It's incredible how dogmatic and unscientific people from r/science are

[CosmicExplorer]

Every time I comment anything about psychedelics decreasing brain activity/metabolism, I get downvoted into oblivion. They either don't even read the studies or misinterpret them. There's never a valid critique, either straight up denial or ad hominem type of argument.

https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1e70w9g/comment/ldx3a2p/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

If you mention to them for example that the hypothesis "other people exist beyond my mind" is unfalsifiable, they'll immediately label you as crazy. It's shocking that people who pride themselves on being scientific, logical, and rational, are cherry-picking when and how much they want to be scientific, and are in full denial about it. I mean I guess water is wet and what did I even expect, but still I naively thought they were not as dogmatic. I considered making a post on askscience or some similar subreddit explaining my frustration but realized that there's no point. There's no discussion with them. If it potentially threatens their preconceived notions, they'll deny, downvote you, and call you unscientific (oh irony).

 

Edited July 20 by CosmicExplorer

[DianaFr]

I suggest you base your point on peer-reviewed publications from respectable journals. It's also a good idea to try to validate the other perspective at least partially by trying to understand where these arguments are coming from - it helps greatly with coming off less biased and more likely to be listened to. For scientific people, whenever you present a blog post as an evidence, especially on a controversial topic, it's an automatic downvote. It could help if you presented data with a better validity. 

[DianaFr]

Another question - what do you mean by brain activity? What in particular is being decreased by psychedelics and is that supposed to be beneficial or detrimental or it depends? I'm not an expert on the subject by any means - just curious. I quickly checked the literature and found an article in eLife* which looks at LSD and brain connectivity. It's a neuroimaging study that suggests that some brain regions present increased connectivity (increased interaction) in some regions and decreased connectivity in others compared to placebo. Also, this change spatially correlates with the expression profile of a receptor that's involved in the metabolism of LSD. According to these results, it seems more appropriate to talk about the modulatory effect of psychedelics. I would love to read a more detailed argument from you to understand your point better.

*Preller KH, Burt JB, Ji JL, Schleifer CH, Adkinson BD, Stämpfli P, Seifritz E, Repovs G, Krystal JH, Murray JD, Vollenweider FX, Anticevic A. Changes in global and thalamic brain connectivity in LSD-induced altered states of consciousness are attributable to the 5-HT2A receptor. Elife. 2018 Oct 25;7:e35082. doi: 10.7554/eLife.35082. PMID: 30355445; PMCID: PMC6202055.

[LastThursday]

People on reddit are not going to be straight up scientists, they're just on there giving you their opinions or parroting what they've casually learnt. What you're rubbing up against is that most people are deep in the materialist paradigm. When you're stuck in a paradigm it's very difficult to see things any other way, or to even realise that you're stuck in one. It's not their fault however, it's just Western society's main paradigm.

[CosmicExplorer]

7 hours ago, DianaFr said:

I suggest you base your point on peer-reviewed publications from respectable journals

If you post study directly and say psychedelics decrease brain activity, it's the same reaction

7 hours ago, DianaFr said:

For scientific people, whenever you present a blog post as an evidence, especially on a controversial topic, it's an automatic downvote. It could help if you presented data with a better validity

 

6 hours ago, DianaFr said:

Another question - what do you mean by brain activity? What in particular is being decreased by psychedelics and is that supposed to be beneficial or detrimental or it depends? I'm not an expert on the subject by any means - just curious. I quickly checked the literature and found an article in eLife* which looks at LSD and brain connectivity. It's a neuroimaging study that suggests that some brain regions present increased connectivity (increased interaction) in some regions and decreased connectivity in others compared to placebo

This is precisely the reason why this time I thought it would be better to post the link to his blog post which explains it in more detail. The brain connectivity in psychedelic studies is notoriously misinterpreted as the brain activity/metabolism of the brain increasing. You can have more brain activity and less connectivity and vice versa. "what the paper shows is that, although brain activity, as measured with MEG, has decreased, the activity that remains is more synchronized across brain regions"

 

[DianaFr]

I don't know, you should be more specific - brain activity is such a wide concept, it literally means nothing if you say it's decreased/increased. Brain activity measured by what and under what experimental conditions, compared to what, induced, blocked, modulated by what, what organism, mouse, rat, human, cell culture or multiple, in what condition, healthy/diseased, wild type/knockout, etc. And ultimately what's your point?? If you present such a wide statement and don't relate it to anything, then it's a little difficult to have a productive discussion. I never studied the topic but thanks to your post already found quite a few interesting articles about the effect of psychedelics and it's way more nuanced and complex than increase/decrease. You, however, seem to be passionate about the topic. Can you point to a specific piece of data that is in line with your statement? 

[Leo Gura]

Ah, yes, Reddit science, the finest minds.

[Extreme Z7]

I once got into an argument with one of these terminally-online science-obsessed losers who tried to argue that ethics and emotions don't matter because they are not "natural" phenomenon.

And yes, this person was a self-proclaimed proud "Pragmatist".

Edited July 21 by Extreme Z7

[Leo Gura]

Science rats.

Edited July 21 by Leo Gura

[CosmicExplorer]

@DianaFr By brain activity I mean brain metabolism, measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), or magnetoencephalography (MEG), in healthy humans (or rats), compared to placebo.

5 hours ago, DianaFr said:

brain activity is such a wide concept, it literally means nothing if you say it's decreased/increased. Brain activity measured by what and under what experimental conditions, compared to what, induced, blocked, modulated by what, what organism, mouse, rat, human, cell culture or multiple, in what condition, healthy/diseased, wild type/knockout, etc. And ultimately what's your point?? If you present such a wide statement and don't relate it to anything, then it's a little difficult to have a productive discussion

You're missing a point, those details don't matter in the context of what I was saying: "Anesthetic drugs increase brain activity. Metabolically the brain under anesthesia is further away from a state in which the dead brain is than in a normal sober waking state, and the brain in a normal sober waking state is further away from the dead brain than the brain under LSD, psilocybin or DMT"

What matters for my claim is whether or not the overall brain metabolism is increased, decreased, or stays the same under psychedelics (and anesthesia) vs placebo. In a dead brain, metabolism ceases.

5 hours ago, DianaFr said:

brain activity is such a wide concept, it literally means nothing if you say it's decreased/increased

No. It means a lot for the sake of discussing metaphysics. According to materialism, consciousness is brain activity (a totally inactive brain is, after all, a dead and unconscious brain under materialism)

5 hours ago, DianaFr said:

Can you point to a specific piece of data that is in line with your statement? 

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1119598109

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15179026/ (in rats)

"Human EEG studies with serotonergic psychedelics consistently report a broadband spectral power decrease (delta to gamma) most pronounced within the alpha band (8–12 Hz) and a decrease in functional connectivity and integrity of networks [21,22,23,24,25,26]. On the other hand, increases in higher frequencies (gamma oscillations, 30 Hz and above) have been also described [27,28,29]; however, the effects are hard to interpret due to typical contamination related to increased tension of the facial muscles. MEG, in contrast to EEG, is devoid of this contamination [30], and on the contrary shows a decrease in oscillations within the gamma range [31]."

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1518377113

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15179026/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-51974-4

 

Anesthesia:

https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(24)00446-X?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS089662732400446X%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

 

 

[zurew]

On 2024. 07. 20. at 5:40 PM, CosmicExplorer said:

If you mention to them for example that the hypothesis "other people exist beyond my mind" is unfalsifiable, they'll immediately label you as crazy. It's shocking that people who pride themselves on being scientific, logical, and rational, are cherry-picking when and how much they want to be scientific, and are in full denial about it.

Yeah, but that point is not really in the domain of science thats much more of a problem in philosophy. People who are into science (and people in general) very rarely know anything about philosophy and they conflate a bunch of things and have no idea what certain terms or philosophical expressions mean. They don't know the difference between physics and metaphysics and just from that they get super confused when it comes to any philosophical discussion.

+ They probably have certain heruistics regarding people bringing up philosophy and because most people are super bad at philosophy - (this is gonna be my assumption) when people on the sub see philosophy brought up, they probably just assume that you are a whacko or you don't know wtf you are talking about, just because they probably have  had a lot of negative experience with people who bring up philosophy.

Edited July 22 by zurew