Pot Priming
Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife
Jonah Lehrer looks at “why smoking weed seems to unleash a stream of loose associations.” It seems to have to do with “hyper-priming,” in which normal priming (where, for instance, hearing the word table makes it easier to call to mind the word chair) is turned up to 11:
Obviously, you don’t want too much hyper-priming, or else everything seems connected; the web of associations becomes a source of delusions. But for many creative tasks it’s important to cultivate an expansive associative net, or what psychologists refer to as a “flat associative hierarchy”.
Also: It apparently makes Phish tolerable.
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