Highest Rated Comments


butkaf3955 karma

Bill, in an interview with Playboy in 1994 you claimed to have used LSD when you were younger.

Right now, LSD is being investigated more and more closely as a therapeutic tool for various conditions and situations (ranging from autism, to alcoholism to fear of dying), but also as a creativity enhancer (as attested by its documented use in the form of microdoses in Silicon Valley). Do you feel your LSD experiences contributed anything to what you have achieved and invented?

If so, could you share some of the most relevant elements?

butkaf31 karma

Have you done any studies on cold water exposure and its effects on mitochondria production, functionality and density?

butkaf11 karma

Are there any specific mathematical patterns that you have seen occur in nature? Anything specific that's frequent, or seems to occur in similar situations, or lifeforms?

I've always thought of the reason that the fibonacci sequence (or similar sequences) occur is because within three directional dimensions, that ratio is optimal for certain situations (like plants trying to cover as much space as possible to catch sunlight). Do you agree with such an assumption and do you believe that biology is bound by certain mathematical constraints within which it has to function, or unbound, able to move beyond mathematical constraints?

butkaf3 karma

Dear mr Nutt,

I have used LSD to scientifically and therapeutically analyse my autism. My experiences have fascinated my therapists, but they are not involved in psychedelic research or anything experimental. The neuroscientific information I have come to understand, process and relate to my experiences both in my sober state and on LSD have allowed me to help myself and some of my peers who also have autism or autism-related mental states, simply from the insights of how it might work, what might cause these altered mental states that autists seem to be in.

I gladly wish to contribute to this research, both with my own insights (and discuss them with scientists active in these avenues of psychological and neuroscientifical research) and by taking part in experiments to get quantifiable scientific data regarding these experiences.

How would you suggest I proceed? I am involved in the field of consciousness studies through archaeology, but there is no contact with any kind of research that I am interested in in partaking.

Thanks for coming here and for your efforts!

butkaf2 karma

Hi Dr Large,

I'm only beginning my journey in the field of sensory and evolutionary neuroscience. I just wrote my thesis about how the structure of the human visual system gives rise to certain geometric hallucinations (Kluver's form constants) which can be used as a reliable model to compare to prehistoric art (and specifically, Late Neolithic pottery).

A lot of psychedelic art contains these form constants, because they manifest themselves when taking psychedelic drugs. I have always been attracted to this kind of art all my life, and I think it has to do with the fact that I am autistic (which can create a mode of sensory processing that has overlaps with the effects of psychedelics.) Likewise, I have always been attracted to psychedelic trance (psytrance and goa trance) which has always had profound effects on me. Some psychedelic trance sounds as if it sounds both "outside" and "inside" my ears, eventually becoming one big expanse of pure euphoria in which my consciousness and body just dissolve. It is a feeling like no other and I have never seen it described it by anyone else anywhere. It doesn't just sound good or pleasant, it's a whole new scale of experience.

From an academic perspective I would like to ask: Have you ever found a definable relationship between music that induces these types of experiences and the structure of the human auditory cortex, or in the way it processes auditory information? Have you ever heard of these types of experiences before and do you have any theories as to what might cause them?

From a personal one I would like to ask if it's possible to analyse the specific music that affects me, and look for commonalities and patterns? Any lead I have on what causes this effect allows me to understand it better and find more of it.