this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2024
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TechTakes
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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You know, I have no direct information as to what kind of background those people might’ve had for their trips, but 1337% it was wrong (or this person is just full of it). Set and setting. Always. And dear god if I came out of a trip with that? What a fucking abysmal prospect
And yet holy fuck that’s quite possibly a strong driver in all this insanity isn’t it?
You could guess my internal state right now, and you’d need zero psychedelics to do it
it’s a fucking tragedy what techbros, fascists, and gurus have done to the perception of what a trip even is. there’s this hilariously toxic idea that a trip must have utility or else you’ve wasted your time and material; these people will gatekeep and control how you process what should be a highly personal experience, because that gives them a subtle but powerful amount of influence over what you’ll take back from your trip. the Silicon Valley/TESCREAL crowd have even ritualized bad set and setting so much that they don’t need a guru personally present in order to have a bad fucking time.
the damage these fucking fools have done is difficult to quantify, largely because psychedelic research is either banned or firmly in the hands of those very same fucking fools. it’s very important to them that you don’t use your temporarily jailbroken neocortex for your own purposes; that you never imagine a world where they don’t matter.
yep. a couple of years ago I read We Will Call It Pala and it hit pretty fucking on the nose
a couple years later, with all the dipshittery i've seen the clowns give airtime, and I'm kinda afraid? reticent? to read it again
never read this one before. neat story, even if it is not much more than The Lorax, but psychedelic-flavored.
unprompted personal review (spoilers)
it makes sense that the point-of-view character is insulated / isolated from the harm they're doing. my main gripe is that in doing so, the actual problems of the hypothetical psychedelic healthcare industry (manufactured addiction, orientalism and psychedelic colonization, inequality of access, in addition to all of the vile stuff the real healthcare industry already does) wind up left barely stated or only implied. i was waiting for the other shoe to drop; for Learie to, say, receive a letter from a family member of a patient who died on the bed due to being unattended to, a result of stretching too few staff too thin over too many patients, et cetera. something that would pop the bubble that she built around herself and tie the themes of the story together.
instead it feels like she built the bubble and stays in the bubble. she's sad her cool business idea outgrew her, that the fifty million dollars she got as a severance package doesn't fill the hole in her heart she got by helping people directly. which is neat and all, but, like. what about all the uninsured and poor Black people who never got to even try to see if psychedelics could help? what about the Native Americans who watched their spiritual medicine, for which they were (and still are) punished heavily for using, get used to make Learie's millions, for which they will never see a penny? what about your overworked staff, Learie!?
from a persuasive and political perspective, to me it seems the non-sequitur ending leaves the entire story up for ideological grabs. think it sounds like capitalism is bad? sure, go for it. think the problem is that we need to do capitalism, But Better™? sure, go for it! hell, that's basically the author's own conclusion:
sorry, but a can of glow-in-the-dark paint over the same old exploitative business practices is not a solution. it's just more marketing. where is this even going?
a $3,000 value course for only $999! what a steal!! order now, seats are first-come first-serve!
yep to a lot of your points (I'll try reply in more detail tomorrow, majority of brain context atm is going to fucking android bullshit)
as a bit more context, it was originally published on https://aurynproject.org/, which I think also says something about its origin/background. imo overly-narrow horizons in their optimism is a problem that plagues a lot of psychedelic-treatment evangelists (and I already view the argument favourably!); it's something I've often felt irked by but also haven't really been able to engage with in depth much to try form any wide-consumption counterargument too, because headspace and a lot of other stuff too
The Auryn project has a sub-project called North Star, founded by a VC partner, and a Bain Capital veteran, among others.
The whole thing gives me the ick.
best of luck with android bullshit. i'm not familiar with either psychedelics themselves or their evangelists, but yeah, would love to hear thoughts