But in the case of Brendan, he had recently been exposed as a white supremacist and lost his job when he was enrolled in the study. He was full of regret about getting caught out.
I imagine that this person was already contemplating personal growth, and the drugs just kicked his not-fully-conscious or not-fully=acknowledged feelings into conscious, actionable thought.
MDMA releases the chemical oxytocin, which our bodies naturally produce. The chemical causes animals to fiercely love their own, but also protect them from others — which can mean a disdain for outsiders may actually increase.
I would have to see more data or examples to take this last clause as real. It sounds like some off-the-cuff dualist BS conjecturing. I can’t imagine oxytocin increasing disdain of outsiders just because it induces the opposite feelings toward your in-group.
Neuroscientist here. Neuropeptides always have dozens of different uses, and oxytocin is no exception. The idea that it is a "love hormone" is a simplification for the lay person.
Do you have specific knowledge that oxytocin actually does this though?
He literally got blue-pilled... The greatest fear of these guys😂
One human does not make a trend, but it is interesting. They'd have to test many more white supremacists to see if the effect will be same for the majority of test subjects.
If it were a "cure" then the right-wingers would become very scared of getting drugged.
Edit:
MDMA has, for instance, been used by the Taliban to channel connection to the divine during prayer chants, according to Nuwer.
Nuwer pointed out that Brendan's "seemingly spontaneous change" appears to be an exception to the norm.
Read the article guys. Won't work for everyone and could maybe even be used by White Supremacists to be more like the taliban.
The case suggested that MDMA has the potential to "influence a person's values and priorities," the authors wrote in a case study about Brendan. They hypothesized that if extremist views are fueled by fear, anger, and cognitive biases, they could potentially be treated with drugs.
It's interesting to learn, what this paragraph seems to suggest, that for some people holding extremist views is actually the result of mental illness. It is probably hard for people to realize and/or even admit that they are ill until something drastic happens.
Fear, anger, and cognitive biases are not mental illness. Experiencing emotions is a completely normal human experience. All humans have cognitive biases because of how our brains our wired.
Yes thats true.
That's not what they said though.
They said extremism. Which is absolutely not a completely normal human experience.
I'm not sure that the case, the brain is very complex so there lots of places thing can go wrong.For example damage in the limbic system could cause increased fear responce or damage in part of the brain that could down regulate the limbic system. We tend to acknowledge this in the case of brain injury. But there does seem to be a bias when it comes to neurological defects that don't have any known direct causes. But it super possible to just have a brain that emotion processing is abnormally predisposed to fear responses to that point that is should be considered a mental illness
Kind of seems like we should dose the entire planet in MDMA for a day and just see what happens. Might be really good.
Do you want Reavers? Because this is how you get gorram Reavers.
Off topic: does Lemmy have a browncoat community yet?
Or, huge amounts of people will kill themselves or die due to medical completications.
"Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make"
Of course his name is "Brendan". hmmm
I've taken MDMA and it didn't change my beliefs.
I've read some people on the other site that became vegan after trying shrooms... lmao I've taken plenty of cubensis and I enjoy meat like it's my last day on earth.
Nuwer pointed out that Brendan's "seemingly spontaneous change" appears to be an exception to the norm. MDMA releases the chemical oxytocin, which our bodies naturally produce. The chemical causes animals to fiercely love their own, but also protect them from others — which can mean a disdain for outsiders may actually increase.
Maybe he felt a surge to protect humans in general, and that intense feeling changed his outlook. Yeah, definitely, we should treat this as an exception not the rule, but I find myself wondering if he was already open to change, even if he didn't realize
I was wondering if he was already wanting to change and that's why he signed up to the study.
I think that's likely as well. It may have been the thing that gave him a push to change, but I don't think anything would have happened if he hadn't had doubts beforehand.
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