Ezra Klein

Here's the other skeptic interpretation of what I just said. The very fact that you can reliably induce mystical experience. It just shows that this is just random firings of brain chemicals. that this should make you much more skeptical all the way through that mystical experience has any truth value to it at all.

Here's the other skeptic interpretation of what I just said. The very fact that you can reliably induce mystical experience. It just shows that this is just random firings of brain chemicals. that this should make you much more skeptical all the way through that mystical experience has any truth value to it at all.

The fact that something that, in the case of LSD, a Swiss chemist synthesized just mere decades ago can be some sort of reliable portal to people feeling like they had some kind of mystic experience, it actually implies that none of this was ever mystic at all, that there's some kind of pattern of brain chemicals that you can fire off, that in the same way some patterns will make you,

The fact that something that, in the case of LSD, a Swiss chemist synthesized just mere decades ago can be some sort of reliable portal to people feeling like they had some kind of mystic experience, it actually implies that none of this was ever mystic at all, that there's some kind of pattern of brain chemicals that you can fire off, that in the same way some patterns will make you,

depressed and other patterns will make you think your body is itching, you know, and other things will do. There's one of those patterns creates the misapprehension of the numinous. And that all this is actually not an argument for any kind of belief. None of it is spiritual technology.

depressed and other patterns will make you think your body is itching, you know, and other things will do. There's one of those patterns creates the misapprehension of the numinous. And that all this is actually not an argument for any kind of belief. None of it is spiritual technology.

What it shows you is that there's kind of nothing here, and it actually just explains away a huge category of experience that leads people towards these fantastical claims.

What it shows you is that there's kind of nothing here, and it actually just explains away a huge category of experience that leads people towards these fantastical claims.

But near-death experiences in the book, right? There's fasting, right? There's a lot of induced mystical experience or mystical experience in moments of extremists, and you do take it seriously. So I guess I'm asking, why not just the brain chemicals?

But near-death experiences in the book, right? There's fasting, right? There's a lot of induced mystical experience or mystical experience in moments of extremists, and you do take it seriously. So I guess I'm asking, why not just the brain chemicals?

Well, can I force you to steel man this? Because... If you've ever read an Oliver Sacks book or familiar, I mean, as you are, I know, with mental illnesses, there are many things that happen in our brains where you might say, why do we have something like that that can ever turn on?

Well, can I force you to steel man this? Because... If you've ever read an Oliver Sacks book or familiar, I mean, as you are, I know, with mental illnesses, there are many things that happen in our brains where you might say, why do we have something like that that can ever turn on?

internally contradictory about thinking that the clear link between the physical and the spiritual means that you could reduce the spiritual to the physical experience i always enjoy that there are these two completely opposite theories of what the brain is doing and i'm not saying one isn't much more accepted than the other but there's the understanding the more materialistic sense of it that everything in our experience

internally contradictory about thinking that the clear link between the physical and the spiritual means that you could reduce the spiritual to the physical experience i always enjoy that there are these two completely opposite theories of what the brain is doing and i'm not saying one isn't much more accepted than the other but there's the understanding the more materialistic sense of it that everything in our experience

is the brain. And then there's the theory that I've heard from some consciousness researchers that exists in the near-death experience world that some of the psychedelics people believe that the brain is a kind of like a reducing valve.

is the brain. And then there's the theory that I've heard from some consciousness researchers that exists in the near-death experience world that some of the psychedelics people believe that the brain is a kind of like a reducing valve.

Tell me about that thought.

Tell me about that thought.

What's official knowledge?

What's official knowledge?