Anil Seth

What's the point?

What's the point?

Well, I'd almost throw that back in almost the opposite way.

Imagine that life went on forever.

And that you just no moment of experience had any particular meaning because the next day there's always another day.

There's always a new experience you could have.

You could have every experience that was available in the universe of experiences over time.

You could say that if life went on forever, that would be the thing that would drain the meaning and purpose out of our existence.

It's the fact that there is finitude to life, that we exist in this world as a conscious creature, a self-aware creature for an astonishingly brief period of time.

That's what gives our experiences in the moment the value that they have.

You're right.

I think the history of people and societies using mind-altering substances is about as long as history itself.

And interestingly, it's not only humans.

There's quite good evidence out there of other animals eating mushrooms of various sorts.

reasons of their own which is very hard to understand we can't even ask them it's hard enough to know why we as humans do it i suspect it's not all about just alleviating the pain of the everyday i think there can be a grandeur and a wonder in exploring the wider space of conscious experiences that are possible and there are many ways you can do it i mean that the um

For me, the most interesting history and future of mind alteration are with things like psychedelic substances.

They're not addictive.

They're not toxic.

What they do is they open up dramatically new kinds of experiences.

And in a sense, they show us quite directly that the way we experience the world is