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I have a resounding lack of
interest in recreational I have no doubt that
drugs. I could get really
drunk and have a really
I use caffeine, sometimes. great time.
I try to keep it moderate.
That's about it... I just doubt that it would
except for sugar and chocolate, be technically accurate to say
of course. that it's "me" having the
good time.
"You don't have any
curiosity about --"
No, not much.
They're not real. REALITY
The experience may
seem engaging, the
effects may be intense,
you might feel good,
but it's all cut off
from anything that
matters.
Your mind/body complex
has a biochemical level,
and the signals between
components can be faked,
forged, you can fool your
self many ways... but why NATURE
would you want to? Why
con yourself?
A classic example: "wire-heading".
Supposedly you can stick a wire
into the "pleasure center" of your
brain. The apocryphal story has it
that organisms cannot resist this
stimulus. A lab rat will press the In Niven's version, once
button until it dies, rather than jolted this way, the
stop for food. memory of the experience
haunts you forever, and
I used to tell this story to you *will* come back for
people snorting cocaine, and more, eventually.
ask them if they'd do it.
(If the surgical aspects bothered them,
I'd add in Niven's fillip about doing it I also used to like
non-invasively with a current induced to ask cocaine-people
by a magnetic field). if they thought it
should be legalized.
Usually they still said no...
Usually
My point was that I don't see what they said
the difference is. no.
Rewards
disconnected
from the behavior
they're normally
connected to.
Another example:
Imagine a scenario where human
beings are is immobilized, kept HAPPY_BREED
on artificial life support.
Add a detail to this scenario,
suppose the machines slice your
spinal cord, disconnect your optic
and aural nerves, and run them all These days they call
to a computer that can simulate a this sort of thing is often
fufilling existence. You'll live your called Virtual Reality.
life in this box, but your mind will But mostly that's a different
think it's utopia. concept:
So, would you do it? Gibson's cyberspace is about
interfacing with The Real in
I wouldn't. I know people who would. a different way, the world's
information turned into a
To me, it represents the 3-D time-varying graph, a
diffence between pleasure data scape.
and happiness, between feeling
good, and doing something
worthwhile.
IRONTHORN
From a conversation about LSD:
I say: She said:
Drug addictions are just
symptoms of some other
problem. The people who
get compulsive about
them are already really
insecure and neurotic.
Translation: I'm immune. Things
like that don't happen to me.
This kind of talk sets off
alarm bells in my head, it
sounds so much like just
another rationalization, like
all the others I've heard too
often in my life ("I'm a good
drunk driver. All of my
accidents have been when I was
sober.")
LSD is fun. There's a sense
of discovery about seeing
things in a new way. For
example, Looking at a moss
bank, you might suddenly
imagine what it would be
like to be really small and
be able to crawl around in
there, and if you tried to
explain what you meant to a
straight person they'd go
"so? It's just a moss bank."
This sounds like a particularly
empty kind of fun to me. You
get a sense of discovery without
really discovering anything.
Well it is playing with fire.
The effects are unpredictable.
But it *is* fun. You know,
some people like going on
amusement park rides, and
they think that's fun. FUN
So the sense of risk adds
to the sense of adventure?
And then, any attempt at
arguing against it can become
an incentive to do it. "Can
you take the acid test." RISK
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