Probability (or lack of it) for designer -customer-based- mind-altering drugs?

[Kyriakos]

I think it won't happen, and by designer/custom-based drugs i mean (for a general example) a drug which if taken will replace sensory output X with Y, as in the person will now see the sky as purple, or view ants as lego blocks.

I think this can be manufactured in an individual basis, but not in the capacity to alter it to other people in a finite number of changes to the drug. Ie a set person may have such an effect of the custom drug, but the drug won't at all have this effect on the next person. Likely the effect there would be very difficult to even tie to the first taker's experience/alteration of sense.

What is your view? Can such drugs be created or not? (meaning drugs which will target specific sensory output as such, in more than one human).

The reason i don't think it can happen is because likely there are myriads of crucial differences in how any sense is experienced in an individual human.

 

[Daw]

I think it won't happen

I hope it won't happen, actually. In fact, some people are very capable of popping out utter nonsense and all sorts of weird stuff even when they're sober.

What is your view? Can such drugs be created or not? (meaning drugs which will target specific sensory output as such, in more than one human).

Theoretically, I think they can be created, probably.

But there is a list of problems to go through before that can happen:

- Are we sure we see the world identically now, or we just understand each other because we use same words to identify same things (although we perceive them differently)?
- Individually designed drugs will call for:

• individual diagnostics to find out how that particular person sees the world at the baseline / by default;
• which things are responsible for every association/perception made;
• which are to be altered to get the needed result;
• what is the needed result in the first place;
• who will be the audience and whether or not they will need some altered perception to appreciate the "art".

Then we talk about the costs.

An easier to implement "art" will be a technology enabling scanning, recording and visualizing people's dreams. No drugs, universal approach, tons of creepy nightmarish twisted art objects.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

So you find VR dangerous but would like to have drugs so strong to make ants look like lego blocks.

 

[Kyriakos]

^I don't want to, i am merely noting that such drugs likely will be functioning only for a single person in each form (and to alter form to use in analogous manner on a second person pretty much would need a hugely different drug, effectively a new drug).

@Daw: yes, that is why i don't think it can happen. We communicate in a manner which does not take into notice the vast differences in how we sense stuff or identify sense/thought.

 

[warpus]

Once we have a more complete understanding of how our brains work (I think right now our understanding is fairly pathetic overall) and are able to build nanoprobes that are able to block receptors in our brains and do other things like that.. then maybe. But I'm not sure how good drugs would be at that. Maybe a drug & nano mix?

 

[Kyriakos]

I suppose the mind already has its own nanoprobe analogous. Afterall can something (mentally for us) assume state A if inherently it cannot assume a near infinity of other/connected states?

In other words: if some sensation was not inherently a part of a pool of other 'similar' ones, then it likely would not be identified as anything in the first place, for we cannot identify something we have no sense of being subject to change. That includes the idea of change or stability. I doubt it remains constant even for the single person, let alone all possible human minds.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

I don't think it's necessarily impossible for this kind of thing to exist, but we're nowhere near being able to do it. We can't even make drugs that stop people from being depressed that don't come loaded with a bunch of side effects that are arguably worse than what they're curing. Our understanding of neurochemistry is still in its infancy.

 

[The_J]

Not sure what the question here is....
Can we produce drugs, which will screw over your brain/a random person's brain? Yes we can.
Can they be altered in a high througput way? Yeah, the drug cartells are already doing that (someone from the european drug legalisation....department, whatever, complained that they're changing so fast/much that bureaucracy is too slow to forbid them)
Can they be altered, that they only work on YOU and on no other person? No way. The chemical receptors for a chemical have in all human beings (exceptions apply) in general the same structure (exceptions apply), and you'll not be able to make something so specific that it only fits to 1 out of 7 billion.

 

[Kyriakos]

^That is a different effect, though. I mean an (eg) anti-depressant has a function deemed as specific as an over-arching effect (makes you feel less depressed). I was posting about a hypothetical drug which would have an effect of the variety of making you sense X specifically as Y (eg an ant as a lego block). That doesn't seem to be a function formed in a common manner on all humans (cause it is way more specific and a final output), unlike the receptors dealing with overall/general mood effects.

 

[warpus]

A good hypnotist should be able to do that to someone. Not everyone though, as their methods don't really work on everyone.

 

[Kyriakos]

^Yeah, but hypnotism is not working as a drug (it is word-based, obviously), and it was banned as a practice after a while. Iirc it was even abandoned during Freud's own timeline of practice, due to causing extreme side-effects..

 

[warpus]

Hypnotism isn't banned as a whole, it's probably just banned for shrinks to use as treatment or something like that. Hypnotists are usually entertainers these days, they go around and charge people money to sit in large crowds and watch people be hypnotized.

But anyway, that just points me at my next point - It seems that what you are trying to accomplish might not be a hardware question but rather a software one. I.e. Maybe a drug might not be able to accomplish this, because drugs do not work at a high enough level.

Essentially you might be asking: "How do I change my website's colour to blue" but also "What change do I make to the motherboard to achieve this?"

 

[Kyriakos]

Hypnotism isn't banned as a whole, it's probably just banned for shrinks to use as treatment or something like that. Hypnotists are usually entertainers these days, they go around and charge people money to sit in large crowds and watch people be hypnotized.

But anyway, that just points me at my next point - It seems that what you are trying to accomplish might not be a hardware question but rather a software one. I.e. Maybe a drug might not be able to accomplish this, because drugs do not work at a high enough level.

Essentially you might be asking: "How do I change my website's colour to blue" but also "What change do I make to the motherboard to achieve this?"

Yes, cause if you turn your website blue through a motherboard change, that change is hugely more ingrained on the system now. You'd literally need to change the machine back, to cancel it.

 

[warpus]

The point is that there is no way to turn your website's background blue, and only your website's background blue, by screwing around with the motherboard.

 

[Aea]

The point is that there is no way to turn your website's background blue, and only your website's background blue, by screwing around with the motherboard.

Yes there is. :/

 

[Kyriakos]

The point is that there is no way to turn your website's background blue, and only your website's background blue, by screwing around with the motherboard.

Yes, but notice the topic being (in the analogous of your example) about changing all similarly identified X color (background specific *might* or might not apply) to blue.

Although, in principle, if enough ties from a motherboard to a type of unusual parameter exist, i have to suppose the computer may still go in some specially built (as analogously caused by the designer-drug) state where particular areas alter color. Some variation of the blue screen, just localised.

 

[The_J]

I was posting about a hypothetical drug which would have an effect of the variety of making you sense X specifically as Y (eg an ant as a lego block).

mmhh...I guess that could work, but is way too far in the future.
As pointed out, we don't yet understand how the brains works (and might never, who knows).
But everything you see is somehow imprinted in your mind (-> memory), therefore it has a unique signature. It should be possible to pull the right triggers to manipulate exactly one thing, if all information is given. I doubt it'd be easy though, might require a half ton of drugs AND probably some mental interference. Probably not a good idea.
Let's go rather with VR. There you can just change everything if you like.

 

[warpus]

Yes there is. :/

Okay, how?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Edit wow that is a misleading thread title. Should have read the op before I submitted this off-topic post:

Spoiler :

Haven't read the thread but this is already happening.


There is a lot of marijuana, ecstasy and cocaine analogues on the market. They were designed by chemists to replicate the high of those drugs but not be technically illegal (at first) as they were different molecules. They could also fool drug screening tests that were not designed to detect these analogues.

The laws are catching up but at least for a couple of years, every time the DEA would ban one molecule/drug, another one would pop up very quickly. You could buy these over the counter at head shops and gas stations all over the country. Now I think the DEA has taken a more blanket approach where they ban any and all analogues, rather than just targeting one molecule at a time.

 

[warpus]

When I was in Hollywood in a store looking for a souvenir, the clerk there asked me if I want to by some "synthetic Marijuana".. .. for.. I think it was $30USD a gram.

I was like.. "No thanks, I'm Canadian", I didn't know what else to say. Synthetic marijuana? Yeah, like that's going to be healthy. What's next, $100 synthetic steak, when I can just fly back to the great white north and get a real steak for 1/4 the cost?