Unless you can produce evidence that Van Gogh attributed his artistic skill to cutting off his ear, that doesn't follow. You've compared two dissimilar things.

I'm not inclined to give full credence to what someone attributes their own success to, either. I'm not taking a position either way, just observing that your argument is unfounded.

Also - unless you can produce evidence that having artistic skill of Van Gogh is intrinsically valuable.

Is there evidence to support the claim that Van Gogh believed cutting his ear off was important to his life and work? If not, then this is a very different example to that of Jobs' claim and is an equally poor way of refuting a position.

There's no evidence to that. From my personal experience (yes, anecdotal etc) with dozens of LSD taking friends over the course of many many years, they all end up attributing huge importance to their acid trips, and all the insights gained from them. The problem is this is the same with the brilliant friend, and with the do nothing, sit on my couch all day friend. For example: one of my friends, after taking acid, was so euphoric because, as he told me, he now understood so much. 'Like what?", I asked, and the only things he could tell me he understood was stuff like "i know why this lamppost is here", and "I know why there's a sign over that bakery", and other crap like that. And no, there wasn't anything deeper than that. I prodded.

So you are willing to discredit everyone's claim to the importance of their trips based on examples of people who falsely claim that their's was important?

I don't think anyone here is arguing the position that LSD will have a profound impact on anyone who takes it, just that it can give people a different way of looking at the world and sometimes that leads to novel and important insights.

Replace "LSD trip" with "university degree" in your example. Sure, there are many people who take a physics course and feel as though they have had profound insights but actually haven't. However, you can't use those examples to argue that everyone who claims their physics course has inspired their life and work is lying.

No, when I said "There's no evidence to that" I was referring to wether Van Gogh cutting his ear off was important to his life and work. I didn't discredit everyone's claim to the importance of nothing, just the claims of my closer friends, and I even acknowledged it as anecdotal evidence. Now, when you want to replace 'LSD' with 'physics course', then I'll disagree with you. If someone completed a university physics course, then yeah, they probably actually gained some important insight/knowledge as to how things are. If I ask a physicist why the sun is shining he probably won't answer me that it is "just the effective energy of the whole cosmos"(true quote -- again, lots os my friends took acid). Plus, saying that LSD sometimes leads to novel and important insights is just as anecdotal. Where are all the scientists and Nobel winners that attribute their discoveries to their acid trips? I've heard one or two, mostly just the DNA thing.

As someone with direct experience of the stuff a number of times (all a long time ago now) let me just say.... spot on.

I think the psychedelic experience at most produces an unwarranted sense of the profound. You may feel like revelations have occurred, but really they were nothing. Like those dreams when you figure it all out but when you wake up it's gone, or it was something about wearing your trousers backwards to solve the problem of disharmony in the middle east.

That's not to say I don't think there are a whole load of positives in there, but deeper understanding of the universe and yourself? Meh, I say, meh.

Anything that causes a connection or association of ideas that wouldn't have otherwise been formed holds the potential to facilitate a deeper understanding of ones' self or the universe.

Even in my limited experimentation with drugs, I feel as though I've experienced thought outside the realm of regularity.

That's what the trip produces, a feeling of deep insight of everything. Maybe it trips some "Eureka" area in the brain.

It's not only LSD that does it either, other drugs do it, as do some activities. People with a lot of practice in meditation seem to develop the same feeling, from the way they describe it.

Depends on every person, you cannot generalise, especially if you do not have such experience. LSD unlocked me a door in my head and I know I'll never be the same as before, I think my brain somehow changed physically. I lost lot of fears and could analyse myself as being part of nature. I was 19, now I'm 33 but I still enjoy remembering that moments; I took it 4 times. BTW I'm not a hippie but SW engineer :-)

Plato's Cave.