Through sheer randomness in thought patterns, does it allow people to stumble across ideas or ways of thinking that can increase their intelligences?

http://www.manikus.com/mixed/lego/

Shear Randomness only exists when in relation to observative positioning. Namely you might observe something that seems random to you, but it might very well have been calculateable and ordered.

There is a potential for peoples intelligence to be increased through the use of pattern sequence recognition, this is noticable if you were to take IQ tests consecutively.

The point here though is that a persons understanding is based on logical progression, where as chaos is about total disorder.

So a number of chaotic thoughts isn't going to lead to an increase in intelligence unless every chaotic event is "analysed" and order created out of it.


As for the Link, well it's all fun but a bit off-topic.

Aren't all thoughts analyzed?

Thus random thoughts would be an additional form of stimulus.

How is that link off-topic? ;)

i hope u don't want to grow intelligence in order to play the games of life better, cos u won't feel any better by being intelligent, in fact many intelligent ppl are depressed. however if u use your intelligence to reach harmony it can be very useful.

if your thought patterns are randomized intelligence catalysts then it would benefit your intelligence, since u probably get more experiences from randomness than habitual thinking. all drugs give distinct new experiences which develop life experience, which is a kind of intelligence.

however i wouldn't say marijuana creates randomness, but it does stimulate the right brain half, which in western culture is very unstimulated, and as u do that you develop a totally different way of thinking that can be combined with your old intelligence engine (left brain half) and therefore not in the least from synergy reach better ways of problem solving.

then there is the psychedelic effect of marijuana, which is mind growing and helps you develop for example your intelligence to appreciate nature.

although in the end, after constant use of marijuana it becomes a habit, which is more destructive than productive.

Originally posted by prozak
Through sheer randomness in thought patterns, does it allow people to stumble across ideas or ways of thinking that can increase their intelligences?

http://www.manikus.com/mixed/lego/

No.

Saying your intelligent when your high is like saying your funny when your drunk.

you are funny when you're drunk. at least to yourself. things seem funny, when really they aren't.

same as high. when you're high, everything that pops into your head seems like the best idea you've ever had. it's a fun feeling. doesn't mean it's true though. saddly.

:eek: :m:

Intelligence and indeed brilliance are often attributed to focus. Something marijuana certainly does enhance. Also, recent studies have found that THC or some other cannabinoid mimics a natural drug in the body which helps us to forget bad experiences.

Remembering bad experiences is useful to avoid a repeat of past mistakes but sometimes the lesson is unnecessary and we need to lose our fear. What if somebody chipped a tooth while eating and then suffered an anxiety attack whenever faced with food. Not good. Experiments on rats divulged this new finding. The poor critters were electrocuted to the sound of a bell. This was done on a daily basis until they went into a panic every time they heard chimes. Even after the shocks ceased to happen. Those rats who were then stoned as part of the trial recovered more quickly. This may not be much of a surprise to potheads.

How often do overworked people go on holiday, relax, recharge the batteries and then return to work with a clear head and sharper mind? Relaxation and lack of anxiety are probably conducive to more rational thought.

:m:

i think you are self medicating for a mental illness, possibly Bi-Polar disease.

Originally posted by Redrover
Saying your intelligent when your high is like saying your funny when your drunk.

It notice way more shit in a movie or song when i'm high than sober. i believe it's a valid observation that one might become more attentive thus realize more stuff thus feel like they are more intelligent. :m: :m: :m: :m: :m: :m: :m: :m:

so light up and watch

Short answer: No.
I'd be willing to wager that people would do poorly on intelligence tests while under the influence of Marijuana (there must be some studies along these lines).

On the other hand I do think there is something to be said for "consciousness expansion".

For example, Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel Prize for his invention of the polymerase chain reaction, a chemical procedure that allows scientists to "see" the structures of the molecules of genes, gave credit to his use of LSD for being able to envision the thing.

Sure, LSD is a totally different chemical, but I think it is important to give such suggestions a little bit more thought than the usual, "its a drug, all it does is impair".

While I don't think "intelligence" can be raised by marijuana use, what you do with your intelligence can be channeled in new and interesting directions, such as drawing up plans to build a house out of jelly donuts.

I myself can only go by personal expirence and that is in Physics class. When i am sober i have a hard time visualizing things inside my head and thats how i learn i see it. When i am high i can clearly Interperate vocal information into information that is visible to me and therefore i understand it. I can also here diffrent insturments in songs that would normaly be lsot in the drown of bass or whatnot when i am under the influence. I dont know maybe all this is just inside my head or maybe not :confused:

Although I have smoked pot, quite a lot in the past, I must admit that when I did LSD (Acid), my senses, hearing especially, increased dramatically. I could hear the buzzing of the electricity flowing through the street lights from inside my apartment! I cannot hear them when I'm not on LSD, which has been quite a few years, and I won't be dropping double orange barrel, blue star blotter etc. again since I do have a family now. LSD did seem to increase my awareness.

I most likely would say no, but you never know, if you believe that people can actually stumble upon things in there sleep that they will discover later, then maybe when they are high, they may discover something as well. I doubt it though.

This is a topic that science seems to have missed. As a fairly serious musician I know for certain that marijuana enhances ones ability to disentagle threads within the music, as someone else said above. As for intelligence I'm not so sure.

I suspect that marijuana gives people greater insight precisely because it impairs ones thinking, producing a state similar to meditation, and thus allowing one to see what is underneath all that clutter more clearly. I have heard meditation likened to stopping a busy stream flowing so that one can see the riverbed properly. I don't think it makes you more intelligent. It just seems to let you see what is true and obvious more easily. I don't believe this is an illusion although it would need some testing to prove it.

The really interesting and inexplicable thing is that marijuana tends to give people the same sort of thoughts and outlook on life. It is hard to see how a drug that disrupts our normal thinking ends up always disrupting it in a structured rather than random way. Anyone come across any research on why this might be so?

Originally posted by Stryderunknown
As for the Link, well it's all fun but a bit off-topic. [/B]

Okay well going one more step off-topic of this off-topic subject.
Who discovered the effects of marijuana. Did some indians just sit around smoking everything they saw to see what happens. If thats the case i'd hate to see what happened when they smoke poison ivy. i had an uncle that did something similar with a burning barrel and it didn't turn out so well.

Note: Anyone who thinks this is to imature plz just ignore. i don't need any "shut up u dumb kid messages." thanx

Originally posted by rhetorician
Okay well going one more step off-topic of this off-topic subject.
Who discovered the effects of marijuana. Did some indians just sit around smoking everything they saw to see what happens. If thats the case i'd hate to see what happened when they smoke poison ivy. i had an uncle that did something similar with a burning barrel and it didn't turn out so well.

Note: Anyone who thinks this is to imature plz just ignore. i don't need any "shut up u dumb kid messages." thanx
I suspect someone chucked some on the campfire one night, or ran out of tobacco.

Canute, I find your post very interesting. Question, what do you think is the same outlook that people who smoke share? About the river analogy, I feel that this is true, and here is my point of view: I do not necessary think that marijuana has major effects on raw cognition itself that will increase intelligence, but it does so indirectly by how it effects your emotions and how your emotions tie with how you think.

When I have smoked I have noticed that marijuana slows down certain short but rather intense feelings that are almost continous and or unnoticable when normal/ sober, this allows one to identify and think through feelings and how they effect your thoughts.

It is strange, because this allows you to think underneath the dominant concrete thoughts of sobriety, an get a glimpse of where these thoughts are formed as they are forming.

Overall, I think marijuana can help one to become more aware of the thinking process and themselves and therefore rethink certain ideas they may not have be willing or capable to do so before. However, one still has to use their natural intelligence to ultimatly do so.

Can we move this to free thoughts or the garbage can?

Originally posted by hlreed
Can we move this to free thoughts or the garbage can?
Don't mind. But it is an area of scientific research that is under researched in my opinion.

Rayview - I don't entirely grasp the nature of your experience but know these things are difficult to describe. I suppose at heart the common experience seems to be the one of sensing, feeling and understanding the world better. Although this understanding may be false and an illusion it nevertheless seems to be consistant in kind across a majority of users, and thus leads them into similar behaviours, such as caring about the environment, or becoming horrified at the unstoppable march of corporate capitalist politics. f I was a neuroscientist ( or a corporate capitalist) I would want to know why this is. Why not just an increase in random and incoherent thoughts?

from a biological stand point, Pot does some funky stuff to your brain, including both alcohol-like depression effects as well as LCD-like psycadellic effects. It is one of the less studied, and also one of the most mis-classified drugs, IMO. The studies used to outlaw it in the US were scientifically unsound at best.

Marajuana does not improve your critical thinking abilities; I doubt anyone who has tried it would argue that point. But it seems to allow for a fairly structured connection of ideas that would otherwise remained seperated in the brain. I have always wondered if the presence of THC (the most active substance in pot) promoted inter-hemisphere traffic in the brain. If it did, you would see 'reality' and 'imagination' (left and right hemisphere, respectively) merge; this in turn very well could result in more imaginative solutions to real world problems.

As for who 'discovered' pot, it is a native plant to the american continents, largly in the tropic and sub tropic area of central and south america. Both Tobacco and Pot have been used as sacred links to the spirit world by Native Americans for millenia. George Washington's favorite smoking blend was 50% tobacco and 50% "cannabis" (from his personal diaries). Pot has been around for a long time. It is my belief that pot is illegal while tobacco is not because of politics, and nothing more. Tobacco had a strong toehold in the common population than MJ did, and therefore was harder to outlaw. Therefore it wasn't. While marajuanan may contain more carcinogens than *natural* tobacco, it is also more potent, and less is needed to reach an effective does. this is why a joint is "passed" around, as opposed to a cggarete, which may be puffed one after another. So to argue that MJ is worse than tobacco is to ignore the very important point of ED and LD- Effective Dose vs Lethal Dose. No one has ever died from an overdose of THC. People can easily die from an OD of nicotine, it's a serious poison, often used as a pesticide! What's more, how many people die every day from OD'ing on alcohol? and why is pot illegal in the US????

anyway, back to the point, I think that pot, as well as other currently outlawed natural psycadelics could be very usefull tools in researching neurological disorders. The Native American Church currently uses Peyote (contains mescaline) in their ceremonies, and has an extrodinarily low rate of abuse. IMO, largelythat is because they don't refine the mescaline, but leave it in it's natural form- you eat to much peyote, you upchuck it all, long before anything close to an LD is reached. For another example, unrefined cocain, ie cocoa leaves, are fine as a caffine replacement. you cannot OD on chewing cocoa leaves. it's only when it is refined that there is a problem.

One other thing people should keep in mind is that street Marajuana today has about 97% more THC/g than it did in the 60's. it is being refined just as cocain and mesciline has been, but in pot, it is being refined through encouraged evolution, and I have even heard rumors of genetic engineering on the level of bacterial gene splicing. given the $$$ involed in the international drug industry, it would not surprise me.

to say it flat out, if tobacco and alcohol are legal, there is no scientific reason that mj should be illegal. The legal status of refind and proccesd drugs such as MDNA, LSD, cocain, etc, need to be re-evaluated as well, but legalisation of these fast-acting, low ED/LD ratio drugs would not be a good idea.

I would recommed Andrew Weil's "Natural Mind" for a good perspective on biology/social commentary on human use of drugs. further reading gets pretty scientific, but anything involving the passing of chemicals through the blood-brain barrier, studies into the delivery system of the drug (mucose membrane/smoking/vs direct blood injection), or dopamine controls int he brain are very educational for pro/anti-drug arguments.

I want some :m: shoes to be available at my local foot locker, darn it!


[edit for spelling and an assemblance of clarity]