earth because we all die alone.
EDIT: Also, DXM makes you MAD horny and you can fuck FOR EVER. and ever
And low doses (like 125mg) of DPH make orgasms super incredible.

18 grams? Are you fucking kidding me? ....That's insane

I was taking them every night, so my tolerance was very high. It's not THAT high though. People just take really low doses for some reason.

 
Best Response

This is a bit of a nit, but the world did not move away from hunter/gatherer communities because it "ran out of earth on which to hunt/gather". It did so because food production was radically more efficient in feeding concentrated populations of people and allowed for other community members to join professions that weren't self-sufficient, like politics and the military. Thus, food producing societies came to dominate large swaths of the world in a matter of centuries.

"For all the tribulations in our lives, for all the troubles that remain in the world, the decline of violence is an accomplishment we can savor, and an impetus to cherish the forces of civilization and enlightenment that made it possible."
 
NorthSider:

This is a bit of a nit, but the world did not move away from hunter/gatherer communities because it "ran out of earth on which to hunt/gather". It did so because food production was radically more efficient in feeding concentrated populations of people and allowed for other community members to join professions that weren't self-sufficient, like politics and the military. Thus, food producing societies came to dominate large swaths of the world in a matter of centuries.

No, thanks for your comment, and I believe you are correct. My understanding is that anthropologists believe it was a combination of both - necessity due to lack of food or threat of force from the stronger neighbor who had already made the change. My summary was overly simplistic to give a broad overview of the trajectory, and I skimmed over the process in saying that domestication led to tribes, states, and nations. Bottom line, domestication was a social advancement, and people either adopted it, were killed by the ones who did, or starved.

 
808:

Take the best dozen teachers in the country in each narrow subject and pay them to produce a series of lectures, assignments, etc. Design a curriculum in each subject and apply the concept of gamification, where students earn a “degree” or “grade level” once they complete a certain number of courses in a subject, thereby drastically increasing motivation to learn through smaller goals and competition. Require a core curriculum, but leave students free to explore where their minds take them. Let students learn at their own paces, and keep the local teachers to provide personalized attention as necessary. Less time spent on preparing lectures and grading tests means more time helping the students learn.

This is clearly what we need. I would like to see this in a private for profit form.

 

Life can be quite bleak if you really think about it. All it would take is a big rock to hit the earth and either send humanity into extinction or break up the planet. into pieces further eradicating any evidence of our existence. However, I choose not to think like that. I see it as a lottery. How many planets, stars "rocks", are out there in the universe. And how many of them have developed life such as ours, or even simple organisms : answer is near 0. So statistically speaking - my existence alone has a probability (0 + an infinitisemally small number). That's worse than any lottery you have or will ever participate. Therefore, I, you and all of us have won the biggest lottery that will probably ever exist. So it would be a "sin" not to "try" to put it to "good use" (if that even means anything).

 

Nothing new here:

overpopulation- most definitely.

the shrinking of middle class in America -sure.

human race: inconsequential in the grand order or the universe- of course.

transfer of wealth from the West to the rest of the world-yes, the US GDP is now only 22% of the world versus 50-smth % post-War. You need to understand that US population is only 5% of the world.

live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse behind (LFDYLBCB) -was my thesis in grad school.

For those that like having fun I suggest you get on this thread http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/whats-the-limit-for-makeup-and-he…. Bookmark it.

Winners bring a bigger bag than you do. I have a degree in meritocracy.
 

For one, I can't believe people somehow turned that essay into a debate on the benefits of drugs for understanding our place. The fact of the matter is this post was about human progress, and you kids are sitting in the corner of a room tripping on shrooms, activating the quirks of the human mind, does nothing to benefit you, progress, or society as a whole. I am not anti-drugs, but it does not appear to be relevant to the original post, as suggested in an edit by the author.

Secondly, the problem that the above post fails to address is the importance of programming. Programming is the new english. In a world being eaten by software, the ability to mold and shape the world around you is the primary skill. Education will soon being to reflect this reality. With most jobs being cut out by new software, the importance of being the person that creates that software is paramount. Ask yourself, how much has software began to shape your life, how you service your own needs, and how you divulge your time? I suspect there will always need to be a role of capital markets to help the flow of money, and the ensuing roles such as investment bankers and traders; however, even in those roles you do not have to look far to see how software is taking over - just ask some derivative traders. I said programming is the new english - to use a rather direct analogy, imagine being a worker in the US that only speaks a foreign language. Without knowledge of the native language your ability to work, what you are paid, and what you do will be determined by those who speak "english", and you won't like it.

 
Heist:
Little Engine Would:
Maybach:

Little Engine Would:
Oh yeah, I watched Avatar on like a gram of DXM a few years ago. It was fucking incredible.
Speaking of which, you can also take DXM and DPH together for the most realistic trip you'll ever experience. I took 700mg each, opened a door, and I saw the lushest, most realistic Avatar world. All kinds of crazy shit.
You can do DPH alone, and I've tripped for days at a time on that, but I do not recommend it. It is incredibly uncomfortable physically and totally realistic in that you will not know that you're tripping. And what you see is often terrifying. You'll see swarms of bugs come at you, shadows turn into people you love with blood dripping from them coming at you with knives.
I was sitting alone one night on like 800mg DPH and two trolls started dancing in front of me. One's head turned 180 degrees and he started circumcising the other. This is also incredibly neurotoxic and terrible for your heart (it will race like a fucking Kenyan). Lots of people have killed themselves on accident or died of strokes and shit on this. Don't do it unless you do your research. I was sitting in class freshman year of college one morning after tripping and didn't realize that I was still tripping until the Bio professor grew a second head.
Shrooms are very cool. There was a time when I was selling shrooms and was doing them every night. I had one really shitty trip. I had come home from the gym and was going to a house party. I had a protein shake, two ounces of weed, an ounce of shrooms, a scale, my steamroller, and a few notebooks in my book bag. I drove to the party with my girlfriend at the time and two friends. This was like Junior or Sophomore year of high school and the party was at the house of some kid whose dad was a loser who partied with his kid's friends.
So I ate, I think 18, grams of shrooms. And this dude found out because my buddy asked me how I'm feeling. And he's fucking with me all night. He's always coming up to me, waving his hands in my face, and asking me what I see right now, BRO.
I don't fucking remember what happened, but I ended up in a forest and the protein shake spilled in my bag, soaking into my two ounces of weed because I didn't close the plastic bags after packing a steamroller bowl in the forest where I lost my friends. My scale broke too. I knew that something wasn't right with the bag, but I couldn't figure it out at the time. So I sat there in the dark forest, no idea where I was, picking through this protein-soaked weed and notebook paper trying to figure out what the fuck was going on here and what my next step needed to be. My girlfriend found me in the morning. We got drunk and did burnouts in the snow in a parking lot.
I actually just did shrooms for the first time in like four years a few months ago. I only took an eighth. Wasn't enough to make me trip really, but I just got really introverted. I was upset at my family about something at the time. I found that my attitude going into a trip sort of sets the tone for the whole trip. And I got very analytical as usual. I sat there for like six hours watching CNBC thinking about how I don't need anyone, not even my family. I'm gonna make a bunch of money and fuck this gay earth because we all die alone.
EDIT: Also, DXM makes you MAD horny and you can fuck FOR EVER. and ever
And low doses (like 125mg) of DPH make orgasms super incredible.

18 grams? Are you fucking kidding me? ....That's insane

I was taking them every night, so my tolerance was very high. It's not THAT high though. People just take really low doses for some reason.

I've never really understood those who take psychedelics frequently. What is the motive? 18 grams is an insane amount of mushrooms to eat let alone afford. Where were you getting all this cash?

Contrary to what Blackhat said, I believe that you have extremely thick skin. I remember totally losing my marbles after an eighth and haven't found myself mentally prepared to go back down that road again. It wasn't necessarily a bad trip but the repercussions lingered for a year later where I would thoroughly analyze every situation in life I was in which made me very self critical which isn't always a good thing.

From a life perspective, I wouldn't say that psychedelics changed my life at all. I can now relate to people when they talk about there trips but I don't get into the philosophical aspect of it. Taking these drugs to find a new meaning for life isn't the right way to go about things. I fall back on morals, instincts and the way I was raised when it comes to how I want to live my everyday life. I think they are fun to do with some buddies as a bonding experience but wouldn't take it any farther than that.

Why do drugs for many nights? Same reason I'd drink and fuck for many nights: it's fun yo. Shrooms are pretty inexpensive. And they were a part of my inventory at the time, so it was pretty cheap for me. But I have severely cut back on drugs. I've spent entirely too much money on them. Also, anything on Gilt with linen in it.

 
soc0820:

For one, I can't believe people somehow turned that essay into a debate on the benefits of drugs for understanding our place. The fact of the matter is this post was about human progress, and you kids are sitting in the corner of a room tripping on shrooms, activating the quirks of the human mind, does nothing to benefit you, progress, or society as a whole. I am not anti-drugs, but it does not appear to be relevant to the original post, as suggested in an edit by the author.

Thank you.

soc0820:

Secondly, the problem that the above post fails to address is the importance of programming. Programming is the new english. In a world being eaten by software, the ability to mold and shape the world around you is the primary skill. Education will soon being to reflect this reality. With most jobs being cut out by new software, the importance of being the person that creates that software is paramount. Ask yourself, how much has software began to shape your life, how you service your own needs, and how you divulge your time? I suspect there will always need to be a role of capital markets to help the flow of money, and the ensuing roles such as investment bankers and traders; however, even in those roles you do not have to look far to see how software is taking over - just ask some derivative traders. I said programming is the new english - to use a rather direct analogy, imagine being a worker in the US that only speaks a foreign language. Without knowledge of the native language your ability to work, what you are paid, and what you do will be determined by those who speak "english", and you won't like it.

Excellent point. The mismatch of job availability to job skills is a frequently discussed problem and a huge downer for the economy. My view had been that this was simply a normal process that has become a bigger problem than usual because companies failed to lay off workers when they should have, then everyone did it at once during the most recent recession.

However, you make an excellent point. The underlying problem here is that we should have made programming an integral part of the reading, writing, and arithmetic trio from grade 1 on, since that would be the skill that we need going into the future.

For the sake of discussion, however, is it really necessary for people to learn programming now? Can't the majority of society get by in the future using programs that convert easily manipulated interfaces into code? (For example, Microsoft Expression.)

 
808:

Excellent point. The mismatch of job availability to job skills is a frequently discussed problem and a huge downer for the economy. My view had been that this was simply a normal process that has become a bigger problem than usual because companies failed to lay off workers when they should have, then everyone did it at once during the most recent recession.

However, you make an excellent point. The underlying problem here is that we should have made programming an integral part of the reading, writing, and arithmetic trio from grade 1 on, since that would be the skill that we need going into the future.

For the sake of discussion, however, is it really necessary for people to learn programming now? Can't the majority of society get by in the future using programs that convert easily manipulated interfaces into code? (For example, Microsoft Expression.)

Hmm good question. My immediate thought going back to my analogy was that would be like the foreign worker saying how do I learn the minimum amount of english possible to get by- why risk it instead of learning as much as possible? Or even better yet, using something like Microsoft Expression would be me like telling you as a foreign worker in the United States, here are a 100 english sentences, you can use only these but use them as you please. At some point you will hit limitations and will want to use your own words. Eventually it makes sense to just learn the letters & the words, and how to use them. In the case of programming languages, most programmers use languages that have been around for 20+ years, (frameworks, such as rails django etc, are newer and tend to take care of alot of conventional items in the same way that microsoft word allows you to simply write english).

However, as a counterpoint there are plenty of people that are masters of the english language that have nothing worthwhile to say. Mastery of language does not mean you are the best at utilizing it. In the case of programmers, many have nothing worthwhile to build. Point being is at some point there is a diminishing return of utility for learning more, but that definitely is not the case at the lower bounds - which is why I believe programming will become a staple in education across the world.

 

Basically the majority of the original post - up to say the circa 1960 section - was paraphrased without attribution (plagiarized?) from Jared Diamond's popular book Guns, Germs, and Steel.

 

"At this point, technology has continued its rate of advancement, with computers being fully integrated into our everyday lives, leaving us free from the worries of many of today’s normal activities. We will have an incredible understanding of the human genome, gotten through the related ethical dilemmas, and used gene splicing to cure most illnesses and give people far better mental and physical abilities."

I think our understanding of the human genome and ways to manipulate it will be one of the most relevant fields to the well-being of our species in the next couple centuries. Over time, if we as a planet can come together and "manually evolve" future generations of people to be more collaborative, better long-term thinkers, and more rational (less exuberant) we can solve such problems as:

1) War, genocide, terrorism, and the possibilities of nuclear catastrophe 2) Global warming (caused by an over-emphasis on short-term gains over long-term sustainability) 3) The agency-principal problem present in every organization in our society

After that, i think one of the next big frontiers for us (once we've finished solving hunger globally, and vastly improved our defenses against disease including constantly evolving killer strains), is space exploration. I know SpaceX plans to set up a civilization on Mars in just like 20 or 30 years or something. Not sure how we can expand to other solar systems though if it's truly impossible to accelerate past the speed of light...

Also i agree that eventually the human consciousness will be able to be maintained for at least hundreds of years, maybe indefinitely. Not so sure our generation will get to experience that though - i tend to think it's still a century or two off

 
 
AriZGold:

Basically the majority of the original post - up to say the circa 1960 section - was paraphrased without attribution (plagiarized?) from Jared Diamond's popular book Guns, Germs, and Steel.

Good book - it goes into a lot of detail about some of the trends I discussed in the first two paragraphs. The trends, however, are common anthropological knowledge.

 
alexpasch:

Yeah, that 3) resource problem is "no big deal".

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/can-ec...
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/econom...

These two articles are silly. If you listened to doomsday scientists like this, you would have believed that the "end of energy" was on the horizon for the last 100 years. The rate of population growth is slowing, energy consumption is becoming exponentially more efficient and the amount of energy to which we have access continues to grow as more resources become economically viable.

Some of the examples in these articles are laughable. For instance, the author brings up 747s as an example of air travel not becoming more efficient in the last 30 years (forget that 747s themselves have become ~15% more fuel efficient between the 747-100 and the 747-8). Let's just do a chart, since the author seems to love those:

"For all the tribulations in our lives, for all the troubles that remain in the world, the decline of violence is an accomplishment we can savor, and an impetus to cherish the forces of civilization and enlightenment that made it possible."
 
alexpasch:

Yeah, that 3) resource problem is "no big deal".

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/can-ec...
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/econom...

Your suggestion to mine Mars is particularly laughable...
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-no...
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galact...

These articles are interesting, but contain so many faulty assumptions a critique would be longer than my original post. The author sounds like another environmentalist trying to promote his short-sighted agenda, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt since the articles are several years old.

There was a much better video posted on WSO about the depletion of natural resources, humanity's energy consumption, and the fallacy of the perpetual growth assumption, but I can't find it anywhere. SB to whoever posts the link.

 

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