From: Sasha Chislenko (sasha1@netcom.com)
Date: Thu Jan 20 2000 - 17:35:44 MST
At 02:46 AM 00/01/20 , Delvieron@aol.com wrote:
> Okay, maybe that wasn't the last thing. I just want to say that I
>against the use of most illicit drugs at this time. It seems to me that
>using current pharmaceutical technology to try to alter the mind is like
>using a sledgehammer to hammer a screw into a precision clock...its a really
>bad idea unless you're desparate and that is all you have. If you already
>have a fairly healthy brain and functional mind, it seems like a poor
>risk/benefit trade-off to try to use current tech to improve it. That's why
>I would by and large limit drug use to treating illness. Now the above
>mentioned future techniques of localized, endogenous changes to brain
>chemistry will likely have the necessary level of finesse to try to upgrade
>conscious mood and experience. So for now, I recommend staying off drugs
>unless you need them, and work on biotech and nanotech (or are they one in
>the same<g>).
I agree with this as a personal choice, but not as a restrictive policy.
Decriminalization of drugs and their research now would allow to start work on
adjusting personal attitudes and social regulations to reliance on personal choices
and responsibility, rational discussion on acceptable risks, grow research labs
and educational groups discovering and teaching personal work in alternate
states, etc, etc. - these are issues that will take much longer to resolve than
the technology. Delaying these most crucial issues, we are setting up the
mildest technological advances to potential violent social conflicts.
We already have hundreds of thousands of people regularly raped in jails
for attempts to gently modify their perception with such mild and non-
addictive things as pot and psychedelics. What is worse for their mental
and physical health?
Everest climbing is riskier than any drug that has ever existed, and yet it's
glorified rather than persecuted. Hamburgers are worse for your health than pot.
Do do not want to establish a comprehensive Nazi control over personal risks,
but rather prepare the social environment as fast as possible to handling an
unprecedented flood of possibilities for personal modifications - some of
them finer than current drugs, some much stronger - because we really don't
have enough time...
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Sasha Chislenko <http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html>
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