I think you are mischaracterising the experience. Drugs themselves don't actually do anything to the brain, they interact with neurochemicals that are already there and manipulate them wrt input, output, or perception. For instance, LSD's hallucinations are essentially a biochemical form of creating a virtual simulation. I suspect when/if we create brain/computer interfaces to augment our minds to boost intelligence and memory, that chemicals like LSD will be used on a neuron by neuron, nerve by nerve basis to generate heads up displays within the visual cortex.Diogenes wrote:KitemanSA wrote:Sorry, don't get your point here.Diogenes wrote: Yet you're still not explaining to me how using a narcotic to interfere with your normal judgment constitutes a sapient decision.
You have a complex control system. Let's say it's a computer. Let's say it is able to process data and output results. Let's say it works very well and is virtually foolproof. This represents cognizant sapience.
Now let's say you introduce randomizing code into the program, or a virus that erases or moves data while it's being processed. You no longer have any cognizant sapience. What's more, you've damaged the programming in such a way that it now has a much higher error rate and is not longer trustworthy.
Why should you trust it's decisions?
We aren't near that sort of thing yet by any means, but playing around with LSD today is really no different from running fractals graphics programs on your Mac.