Cocaine & the Philosophy of Science
10 January 2016 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
so that's it that's really all I had to
say about a boss who steal this video hi my name is Ken today I kind of want to bring some attention to a channel that I've really been getting into the channel it's called a boss lay seal I apologize if I'm butchering the name uh-huh new yen base out guys Zinnemann begins with the illusion that i'm working my way through this stack of books but in fact it's simply the case that some of the books have been taken out of this stack to sit underneath the microphone I'm gonna be reading the same stack of books for quite a while for better force um the other week I had an assignment during the first week of new classes to come in and talk about a book that had influenced me in some profound and meaningful way relevant to the course and one of my first thoughts was actually to talk about a book that I had in my mind lately about the history of cocaine and the philosophy of science I'm just gonna say a little bit about that here to start with an anecdote though the first time I encountered cocaine was actually in my second year of high school one of my high school teachers was apparently a cocaine user I would say a regular cocaine user rather than a cocaine addict but obviously I'm not in a position to really know when she was fired and she was fired somewhat suddenly and unexpectedly the story was that it was for cocaine use and I can't even say that was a rumor that was just what I was told in point of fact and from the first day I met her her behavior was erratic in a very peculiar way that I later came to recognize as a sign of cocaine use and she you know sniffed at her nose in a strange way was constantly fussing about her nose would leave the classroom and come back suddenly a lot more cheerful and so on she had all the signs of hey of a coke user and as the same when she was fired that was the reason given that was my second year of high school so in many ways mentally I was still a kid and her erratic behavior I mean she gave lectures in a kind of unexpected and irreverent and directionless manner but some of the lecture she gave that had no relation to the the sentiment of the course actually we're very memorable and very wise and really stayed with me but you know at that age like sit down a class and I you know I often wouldn't even be making eye contact with her while she was giving these lectures sort of look down at the desk you know very different from the way you you actively listen to slang and learned something as an adult I remember one day she came in and I gave this lecture on rape and freedom and how you know living in a democracy in a country with freedom necessarily entailed fear and taking risks and and she traveled around the world and she would prefer to live in a country that was dangerous and where there was the danger of rape than living in a country that was absolutely safe and we're basically patriarchy was constantly protecting women and separating women from the rough-and-tumble of society but where there was no risk of rape really bizarre lecture and and probably inappropriate for a high school classroom but obviously it was also delivered with passion she talked about her experiences traveling in Latin America possibly where she was introduced to cocaine and you know while she was saying it you're sitting there as a as a kid thinking why the hell is she talking but later on you look back and think that was one of the most interesting days I had in high school we had a book that did change my life in a somewhat subtle but profound way and I can't really cite the book here the title was just Freud and cocaine and in googling it now I found there's actually more than one book titled Freud and cocaine so I'm not sure which it is but this book it included anecdotes in general about the history of the scientific response to the discovery of cocaine with comparisons to the discovery of heroin opium and I think some brief comparison - to the discovery of tobacco but I had actually read about the scientific response to tobacco just in in courses and classes previously so that that was not that was one comparison I already had in mind there's this remarkable pattern which you get even with tobacco people thought tobacco was a wonder drug people thought tobacco could cure deafness by blowing tobacco into your ears tobacco when it's applied to your extremities or your senses one of the effects is simply causing tingling and all these magical curative properties were attributed to tobacco basically because of this tingling alone now cocaine has effects far beyond causing tingling but tingling and numbness are one part of the medically real effect of cocaine and what this study showed this book demonstrated was that Sigmund Freud at a crucial early phase of his career attributed the efficacy of his therapies his experimental therapies really to the effects of cocaine to massively simplify what's quite a complicated and fascinating chapter in the world's history one of the effects of cocaine is to cause is localized anaesthetic localized anesthesia so when it's applied to the nose one of the effects is numbness in the nose now Freud had a theoretical approach the nose many mammals their sexual response is linked to smell is linked to the nose and Freud thought that when he was giving his patients cocaine he was just causing localized anesthesia in the nose he didn't think the other drug effects were happening so it's led to and it's not complicated it's just difficult to kind of give a reasonable summary of it this led to him firstly massively overrating the efficacy of his talking cure at an early stage and in his early days it wasn't just talking cure he was playing around with he was fooling around with a number of experimental therapy shall we say but if you administer cocaine to a patient and then talk to them about their emotional problems or use any other therapeutic method and then they come back to you the next session and say wow you know after our session last week I felt like all my problems have been lifted off my shoulder and and this is very important - to Freud and suddenly I felt the relief of all my sexual inhibitions and my sex life with my husband or wife dramatically changed for the better etcetera now this is of course reflective of short-term cocaine use often comes with a seeming increase in libido or at least the disappearance of sexual inhibitions long-term cocaine use is associated with declining sexual appetite and often coke addicts lose all interest in sex entirely mm-hmm but for Freud and how he thought about psychological health and the role of sexuality this led directly to his belief that all neurosis in principle is sexual and - his whole approach to the mind and therapy uh now look okay so this is a simple scientific anecdote although one that was massively influential in history of the world because Sigmund Freud went on to found a sort of philosophy of mind that influenced millions of people and impacted millions of lives through psychotherapy and so on but in my life I mean I got to see some of the same themes play out again with the Western infatuation with SSRI drugs with serotonin inhibiting drugs the various forms of antidepressants and all kinds of fad theories sometimes based on a scrap of real science that basically come down to what's called the enhanced osebo effect you can actually see a lot about the enhance placebo effects on YouTube it's one of James Randy's favorite themes I can't think offhand of something really good he posted about that but the point is here the placebo effect alone just means you're given a drug that has no effect whatsoever but enhance placebo is that I give you a drug that has an irrelevant effect so if I give you a drug that just causes tingling then you can feel it working right you can feel an effect of some kind and then it's very easy for people to attribute all kinds of changes in their lives to the effect of that drug because it has a non-zero effect it's not just a placebo it's an enhanced placebo effect for my generation the threat of nuclear war was the single most powerful symbol of science of the philosophy of science the invention of the atom bomb and then the decisive conclusion to the United States is war with Japan with the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by nuclear arms for me personally as a child and as a very young teenager vivisection the use of experimentation on animals very decisive and important aspect of philosophy of science later I read other works of I'm not gonna get into the stuff at read when I was a university student or an adult obviously once you're more sophisticated these things change again but I mean reading that work on cocaine and Sigmund Freud in terms of the the procedures of science and how scientific discoveries or seeming scientific discoveries can change the way a whole society perceives itself that was a that was a very powerful insight in my life without adding too much that length this video to talk about the implications for the rest of my life I'd point out that very clearly this relates to the fact that I never was seduced by the pseudo-scientific claims that existed within Buddhism from day one of my involvement with Buddhism are regarded the claims of psychological and semi-scientific effects of meditation with skepticism with true skepticism which is still so hard to find and you can find recent reflections of mind in my videos attacking sam harris who's shown himself to be a shameful imbecile in you know sifting through totally unreliable laughable fishing expedition science cargo cult science and picking it up as proof of the efficacy of meditation getting all kinds of facts that stuff never seduced me and reading this book and thinking about the history of science in this way was part of that and then also when I got involved with vegetarianism and veganism which was earlier then I was involved with Buddhism I guess again the pseudoscience just did not interest me it wasn't my reason for getting involved it also wasn't a reason for me to to not be involved but I mean you know freelee and durianrider telling you that garlic contains a neurotoxin they used to use the word neurotoxin a lot more frequently on that channel than they do now they've responded to criticism telling you that you can eat unlimited calories as long as their carbohydrates and never gain weight oh yeah and how does that relate to the laws of physics you know these are just a few examples but obviously there's always been a lot of pseudoscience floating around veganism but of course also there's even more pseudoscience in terms of the justifications for eating meat and again as with Sigmund Freud's theories you know there's an enhanced placebo effect of the core of that eating a ton of protein from animal meat it does have an effect it causes tingling if you like it causes a subjective feeling many people report a subjective feeling of wellness basically whenever they eat something that contains a ton of salt a ton of fat and a ton of protein and many people get that from from animal sources at obvious there's a whole realm of pseudoscience trying to prove to you that the ancient Inuit were perfectly healthy before Europeans arrived and started feeding them plants as opposed to their you know miraculously healthy diet of seal blubber and raw fish stuff is never gonna end but anyway sorry if I spoke about the implications of this in my life this video would be much much longer this is just a short note to say that yeah this isn't just about cocaine direct competition for the vegan cheetah by my diet book by my yoga DVD by my t-shirts will mana products don't
say about a boss who steal this video hi my name is Ken today I kind of want to bring some attention to a channel that I've really been getting into the channel it's called a boss lay seal I apologize if I'm butchering the name uh-huh new yen base out guys Zinnemann begins with the illusion that i'm working my way through this stack of books but in fact it's simply the case that some of the books have been taken out of this stack to sit underneath the microphone I'm gonna be reading the same stack of books for quite a while for better force um the other week I had an assignment during the first week of new classes to come in and talk about a book that had influenced me in some profound and meaningful way relevant to the course and one of my first thoughts was actually to talk about a book that I had in my mind lately about the history of cocaine and the philosophy of science I'm just gonna say a little bit about that here to start with an anecdote though the first time I encountered cocaine was actually in my second year of high school one of my high school teachers was apparently a cocaine user I would say a regular cocaine user rather than a cocaine addict but obviously I'm not in a position to really know when she was fired and she was fired somewhat suddenly and unexpectedly the story was that it was for cocaine use and I can't even say that was a rumor that was just what I was told in point of fact and from the first day I met her her behavior was erratic in a very peculiar way that I later came to recognize as a sign of cocaine use and she you know sniffed at her nose in a strange way was constantly fussing about her nose would leave the classroom and come back suddenly a lot more cheerful and so on she had all the signs of hey of a coke user and as the same when she was fired that was the reason given that was my second year of high school so in many ways mentally I was still a kid and her erratic behavior I mean she gave lectures in a kind of unexpected and irreverent and directionless manner but some of the lecture she gave that had no relation to the the sentiment of the course actually we're very memorable and very wise and really stayed with me but you know at that age like sit down a class and I you know I often wouldn't even be making eye contact with her while she was giving these lectures sort of look down at the desk you know very different from the way you you actively listen to slang and learned something as an adult I remember one day she came in and I gave this lecture on rape and freedom and how you know living in a democracy in a country with freedom necessarily entailed fear and taking risks and and she traveled around the world and she would prefer to live in a country that was dangerous and where there was the danger of rape than living in a country that was absolutely safe and we're basically patriarchy was constantly protecting women and separating women from the rough-and-tumble of society but where there was no risk of rape really bizarre lecture and and probably inappropriate for a high school classroom but obviously it was also delivered with passion she talked about her experiences traveling in Latin America possibly where she was introduced to cocaine and you know while she was saying it you're sitting there as a as a kid thinking why the hell is she talking but later on you look back and think that was one of the most interesting days I had in high school we had a book that did change my life in a somewhat subtle but profound way and I can't really cite the book here the title was just Freud and cocaine and in googling it now I found there's actually more than one book titled Freud and cocaine so I'm not sure which it is but this book it included anecdotes in general about the history of the scientific response to the discovery of cocaine with comparisons to the discovery of heroin opium and I think some brief comparison - to the discovery of tobacco but I had actually read about the scientific response to tobacco just in in courses and classes previously so that that was not that was one comparison I already had in mind there's this remarkable pattern which you get even with tobacco people thought tobacco was a wonder drug people thought tobacco could cure deafness by blowing tobacco into your ears tobacco when it's applied to your extremities or your senses one of the effects is simply causing tingling and all these magical curative properties were attributed to tobacco basically because of this tingling alone now cocaine has effects far beyond causing tingling but tingling and numbness are one part of the medically real effect of cocaine and what this study showed this book demonstrated was that Sigmund Freud at a crucial early phase of his career attributed the efficacy of his therapies his experimental therapies really to the effects of cocaine to massively simplify what's quite a complicated and fascinating chapter in the world's history one of the effects of cocaine is to cause is localized anaesthetic localized anesthesia so when it's applied to the nose one of the effects is numbness in the nose now Freud had a theoretical approach the nose many mammals their sexual response is linked to smell is linked to the nose and Freud thought that when he was giving his patients cocaine he was just causing localized anesthesia in the nose he didn't think the other drug effects were happening so it's led to and it's not complicated it's just difficult to kind of give a reasonable summary of it this led to him firstly massively overrating the efficacy of his talking cure at an early stage and in his early days it wasn't just talking cure he was playing around with he was fooling around with a number of experimental therapy shall we say but if you administer cocaine to a patient and then talk to them about their emotional problems or use any other therapeutic method and then they come back to you the next session and say wow you know after our session last week I felt like all my problems have been lifted off my shoulder and and this is very important - to Freud and suddenly I felt the relief of all my sexual inhibitions and my sex life with my husband or wife dramatically changed for the better etcetera now this is of course reflective of short-term cocaine use often comes with a seeming increase in libido or at least the disappearance of sexual inhibitions long-term cocaine use is associated with declining sexual appetite and often coke addicts lose all interest in sex entirely mm-hmm but for Freud and how he thought about psychological health and the role of sexuality this led directly to his belief that all neurosis in principle is sexual and - his whole approach to the mind and therapy uh now look okay so this is a simple scientific anecdote although one that was massively influential in history of the world because Sigmund Freud went on to found a sort of philosophy of mind that influenced millions of people and impacted millions of lives through psychotherapy and so on but in my life I mean I got to see some of the same themes play out again with the Western infatuation with SSRI drugs with serotonin inhibiting drugs the various forms of antidepressants and all kinds of fad theories sometimes based on a scrap of real science that basically come down to what's called the enhanced osebo effect you can actually see a lot about the enhance placebo effects on YouTube it's one of James Randy's favorite themes I can't think offhand of something really good he posted about that but the point is here the placebo effect alone just means you're given a drug that has no effect whatsoever but enhance placebo is that I give you a drug that has an irrelevant effect so if I give you a drug that just causes tingling then you can feel it working right you can feel an effect of some kind and then it's very easy for people to attribute all kinds of changes in their lives to the effect of that drug because it has a non-zero effect it's not just a placebo it's an enhanced placebo effect for my generation the threat of nuclear war was the single most powerful symbol of science of the philosophy of science the invention of the atom bomb and then the decisive conclusion to the United States is war with Japan with the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by nuclear arms for me personally as a child and as a very young teenager vivisection the use of experimentation on animals very decisive and important aspect of philosophy of science later I read other works of I'm not gonna get into the stuff at read when I was a university student or an adult obviously once you're more sophisticated these things change again but I mean reading that work on cocaine and Sigmund Freud in terms of the the procedures of science and how scientific discoveries or seeming scientific discoveries can change the way a whole society perceives itself that was a that was a very powerful insight in my life without adding too much that length this video to talk about the implications for the rest of my life I'd point out that very clearly this relates to the fact that I never was seduced by the pseudo-scientific claims that existed within Buddhism from day one of my involvement with Buddhism are regarded the claims of psychological and semi-scientific effects of meditation with skepticism with true skepticism which is still so hard to find and you can find recent reflections of mind in my videos attacking sam harris who's shown himself to be a shameful imbecile in you know sifting through totally unreliable laughable fishing expedition science cargo cult science and picking it up as proof of the efficacy of meditation getting all kinds of facts that stuff never seduced me and reading this book and thinking about the history of science in this way was part of that and then also when I got involved with vegetarianism and veganism which was earlier then I was involved with Buddhism I guess again the pseudoscience just did not interest me it wasn't my reason for getting involved it also wasn't a reason for me to to not be involved but I mean you know freelee and durianrider telling you that garlic contains a neurotoxin they used to use the word neurotoxin a lot more frequently on that channel than they do now they've responded to criticism telling you that you can eat unlimited calories as long as their carbohydrates and never gain weight oh yeah and how does that relate to the laws of physics you know these are just a few examples but obviously there's always been a lot of pseudoscience floating around veganism but of course also there's even more pseudoscience in terms of the justifications for eating meat and again as with Sigmund Freud's theories you know there's an enhanced placebo effect of the core of that eating a ton of protein from animal meat it does have an effect it causes tingling if you like it causes a subjective feeling many people report a subjective feeling of wellness basically whenever they eat something that contains a ton of salt a ton of fat and a ton of protein and many people get that from from animal sources at obvious there's a whole realm of pseudoscience trying to prove to you that the ancient Inuit were perfectly healthy before Europeans arrived and started feeding them plants as opposed to their you know miraculously healthy diet of seal blubber and raw fish stuff is never gonna end but anyway sorry if I spoke about the implications of this in my life this video would be much much longer this is just a short note to say that yeah this isn't just about cocaine direct competition for the vegan cheetah by my diet book by my yoga DVD by my t-shirts will mana products don't