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How AI turned William James into a Drug Warrior

letter to the editors of New Scientist

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

October 6, 2023



In response to Daniel Cossins' 2018 article about "Discriminating Algorithms:

We need another article from Daniel, this time about "Politically Correct Algorithms" (aka "Philosophically Anachronistic Algorithms").

I recently visited deepai.org where I queried the AI version of William James. I wanted to know what James thought about the ongoing push to outlaw laughing gas in the UK and the US. The use of laughing gas , after all, convinced William James that we must study altered states in order to understand ultimate reality and the true nature of consciousness.

The response of the AI version of William James sounded suspiciously modern. Regarding laughing gas , he suggested that we "limit use to professionals."

That statement reflects a classic Drug Warrior lie: namely, that the only stakeholders in the legalization 1 debate are the impressionable young people whom we fail to educate about substance use. But James was not programmed like that. He did not attend DARE classes as a kid that indoctrinated him in the drug-hating beliefs of Christian Science. He did not watch endless TV shows 2 as a kid whose plots were tweaked by the White House to promote Drug War prejudices. He would have recognized, when pressed for elaboration, that laughing gas 3 could be a godsend for the depressed and a worthy replacement for alcohol. Nor would he have advanced the elitist doctrine that only professionals should use the substance in order to achieve altered states.

AI algorithms put Drug War propaganda into the mouth of William James -- and the technophile materialists at New Scientist could not care less.


You may say that these claims are debatable, but that is my whole point. It is wrong for AI algorithms to put modern answers in the mouths of historical figures by assuming that they would share our modern prejudices.

The AI programmers should instead have the honesty to respond to questions like mine with a humble disclaimer, stating that the query is far too "fraught" to conduce to a quick answer based on the parsing of Big Data.

Instead, they pretend that no answer is too hard for them, even if they have to falsify history in order to keep up that air of omniscience.

*william*
*materialism 4*

Notes:

1: National Coalition for Drug Legalization (up)
2: The Dead Man (up)
3: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide (up)
4: How materialists lend a veneer of science to the lies of the drug warriors (up)







Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




Rick Strassman isn't sure that DMT should be legal. Really?! Does he not realize how dangerous it is to chemically extract DMT from plants? In the name of safety, prohibitionists have encouraged dangerous ignorance and turned local police into busybody Nazis.

"My faith votes and strives to outlaw religions that use substances of which politicians disapprove."

Materialist scientists are drug war collaborators. They are more than happy to have their fight against idealism rigged by drug law, which outlaws precisely those substances whose use serves to cast their materialism into question.

To treat opioid use disorder (which is really prohibition disorder syndrome) we should normalize the peaceable smoking of opium at home as an alternative to drinking alcohol.

I have yet to find one psychiatrist who acknowledges the demoralizing power of being turned into a patient for life. They never list that as a potential downside of antidepressant use.

We don't need people to get "clean." We need people to start living a fulfilling life. The two things are different.

Prohibition is a crime against humanity. It forces us to use shock therapy on the severely depressed since we've outlawed all viable alternatives. It denies medicines that could combat Alzheimer's and/or render it psychologically bearable.

It is a violation of religious liberty to outlaw substances that inspire and elate. The Hindu religion was inspired by just such a drug.

Some fat cat should treat the entire Supreme Court to a vacation at San Jose del Pacifico in Mexico, where they can partake of the magic mushroom in a ceremony led by a Zapotec guide.

We might as well fight for justice for Christopher Reeves: he was killed because someone was peddling that junk that we call horses. The question is: who sold Christopher that horse?! Who encouraged him to ride it?!


Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






There is nothing to debate: the drug war is wrong, root and branch
Physics has found a theory of everything


Copyright 2025 abolishthedea.com, Brian Quass

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