Although this question may seem absurd at first, I personally find it interesting to ponder.
What inspired me to pose this question was the realisation that many people seem to be alive, but aren’t truly living. As Benjamin Franklin once said: “Some people die at 25 and aren’t buried until 75.” It’s a very provocative statement that really makes you question the extent to which you’re truly living. Are you a mere spectator, or captain of the ship of your own life?
Additionally, the war on drugs has forbidden people from taking safe, meaningful and therapeutic substances for decades, with such little evidence to back up their harmful claims that I felt the need to call b.s. when I see it.
Two notes before we start:
- This post assumes you know what the psychedelic substance LSD (Lysergic Acid Diethylamide) is. If you don’t, watch this first.
- I don’t promote the usage of illegal substances. This post is for educational purposes only. What you do outside of the screen is on you, so be responsible.
What’s the hypothesis?
Exposing your mind to television could have more harmful long-term effects than taking LSD. More specifically, the opportunity cost of not consuming LSD could far outweigh any benefits of watching TV.
What are the dangers?
There’s two types of dangers I want to highlight:
The first are lethal dangers, such as overdosing or fatal-injury, which are much easier to quantify. Either you’re dead or you’re alive.
Then there’s non-lethal dangers, such as living an unfulfilling life, or suffering from permanent and potentially debilitating brain damage.
At first you might automatically rule TVs out of the lethal criteria… I mean they’re just TVs right? But you would be mistaken. Did you know that a person is killed every two weeks from a TV falling on them, according to a report from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. By that number, from 1997 to the present year (2017 as of this post), approximately 520 people have died from TVs.
What about LSD? In order to directly die from LSD consumption (via overdose / poisioning), one would need consume 100 times the standard dosage (10,000ug), with the standard being just 100ug. This makes it very difficult for your average joe to overdose, because that quantity is not easily accessible. According to a report on LSD deaths, there’s not been a single reported human fatality from an LSD overdose, ever. There has however been several reported indirect deaths, such as suicides, when taking the substance—but according to the report above, such an event is estimated at 1 per million uses, which is extremely low. Second to that, the correlations between the two events are by no means scientific, so their validity is not to be taken as gospel just yet.
For comparison, alcohol, which is a completely legal drug sold over the counter, only takes 5–8g per KG of bodyweight (or approximately 1L of spirits for a 60kg individual) to cause a fatal overdose. In the U.S., 88,000 people die annually from alcohol-related causes.
As another comparison, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), who regulate dietary supplements, medication and medical devices in the U.S., have approved drugs which have caused an estimated 800,000+ deaths.
Okay but these are absolute numbers, what about percentages?
A very malicious data-manipulation tactic that many use is to only focus on absolute numbers, not percentages (which is the real metric you need), and shine the light on the negatives while omitting the positives.
I’m going to calculate the percentages by adding up the total deaths per item within a 20 year timeframe (1997 > 2017), and compare them to the average population within said timeframe.
Population data:
- U.S. population in 1997: 272 million.
- U.S. population in 2017: 326 million.
- Mean U.S. population from 1997 > 2017: 299 million.
Total deaths data (1997 > 2017):
(Note that the statistics below have already been referenced earlier).
- TV fatalities: 520.
- LSD: Although no direct deaths have been reported, it’s only fair to do an estimation of 1 person per million, which is 299 people.
- Alcohol: 1.76 million.
- FDA Approved Medications: As FDA reporting only started in 2005, I’m going to estimate the yearly deaths by dividing the total (800k) by 12 (number of years from 2005 > 2017), which gives us 66.9k / year, and multiply that by 20 (1997 > 2017), which is a total of 1.33 million.
U.S. population vs death percentages:
- TV: 0.000173% of the population.
- LSD: 0.0000999% of the population.
- Alcohol: 0.588% of the population.
- FDA Approved Medications: 0.444% of the population.
According to all of this publicly available data from government reporting, the least harmful item on a per-capita basis is LSD, next TV, followed by FDA approved medications, with alcohol being the most harmful.
As a rational, data-driven person, one can only conclude that based on the fatality statistics, LSD has the lowest probability of causing life threatening harm, even lower than televisions.
The irony is that what appears to be the least harmful item on the list is the only one that is completely illegal, which could land you 25 to life in a federal prison.
What about non-lethal risks?
Now that we know lethal risks are so improbable they’re barely worth being concerned about (you should be more worried about TVs falling on you), it’s time to understand the other risks involved when it comes to TV and LSD.
Although I would love to write up a comprehensive analysis looking at said category of risks, there’s very little tangible data for both LSD and TV.
Given LSD has been banned since 1967 (50 years!), there’s been little opportunity to conduct clinical studies due to its legal status, which leaves us not truly knowing what the long-term effects could be.
What we do know, based on reported fatalities (zero), is that at the very least LSD does not have a high affinity for overdoses, which already makes it a much safer option than other substances like alcohol from a fatality viewpoint.
As for TV, well, there’s very limited data too… because such a device is not seen a threat to people. I mean, it’s “just a harmless TV” right?
So we’re going to get philosophical for this one. Science begins where philosophy meets its limits, and vice versa in this case where there’s limited scientific and statistical data avaiable.
So what’s the ultimate risk to humans?
I think the former lethal risks pale in comparison to the following.
The biggest risk, in my humble opinion, is not making the most out of the limited time we have on this blue rock of ours floating in space. More specifically, not discovering true meaning and purpose, and pushing life experiences to the absolute maximum.
As I’ve written about in a previous post, we take what we have for granted. For all of eternity (13.7 billion years) before we were born, we did not exist. And once our time is up, we will go back to that state of non-existence and non-experience for an infinite amount of time. Think about that.
I mean for fuck sake, there’s a 1 in 400 billion chance of you and I being born in the first place. It’s absolutely shocking how low the odds of existing are. It’s something each and everyone of us should be grateful for.
So ask yourself this: Would you rather be brainwashed and have your mind controlled by the propaganda machine that is TV and mainstream media, and numbed by utterly atrocious shows like Keeping Up With The Kardashian’s, or would you rather have mind-expanding introspective experiences that change your perspective on the world, and help you discover your purpose, which could ultimately lead to a happier and more meaningful life?
Imagine you’re sitting in the hospital at 80 years old, told you have a day to live. What choice do you think you would regret more?
Given taking LSD has such a low reported risk and can yield such empowering changes in ones life, the opportunity cost of not trying it at least once seems to far outweigh any risks. With the caveat that it’s taken safely under the right conditions, in the right mindset.
Considering the premise of maximising ones experience of life to the highest degree possible, I firmly believe that it’s more dangerous to be brainwashed by TV than it is to use pharmacological technologies like LSD.
You get one shot at this thing called life. Remember that.
Will you spend it behind a screen being fed bullshit all day long, or reaching new frontiers inside your mind and manifesting said insights into your life?
The choice is yours.
The data is there for you to make your own decision.
As always, my perspective could be completely unfounded. As someone who seeks to expand their mind regularly, you’re more than welcome to kindly make suggestions, or challenge my opinion altogether. Just do so with good intention, I don’t have time for malicious people.
