Psychedelics in problem-solving experiment | Hacker News Reader

Psychedelics in problem-solving experiment

en.wikipedia.org

167 pointsgasull47 comments

Myself, I used LSD to learn calculus -- or rather, to overcome a lifelong crippling phobia/anxiety of mathematics, which allowed me to rapidly learn calculus. When I was 21, I encountered John Lilly's theories of cognitive metaprogramming with psychedelics, and I designed a trip to convince myself -- at a really primal level -- of the fundamental beauty, power, and accessibility of math. 12 hours after dosing, my fear of mathematics was gone forever, and I spent the rest of the summer acing a series of intensive calculus courses. 17 years later, I've co-founded three successful and highly maths-intensive companies. I am certain that I could not have done this without the drugs.

I do hope that some day the world will wake up and realise how much of a wrong turn it took in banning psychedelic research; it has the potential to be a power for good unlike anything else.

On a funny note: Someone shared a video with me, which is a joke trailer for Project Lectorium -- a Russian project to collect videos of lectures, math, economics, engineering etc.

Anyway, in one of its parts there is a professor who explains group theory and he mentioned how a "friend" (wink wink) of his used to take drugs. And while on a trip he saw this bubbling substance, it talked to him and it told him "ask me any questions?". So he asked whether something will happen in his life. But the bubbling substance responded "homologies are null/(singular?)". And so since then he had spend most of his life trying to answer that question.

If anyone speaks Russian, here is the actual video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqAf5lOJZew

Having read your comment, it reminded me of it.

Also presumably Paul Erdős was fond of amphetamines. I wonder if there are many other cases or stories of LSD or other drugs influencing mathematical discoveries.

In Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and the Damned, the protagonist's father is fond, in later years, of attributing his business success to his lifelong religious devotion. The hero doubts it.

I have been temped in the past to equate this magnate character's conviction to PG's belief that it was Lisp which allowed Viaweb to do so well.

I do not disaprove of religion, functional programming, or psychedelics. But in the instances described, I tend to view them mostly as analogous to Dumbo's magic feather.

With respect to psychedelics, they actually do affect your brain. You'd be hard-pressed to tease apart what portion of the outcome was unaffected by the drug when claiming that the results were all due to the Placebo Effect.

That's true, but there's no chance to have a control group. No one having an acid trip can possibly compare his subjective experience to someone who's taken a sugar pill. And without control groups and other strict controls, human studies are next to useless.

The above means that the Placebo Effect cannot be realistically guarded against or dismissed.

> The above means that the Placebo Effect cannot be realistically guarded against or dismissed.

This is a little different than the parent's statement (which I was responding to):

> I tend to view them mostly as analogous to Dumbo's magic feather.

To be fair, so does lifelong religious devotion.

Now the question is, whether you would have overcome your phobia without psychedelics.

Counterfactuals are always difficult, but in this case I am sure that the answer is somewhere between "no" and "after years of hard work". Certainly it wouldn't have happened overnight -- whereas with psychedelics it very literally did happen overnight. Even if the psychedelics were simply a shortcut, there was a lot of benefit in taking them: within a year of my trip I'd completed 15 credits worth of maths courses, and the rest of my education and career benefited accordingly. I'd been trying for years to overcome those anxiety issues organically and was still only a fraction of the way there, so the non-psychedelic path would not have yielded results in time to benefit me in university.

I couldn't describe how fascinating I'm finding your experience! I don't want to burden you with questions, so I'll have parsimony: can you ellaborate on what did your experience with LSD change in your disposition with mathematics? Did it remove an emotional barrier, did it make you somehow solve things quicker, and in what sense did it do so? (were you just quicker, or the same speed but more intuitive?) were you instead more creative?

I'm specially curious because I love math. There's no emotional barrier between me and various fields -- I find so many things fascinating I could get lost for hours absorbing any theory pretty much. But I'm below average at math. My biggest issue, particularly, is that I'm awfully slow and make tons of mistakes. This doesn't go away with any amount of study (at least so far). If I lived isolated and didn't have to be examined and so on, I would happily pace at my snail speed and be happy with that, but since subjects evolve too quickly and most people are too quick for me, I feel pursuing math-intensive fields would be too demanding.

Primarily it instilled that love of math, where previously there had been anxiety and ennui. This was sufficient to get me actually complete the work -- and do some extra work for fun -- which was more than enough to get through the math in my university coursework. I didn't get into more advanced maths in university, and for the fields that I've ended up in (and here I need to omit some otherwise too-revealing biographical details), I'm undoubtedly sub-par at mathematics. When it comes to calculation, I'm still definitely slower and more mistake-prone than my colleagues. I attribute this to avoiding mathematics for my first two decades; if math is a language, then I learned it at an age when having a thick accent is unavoidable. I make up for these deficiencies by being much more stubborn than my colleagues -- just hammering away at problems until they're done -- and also having an excellent intuitive grasp of certain domains, which I can then implement via coding rather than formulae. (I learned to code when I was very young, so that's something which I'm much more natively fluent at). After I've solved a problem via intuition and code, I usually try to prove (or at least investigate) it with proper math, to reassure myself that the solution is efficient and correct. That's far slower and more painstaking, but I eventually get there (and nine times out of ten, my intuition was correct). That's probably the wrong way to do things, but it works. I wouldn't be able to have a job where the math necessarily came first, however!

Thank you so much! You seem to be really sucessful with problems not unlike mine, so evidence that I can just wrestle with problems for long until they yield always boosts my hope. (Probably asking too much, but if you feel like it please send me some of your work on my email)

Could you go into more detail about the trip? I would love to hear about the design of it and how you convinced yourself to love math.

Well, I'd always had a love of fractals, without ever truly comprehending how the underlying maths worked. Same goes for cosmology -- utterly fascinated by the outputs, but didn't really understand the actual mechanisms thereof. So during the trip, I used fractal and cosmology images and videos as an emotional "anchor" -- grounding the trip in material I already loved and was comfortable with / fascinated by. I then surrounded those materials with more mathematically technical videos, images, and texts about fractals & cosmology -- the things I traditionally would have shied away from as too mathematical for me to understand; and finally, surrounding that material, I spread out the quite trivial mathematics I was struggling with at the time -- textbooks, homework assignments, etc. The intention was to create a continuum ranging from the mundane to the transcendent, with the hope that when the boundaries dissolved between them, I would understand that they're all really one and the same, and that my enthusiasm for the transcendent could be extended into every corner of mathematics.

This more or less worked as planned, although during the peak of the trip -- I had taken quite a lot of LSD -- my vision got too wobbly to actually make sense of words and numbers, so I put on a video of "Baraka" instead, which seemed comprehensible at the time and somehow in alignment with the whole "transcendent" angle of the trip. As I came down, I moved back to reading chapters of James Gleick's Chaos and finally to doing math homework which had previously irritated the piss out of me -- but now I loved it. That attitudinal switch was instant and permanent.

At the same time as this was a very positive experience for me, it also gave me the a level of respect for LSD such that I don't approve of it being used as an uncontrolled "party" drug. The changes I made to my brain were intentional and beneficial, but I can easily see how somebody who wasn't controlling their environment and intentions could end up bricking their brains on a bad trip. That kind of power is something that should be used with care.

Good choice with Baraka. I'm sure that was fascinating to watch.

While I also believe that they can have beneficial effects, and that research shouldn't be stopped, at the same time it's worth keeping in mind the side-effects:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSD#Potential_adverse_effects

Have you experienced any?

I personally haven't had any adverse effects aside from a sore jaw and a mild ~36-hour serotonin depression following a trip. In the company I took it -- fellow "psychonauts" who always made a serious effort to control the quality of the environment, the quality of the drug, and the quality of their own mental state -- I've never seen anybody else have serious adverse affects, either. We all benefitted from it to varying degrees.

That said, I don't want to dismiss the potential for adverse effects! LSD is a serious tool. It basically gives you the ability to bypass and/or rewrite elements of your brain's BIOS, which is just as powerful and potentially dangerous as it sounds. I can appreciate the possibility for harm if your environment, mental state, or chemistry go awry. It is dangerous to take LSD in a potentially hostile environment where you don't have adequate support, or if you are prone to certain types of anxiety or confusion. There are plenty of people who should probably never take it; personally, I don't recommend it to anyone who isn't already fairly comfortable with observing and controlling their own mind through introspection and/or meditation.

> It basically gives you the ability to bypass and/or rewrite elements of your brain's BIOS, which is just as powerful and potentially dangerous as it sounds.

What does it mean? Is it possible to convince your brain to "choose" different sexuality, for example, while high on psycs?

Timothy Leary claimed that he could and did help people change sexual orientation. I don't know how verifiable any of his claims are.

This sounds quite incredibe. In fact, very incredible, considering you just registered that account and this is your only post. But I believe you may be telling the truth.

Do you think the same could be applied for other disciplines, like programming and computer science?

Yes, this is a dummy account; my regular account here has 4497 karma, but is linked to my real name. The conservatism of some of my clients -- and the fairly public role I sometimes must play -- is such that I'd rather not have my former illegal exploits broadcast quite yet. Hopefully you can understand!

In answer to your question: yes, I very much believe that it can be applied to programming and computer science -- and in fact already has been. Much of the early development of those disciplines was directly influenced by psychedelics.[1] I personally haven't tried to apply psychedelics to programming/CS in the same explicit way as I did for math, but I've found that the general visualisation skills developed over about a decade of fairly steady experimentation -- tripping about 3-4 times per year -- have been invaluable in solving constraints problems, visualising codeflow, etc. But one could argue, in that case, that I might have developed the same skills without psychedelics, since it was a slow development over many years. Whereas in the case of the "mathematics trip", the cognitive change literally happened overnight.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said

Love the choice of your dummy account name!

I immediately remembered it from the C64 days. Used in a FOR loop, poke 53281,x would create some marvelous color loops.... almost psychedelic ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tar8kV39P2E

Nailed it! ;-)

> Yes, this is a dummy account; my regular account here has 4497 karma, but is linked to my real name.

Are you aware of browser/device fingerprinting? [0] Technology (i.e. we) has/have killed privacy (unless you take extreme steps to protect it).

[0] https://panopticlick.eff.org/

Oh yes, I'm aware of that stuff. If somebody reasonably competent wanted to resolve my real name from this dummy account, I have no doubt that they'd be able to do it. My concern, however, is not that malign people reading Hacker News will try to discover who poke53281 really is (surely I'm not that interesting); rather, it's that I don't want clients Googling for my real name to easily turn up accounts of my drug-taking exploits. It is probably still possible to start with my real name and find this account, but that would be a vastly harder task -- a much smaller needle in a much larger haystack -- and again I can't actually imagine anybody being sufficiently motivated to do so.

Then saying your exact karma wasn't a great idea, was it.

I wouldn't assume that's his actual karma score.

Or she or he wanted to stay anonymous/safe while admitting to the use of psychedelics. If you believe, then why do you doubt?

Creating a throwaway is perfectly reasonable for disclosing something like this. I just remain skeptical of all sorts of claims like these.

But I am leaning towards his telling the truth.

Do you mean John Lilly? I'm not finding much about a Robert Lily with regards to "psychedelics" and "cognitive metaprogramming."

Good grief, yes, thanks for catching that! It's late in my timezone... [editing my post now...]

I would like to read a detailed description of your experience, using a blog post or a gist if/when you have the time.

Can you explain in detail how you achieved this? How is it that you "designed" the trip?

having same phobia of math (just about blanked on any midterm or final in university) this is intriguing.

can you describe your experience more in detail? what in particular did you discover during the process how to overcome fear of math?

See here for the details of the trip: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8247965

The critical thing is to understand that the opposite of fear, hate, and indifference is love. If you truly love something, you'll gladly do whatever it takes to become good at it. So I needed to rewire my brain to be madly in love with mathematics; once that was accomplished, the rest was easy.

If you're interested in the topic, I highly recommend the book "What the Dormouse Said", which explores amongst other things the impact of psychedelics on computing.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said

Timothy Leary also has a chapter in "The Art of HCI design" in which he explores parallels between psychedelics and computer interaction.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Human-Computer-Interface-Desig...

I came here to mention the first title. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but as I recall LSD not only reached the computer scientists early on, it more or less was introduced via such academic circles.

The other day I reflected on the fact that the project I have been working on for the last 3 years have such strong connections with my first psychedelic experience. Sometimes I wonder about the worth those things, questioning what ultimately can be gained from that so-called ineffable, even as a source of inspiration. And I'm the first one to trivialize it too, to debunk it as pretty much any intoxication. But then again, you can shrug it off, it doesn't hurt you, or change you: it's only significant if you are open to it. So it just seems to me that it would be silly to be cynical about something like that, to doubt the good of something that really just opens your mind a bit.

If anyone cares, this is the complete Tim Leary photo archive. A while ago I was asked to help curate it, and my payment was getting to keep a copy on my site, as long as it doesn't show up on search engines.

http://robots-everywhere.com/leary_gallery/index.php

There's also a dosbox setup for Leary's Mind Mirror software.

http://robots-everywhere.com/portfolio/games/mmirror_port/

Awesome! Thanks!

Some people have experimented with micro-dosing (~0.1 to 0.2g dry of) psilocybin mushrooms at shroomery.org, especially: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/17315584... . He seems to have observed an increase in focus and productivity at work (editor of some kind). Unfortunately he stopped posting abruptly.

> he stopped posting abruptly...

That is the slight problem, mega-dosing types have probably independently arrived at some coherent theory of everything many times yet not got as far as writing it down. The 'increased focus...' is probably comparing micro- to mega- dosing, not 'reality'.

At least the Beatles were able to complete albums with words written whilst off their trolleys, few others seem to manage it. Really if there is to be research in the wonders of various psycho-active drugs, the hard part, writing it down, in a form that makes sense in the 'real world' is where research needs to be conducted.

> The 'increased focus...' is probably comparing micro- to mega- dosing, not 'reality'.

A typical mushroom taker can only trip once a week or once every two weeks (as tolerance builds up very quickly). That means one or two weeks of "reality" between (mega-dose) trips.

Googling around turned up some pretty interesting results from programmers specifically: http://www.reddit.com/r/Psychonaut/comments/1n93n4/the_lsd_m...

Given the subtlety of the effects, I would like to see blinded washout crossover.

Gwern did a convincingly rigorous self-experiment with LSD microdosing. [1] He sums it up as, "No beneficial effects reached statistical-significance and there were worrisome negative trends. LSD microdosing did not help me."

[1] http://www.gwern.net/LSD%20microdosing

Here is a very interesting talk about this study (and on the subject), by James Fadiman, one of the researches on the team:

Scientific Problem Solving with Psychedelics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtL5fafpRKc&list=SP4F0vNNToz...

From the talk:

"It's not 'take psychedelics and you can understand quantum mechanics'. But if you understand quantum mechanics and you take a psychedelic, you may really understand quantum mechanics"

Can LSD alter sexuality? Any studies on that one? Thanks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com