K-Punk on Weed!!

[johneffay]

Reply to Stelfox

So you'll be aware of the hierarchy within science where chemists look down on biologists because they deal with 'more primal' elements and physicists look down upon chemists and biologists for the same reason. Then there's the question of 'fringe scientists' such as psychologists. Is this objectivity?

What do artists do? Given all your posts on the music thread, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you're just trying to wind me up.

I'm anything but anti-science, however it's patently obvious that
1. The structure of scientific methodology means that it is not, and cannot ever be, purely objective. Most scientists admit this.
2. So far, there are things in this world which science has not got a handle on, but that art, the humanities, and (dare I say it?) religion seem to engage with more successfully.

 

[Grievous Angel]

Stelfox Vs Effay: Seconds out, round two

My point was about critical theory contra scientific theory. I have a suspicion that when you say 'science', you actually mean 'engineering'.

... a point you could do with expounding on a little. I think putting the word "engineering" into Dave's mouth is a terrible faux pas, you gotta do better than that brotha!

theory is by any definition, simply opinion. science is based in fact, as far as we can discern, therefore give me science any day over theory.

Glib or what! C'mon Stelfox you can do better than that! Posting in a hurry were we?

1. The structure of scientific methodology means that it is not, and cannot ever be, purely objective. Most scientists admit this.

Excellent response...

I would point out however that it's not at all clear that "most scientists" would accept that science cannot be purely objective in a way which made that acceptance truly meaningful. Most, if not all, philosophers of science, yes, but I'm not sure all scientists do so.

Otherwise, why would zeteticism exist?

2. So far, there are things in this world which science has not got a handle on, but that art, the humanities, and (dare I say it?) religion seem to engage with more successfully.

... and not a bad expansion of your argument.

Of course, to refer back to the origin of this thread, if you get three scientists and three academics from the humanities in a room, and got them stoned, then you'd really be on the way to getting a handle on "art, the humanities, and (dare I say it?) religion".

Required reading for this thread: The New Inquisition by Robert Anton Wilson.

 

[stelfox]

well i'd rather have proper, real science that attempts to be empirical than nonsensical pseudo-scientific rambling from people who don't even bother to check widely available facts. i am not letting go of this one. high-level consumption of THC has been seen to drastically lower levels of three major male hormones in a number of human and animal subjects. therefore weed smoking DOES NOT make you male, if anything it makes you LESS male. i am correct and i have science on my side. why is that so hard to accept?

 

[Grievous Angel]

well i'd rather have proper, real science that attempts to be empirical than nonsensical pseudo-scientific rambling from people who don't even bother to check widely available facts.

Woah fella! Easy now. We're all friends here. Back to your dislike of theory... theory isn't opinion. C'mon, you must know that! Same thing as... well, a lot of philosophers of science would say that what science comes up with -- the best that science comes up with -- is theory. It has a hypothesis, goes out looking or evidence either way, comes up with an idea of what's going on -- and that's always a theory. Newton's laws? Theory. Quantum mechanics -- the single most useful, most proven, most mind-boggling idea to come out of a dandruff-strewn lab -- it's a theory. 'S what they call it in the trade, and why paradigms collapse. You read any Thomas Kuhn? Thought you had.

By the way -- on weed making your balls shrink or something -- well, it's been a while since I talked seriously with a genito-urologist about this, I think it was 2000 in fact, but what I heard back then was that it was a suggestion, not yet proven. But let's face it, if you're facing a lack of testosterone in the trouser snake department a quick blast of Sizzla should boost yer levels, so what Mary taketh away, she also giveth!

And anyway, I have two bouncing baby boys, so I may be limp, but I got balls of steel and every seed-shot's a winner!

 

[mms]

i was reading about the brain making it's own natural marijuana-like compounds called endocannibaloids, research has exposed a new type of signalling system in the brain based around them, it's a retrograde system that only usually occurs when the nervous system is developing, so it's quite unusual.

work being done on it could produce some of the benefits that cannibis has on the brain when it contacts cannibaloid receptors (the proteins imbedded in the membranes of the cells, like neurons etc).

the benefits are the ones that scientists have proposed for a while , ie pain regulation, control of anxiety, inducing hunger and controlling vomiting, nausea, anxiety and neurological disorders etc, things which are useful for treating various disceases but without the side affects like paranoia etc and the side affects that Mark points out + possibly some of the nauseous social aspects that have grown around dope smoking .

My question is, if a readily avaliable pill that gave some of the benefits and pleasures of smoking weed by working with the endocannibaloids, would the smokers here take it, and quit smoking, sitting around in rooms watching the bill, barely talking and all that shit?

 

[stelfox]

i'd have hoped it was obvious that i was being deliberately glib re the theory/opinion thing. however, i do prefer science to philosophy and critical theory. i find it a lot more interesting, simple as that, and i admire the approach more... there's something more tangible and rigorous about scientific research than there is in formulating ideas that tokers are all part of the global-kapitalist konspiracy or that lawyers are evil etc.

 

[Grievous Angel]

My question is, if a readily avaliable pill that gave some of the benefits and pleasures of smoking weed by working with the endocannibaloids, would the smokers here take it, and quit smoking, sitting around in rooms watching the bill, barely talking and all that shit?

On the one hand, I'm interested in legalisation and better ways of smoking organically grown skunk for those rare moments of repose in my busy parental life.

On the other -- sitting around in rooms watching the bill, barely talking -- I just don't get any of this. I cannot for the life of me sit down and mong out, and even less so when I am stoned. Can't do it. I think my wife would actually like it if I could actually sit down and just let it all hang out in front of the telly for a few hours but I find it tooth grindingly frustrating.

Similarly, just sitting and smoking and not doing anything is... purgatory. Maybe I can just mellow out into music but not often. I have to be doing something -- usually making music, writing or, all too frequently, working.

This idea that stoners just sit there and vegetate is just weird from my POV.

 

[mms]

On the one hand, I'm interested in legalisation and better ways of smoking organically grown skunk for those rare moments of repose in my busy parental life.

On the other -- sitting around in rooms watching the bill, barely talking -- I just don't get any of this. I cannot for the life of me sit down and mong out, and even less so when I am stoned. Can't do it. I think my wife would actually like it if I could actually sit down and just let it all hang out in front of the telly for a few hours but I find it tooth grindingly frustrating.

Similarly, just sitting and smoking and not doing anything is... purgatory. Maybe I can just mellow out into music but not often. I have to be doing something -- usually making music, writing or, all too frequently, working.

This idea that stoners just sit there and vegetate is just weird from my POV.

yeah i was winding up, hence the cheeky wink.

but it does have adverse neuroticisms in all the heavy smokers i've met, different ones mind, but a cluster of them that are easy to identify as cons of smoking weed. I've found it incredibly frustrating in the past.
Also for a non smoker like me, sitting with a group of people smoking weed is totally incredibly boring. although i have been known to smoke it sometimes when bubbling near a speaker.
Used to smoke it alot, started at 14 stopped smoking everyday at about 17.

 

[johneffay]

... a point you could do with expounding on a little. I think putting the word "engineering" into Dave's mouth is a terrible faux pas, you gotta do better than that brotha!

Fair enough, the distinction I'm making is between theoretical and practical science; I would suggest that engineering is shorthand for the latter.

Stelfox, I agree with your point about THC and masculinity. Masculinity encompasses many things, but on one level at least, it is tied to certain hormones. If THC reduces these hormones in the body, it is a significant point against a puportedly materialist argument. I have a great dislike of all this supposed anti-essentialist discourse which then goes on to make generalisations about sexual difference. It's the idea that scientific theory is purely objective, but critical theory is all doxa which I'm not happy about.

Actually moving on topic for once: Sweeping statements about the effects of any drugs are obviously so reductionist as to be useless. If you want empirical evidence for this, you only need to look at the wealth of material on the placebo effect.

If most people who smoke dope sit around doing fuck-all; so what? A lot of people who don't smoke dope sit around doing fuck-all most of the time as well. Many people who take speed run around a lot but accomplish very little; some get loads done. As (I think) 2stepfan said it's all down to how and why you do it.

Then there's always the question of what's wrong with demotivation if it breaks the Protestant Work Ethic.

 

[Grievous Angel]

As (I think) 2stepfan said it's all down to how and why you do it.

I might have said that, but I'm too stoned now to remember.

It's work that's the real drug. Can't get enough of it!

 

[captain easychord]

Similarly, just sitting and smoking and not doing anything is... purgatory. Maybe I can just mellow out into music but not often. I have to be doing something -- usually making music, writing or, all too frequently, working.

This idea that stoners just sit there and vegetate is just weird from my POV.

exactly. this has also been my experience. i think if you've been smoking for a while you kind of get over this phenomenological hump and master the drug's effects. i remember the first few times smoking back in the day involved me sitting on a couch thinking awful thoughts, still, totally incapacitated. now i find the effects (much like 2stepfan) to be amphetamine-like if anything. i get stimulated, my lateral pathways become unhinged (DJ'ing gets a lot better, music production, sonic texture comes to the fore).

there's this great bit a rap documentary called "the show" dating back from the early 90's. there's an interview with method man where he discusses the positive effects of pot on his rhyming. he refers to really powerful hydro as "that head banger boogey shit", about it unleashing his ability to freestyle. i think that's what pot means to a lot of people, especially rappers.

 

[sufi]

weed for president

phenomenological hump

seen!

adverse neuroticisms

seen!
please list a few, just for a larf, maybe i can add some to my collection!

lateral pathways become unhinged

seen!

apart from this positive philosophical effect, weed's status has always meant that it has been an outcast clandestine thing, so smokers are like a secret anti-society, a stigmatised independent culture excluded from norms.
in this way, pot is a very positive social force, providing autonmous networks of like minded freaks communicating exclusively across lateral unhinged pathways . whether de-criminalising,legailsing or whatever would change that, who the fuck knows?

 

[mms]

apart from this positive philosophical effect, weed's status has always meant that it has been an outcast clandestine thing, so smokers are like a secret anti-society, a stigmatised independent culture excluded from norms.
in this way, pot is a very positive social force, providing autonmous networks of like minded freaks communicating exclusively across lateral unhinged pathways . whether de-criminalising,legailsing or whatever would change that, who the fuck knows?

and then it wears off eh?
this is of course dopehead rubbish, you could say the same thing about bunch of drunks in the park.

 

[MBM]

By a strange coincidence

I got stoned for the first time in months last night. It was horrible!

The feeling the next morning of being woozy and uncoordinated. At least with a hangover you want to get stuff done the next day (if only to take the pain away).

And apparently, it's turning me into a girl as well...

 

[&catherine]

Pseudo-scientific ramblings?

well i'd rather have proper, real science that attempts to be empirical than nonsensical pseudo-scientific rambling from people who don't even bother to check widely available facts. i am not letting go of this one. high-level consumption of THC has been seen to drastically lower levels of three major male hormones in a number of human and animal subjects. therefore weed smoking DOES NOT make you male, if anything it makes you LESS male. i am correct and i have science on my side. why is that so hard to accept?

The point that I tried to make was not about the 'facts' themselves. What was not 'accepted' - what was in dispute - was the definition of what it is that these concepts/categories of 'male' and 'female' mean.

Science as a discipline doesn't really deal with problems of meaning. It's the difference between giving a list of the the material things that make up a book (paper, ink, thread for binding...) and explaining or attempting to understand what this book is 'saying', how one should interpret it... The physical 'facts' themselves can't tell you the latter. K-punk's points were not only about the behaviour that smoking influences/engenders, but also set out a characterisation of the hegemonic cultural positions that weed makes easier for people to perpetuate through idleness and inertia. There was never a squabble about the 'facts'. (Aside from people posting here with their own pot-related experiences that they believe to corroborate/contradict Mark's characterisation of "Chronic Demotivation".)

In other words, perhaps there isn't such a conflict between what you're saying about the effects of THC on hormones, and Mark's comments on stoner behaviour. It's just that you're both making points in different 'categories' or from disciplinary perspectives.

And to generalise a little from here, I'd say that the conflict that is set up between 'science' on the one side, and 'cultural' disciplines on the other (including psychology, much philosophy, theology, literature...) is often a false one. You don't have to 'choose' between adherence to biology or philosophy, so long as you recognise that each answers a quite different set of questions. (Though some people use the banner of Science in order to support a partial political-subjective position by dressing it up in the robes of Objective Fact, so that it can appear to be 'irrefutable'. A pertinent example of this could be the claim that women are somehow hard-wired to be nurturing and caring through their biology. The authority of science normalises and makes such cultural products - ideologies - seem 'natural'. File it in the same box as politicians' claims that for reasons of "national security", the draconian legislation that they are proposing should receive "bipartisan support" )

Given this, perhaps the comments that you categorise as 'pseudo-scientific rambling' appear as such because they were never trying to masquerade as science in the first place.

 

[&catherine]

the best question i've ever heard: "so, art... what does it actually do?"

There's actually quite a large body of literature about this, if you're interested. The condition of art in 'modernity' (a much-disputed category in itself) is often defined as being 'without purpose', so that art has become 'autonomous'. (I use the overabundance of little quote-marks, in case they seem characteristic of some affection plaguing so-called 'post-modern' academic writing, in order to indicate that this is the terminology that is used in the debates themselves, rather than something that I'm pulling out of my hat right now.) So, whereas art served a purpose in previous centuries - religious, or portraiture for the wealthy - it now finds itself in the paradoxical situation of having ultimate freedom that comes at the cost of being trapped in this 'useless' bubble (kind of like academic writing, no? ).

A few big-name German cultural theorists have quite a bit to say about this. Theodor Adorno, for example, finds that this it is this 'useless' quality of art - its inability to be employed for utilitarian purposes - that makes it 'democratic' (I think this is the word he uses. Check out his Notes to Literature for more detail). He also argues that art which unequivocally supports a 'cause', no matter how good the cause is, may as well be propaganda in its 'form'. He makes this argument against Jean-Paul Sartre's idea of committed art.

So yes, art doesn't 'do' much. It hasn't been popular with a lot of key philosophical figures over the ages, including Plato, who argued that actors and playwrights should be banished from the ideal republic. But even so, it can raise questions and do things that many other works just cannot do. So I don't really think you can hold it over art that it isn't that useful.

 

[&catherine]

what was in dispute - was the definition of what it is that these concepts/categories of 'male' and 'female' mean.

Oh, and to clarify in advance - I'm not endorsing the position: "masculinity and femininity are just constructs, maan, we're all just texts, there are no such things as bodies". Just pointing out that it's more than hormones.

Oh, and apologies for going on a rather distant tangent with the post above

 

[Backjob]

Oh, and to clarify in advance - I'm not endorsing the position: "masculinity and femininity are just constructs, maan, we're all just texts, there are no such things as bodies". Just pointing out that it's more than hormones.

Thank fuck for that!

And to generalise a little from here, I'd say that the conflict that is set up between 'science' on the one side, and 'cultural' disciplines on the other (including psychology, much philosophy, theology, literature...) is often a false one. You don't have to 'choose' between adherence to biology or philosophy, so long as you recognise that each answers a quite different set of questions. (Though some people use the banner of Science in order to support a partial political-subjective position by dressing it up in the robes of Objective Fact, so that it can appear to be 'irrefutable'. A pertinent example of this could be the claim that women are somehow hard-wired to be nurturing and caring through their biology. The authority of science normalises and makes such cultural products - ideologies - seem 'natural'.

Yeah well, this is the difficult bit. I'm no "scientist" but I did do a degree in it, and studied a lot of philosophy of science, and the tricky bit that people without science training always get mixed up are these two issues of, firstly, whether science is "fact" or "theory", and secondly the statistical meaning of statements like "women are more nurturing than men".

Science isn't "fact" because it is disputable. But it's not just theory either. It's a particular type of theory arrived at using a methodology. Science means that you produce a testable hypothesis about something and then test it empirically, and publish your results and your methodology so that others can replicate and confirm your results. The key words are "testable" and "replicate". If you adhere to those principles, then a hypothesis that has been tested and replicated can accurately be said to be the current "best guess" at the truth given current resources. Hence my "to the best of our knowledge" comment earlier.

You probably know this, but I say it to make the point that no real scientist should ever claim that science is "objective fact". Science is science, not fact. But science is much closer to fact than a theory not arrived at and tested using scientific method...

As for "women are more nurturing than men" - people can and do make such statements, but they only make sense in a statistical context, meaning on average women exhibit more of a certain type of behaviour. Which is not the same as saying either that all women behave like that, or that this behaviour is caused by having two X chromosomes...

set out a characterisation of the hegemonic cultural positions that weed makes easier for people to perpetuate through idleness and inertia.

So let me get this one straight:

Men are in control (are the hegemony).
Smoking weed makes you more like a man (in terms of the social construct of masculinity).
Smoking weed makes you inert.

So weed gives men more control by making them more inert? Weird...

...adverse neuroticisms...

Ask a smoker how they are today and recieve a ten-minute rundown on their mental state...

 

[Wrong]

Not that anyone should need any evidence that scientists have a thorough grasp of theory, but theorists have very little grasp of science, but if you want proof, you need look no further than the <a href="http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html">Sokal hoax</a>.

The irony is that one of the things the Sokal hoax showed was that Sokal didn't understand theory - he thought he was writing nonsense, when actually he was just writing mediocre theory. It's a demonstration that postmodernists are right to be hostile to judging texts by reference to authorial intention.

 

[stelfox]

backjob has actually distilled one of my points perfectly.
patrirachal hegemony hasn't exactly been maintained by men doing nothing!
the *whole* of mark's diatribe was based on massive, sweeping generalisations and stereotypes.
this is obviously not useful
anyway, from now i will view everything from a perspective of cold scientific reason.
all this has made me realise that anything else is pointless.