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 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 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 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.
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.
What bothers me about AI is that everyone's so excited to see what computers can do, while no one's excited to see what the human mind can do, since we refuse to improve it with mind-enhancing drugs.
This is why America is creeping toward authoritarianism -- because of the prohibitionists' ability to get away with everything by blaming "drugs." The fact that Americans still fall for this crap represents a kind of collective pathology.
The December Scientific American features a story called "The New Nuclear Age," about a trillion-dollar plan to add 100s of ICBM's to 5 states, which an SA editorial calls "kick me" signs. This Neanderthal plan comes from pols who think that compassion-boosting drugs are evil!
It's already risky to engage in free and honest speech about drugs online: Colorado politicians tried to make it absolutely illegal in February 2024. The DRUG WAR IS ALL ABOUT DESTROYING DEMOCRACY THRU IGNORANT AND INTOLERANT FEARMONGERING.
The FDA is not qualified to tell us whether holistic medicines work. They hold such drugs to materialist standards and that's pharmacological colonialism.
Scientists are not the experts on psychoactive medicines. The experts are painters and artists and spiritualists -- and anyone else who simply wants to be all they can be in life. Scientists understand nothing of such goals and aspirations.
Science keeps telling us that godsends have not been "proven" to work. What? To say that psilocybin has not been proven to work is like saying that a hammer has not yet been proven to smash glass. Why not? Because the process has not yet been studied under a microscope.
David Chalmers says almost everything in the world can be reductively explained. Maybe so. But science's mistake is to think that everything can therefore be reductively UNDERSTOOD. That kind of thinking blinds researchers to the positive effects of laughing gas and MDMA, etc.
When the FDA tells us in effect that MDMA is too dangerous to be used to prevent school shootings and to help bring about world peace, they are making political judgments, not scientific ones.
Drug warriors have harnessed the perfect storm. Prohibition caters to the interests of law enforcement, psychotherapy, Big Pharma, demagogues, puritans, and materialist scientists, who believe that consciousness is no big "whoop" and that spiritual states are just flukes.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, How AI turned William James into a Drug Warrior: letter to the editors of New Scientist, published on October 6, 2023 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
You have been reading an article entitled, How AI turned William James into a Drug Warrior: letter to the editors of New Scientist, published on October 6, 2023 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)