[marginalium]
Psychedelics demolish assumptions
18 Apr 2025
Psychedelics demolish assumptions:
With their uncanny ability to disrupt our ordinary modes of perception and thinking, psychedelics have long been associated with feelings of insight … One of the most powerful cumulative effects of these disruptions is what I call ‘epistemic loosening’. Epistemic loosening is, in its essence, a quasi-Socratic, temporary destabilisation of deeply held beliefs and assumptions
I talk about the ’language problem’ all the time. So here is a new way of talking about this kind of intuitive insight, and as a bonus, how psychedelics interact with it. And here are some old articles of mine that talk about the same thing from other angles.
Anthologies: Gratification, Thought Architecture, On Being Fruitful, On Thinking and Reasoning