Why Were Early Psychedelicists so Weird?
The article assumes a two way split: normal versus weird. I think we need a three way split: solid-normal, cozy-weird, out-there-weird. If you grow up with something you treat it as normal, as do the people around you, and some of them work for main-stream-media, so you see it on TV too, treated as normal. And some of the stuff that falls into that category is really weird, you just cannot see it.<p>For example, I was reading an article in The Economist about food distribution in India. Back in the early 1950&#x27;s there was a famine and hoarding. Fucking hoarders! So they banned ware-houses and cold-storage to stop hoarding. Not completely, but enough to cause trouble. Obviously that is a bit of a disaster. Agriculture is notorious for having good years and bad years and you need plenty storage to smooth things out and make sure people don&#x27;t starve.<p>Here is where it gets weird. You&#x27;d think I was going through the archive, reading a story from the late 1950&#x27;s about the repeal of the anti-storage laws (complete with little box explaining about how such a totally whacked out law got passed in the first place). No, the article was from June 27th 2015 and was lamenting that the law was still in place.<p>So it is not just weird. It is cozy-weird. People are trying to combat the volatility of agricultural production with laws against warehousing and cold-storage and it has become normal, just the way you do it.<p>Second example: Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome were born to a virgin, Rhea Silvia, who had been forced join a virgin priesthood. Her wicked uncle Amulius had stolen the throne from her father Numitor, and didn&#x27;t want any grandsons turning up to reclaim their grandfather&#x27;s throne. So no sex for Rhea Silvia. The God Mars helps out and soon Romulus and Remus are born to a virgin.<p>Well, shit! I&#x27;d always imagined that when Christianity was getting popular in 300 A.D. it was a case of &quot;virgin birth, wow, like man, that is so totally amazing, nothing like that ever happened before. That is sooo cool, count me in, I&#x27;m a believer!&quot;. Now I&#x27;ve learned a little more history. The Christian Virgin birth is looking like a me-too story. &quot;Our hero-founder was also born of a virgin, so there :-P&quot;. Let&#x27;s abandon concerns about me having to change my mind again when I learn another little bit of history. The story so far has virgin-birth as cozy-weird not out-there-weird in 300 AD. (Which neatly gets me out of voicing an opinion on whether it is any kind of weird in 2016.)<p>Example three: People believe that if a scientific result is statistically significant at the p=0.05 level, then the probability that it is true is 95%.<p>I&#x27;m feeling really proud of myself for providing three examples of cozy-weird. If you think about it, I shouldn&#x27;t be able to give any examples of cozy-weird at all. I say &quot;X is cozy-weird&quot; and every-one dog piles on top of me insisting that X is normal and every-one agrees that X is normal :-)<p>Anyway, there is a two way split normal(2) and weird(2). There is a three way split solid-normal(3), cozy-weird(3), out-there-weird(3). Here is how they line up<p><pre><code>    weird(2) = out-there-weird(3)

    normal(2) = solid-normal(3) union cozy-weird(3)
</code></pre>
For some psychonauts an important motivation taking LSD is the hope that one can break through to reality in the sense of becoming able to see what is so strange about the cozy-weird.<p>SSC asks &quot;Why were Early Psychedelicists so out-there-weird(3)?&quot; (my translation).<p>That seems like a really tricky question because it is so hard to see what happened to the cozy-weird. Lets define weird(3) as the union of cozy-weird(3) and out-there-weird(3). Suppose some-one trips on LSD and realizes that you should respond to the volatility of agricultural output with laws that favour ware-housing and cold-storage. Suppose it goes further and they think that alien space bats are attacking Earth with stupidity rays and that is why there are laws that oppose ware-housing and cold-storage. That is a solid helping of out-there-weird, and a worthwhile reduction of cozy-weird. Did total weird(3) go up or down?<p>The previous paragraph ends with a hanging question. I&#x27;ve no idea whether the early psychedelicists had any success with seeing the strangeness of the cozy-weird. Time for a case split.<p>Case I, the early psychedelicists had no success with seeing the strangeness of the cozy-weird. If so, this is in itself a reason not to take LSD. Seeing the strangeness of the cozy-weird is one of the motivations. If others have already tried it and it didn&#x27;t work, then it is time to try something else.<p>Case II, the early psychedelicists had some success with seeing the strangeness of the cozy-weird. Then there is an upside to balance the downside of perhaps becoming out-there-weird. Also there is an extra contender for why the early psychedelicists got so weird. Seeing the strangeness of the cozy-weird is mentally destabilizing. You can still share solid-normal(3) stuff with normal(2) folk, but the cozy-weird(3) stuff is a barrier between you, making each think that the other is a bit daft. What happens when you are cut off like this? Does the loss of social anchors set you adrift and at risk of becoming out-there-weird. Does the experience of seeing the strangeness of the cozy-normal directly unsettle you, making it hard to know what to trust and how to judge things? The existence of the cozy-weird makes things very complicated.