Talk:Eight-circuit model of consciousness

Reference materials

• Info-Psychology (revised from Exo-Psychology) By Timothy Leary (one of Leary's complete final works on the Eight-circuit model)

Note there are differences in page numbers between prints! (found difference in page numbers between 3rd printing(1992) and 7th printing(2011) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dpowell787b (talk • contribs) 12:40, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

• Exo-Psychology by Timothy Leary. (First major work on the Eight-circuit model of consciousness)
• Evolutionary Agents by Timothy Leary. (one of Leary's last works completed on the Eight-circuit model)
• Game of Life by Timothy Leary with contributions by Robert Anton Wilson
• Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson
• Quantum Psychology by Robert Anton Wilson
• Angel Tech by Antero Alli. Forward by Robert Anton Wilson. (with reference to Info-Psychology as Leary's work on the Eight-circuit model)
• The Eight-Circuit Brain by Antero Alli (one of the most recent books published on the Eight-circuit model)
• Neurologic?
• Neuropolitics?

"Info-Psychology" from Leary, "Prometheus Rising" from Wilson, and "The Eight-Circuit Brain" from Alli, should be the first reference from each author. Each of these works are non-fiction and have the largest content of the Eight-circuit model in each of the books to the corresponding authors. There is no story, characters(only for examples), or other elements to claim they were written in fiction.Dpowell787b (talk) 10:40, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Structure of descriptions to be covered for each circuit

• Basic description - all 3 stages for each circuit
• Where is the suggested imprint in ontogeny?
• When is the suggested period in evolution where the circuit emerged?

This list is similar to structure in Leary's books on how he made points on each circuit. Each author mentioned does suggest 24 stages for the circuits. 3 stages for 8 circuits. This should be highly noted.

Wilson and Alli had other takes on the circuits, with different chapter structure to each circuit. For example, a chapter for each circuit included base description, compare and contrast, examples, suggestions, and exercises.

The following list were points to be covered were based on someone's interpretation of Wilson's work. If we were to ask "What methods activate it?" Each author would answer differently. Alli did not suggest drugs for "circuit activation", and contrary to belief, Leary does not suggest a particular drug for each individual circuit. He suggests some drugs for reception of some circuits. Example: Stage 16 neuro-electric drugs (Game of Life, pg 191 or Info-Psychology, pg 124)Dpowell787b (talk) 07:44, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

• Basic description
• When is it imprinted?
• What imprints are possible?
• When did it evolve?
• What methods activate it?

Criticism?

Unresolved

 – The article is based entirely around a primary source bolstered by non-specific references to other questionable sources. It makes outlandish claims without any regard for scientific consensus.=February 2012.

You know this kind of science is technically unethical? (considering that it involves illegal, harmfully addictive drugs?) Surely there is criticism of Leery SOMEWHERE. Tcaudilllg (talk) 05:41, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Criticism of Leary and Leary's stance on mind-altering drugs would be different than criticism of the model. The purpose of the model itself was never to encourage the use of any drug at all but rather to outline the different stages of consciousness in primate evolution and their biological foundations and advancements throughout time. The only reason drugs were mentioned in the model at all was Leary and Robert Anton Wilson theorized certain chemicals provoked such forms of consciousness mentioned in the model. The model was never intended to be pro-drug or anti-drug. If you want to criticize Leary's stance on drugs, do it in the Timothy Leary article.72.240.112.36 (talk) 01:05, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

As of the moment, I cannot find any criticism of this model at all. In the past, this article had criticism incorporated in it, but it was always removed because it contained original research.72.240.112.36 (talk) 17:39, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps mainstream psychologists/neuroscientists consider it unworthy of their attention? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tcaudilllg (talk • contribs) 17:27, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

This is a discussion for improving the article, not a forum for you to express your opinions. If you have anything else to say, it should be directed at improving the article.72.240.112.36 (talk) 05:31, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

This article, in its present form, is proselytizing a non-verifiable contrivance, and alluding to it as a "theory". It is not a theory, as it is not a structure designed to explain a set of empirical observations; what observations could possibly concern "information from beyond ordinary space-time awareness which is limited by the speed of light"?

The sentence, "Leary may have received the basic idea for this system from an anthropologist" attempts to lend scientific credibility through hearsay.

The sentence beginning, "The 8 Circuit model seems to provide a conglomerate model of a series of preceding and interconnecting models within some of the human and medical sciences..." attempts to connect the construct to accepted scientific fields, where there is no connection. Citations should be provided if there are any available.

This article is pseudo-science; it has no supporting evidence, contradicts itself, falls far short of meaningful modeling, and many components are flat out non-verifiable. Recommend deletion as complete bollocks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.93.219.192 (talk) 01:37, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the the article smacks of psudo-science, but so does Freud's tripartite model of consciousness, astrology, phlogiston etc. While Leary's model, Freud's, astrology, and phlogiston are generally ignored by the scientific and academic community today, they have been influential for various fringe or non-academic groups. Thus, the article should certainly not be deleted. Also, this discussion section appears to be a call for references to published criticism of the model. I'd be very interested if any such criticism exists as well... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.56.112.48 (talk) 04:36, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

NB: Actually, all of those ideas were very influential in academic and non-fringe circles for their memetic lifespans, too. Many scientific and quasi-scientific ideas are questionable but influential and lead to improved ideas. E.g., I'd rather have an ancient Greek doctor who thought in terms of leeching, "bodily humours" and "bad air" than a tribal shaman who saw everything in terms of the will and influence of various spirits and totem animals or a Dark Age exorcist who thought my ailments were the work of Satanic possession or my own witchcraft. Human wisdom is a perpetually step-wise process (sometimes backwards for a bit as my examples indicate). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 21:07, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Over two years later, most of this is no longer applicable, since the article text has been improved. I'm marking this as {{resolved}}, though not archiving it yet, in case someone wants to read through it and re-examine the article to see if they feel all the issues flagged here were legimitate problems and have all been fixed (seems that way to me on both counts). I'd suggest posting a new thread about any perceived problem. The vast majority of editors & readers with an issue or two about this article have made article improvement (the actual purpose of talk pages at Wikipedia, which is not a forum) difficult because their posts have mostly been prefaced with or buried under attacks/complaints with regard to Leary, drugs, and/or the validity of his consciousness model as science (I've yet to see anyone cite him saying it was science, actually...), leading inexorably to rancorous debates about pseudoscience, the counterculture, etc., and everything but article improvement. So, please raise issues in a focused manner so they can be more quickly resolved without flamey off-topic arguments about dope, epistemology and spirituality, please. I've moved the bulk of that noise to the archive pages. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 21:07, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• I am again marking this as unresolved because I just read half of a sloppy article. That's all there was to read: a non-npov, non-cited mess. A criticism section alone would be insufficient to remedy these deficiencies. Links to evidence of claims, language clearly identifying the context of the claims, and neutral (tertiary) analysis - all of these need to be incorporated into the lead and body of the text. Next would be an spov criticism section. It shouldn't be too hard to find sources in physics journals to completely discredit at least half of the claims mentioned in this model. Spiritual components and stipulations in addition to literary works based on the model must also be treated to yet another section. A good treatment of Leary's work would also benefit from page references, perhaps quotation notes. I am sorry to say that the problems in the article are systemic. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 07:56, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm afraid that what you are asking for here is broadly outside Wikipedia's remit. It is not for editors to find and cite primary material that might discredit various aspects of Leary's theory. That would be original research by synthesis. If there is no secondary literature criticising the model, for whatever reason, then there cannot be a criticism section. We cannot fill in the criticism ourselves, only report what others have said about the theory, and this does not include things that other people have said that we might think relevant to the theory unless the connection has been drawn in a reliable source. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.226.37.177 (talk) 09:26, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

I absolutely agree that this article has huge problems with NPOV, citations, and original research that is not from any of the authors. Beyond the first paragraph, the entire article needs to be fact checked. With that being said, I've just reversed an edit added to the page about the validity of this model being scientific. Leary has stated that this model is of scientific theories "based off of empirical findings" in various areas of science. (Info-Psychology, pg. 8) Again, a large portion of the content on the page is not his work at all. Please add content with citations from the authors, not criticism and opinions. Dpowell787b (talk) 10:21, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Clarity, style, intelligibility

Unresolved

 – Article still badly needs copy editing as of date=August 2011.

Largely for clarity, style, and good old intelligibility. Neutrality remains a problem for this page, IMO, as the only references are from those who propose the 'model' themselves. There also a biased undertone in favor of the use psychedelic drugs, NLP, and what I would call (generously) 'alternative philosophies.' Claims about related 'techniques' are problematic. Why isn't religion included, of which 'Crowleyan magic' is just one form? I'm not even sure how I got to this page, but I'm pretty sure the article I linked to it from has almost nothing to do with Leary's 'theory.' If the authors re-edit this page, please resist using idiosyncratic language and punctuation, particularly capitalization. 173.21.106.137 (talk) 05:55, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I've worked on the capitalization some, but this entire article badly needs copyediting even further than I've gone. There are innumerable cases of grammar errors, poor logical sentence flow, etc., etc. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 21:07, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Derived from Hindu tantra

Unresolved

 – No source provided.

Leary did not create the Eight Circuit Model (http://deoxy.org/8origins.htm), as it comes from Hindu Tantra philosophy. Therefore, you can call Leary's theory "pseudoscientific" just as much as you can say that Tantra is pseudoscience. Of course, saying this would be nonsense, because these things are completely unrelated to Cartesian science, both in space and time: which means that you can't say that they pretend to be it. I've seen this kind of discussion happening in several articles, and it resulted in the deletion of the Timewave Zero article - because, you know, the I Ching, which was invented 2800 BCE, does not meet the methods of a guy who was born on the 16th century. If anything, this reveals some cultural bias in Wikipedia users. 187.54.91.216 (talk) 13:57, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Leary's 8 circuits are a PHILOSOPHY. They may be applicable in psychology, but philosophy's what they are. I agree with the user's comment above mine. The 8 circuits can also be mapped on to the days of the week. 1 Moonday (everythings new and magical, what do i need?), 2 Tuesday (teuton tribe, the Teus, god of the tribe Toutatis, let's gain some power/status by joining a gang/tribe), 3 Wodensday (Woden/Odin, the all-father, 'the Word was god and the word was with god' etc, let's rationalise everything with respect to our tribal chief, believe in the leader/law, for personal gain and stability) 4 thorsday (The god Thor, male sexuality, moving heaven and earth for sex, I'll be sensitive to your needs and rational, as long as you don't touch my ego), 5 freiaday (Goddess freia, mature female sexuality, empathetic, I'll be attracted to you if you look like you can take care of my yet to be born child, i'll take care of your ego as long as you can take care of my child), 6 Saturnday (the god saturn, the sober judge, the philosopher, scientist, the one who understands both masculine and feminine perspectives and thinks with clarity), 7 Sunday (The Son/sun, the mystic/magician/shaman, the true artist communicating with a magical effect, spreading the enlightenment gained on previous circuit, wearing different egos, is everyone to everyone, iconic). the 8th circuit is Gaia consciousness, and you don't need to worry about days if you're the earth itself spinning on it's axis, night/day is happening at the same time. Hence non-local. this makes sense to me, because it fits in with so much ancient stuff, yet Leary's concept of what the circuits mean doesn't quite seem to align with this interpretation, which tells me that he probably got this stuff from a source that DID make more sense, as opposed to 'virtually creating' the thing.

Natmanprime (talk) 22:22, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

That some nice original research we can't use. Even the suggestion that Leary was inspired by chakras and yoga has yet to be sourced. We can't be adding more such stuff without it coming from independent, reliable, published sources. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 21:07, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

From what I can tell he was just paraphrasing Prometheus Rising. Not original research. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.100.79.42 (talk) 10:45, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

This is a false claim for origin, yet still holds some relevance. The Deoxy website (http://deoxy.org/8origins.htm) has parts and chapters in the book "What does WoMan want", which is a work of fiction from Timothy Leary. This is the main resource used in this confusion. Leary does show inspiration from the Hindu system, chakras, yoga, and various other sources in the book "Game of Life" on pages 18, 34, and 46. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dpowell787b (talk • contribs) 03:45, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Anal

Stale

 – Editorial & sourcing suggestions made, but not followed up even a year later.

The names of the circuits in this article do not correspond with my recollection from reading Prometheus Rising 8 or 9 years ago. For instance, why doesn't the article apply the terms oral and anal. Also, Wilson's spectacular lecture "How to Tell Your Friends From the Apes" really ought to be a reference for this article. __meco (talk) 13:52, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, the order is different from prometheus rising. However, Wilson later changed his version back to learys (i.e. 7. metaprogramming -> 6. metaprogramming , and 6 neurogenetic circuit --> 7)[around 1996 in Quantum Psychology.] Although the order may have not survived the test of time, Wilson still detailed each circuit brilliantly in Prometheus rising.

I will probably add the terms anal, oral, and as well as others used in prometheus rising to the article sooner or later.

Also, never heard of that lecture. I ought to check it out. —Preceding unsigned comment added by James Brown Nine (talk • contribs) 23:20, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Regardless of his difference of the 6th and 7th circuit in "Prometheus Rising" versus "Quantum Psychology", Wilson still uses the same names for the 1st and 2nd circuit in both books. He names the first circuit "The oral bio-survival circuit", and the second circuit "The anal emotional territorial circuit" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dpowell787b (talk • contribs) 04:27, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Poorly referenced

Unresolved

 – Article has been tagged as badly needing sourcing improvement for a long time.

This article is very poorly sourced by the standards of WP:V, WP:RS and WP:CITE. The main problem is that the bulk of the article is just allegedly sourced by a pile of "references" dumped in "Bibliography", with no indication what statements are sourced by what works, further compounded by innumerable editors, most of the anonymous, changing things willy-nilly over several years of now-resolved neutrality turmoil, such that material that once may have been sourced to a specific reference has had numerous interpolations from other (usually unknown) source, been moved, and otherwise altered without the references being kept up to what little extent they can be kept up with proper footnote citations per WP:CITE, AND other "references" have been added that are not necessarily pertinent, reliable or useful, per WP:RS. The upshot being that large amounts of this article could simply be legitimately deleted per policy at WP:V, as unsourced, especially given how long they've been tagged and how much debate this article was seeing several years ago. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 21:07, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Christopher S. Hyatt

Why is Christopher S. Hyatt mentioned at all? I'm faintly familiar with his work (as a skeptic of it and other stuff like it). He seems to generate mystical/occult/magic[k] books by the dozen, on topics all over the map from Crowleyan Thelema to "Western Tantra" whatever that's supposed to be (I guess that's something like Chinese St. Patrick's Day and Papua New Guinean peyote ceremonies?). I'm having a hard time tracking down any connection at all between the eight-circuit model and Hyatt. Just because Hyatt knew Leary and Wilson at least peripherally, published an interview with Leary, and has been in anthologized publications with both other authors doesn't mean he's connected pro, con or at all to the topic of this article. I'm therefore tempted to delete his mention, unless someone's got a citation to something. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 05:25, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Hyatt has contributed to the model in his book "Undoing Yourself". - Dpowell787b (talk) 04:47, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Merge/Delete/Do Something

I'm going to suggest that this article be chopped up to remove anything that cannot be given a reliable source, and whatever is left over should be turned into a (thoroughly NPOV) section in either the Tim Leary article, or the Prometheus Rising article.

Other than that, I see no reason why this article shouldn't be nominated for deletion, since it has remained in violation of WP:GNG for some time, with no improvement. Both of the sources this article relies most on are primary. Most of the others appear to be part of a personal website.

On a personal note, besides violating NPOV in language and content, and its subject's doubtful notability, this article is very sloppy work. Undiskedste (talk) 04:46, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Removal of WP psychology tag

I have decided to remove the Psychology tag from this talk page because of concerns that the article presents a pseudoscientific formulation as a genuine theory in psychology. No sources have been cited to indicate that this model has ever been seriously discussed or even mentioned in any reputable psychology journal or textbook, even to discredit it. Therefore, in spite of its pretensions to be a model of consciousness, I don't think this belongs in the psychology category, any more than, say, palmistry does.--Smcg8374 (talk) 03:56, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Scientific testing

Has anyone, anywhere, done a proper scientific investigation or even discussion of this model? I've had a cursory look but can't find a thing - David Gerard (talk) 16:36, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Transhumanism?

This is literally a made-up hypothesis with zero evidence ever, though slight popularity in the pre-New Age Human Potential Movement culture of the 1970s - but the same would apply to astrology, for instance. How does this fit into "transhumanism" per se? Is there evidence of it gaining popularity in the transhumanist subculture as such? - David Gerard (talk) 10:25, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

I can see a relation through Leary's interest in SMI2LE - Leary represents psychedelic 60's transhumanism fairly well. After all, transhumanism seeks to achieve higher states of evolution, and this does not have to be through just technology (Leary would have countered that LSD and various training methods are of course just as much technology as any enhancer or mental exercise). A fair number of transhumanists have a passing acquaintance with the model. mostly through RAW. Still, I think few if any of the transhumanists I have interacted with actually *believe* in the model. Anders Sandberg (talk) 00:08, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

This article should not be affiliated with Transhumanism. Although there are many correlations in regards to the evolution of the human species with both Transhumanism and the Eight-circuit model of consciousness, the association can mislead readers on both ends of each subject. Dpowell787b (talk) 08:18, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Science? Pseudoscience? Mysticism? Literature?

Note:This section is a rehash argument from archives (Check "Factual Evidence" and "Pseudoscience" from Archive 1 on the talkpage). Earlier consensus has shown the model not to be pseudoscience. Dpowell787b (talk) 03:30, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

It's important to note it was not presented with scientific evidence, nor that it's even been tested. The article goes on about it as if this is a scientific theory, so stating it's not one is important to put in the intro para.

Note that calling it a "hypothesis model" (which is in any case ungrammatical) is not some sort of get-out.

Of course, if Leary did put any science into it, or if reputable scientific testing was done, this would be very important and useful to add to the article. Though I found nothing first time I looked.

Wilson's use of it is pretty clearly as a literary device - he doesn't advance any science either.

I see non-reliable sources treating it as part of mysticism, but I can't find any RSes there either.

I would simply label it "pseudoscience" except I can't find any RSes that have even bothered with it to that extent either.

I've also posted a request for more eyes on the topic to WP:FTN - David Gerard (talk) 10:22, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

First off, thank you for contributing. The more perspectives on this article, the better. I changed "hypothesis model" to "hypothesis" as indicated. I used the word hypothesis defined as "a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation"

The work from Leary is presented with scientific evidence. The first half of the book "Exo-Psychology" is referencing fields of scientific study, for support to the model. Your statement "...nor that it's even been tested" shows a bias against the model, and not helpful to adding to content of the article. Observational sciences, and experimental sciences have different ways of being tested.

Leary did put science into it. Pg. 8 of Info-Psychology should address your concern.Dpowell787b (talk) 10:55, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Right. Did anyone follow up scientifically or is this just him doing so? Because there's no way on earth a primary source alone would pass WP:MEDRS - David Gerard (talk) 11:23, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm looking at the book now. Page 8 is 0% a claim of science; I've added relevant quotes to the intro, to make it clear what the creator of this theory considered it. If you want to make this claim that what he did was anything in the same field as "science", let alone anything resembling an experimental finding - rather than writing off the top of his head while he was in jail - I'd like you to quote precisely the words you think support this claim - David Gerard (talk) 11:32, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

"They[The theories presented] are scientific in that they are based on empirical findings" (Info-Psychology, pg 8., seventh printing, 2011)(pg. 7, Info-Psychology, third printing, 1992, hyperlink shown above). Thus he is making a hypothesis.Dpowell787b (talk) 11:46, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

No, he talks about fields of science. Where is the testing that was applied to this specific hypothesis? There isn't any. So it's something science-flavoured surrounding a claim without science to it. The word for that would appear to be pseudoscience - David Gerard (talk) 14:09, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Note there are differences in page numbers between prints! (found difference in page numbers between 3rd printing(1992) and 7th printing(2011) Sorry for the confusion, David. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dpowell787b (talk • contribs) 12:42, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

David Gerard, you are holding a negative bias toward the author/s of the article. For example "If you want to make this claim that what he did was anything in the same field as "science", let alone anything resembling an experimental finding - rather than writing off the top of his head while he was in jail" shows bias. The second example of bias is "...nor that it's even been tested" as stated above.

You've made edits with admitting to not reading the material. This is no different than a Creationist arguing evolution being a "hypothesis", "theory", "proposal", or "conjecture". Or arguing if "Id, ego, and superego" is a scientific model that has been tested.

I feel you are making disruptive editing for your bias, which is not following Wikipedia guidelines.

Although, you have made edits that are directly from the book, with in line citation following it. As a seasoned Wikipedia editor, you are bringing a needed level of skepticism to an article that needs to be debunked. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dpowell787b (talk • contribs) 21:10, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Your accusations are strange at best, and you really need to reread WP:AGF. You have failed to produce the evidence to support your claims, and the evidence you did produce does not support them. Furthermore, I am far from the only editor to have disagreed with you on this today alone. I strongly suggest you read Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Arbitration cases thoroughly (and not with an eye for loopholes) - David Gerard (talk) 21:27, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps hypothesis is the correct term. From Wikipedia's lead: "A hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon." The theory is, of course, not a scientific hypothesis, but the term isn't all-inclusive, and without the word 'scientific' being used it seems to fit. The theory has been put forward and then analyzed in several complete books by several competent authors. We all have bias, and in cases like this I try to be honest about mine, and I favor Wilson as an author who, in his fields, writes as plain-spoken and competently as Isaac Asimov did in his. If this page is to be balanced it must contain both criticism and sourced appreciation for this theory (hypothesis?). But that paragraph on astrology should go, as it has nothing to do with this page except for someone piggybacking unrelated concepts upon an established term. Randy Kryn 21:42, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

As a transgressive critique of current scientific understanding (evolving mostly out of the primitive state of neuroscience in the 1960s), Leary was making a proposal that he insisted was not scientific. That's why "hypothesis" is a poor choice of wording, because it is part-and-parcel to the scientific method which Leary held was holding back ideas that could be developed through revelation rather than methodology. It is not fair to Leary to push this "model" into the scientific model side, and so we should avoid words like "hypothesis" which would mislead the reader into thinking he was trying to formulate a scientific proposal. This also goes for technical terms such as nervous system which Leary uses as a placeholder for individual animal consciousness. In the 1960s, systems biology was being reinvigorated by discoveries associated with molecular biology and the like. Use of the term "nervous system" was broader than it is now. It is not fair to the reader to mislead them into thinking that Leary believed, for example, that the eight circuits were literal, measurable electric potentials across potassium-sodium ion channels. jps (talk) 02:23, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

I am reversing you edits for three reasons.

1. Leary was using a hypothesis. - It is true that the words, “idea”, “conjecture”, “proposal”, “scheme”, “proposition”, “suggestion”, “guess”, can all fit as the noun in conflict that keeps being edited (over 10 edits within the last 3 days). All these can be conceptual framework or almost synonyms for "hypothesis".

The term “Evolution”, could be an “idea”, or a “proposal”, (there have been many Creationists trying to argue that term be replaced as well). However, we give credit where credit is due. “Evolution” is a “scientific theory” because it is a well-substantiated explanation based on empirical observations.

I’m not arguing that the Eight-circuit model is a theory, nor arguing that it is correct. It is a hypothesis, just an “educated guess”. Using the definition of hypothesis "a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of ’’limited’’ evidence as a starting point for further investigation". This is no different to the starting points of observational science, such as when Piaget’s cognitive theories, or Kohlberg’s stages of moral development were starting out as a hypothesis. It’s observational science versus experimental science, as Piaget and Kohlberg eventually created standardized tests for their hypotheses. I have changed the edit back to hypothesis.

2.Leary was being scientific – From his own words, in the book ‘’Info-Psychology’’, "They[The theories presented] are scientific in that they are based on empirical findings from physics, physiology, pharmacology, genetics, astronomy, behavioral psychology, information science, and most importantly, neurology." (Info-Psychology, pg 8., seventh printing, 2011)(Info-Psychology, pg. 7, third printing, 1992). This is pretty straight forward.

You wrote after an edit on the article, “This is not a hypothesis in the scientific sense. Leary is CLEAR about that.”-jps. Can you find him clearly stating your point, then we can make concise edits the article.

3.Leary was referring to the human nervous system, not “a placeholder for individual animal consciousness” – Leary, et al. reference the nervous system quite often. For example, The imprinting of each circuit – “neurotransmitter sequence at the synapse” (Info-Psychology, pg. 51, Seventh printing, 2011). The second circuit equated to the sympathetic nervous system “flight or fight” – (pg. 12, pg. 149). Organs, systems, and the nervous system – (pg 46. Second paragragh). There are various others, and more from other authors if you need more references. I am replacing the your word "mind" with "nervous system" in the main article.

JPS, I have seen your edits and I want to point out that you are making this article better, from simple grammar to articulate rebuttals to your edits. I want to say that I’m completely open to more discussion for future edits. I want to consider if we should use the phrase "unproven hypothesis"? Hopefully that will not mislead readers? Dpowell787b (talk) 07:17, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

No, "hypothesis" is simply incorrect, for the reasons explained. Consensus is against you here. You are the only one advocating this view. Please stop your edit-warring and WP:OWNership behaviour - David Gerard (talk) 15:19, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

You are correct. I am starting to show some those behaviours. I guess that I assumed that I knew more about Leary's hypothesis, because I actually read the book. Unlike you, who has never fully read any of the books listed, as you have pointed out yourself in comments after editing. You keep attacking (by reversing the conflicted term once again), then tell me to stop the edit war? That's like calling a "cease fire" on both sides after you fired the last shot.

As with your shown bias that I have put in examples above, you also need to check your eyesight for selective reading. I am not the only editor advocating that "hypothesis" is the correct term. The "consensus" is 2 for 2 in this section of the talk page. Please check back the archives of this talk page and review the same old arguments on this very topic, and see all the mess of arguing it has caused before us. Keep in mind again that the word "hypothesis" kept it's place on this article after all that conflict.

"You are the only one advocating this view." - David Gerard... "Perhaps hypothesis is the correct term." - Randy Kryn (Found four replies above)

I know this could be a form of cognitive dissonance for an admin of Wikipedia and large contributor of Wikimedia as a whole, but... dare I say?... You could be wrong? I've openly asked for assistance on editing on this talkpage, because I could be wrong as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dpowell787b (talk • contribs) 21:34, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

To lay down my arms in the edit war, I'll take it back to JPS's edit of the word, "proposal", and maybe we can all consider rewriting the first sentence? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dpowell787b (talk • contribs) 21:43, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

I actually read Leary's book in question. It seems to support my analysis. Ironically, even the very quotes you provide support my analysis. It seems it is you who don't understand what Leary was getting at. I am still trying to locate the talk where someone in the audience asked a question of him about how the eight circuits were literal electric circuits like you would have in a home or something like that. Leary nearly bit off their head. They were coming at it all wrong. "Circuits" was a useful metaphor for explaining the phenomenology from psychedelics that Leary was trying to capture. It's much the same way when someone uses the term energy to mean "spirit". They specifically do not mean that such energy can be measured! The smarter spiritualists and psychedelics from the 60s and 70s were extremely honest about this to the tune of being able to attract skeptics such as Feynman to Esalen. What happened subsequently is that the smartest ones died or moved on and we're left now with rank amateurs who interpret the musings of the turn on, tune in, drop out critics into pseudo-academic blather. It is insulting to everyone involved -- insulting to the history of this countercultural critique and insulting to those of us who are trying to keep science based in reality.

Be inspired by science and borrow your metaphors from there all you want. But please do not be hoodwinked into believing that your stories are actually science when they are based on imagination.

jps (talk) 15:11, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

+1. The eight-circuit model is a poetic metaphor. This is how Leary wrote about it originally, and RAW and Alli followed. It is not science and it was never intended as science. Furthermore, there are literally no sources treating it as science. Leary certainly does not write about it as science, and the evidence posited that he did would also make much of science fiction into science fact - David Gerard (talk) 01:08, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

I think you both bring good points to the table. I'm compromising on the term "proposal" versus "hypothesis", because I think this rehashed argument isn't going to be settled (It's too similar to old debates from years ago in the talkpage archives). Just arguing over one word isn't going to improve this article. I don't accept the opposing position, but it's not worth going on about. Agree to disagree.

JPS, I would like if you found the video or talk with Leary discussing the circuits with the person in the audience. Hopefully I can increase my perspective with Leary and the circuits. Thank you for your insights. You are very knowledgeable and articulate, on many subjects.

David, I absolutely agree with you that this article needs to show the position of the Eight-circuit model from the mainstream scientific community. We could point out that there hasn't been any other notable work on the model other than the three main authors. Thanks for leading me to fringe theories and problems in that regard.... I was being sincere when I said you bring some NEEDED skepticism to this article. No hard feelings, mate.

I just want to get back to adding referenced material to the article. This is my last input to the discussion on this particular section of the talkpage, but I will still make edits with solid reasoning and wiki guidelines, and still discuss any other topics on the talkpage as well. I leave with a quote from Leary,

"Science is all a metaphor." - Dr. Timothy Leary Dpowell787b (talk) 09:45, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

How can a metaphor for different parts of the mind (not the brain), written by a Harvard psychologist be "pseudoscience"? The shadow, the id, the ego, the 8 circuits, are all just metaphor, you can't open a brain and point to them to make them "real science". It's a way of describing consciousness and the map is not the territory. The brain is a physical thing that can be labeled correctly or incorrectly. The mind is not. It doesn't stop being science because it's a soft science. It's a psychologist talking about psychology. How does that not fall under psychology tag? Camrev (talk) 22:01, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

So this seems to still be a problem in 2021. To someone like me who has a background in esotericism and magic, this is yet another attempt to frame reality into a simplistic pseudoscientific mind model... —PaleoNeonate – 18:44, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Proposed deletion

This article has unfixable neutrality issues.

The article's content is not presented as actual science, nor is it presented as philosophy. It is completely unclear from the article what the subject matter is even supposed to be.

The article reads like a summary of the book it originally came from. The only other sources are people who apparently were interested in, but in no way contributed to meaningful debate about the topic. If an idea has not attracted written criticism, it is neither science nor philosophy. Nor is it notable. This is nothing more than one man's personal ideas about human nature; and while the man himself may be notable, the idea clearly isn't. Wikipedia is not a vehicle for promotion of one person's ideas about life.

The fact that a "hypothesis" from someone as notable and controversial as Leary still has not managed to attract any meaningful written discussion should say a lot.

Compare Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which is linked to in this article, for an example of one person's ideas which actually did attract debate and notability.

In short, WP:NPOV, WP:NRVE, WP:NOTOPINION, WP:NOTADVOCATE, WP:PROMOTION.

The talk section of this article is dead. There has been no real discussion in 6 years, and even what was there was not high quality.

There is no reason for this article to exist. It's possible to talk about this topic from a neutral point of view, but it needs a complete and total re-write. GrandMote (talk) 15:24, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

If this truly was "nothing more than one man's personal ideas about human nature", I would suggest merging it with the article on that one man. But if you read this article it's pretty clear that Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, and Antero Alli are three different people who wrote about this model.

The question of whether this is notable is an interesting one. I just did a quick look through google scholar and found an article that mentions Leary's work and its applicability in understanding humans in a holistic way. So I added a quick sentence about that, and also changed "Hypothesis" to "holistic model" because I think that's more accurate. I'll also remove the call for deletion.

Let me know what else you notice that I can improve, and thank you for pointing out some issues with this article! Etippins (talk) 01:35, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks very much for your kind response. I actually wrote a reply out previously in Notepad but forgot to save it. Haven't had a chance to try and rewrite it until now.

At any rate, I believe notability is still an issue here. The other two authors can both fairly be said to be within Leary's "sphere of influence" (one was clearly said to be Leary's close friend in one of these articles), and to some extent, stood to profit from promoting his ideas. If two of my close friends decide my ideas are interesting and decide to write books about them, that still doesn't make them notable; and all the more so if they stand to profit from them.

As has been mentioned previously, it comes down to what this topic actually is. In the article, Leary is quoted as saying it's "science, to the extent that..." But this does not meet any standard of science, simply because of the lack of discussion and criticism. If someone promotes something as science but is debunked, then it becomes pseudoscience; and Wikipedia has many articles clearly labeled as pseudoscience. The fact that no one has really attempted to prove this theory at all makes it pseudoscience by default. And if we're going to consider this idea from a scientific angle, then it needs to be labeled clearly for what it is: pseudoscience.

At the very least it needs to be stated that in terms of science, it is completely untested, unproven, and undebated.

Or if it's going to be considered philosophy, then Wikipedia's scope gets called into question. Is it Wikipedia's purpose to be repository for any idea any person has had any time about subject, so long as we can somehow call it "philosophy"? It seems to me the answer is "clearly not". But if you have some relevant sources regarding Wikipedia's scope when it comes to philosophy or philosophy of the mind, that would help a lot.

Also, I just want to make it clear that I have no particular issue with this idea whatsoever, although I don't believe in it either. I do happen to have a lot of interest in psychology, and my concern is simply that this is not encyclopedic content. It should be clear straight from the lede of the article if you're dealing with science, philosophy, or whim; and it should be clear whether or not those ideas have been tested, praised, criticized, etc.

But neither the lede nor the body make this clear. Right now the article is just a vehicle for the promotion of this idea. And if indeed the idea is just a whim, then it doesn't belong in an encyclopedia at all.

At least that's my position. GrandMote (talk) 14:52, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Hello again! Thanks for your previous edits. I actually lost track of this issue for awhile because I was logged out. Reviewing the article again, I think that changing the lede from "hypothesis" to "holistic model" actually does solve a lot of the issues with neutrality.

I think that the issue of notability is still there, however. As I mentioned before, clear guidelines from Wikipedia would help a lot here. Is an idea notable simply because its originator is notable? Timothy Leary is quite famous; any decently well-read individual is aware of him. But is that enough?

As far as its use by other authors is concerned, I think there is issue because one was a personal associate, and the other had a clear motive to profit personally from it. The idea was clearly tied to his business model ans was not "pure" research, as it were.

At any rate, I'm not familiar with this kind of topic within Wikipedia at all, so if there is a better place this discussion could be taken, I think that would be good.

Thanks again for your help! GrandMote (talk) 12:45, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Sources

Right now, this article suffers severely from WP:PRIMARY. Here I will attempt to find some secondary sources which can provide context:

• [1] article in media studies
• [2] (note: conference proceeding)
• [3] book on Leary
• [4] article on ketamine
• [5] Psychedelics Encyclopedia (less than pleased that Andrew Weil wrote the Foreward, but... highly cited reference anyway).
• [6] book on psychedelics

Not impressive, but giving a sense of the context, at least.

jps (talk) 11:55, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Please note that Robert Anton Wilson's book and work concerning and expanding on this model (as well as Ali's) are not primary sources to Leary's original model (they would, I'd think, be considered secondary and commentary). Randy Kryn (talk) 14:47, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm a bit uncomfortable with using it as a reliable source for anything but the musings of Anton Wilson, but it does speak to the notability of the idea at least that the football was passed to another who is certainly famous in his own right. jps (talk) 18:39, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

I like McCray, W. Patrick. "Timothy Leary's Transhumanist SMI2LE". Groovy Science: Knowledge, Innovation, and American Counterculture. wplibrary for context. One brief mention in a flood of Leary concepts. All taken, saying 4 terrestrial and 4 post-terrestrial are about the extent of description in most good sources. fiveby(zero) 19:10, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Based on (probably book jacket) summations of this book here, perhaps this should be covered from a social science perspective. Reviews appear to be authored by university professors (Angela N. H. Creager and Fred Turner); two notable scientific journals (Science and Nature); as well as MIT News. Steve Quinn (talk) 20:55, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

In fact, I am guessing there would be enough notable coverage of the book, "Groovy Science," for a Wikipedia article. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 21:00, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Here is an obit for Robert Anton Wilson in The Telegraph [7] to help determine his credibility as a consciousness researcher and theorist. Steve Quinn (talk) 21:12, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

The notability of a fringe theory must be judged by statements from verifiable and reliable sources, not the proclamations of its adherents. I think Wilson, Alli, et al fall squarely in the realm of "adherents". JoelleJay (talk) 18:36, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Discusstion

Have reverted your overall full-scale deletion. Nobody is saying this is set-in-stone way of describing human body-mind interaction and growth, it's a model from a reputable source, Leary, and adhears to WP:PRIMARY by summarizing Leary's original model. This was then later commented on and expanded by other reputable authors, including Wilson, who commented and described the model. The word 'model' is in the title. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:45, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Please revert your edit. [8] I said in the edit history [9] to discuss on talk before reverting per WP:BRD. This encourages discussion and avoids edit warring. Also, BRD doesn't say Bold revert, Bold revert and then D. Your actions are inappropriate. Also, please see WP:OWN

Would have liked to leave your edit for the discussion but what you did was an entire wholesale deletion which gutted the article, which can also be considered OWN. At that point a revert presents the entirety of the page. For much of the page it probably needs a clearer explanation that the model described is from Leary's work, but summarizing that work fits WP:PRIMARY. The Wilson additions, on the other hand, are commentary on another's model and are not primary although he adds to the model's explanation. Wilson, as well as Leary, are considered reputable authors and essayists. Randy Kryn (talk) 00:11, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

This is the second and third time you have exaggerated. The first was "overall full-scale deletion". The second was "entire wholesale deletion which gutted the article" and the third exaggeration is "a revert presents the entirety of the page." ---Steve Quinn (talk) 00:20, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Maybe let's stick to the subject. Describing your removal as huge seem appropriate, and maybe we can agree that removing nearly 11,000 bits of page-relevant descriptive material does change the focus of the page. Randy Kryn (talk) 00:26, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

All of this is irrelevant if the material is based on unreliable in-universe sources (e.g. they take it for granted the model is correct or mainstream) and/or WP:OR. Such content should be removed. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 22:02, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Hello Shibbolethink. Please explain much more fully what you mean and really, please consider reverting your wholesale WP:OWN removal of the descriptors of this article. What unreliable sources? Which one(s) are unreliable, and once those are disregarded how many sources do you consider reliable? Then "in-universe", there is no such thing here. The WP:INUNIVERSE link goes to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Writing about fiction. To repeat the obvious, Wilson wrote an entire non-fiction book about Leary's model. Ten years after if was first described. Wilson's book exists as a secondary source. Whether Wilson agreed with something or not doesn't seem at all relevant to your large removal of long-term material. Don't most non-fiction book writers agree that something is important, and that's why they write about it? Randy Kryn (talk) 23:07, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

You said: Then "in-universe", there is no such thing here.

WP:FRIND:

• In particular, the relative space that an article devotes to different aspects of a fringe theory should follow from consideration primarily of the independent sources. Points that are not discussed in independent sources should not be given any space in articles. Independent sources are also necessary to determine the relationship of a fringe theory to mainstream scholarly discourse
• The prominence of fringe views needs to be put in perspective relative to the views of the entire encompassing field; limiting that relative perspective to a restricted subset of specialists or only among the proponents of that view is, necessarily, biased and unrepresentative.

You said: To repeat the obvious, Wilson wrote an entire non-fiction book about Leary's model. Ten years after if was first described. Wilson's book exists as a secondary source.

Wilson is not an independent or reliable source. He believes the theory. He helped formulate it with the author. He has committed hoaxes before. He has no degrees or formal training in psychology or neuroscience. He is not a respected theoretician or expert in the psychology or neuroscience communities.

WP:ARBPS:

• Theories which, while purporting to be scientific, are obviously bogus, may be so labeled and categorized as such without more justification.
• Wikipedia contains articles on pseudoscientific ideas which, while notable, have little or no following in the scientific community, often being so little regarded that there is no serious criticism of them by scientific critics.

Detecting Bull$%#!, published 8 March 2022 by Al-Shawaf L in Psychology Today:

In fact, misrepresenting quantum physics almost seems to be a prerequisite for peddling psychology-adjacent woo. If you plan to spout vacuous bullshit and you want it to sound quasi-intellectual, you’re going to have to misappropriate some quantum physics! There are probably two things going on besides the field’s imprimatur of authority and scientific respectability. First, peddlers of bovine stercus benefit from the specialist nature of quantum physics and the obscurity of its principles. If readers don’t know much about the field, it’s easier for quacks to misrepresent its findings and axioms. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 01:31, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Shibbolethink. They are saying a lot of what I was thinking when I edited the article to its present form. The only thing I can add at the moment is jps posted some links [10] to develop content that can be used in this article. I think one reason for developing this content is that it is reliable sourcing as compared to the in-universe style of sourcing that is present in the article. This reliable sourcing will help balance out the article. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 02:20, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Another option would be to merge this article to the Timothy Leary article in its truncated form. Maybe prune this article some more prior to the merge. In any case, would Randy Kryn be interested in a merge? ---Steve Quinn (talk) 02:38, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Just going to join as another voice here noting that Wilson is very unambiguously not a secondary source, as he is is no way WP:INDEPENDENT of the topic, but in fact very a player in its construction and promotion, with no outside editorial controls or review function to his work, and has no research background or context for his treatment of these theories. Although, notably, that last component is far more determinative in policy terms than the previous two. Honestly, Randy, when it comes to this aspect of the dispute, this doesn't even pass WP:SNOW with regard to the question of connection to the work and the context in which the source discusses this 'model', and you've been here far too long to be thinking it would fly to position Wilson's perspectives as secondary, all facts considered. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 03:07, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I guess I'm too dense to get why an entire book written about the model ten years after its initial presentation is not a secondary source which has then been itself integrated into the page. And of course I'd oppose a merge to the Leary page, this is a fine stand-alone article, especially if the long-term descriptors are brought back. Please research and understand that Leary was a pioneer of 1950s personality testing and studies while at Harvard who later came up with this important 8-circuit model for personality development and solidification. I've also removed the notability tag, whatever else it is it's notable. As for Wilson, he is regarded as one of the most important writers and essayists of the 20th century in some circles, and his popular 1983 book on Leary's model still stands as the definitive commentary about it. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:37, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Consensus (on this talk page) has determined that the sources are not acceptable for a stand alone article. I understand that you don't agree with this but you are swimming upstream. Also, JoelleJay gave much the same feedback at the current ANI [11], [12], [13]. Also, it seems you have removed the notability tag against consensus that is apparent on this talk page in this section and the "Sources" section. Please restore this tag because it is based on consensus. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 13:02, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Notable. You seem to have very little if any knowledge of Leary's work and the notability of this topic, so please do not push from editing to merging (which amounts to a deletion). There is no consensus of all involved editors as yet, but comments from people working from the fringe theories page. I've finally alerted the Tim Leary and Wilson pages of this attempt, I didn't think this was needed but I guess so. As for your personal involvement, what about that revenge edit you did, you haven't addressed that yet but just seem to think that's a normal action. It isn't. [EDIT: adequately explained]. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:39, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Don't make this about me. There are whole bunch of other editors involved as can be seen on this talk page. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 13:44, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Well this sure has been made about me, hasn't it, at a huge ANI thread, at an off-site attack page, and your unaddressed revenge edit [EDIT: adequately explained, thanks]. None of those were needed but there they are. Hopefully more editors become involved, because if you think I'm missing the point and I think you folks are, it seems to me to be the fringe crowd pretty much demanding ownership of a long-term article. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:54, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I've only briefly looked at Exo-Psychology and Prometheus Rising, but more from McCray, his chapter above and The Visioneers. It seems to me that "8 circuit model" is rather disconnected on its own. SMI2LE might be more informative for the reader and add additional high quality sources. fiveby(zero) 14:17, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Hello Fiveby. The model's evolution could be traced back to Leary's invention of the Interpersonal circumplex. Timothy Leary's work has been attempted to be fringed, even though his contributions to personality formation and consciousness were pioneering. Wilson's assessment and commentary of the model came ten years after Leary presented it, not concurrently, so why he's not considered a valid source must still be questioned. I'd like to remind everyone that this discussion branched from a fringe page discussion questioning why Leary was removed from Category:American consciousness researchers and theorists by an editor who described Leary as just a '60s druggie (I've argued that Leary without a doubt fits that category language). Randy Kryn (talk) 14:44, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I am following the history of science, futurism and counterculture perspective and context from McCray. I notice that Leary never uses "consciousness" or "model" in Exo-Psychology, tho he may in other works. But I know hardly anything about consciousness research and have to look for someone to tell me about Leary, Wilson, Alli and Eckartsberg and to trace the idea from Leary's earlier work. The thing is i can't find someone to do that for me. What i do find is McCray and his perspective, Wilson and Leary both proponents of SMI2LE and this a part of I2. fiveby(zero) 15:26, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Apologies for not commenting on the SMI2LE comment, and of course it would make a nice page. I haven't read all of Leary's work, not that into him as it would seem here, although I would highly recommend Wilson's writings - a recognized and honored writer who, like Isaac Asimov, had the ability to relate his topics in an understandable manner. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:38, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Wilson's assessment and commentary of the model came ten years after Leary presented it, not concurrently, so why he's not considered a valid source must still be questioned. Please read what Shibbolethink said above. Secondary contextualization must come from the mainstream stance on a fringe topic, not from the topic's proponents, and certainly not from people with zero relevant academic credentials. The eight-circuit model has not been discussed at all in mainstream scholarship (no hits on Gale or Scopus), which means Wikipedia cannot go beyond the very bare minimum in describing it and TNT is likely the only option. JoelleJay (talk) 00:56, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Have to agree \with JoelieJay on this one. Sorry to say, this page does not seem salvageable. And it's nothing personal. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 01:01, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

I strongly concur with the consensus that the article as it stood was far too based on WP:PRIMARY coverage and was just generally problematic in tone. That said, there is not yet a clear, robust, and unambiguous, consensus on what should change, so the continued edit warring by multiple parties while there is an ongoing talk page discussion about the matter here (as well as an ANI report and an FTN discussion) is highly inappropriate and needs to stop, before Randy ends up not the only one having their conduct scrutinized by the community.

Now, personally, I don't see the value in TNT here: what longterm benefit do we get from temporarily deleting an article that is clearly based on a notable topic, thus greenlighting a near-future recreation of the article? Far better to just fix the tonal issues now, so the reader arriving here can learn what ECMC purports to be about, but with the right framing and additional context to make it's lack of empirical rigor or academic origin clear. I mean, honestly, I think letting the content of the "model" speak for itself at length actually does a lot to illustrate how much it is not based in science or factual inquiry, which is a good thing. We just need some outside discussion of the topic for context. I'm not convinced that there aren't RS out there that do this, especially in light of the fact that Viriditas has alluded at Talk:Timothy Leary to recalling some. It seems to me that even if academic literature in experimental psychology took no direct, serious interest in Leary's post-academic life writings (and that part is definitely overwhelmingly true), some expert or another who specializes in discussion of psuedoscience has got to have had a go at some point in the last fifty plus years.

Regardless, until there is a clear path forward agreed to here, the radical additions and deletions need to stop. Honestly, an admin looking to make a point easily could have blocked four or five people over this cluster of disputes already, so for anyone still participating in the back-and-forth on blanking the article, I seriously advise caution. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 04:21, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

@Snow Rise: I am not seeing any edit warring going on. The editing is in agreement with consensus. Blanking the article might be somewhat outlandish at this particular time. The conflict with editing this article seems to have passed. Keep in my mind it can be restored to any version. But I agree with the current version - if I may speak for myself. Please don't be overconcerned. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 04:33, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

I spent about two hours on Gale, Google Scholar, and Scopus trying to find anything related to this model in mainstream academic RS, and got nothing at all. If we can't contextualize it properly it absolutely fails notability (NFRINGE). JoelleJay (talk) 04:35, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

People are getting ahead of themselves. This isn't science, it was never intended as science, and as such, you're not going to find any mention of it in scientific sources. The eight-circuit model of consciousness is based on the ideas set out in Leary's monograph, Neurologic, which he wrote (or composed) while in solitary confinement in 1973 in California Men's Colony, and then sent by letter to Joanna Harcourt-Smith. On the very first page of this treatise which composes the basis of this subject under discussion, Leary introduces the reader with the following statement: "The theories presented in this essay are Science Fiction." In the appropriate context and framing, WP:FRINGE does not apply. This is literature, or a form of philosophy. Viriditas (talk) 06:32, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Huh, possibly i'm misreading here but that sure seems like a different story than the one you're telling on Leary's talk page. So over there on Leary's page you say it's WP:FRINGE, but here it's "philosophy" - which is, in your eyes, somehow exempt from content policies? - car chasm (talk) 07:10, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

This is a fringe theory in the context of science. But, it's not science, it's a form of literature that overlaps multiple genres, such as clandestine literature, philosophy, and speculative fiction. Leary himself said this model wasn't science, but science fiction, and as archivists and bibliographers have shown, he has worn multiple hats ("social scientist, activist philosopher, man-of-letters and entertainer") so this is consistent with his character. Further, we know from his publishing history that he was writing underground works of non-science during this phase in his career, such as entertainment and science fiction (Jail Notes, 1970; Confessions of a Hope Fiend, 1973; Starseed; 1973). This does not exempt this model from content policies, but is acceptable for Wikipedia given what we know about the work as non-science (in other words, it has to meet the requirements for published literature in a non-science context). As for whether you are misreading, you recently claimed experimental researcher and psychopharmacologist Roland L. Fischer was a spiritualist during a related re-categorization campiagn.[14] Viriditas (talk) 08:16, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Leary "science faction" and Wilson guerrilla ontology? If so, how would the WP article reader know from this? fiveby(zero) 12:24, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Easy, just return the page and edit in that the work is science fiction (if an author says their work is science fiction then it's science fiction, according to Lazarus Long) and add categories pertaining to science fiction. What's interesting about your link is that Leary's 1973 work isn't in copyright, which makes it easier to quote larger parts of it. It seems that what we have here, to coin a phrase, is a failure to communicate - on my part, for not realizing that the page was about a science fiction work and not a fringe page. Robert Anton Wilson's book then expands on Leary's interesting sci-fi concept, assuring that the wheels, they go round and round. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:06, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Not so easy, i think, given WP's content rules. It's such a small bite from the Leary/Wilson apple that in my opinion you can't really serve the reader here without ending up with an essay straying well beyond the OR limits. That's what some of the editors arriving here have been trying to do, find something that allows this to fit in the content rules but coming up blank. Maybe Exo-Psychology or SMI2LE might serve better as introductions for a general audience? fiveby(zero) 14:04, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

lol actually. Just got back on Wikipedia and found the complete destruction of this beautiful article. What I thought of, first thing, was that if Tim Leary were alive he'd give the deleting editor a loving hug, a great big smile full of warmth and joy, and give a kind laugh at the sad foolishness of those who do such things. Randy Kryn (talk) 22:58, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Fiction proposal

The discussion is getting somewhat difficult to read when it's so condensed to one side of the page, and it appears to have shifted topics, so I hope nobody minds me making a new section. It seems like we all agree that we won't be able to find academic WP:RS in cognitive science supporting Leary's model. @Viriditas: mentions that Leary himself considered this to be "Science Fiction" which might make the article salvageable. However, I'm not sure that adding in a note that this is science fiction and recategorizing is sufficient per MOS:INUNIVERSE.

At a bare minimum, I think if we want to keep this article, we need WP:SIGCOV in independent, (non-fictional) sources like biographers of Leary and Wilson, historians, etc. If those can be added to the article and the content rewritten making heavy use of those independent sources, I think there's justification for keeping the article, though almost all of the current content will need to be paraphrased to be in an out-of-universe perspective.

However, if we can't find those sources either, there still might be a way to keep most of the content of the article, even if the article itself needs to be redirected. Generally there are fewer restrictions on material that's covered as part of a summary of a book. If the books where Leary and Wilson discuss this theory don't all have wikipedia pages yet, they probably do meet WP:NBOOK, I think Leary's books at least pass on his own historical significance. If Neurologic is the main place Leary outlines this model, that article could be created and Leary's description of the model could be put there, with this page as a redirect to Neurologic. Similarly, Wilson's books where he makes his own additions to the theory (Quantum Psychology? could have the content from Wilson's books transferred there.

What do you all think of this idea? - car chasm (talk) 19:46, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

@Carchasm:, just a heads, you neglected to sign your post immediately above. Would you do me a favour and delete this paragraph when you add the sig? Thanks!

These thoughts were originally constructed in response to fiveby's last comment above, but they fit well enough here, so I'll edit and place them here, where they might support CC's effort to refocus the discussion. I do agree that this situation presents us with particular challenges, when it comes to describing a work that (if the current reading is correct) intentionally blurred the lines between fictional and empirical writing. Nevertheless, I know of no policy which allows us to throw up out hands and altogether excise an otherwise notable topic, simply because we are having immediate difficulties in figuring out how to draft content that accurately relates it to the reader, particularly when there are no obvious insurmountable obstacles to doing so.

Furthermore, I've done some searching myself today, and did not find the complete dearth of coverage of this topic that was suggested, even with regard to scholarly works. (Just a little tip: start with Google Scholar. I know there's still a lingering bias towards the portals that became, and in many research contexts remain, the bread and butter for a couple generations of researchers, but google is the great aggregator today). There actually was a fair bit of coverage out there in RS, though much of it is not super in-depth, and to be certain, not everyone was "in on the joke", so to speak. Mixed in with the sourcing treating it as a counter-culture talking point are some who present it as legitimate neuropsychological speculation. Others clearly identify it as a form of mysticism (or else 'magick'), or analyze it from an anthropological or media studies perspective.

To be certain, the more based in hard science/fields connected to the "model" (neurology, experimental psychology) that a given source was, the more likely it was to mention the model incidentally. On the flip side, no sources that I found expressly identify ECMC as a work of science fiction, but several did clearly label it as a work of something like transgressionist art more broadly, indicating they were aware that it was not meant to be taken purely at face value. But my overall take-away is that even if we can only use an observation here, and a clearly attributed statement there from among these sources, it should be more than sufficient to create a lead (and if necessary, other introductory sections) which clearly contextualize the work for what it is. If that is accomplished, I am far less concerned about the impact of having in-depth coverage of what the model purports to be about, in its own written terms. So long as we relate that even Leary would advise you to contextualize it as a creative rather than empirical work, then we have done our job in providing the reader with the correct frame for interpreting the content.

Speaking to the side issue raised by Car chasm, I have no strong position with regard to whether any of this should be discussed in the present article or moved to an NBOOK article. I do think keeping it one space has the advantage of allowing us to integrate discussion of the contributions of the multiple authors who collaborated on this concept, be it art or pseudoscience, but that's not necessarily the most important factor. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 18:09, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

"Coming up blank" was poor wording, not throwing up of hands but move to SMI2LE and expand has been my proposal. McCray i think does a good job of describing the relationship to science fiction so not sure editors are reading that Groovy Science chapter. But that proposal isn't gaining any ground so i'll bow out. fiveby(zero) 20:40, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Fiveby I think yours is a valid proposal. Don't give up the ship! I have been trying to read the article you mentioned. I just haven't had the chance. But I will get to it. For anyone interested here is a link via Wikipedia Library: Timothy Leary’s Transhumanist SMI2LE. Please notice on this page there is a PDF download available on the right in the TOC box. Steve Quinn (talk) 22:10, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

The proposal is to create a SMIL2LE article and merge content on this topic into it? SnowRise ^{let's rap} 22:56, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

I think it would be best to read the article first and determine what is needed for sourcing, if we were to try to merge into a SMIL2LE article. If such a merge works I don't have a problem with that. Steve Quinn (talk) 23:58, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

See also Neurologic (book). It appears that the concept of the seven or eight-circuit model was spread out over at least five books, quite possibly many more, including at the most basic level: Neurologic (1973), Exo-Psychology (1977), Cosmic Trigger (1977), The Game of Life (1979), and Prometheus Rising (1983). John Higgs makes the argument that the idea goes all the way back to his original work at Harvard and is Leary's magnum opus when one takes a wider view of his entire body of work. It's difficult for me to see that, but I'm trying to understand that POV. Viriditas (talk) 10:13, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

24-page booklet called Neurologic that is aguably Leary's most important work..his prison version has qualities that later embellishments are lacking Higgs seems much more interested in the earlier versions, ..number of radical changes to his eight circuit model...now claimed that it also described the evolution of a species through time...product of Leary's main strategy for regaining his credibility: that of seeming to concentrate on issues other than psychedelics... etc. Model moving from a psychedelics to a SF space migration and evolution version? Good stuff probably. Can't link the source tho.fiveby(zero) 16:25, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, great points @Fiveby: I abandoned that line of investigation when I realized there were no online versions of the original available, and frankly, I wonder if any exist outside of collections. But, I don’t think there’s all that much difference between the 24 and 44 page versions, other than a lot of added content. In other words, the original version was just shorter and more simple, but the longer version still includes that original material. Horowitz clears some of this confusion up in his bibliography. I will add more Higgs later. Viriditas (talk) 23:09, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Snow Rise Has some advantages: the relationship to SF can be clarified, more sources available, more potential for expansion, and the reader would not be left wondering what these "post-terrestrial circuits" are all about. Call it a suggestion instead of a proposal. fiveby(zero) 14:39, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

While there is good potential for a SMILE article and even other new pages, and some good comments here, I think that this page should continue as a stand-along article due to its importance in Leary's and Wilson's work (see the "magnus opus" comment above which seems to fit). Randy Kryn (talk) 15:40, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

• I hope there's no opposition to my edits? Because such opposition won't make much sense. I had received a ping from someone in some ANI thread but failed to find the comment. TrangaBellam (talk) 12:07, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Of course there is opposition, your good faith and well-meant edit pretty much destroyed the page. It should be reverted, although many here will agree with it. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:44, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, as Randy noted there is some opposition, but there is more support for the article as is via consensus.---Steve Quinn (talk) 16:57, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

@Fiveby:@Snow Rise: I have read half-way through the SMI2LE article and I think SMI2LE (as a topic) can be a stand alone article. This particular chapter, for which fiveby provided a link, can be used as an acceptable reference imho. (Here is the link again: [15]). Also, I was briefly looking at the end of chapter notes and saw more than 100 references there.

So, I'm thinking that surely there must be other works in those notes that significantly discuss SMI2LE. Now that I think of it, I will set up an article for SMI2LE in my user space that can be written, beginning with this chapter as a reference. Anybody is welcome to join in and help out. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 16:57, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

OK. Here is the link to the article in my user space: [16]. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 17:27, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

The ping was from my comment preceding this one. JoelleJay (talk) 17:58, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

@Carchasm: -- As stated above, the Neurologic (book) article has been created. If the independent sources in the bibliographic section discuss the "circuit model" they might be useful for whatever is decided about the "Eight-circuits" article here. Also, if we could find one independent reliable source then we could merge "Eight circuits" into Neurologic or somewhere else. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 18:40, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

I think Viriditas is to be commended for a very fine piece of encyclopedic prose, especially given the short turn around on the composition. I think it very adequately captures all of the context Leary's work and the theoretical/mystical framework for which it served as an origin point. I'm not certain whether it will ultimately be the best course of action to merge this article into that one, but the base we would be working with in that article certainly makes it a possibility. I would particularly like to hear Viriditas' perspective on the advisability of that course of action before we head too energetically down that road, though. If nothing else, the excellent job in outlining the background of the evolution of Leary's "Psy Phi" concepts will be useful (by way of an internal link) to the reader of any related articles on that topic that do end up being preserved (if any).

I can't speak for everyone, but this approach feels like our best opportunity to thread the needle between providing context and avoiding POV, describing Leary's work in a manner which provides the reader with the tools to decide for themselves whether this is psuedoscience gobbledygook (which, to be honest, is closest to where I fall on it), or brilliant observation, unsanctioned by the academic establishment, but full of higher truth. Honestly, without wishing to point fingers or disorder discussion just when we are getting somewhere, there was, in some of the previous discussions, a little too much of some advocacy for tailoring the content to fit the narratives of those extremes, when Wikipedia's role is really to provide as much information and context as possible to allow the informed reader to arrive at their own conclusions. I think Viriditas' approach here is a stellar example of how to do that, at least with regard to the one narrow subject (the book in question) within a cluster of Leary-oriented topics.

So, hopefully, as Steve says, we can build upon this with the right sources. I will aggregate what I found the other day to see what can be useful towards that end, once I have opportunity to sit at the right computer. I apologize that I have been slow to respond to some posts the last day or so, after proactively involving myself in the ongoing dispute: homelife emergencies dictated my time and may yet for the next couple of days, but I will at least try to supply those sources asap. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 20:36, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

To me, your intuition and rationale are sound. If one assumes this model is scientific, then yes, it must be viewed as fringe, pseudoscientific gobbledygook. I can’t imagine any way around that conclusion. I’ve noticed that up until 1969 (perhaps even later), Leary sounds remarkably lucid and cogent. After this time, for whatever reason, his ideas sound and look more like poetry and performance art. Confused about this change in his approach, I just did some reading about Leary’s arrests, prison time, escape, Nixon’s obsession with Leary as a way to misdirect the public, Leary’s exile in Europe, extradition, re-imprisonment, and the government’s framing of him as an informer. All of this clearly had an impact on his state of mind, but the most unusual thing I read about was how much and how frequently Leary used LSD and other drugs during his exile. For the two or so years he was on the run, Leary did not appear to have ever sobered up. In the way Minutaglio (2018) depicts it, Leary was high on acid for months or years at this point, only coming down when he re-entered the prison system. This must have had an impact on his thinking and writing. Having read Neurologic several times now, I get the impression of more of a Greek elegy or a political position paper informed by a personal philosophy than I do of a scientific proposal. While this constant high is conducive to some form of creativity, I don’t think it helps with the precision needed for a sober, scientific approach. Perhaps some drugs like stimulants might work for unique individuals like Paul Erdős, who would focus intently on obscure and esoteric math problems, requiring a kind of laser-driven concentration to accomplish their goals. My point in bringing this up is that Leary’s state of mind while expounding on the seven (later eight) circuits does not appear to be scientifically oriented, but rather more of one approaching religious ecstasy driven by entheogenic drugs. I am quite familiar with the counterculture literature from this time period, and I just don’t see how it can be seen as a serious scientific work. I think what we are really dealing with is an early form of transhumanist philosophy in the form of a style of literature that likely has a precise, scholarly definition that escapes me at the moment. The eight circuit model is already appropriately discussed in the Timothy Leary#Post-Millbrook section in this context, so unless that section is split out as a history sub-topic, I think this article should redirect there. That’s just a suggestion, as there is no permanent solution; I think the alternate suggestions by others up above are as valid or more than my own. I could also see this material replicated in different articles focused on the history of Leary, the history of transhumanism, and other topics as outlined above. . Viriditas (talk) 03:59, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, notably '69 is about a decade after the start of Leary's use of psychedelics, with significant sustained periods thereafter. It's hard to contemplate a realistic version of the explanation for these works that doesn't include the impacts of that habit as a significant factor. But then too, we're also talking about a man who is being held in solitary confinement, who has had to quite the same drug habit (quite possibly very suddenly), and whose world has recently very much come apart in major ways. Now, I wouldn't venture to speculate as to how genuine Leary's claims that he was being psychologically tortured and deprived of sleep actually were, but I think it's safe to say at least that his circumstances were uncomfortable and difficult in the extreme. It's clear at a minimum that the writing that resulted was not put forward by Leary as an empirical work, whatever it's biology-adjacent features. Though arguably it has been received by some as a legitimate work of scientific inquiry purporting to map to neuropsychological principles, that is not the root of the book's (or the "model's") coverage in reliable sources.

Of course, we have to be careful here not to venture into OR in how we justify our editorial decisions. But sources do discuss some of this, and even cover the link between Leary's circumstances at the time, and the written work that resulted from this period of incarceration. So I think we can at least partially embrace your assessment of the work in objective policy terms. This cuts a little both ways, though more in one direction than the other. On the one hand, this only heightens the original concerns here, regarding the previous draft being too based in primary coverage, thus covering the topic on its own written terms, so to speak. And on the other hand, it signifies why we wouldn't expect to see coverage of this topic in scientific literature, but why it nevertheless has substantial notability arising from other coverage. Mind you, that was my outlook from the start, but the extra contextualization of your Neurologic article and your observations above has only sharpened this perception for me. I note this detail also because of some of the lines of discussion at ANI. I do think that aspect of the debate is thankfully going to end up being a moot point we don't have to resolve, but for the record, my take is that, if we wanted, we could easily source a neutral version of the article that has something to say about the topic while being consistent with NPOV and FRINGE.

So the question is, do we want to? My perception is that the consensus is leaning strongly against it. I have been agnostic on the question of an independent article up to this point, but at least three or four others here think that merging any useful content into one or two other articles is probably the way to go. With you tacitly joining that consensus, and my opinion on the matter divided, I'm certainly not looking to drag the matter out further. That leaves just Randy, as the one party firmly in the independent article camp. Now maybe some here feel we should take a little more time and work through proposals before rushing to a decision: that would also get no argument from me. But I'm trying to read the room, and I get the sense there is support for deciding on a merger solution right now.

So perhaps a straw poll, asking whether to retain this article or merge the content elsewhere? If merge wins out, we could just then take it a piece at a time, moving statements to the talk pages of the relevant articles and proposing additions, and evlauating the sourcing for those statements on a case-by-case basis. If keep wins out in the !vote, I guess we'd be somewhat back at square one? But that seems less likely. Anyhow, I don't see the need to RfC it, since we have five to seven people willing to !vote, most likely. But if Randy wants the extra eyes, that would be his prerogative to make a filing. I'd ask he not do that, because I don't see how it would do anything but prolong debate without being likely to change the outcome, but no one can force him to aver the use of the process if he wants, imo. Then again, this whole discussion arguably should take place via AfD anyway, and that would obviate the need for an RfC. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 06:09, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

TLDR on the post above: is there support here for a straw poll (or a formal AfD) asking whether to keep this article or merge select content into another article (or articles)? It feels like at this point we have the info necessary to come to a consensus, but there's also not necessarily a rush. Thoughts? SnowRise ^{let's rap} 06:09, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

I can see the model being viewed in the way you and Viriditas propose, and I think that's reasonable. But the issue is still how to describe it using independent secondary sources. Whether it purports to be scientific or mystic/mythic/philosophical/artistic, the ideas are still constructed in a way suggestive of a scientific model, and it would absolutely be misleading to readers to retain that without context. And while it's given SIGCOV in works by Alli, Wilson, et al, as far as I know they do not actually provide that necessary context either (on top of being non-independent as associates of Leary, and generally unreliable as occult nonsense). Also, Wikipedia still regards mystic New Agey philosophy as fringe, so it's not like recategorizing ECM as that will relieve us of FRINGE concerns. If no one outside of that area has characterized how the model is/should be interpreted, we're still back at square one. JoelleJay (talk) 01:14, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

I would describe it as an example of late psychedelic literature, with elements of eastern mysticism and early transhumanist philosophy in the releated genre of prison literature. Unfortunately—and there's no way around this—it must also be categorized as pseudoscience, since Leary and other authors claim that this eight circuit model is an example of a new theory of evolution, which the so-called "Eight-Circuit Model of Consciousness" attempts to explain in "scientific" terms. To those of us who are not high on acid at the moment, this is no different from the Time Cube theory. And I should like to emphasize for the second time, that Leary came up with this idea after taking LSD almost every day for several years while in Europe. This is generally not the best way to do the hard work required to compose a sound scientific theory, and if memory serves, there are quite a number of studies on LSD and creativity that demonstrate this claim. In other words, LSD is good for coming up with new ideas, but not for doing the hard work needed to make those ideas work in the real world. Leary did the former, but failed to accomplish the latter. Viriditas (talk) 01:46, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Time Cube was exactly what came to mind when I clicked on that ref to earthportals.com JoelleJay (talk) 01:47, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Seems more a theory of Leary than a theory of evolution: mindmap, 5 level/brains/circuits, 7 circuits and time, 8 circuits and space migration. Instead of refinement of some theory, a concept used to explain himself at different times. 7 circuits and what drugs activate which, then when he wants to downplay the LSD and drug stuff in 1977 the "model" undergoes a radical change and part of SMI2LE. fiveby(zero) 14:22, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

> "And while it's given SIGCOV in works by Alli, Wilson, et al, as far as I know they do not actually provide that necessary context either (on top of being non-independent as associates of Leary, and generally unreliable as occult nonsense)." - To paraphrase Horace, 'Why do you laugh? Change the name and the story is about [Relativity].' Anyone who supported Einstein's theory could just as easily have been dismissed as his 'associate', therefore 'non-independent' and 'generally unreliable' as purveyors of what a Relativity-denier called Grundsinnlosigkeit, complete absence of basic sense. – .Raven  .talk 14:50, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia, like most organizations, runs on social consensus - enough people have accepted Einstein's theory for it to be accepted by the broader community, it's received no shortage of coverage from people with no background in differential geometry. If the only people who published papers about general relativity by the 1960s were Eddington and Hilbert, the hypothetical 1960's wikipedia wouldn't have an article on it, either. But if after fifty years the WP:CHOPSY test fails, and for a Harvard professor no less? There are far more ambiguous cases. - car chasm (talk) 15:09, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

1) WP:CHOPSY is (part of) an essay originated by drs. Tudor Al. Georgescu, who on his userpage self-quotes: "In many countries if you exercise critical thinking you land in jail. Or you will get lynched by an angry mob." I note that this is not praise of "running on social consensus".

2) After I'd read new articles on Plate Tectonics, I brought them up to my trusted teacher, who denounced the idea as nonsense. After I'd visited Argonne National Labs and held a vial of xenon tetrafluoride (XeF₄) in my hand, I mentioned that to my chemistry teacher, who replied, "Impossible: The Noble Gasses Do Not Combine!" The year after men first brought back rocks from the Moon for analysis, I attended the AAAS convention in Philly and got to ask Harlow Shapley about the new proposal that the Moon had begun as an outflung piece of the Earth (the chemistry matched), quite possibly after a collision. He reassured me: "Pure Velikovsky, dear boy, pure Velikovsky." (He was a famed critic of Velikovsky two decades earlier.) But now, half a century later, see giant-impact hypothesis, the first explanation offered at Origin of the Moon. So I'm keenly aware of Clarke's First Law. But note what these examples have in common: like Relativity, they involve the physical sciences, where clear and solid disproof, falsification, may, just may, come quickly.

3) Theories and models of the mind can be rather different in that respect: Psychoanalysis was categorized as unfalsifiable (thus not science but pseudoscience) long ago by Karl Popper, and even by former psychoanalysts. (See this reprise.) It's on our own list of topics characterized as pseudoscience {do look at other list entries while you're there!}... but we still have a full article about it, with Freud himself cited in 17 of the first 50 footnotes, and many associates (some would say disciples) cited in others, which per JoelleJay's rule are "non-independent" hence "generally unreliable". Where is the parallel effort to treat that article like this one, remove cites and the text citing them, until it's small enough (one sentence, one cite) to drown in a bathtub?

4) In fact, it is entirely within our mission statement as an encyclopedia to cover topics like pseudosciences, fallacies, superstitions, scams, hoaxes, and frauds — it is a public service to do so — because here we can provide a) enough coverage to be sought out for reading, and b) neutral coverage [even on "fringe" topics] so we're not rejected as biased, and c) honestly-brokered information on all sides so that readers are fairly warned of the pitfalls. If readers find nothing about them here, perhaps they will at a scammer site.

5) That's why we shouldn't "stealth delete" Psychoanalysis by whittling it down to nothing – readers who find it elsewhere on the web might not get such neutral coverage, or warnings of its flaws. *** The same consideration applies to this article.*** The cure for bad ideas is more information, not less. – .Raven  .talk 18:18, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

You seem to be confusing sources and topics here. WP:FRINGE is why we need an independent source on Psychoanalysis, it's not a directive to purge all mention of it from the site. This article's topic, however has minimal if any independent coverage, ergo it should be redirected. - car chasm (talk) 23:38, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

At the certainty of repeating myself a bit, the article now has "minimal coverage" of ANY kind, let alone independent, because roughly forty references have been deleted  from it, along with all but the first sentence. About 2/3 of the deleted references didn't feature Leary as an author. So what does "dependent" mean to you, other than you disagree with them?

By that reasoning, there are no "independent" sources supporting Relativity, Evolution, Plate Tectonics, or the Heliocentric Model, if you happen to disagree with them. That's a nifty dodge, really. – .Raven  .talk 02:25, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

At this point WP:AGF strains credulity. If you can't understand WP:FRINGE, don't contribute to the project anymore. It's not my job to explain it to you. - car chasm (talk) 03:47, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

> "If you can't understand WP:FRINGE..." – The article which declares, "the universal scientific view is that perpetual motion is impossible" – so among the concepts it declares "fringe" are Newton's First Law of Motion aka inertia; the eternal inflation of the Universe; and time crystals? I understand that its writer(s) didn't know the difference between perpetual motion and a perpetual-motion machine, in short did not actually understand science. But you thump it nonetheless, because neither do you. – .Raven  .talk 04:47, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

If you have issues with understanding the nuances of physics, Sabine Hossenfelder will explain these sorts of things to you for a modest hourly rate if you'd like, but, as I said, this isn't my job, I'm a volunteer here who primarily works in a different field of study. WP:FRINGE is a part of WP:PAG, if these sorts of hurdles are truly so insurmountable for you, you're best off contributing your time somewhere else. - car chasm (talk) 05:48, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

> "If you have issues with understanding the nuances of physics...." – This would be better directed to the WP:FRINGE writer(s) who asserted that "the universal scientific view is that perpetual motion is impossible", conflating the motion with the machine.

> "... if these sorts of hurdles are truly so insurmountable for you...." – Do you often display such reading comprehension problems?

> "WP:FRINGE is a part of WP:PAG" – And it's a pity that despite all your thumping it, you understand neither its factual errors nor its normative guidelines. – .Raven  .talk 07:44, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Off-topic conversation, hidden by mutual consent

(Redacted) > "especially adding paragraph lengths of someone else's words." – Where? Clearly you didn't read the text you declared TLDR. – .Raven  .talk 18:48, 5 June 2023 (UTC) (Redacted) Yes, you're wrong. 2) first discusses my own experiences and quotes short single sentences by two of the other individuals I mentioned; then links (but does not quote) several articles; and finally wraps up with a note about physical sciences and falsification – which last bit certainly is not an original observation with me, but for that very reason seemed noncontroversial enough not to need citation. I suspect there may be quite a difference in our ages. By contrast, the first half of 3) is cited by links to sources, to show these statements are factual and NOT imagined by me. The last half concerns statements you may have seen before because either JoelleJay or I said them (the previous time, rather than just say "17 of the first 50 footnotes", I listed the footnote numbers); ring a bell? – .Raven  .talk 19:35, 5 June 2023 (UTC) I apologize. My mistake is definitely due to some of what you just said. I will redact my last two posts. Thanks for communicating. Also, today, I am experiencing some stress personally. I definitely should have been more careful here. Steve Quinn (talk) 19:53, 5 June 2023 (UTC) And thanks for analyzing the situation. That was helpful. ----Steve Quinn (talk) 19:59, 5 June 2023 (UTC) Also, feel free to hat this conservation, if you so desire. It might be off-topic or something like that and interrupts the flow of the discussion. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 20:06, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Straw Poll

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

There is no consensus from this discussion on what to do with the page. Straw polls are generally not going to attract the necessary attention or have the broad advertisement present with AfDs that will likely be necessary to form any consensus on this topic. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 14:07, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

---

This straw poll is an attempt to determine what to do with this page. I believe the presented options are redirect, merge, AfD or whatever else. Please ivote in this section and if need be, discuss in the section below. Snow Rise's several paragraph post just above this poll has more info for interested parties. Thanks. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 15:51, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

This topic is sufficiently covered with independent sources in the Post-Millbrook section of the Timothy Leary article. Steve Quinn (talk) 00:58, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

• Redirect. Snow Rise, I think you are correct that it is time to make some decisions. So, after looking at Post-Millbrook section in the Timothy Leary article I think coverage there is sufficient. Independent sources have been applied there. So, for now I don't think any content from the "Eight-circuits" article, based on primary sources, needs to be merged over there. Therefore I recommend just making "Eight-circuits" a redirect to that section (for now). An AfD is not needed. A redirect preserves the content for future discussions on other talk pages. Simple, neat, and easy. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 08:47, 4 June 2023 (UT

• Redirect. I think preserving the page history makes sense because it may be useful on other pages, and if anyone decides to write an in-depth scholarly history of the occult esotericism of the latter half of the twentieth century we can always have a full article, but it's just not possible right now to write something cohesive without a good amount of WP:SYNTH. - car chasm (talk) 22:37, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

• Wait SnowRise has more that he is going through, and Viriditas pointed to Higgs which is a helpful source and goes to addressing my comments above. fiveby(zero) 00:13, 5 June 2023 (UTC) .

• Keep, indeed Restore to status quo ante, or the version Randy Krin suggests, without the "stealth deletion" process that has reduced it to one sentence with one source (making a redirect look obvious). JoelleJay and Steve Quinn have both mentioned finding multiple non-Leary sources on Google Scholar – but JJ pejoratively dismissed them out of hand because they support or use this model, and therefore aren't reliable, therefore this article can't have RSs. By such partisan circular logic, Relativity would always have been relegated to "fringe", as only Relativity's deniers (like the one who declared it Grundsinnlosigkeit, complete absence of basic sense) could have been deemed "reliable", and all its supporters would have been deemed ipso facto "fringe" themselves.
  We have articles on religion, philosophy, pseudoscience, and even obsolete science like Phlogiston theory. We keep, rather than delete, them because readers may want to know about those topics. That isn't necessarily an endorsement of their premises by us. We even have articles about criminals and their crimes, presented neutrally, neither praising nor thumping the pulpit and heatedly denouncing them. But somehow THIS is a topic that must not have an article? How curious.
  WP:EDITING is still a policy; the "nutshell" says: Improve pages wherever you can, and do not worry about leaving them imperfect. Preserve the value that others add, even if they "did it wrong" (try to fix it rather than remove it). This is pretty much the opposite of what has been done, stepwise deleting most of the value that others had added, and moving to delete the remainder, rather than adding whatever "fringe" warnings they felt were missing. – .Raven  .talk 14:38, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
• Redirect or Merge. We should maintain the history but the content itself should be merged into the O'Leary article where non duplicative and DUE. Otherwise, much of this page does not comport with wiki policies on DUE and reliable sourcing. This is a pretty blatant POVFORK potential article. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 15:13, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

• There's still a potential to serve an educational purpose here and more sources turning up beyond those of the older content. Easily more so than Tim O'Leary! Probably will end up redirected but editors are still working on it.fiveby(zero) 15:32, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

  Um. You meant to link to the British soap-opera character and not the psychologist, right? – .Raven  .talk 09:02, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Just making fun of the typo and pointing to WP:OTHERSTUFF. fiveby(zero) 16:06, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

• Keep Lumos3 (talk) 12:09, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
• Redirect or merge. Per the various discussions. JoelleJay (talk) 21:27, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
• Partial merge and temporary redirect. My extended reasoning can be found here for anyone willing to wade through a tediously long breakdown of my analysis of the competing factors. I'll try to render it into a more concise summary here in the next couple of days, but for the sake of not contributing to holding this up any further, suffice it to say that I think there is a valid encyclopedic topic here that can and should justify an article at some point, but the pragmatic hurdles at the moment so complicate the WP:PAGEDECIDE analysis that that the most prudent and policy-consistent approach is make this namespace a redirect until some basic quality and WP:V issues are addressed in proposed content. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 03:54, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
• Partial merge and temporary redirect to Leary subsection or book article if it is created before that time. There’s been plenty of time for people to improve this subject, but it hasn’t happened. I am still not certain which book would be the easiest to source for this, and since the current state of this article is less than ideal, the temporary redirect to the Leary subsection is ideal at this time. Viriditas (talk) 01:14, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
• Keep, since this is a model in the company of ancient traditional ways of defining and explaining human consciousness (please read all of the Buddhist, Hindu, and yoga articles etc. concerning the modeling of consciousness, viable stand-alone pages) it does not fit the definition of fringe. The model does not claim to be science or neither proves or asks for the existence or need for experimental replication, thus making no claims based on proof. It simply puts forward a modeling derived from the experiences and thoughts of Leary, and then further built upon ten years later by Wilson (whose writings, as I've discussed, seem applicable enough as a WP:SECONDARY source to fulfill Wikipedia criteria). Leary could be said to be either thousands of years behind or ahead of his time, and his model fits better with the ancient texts as seen through the prism of what he put his brain through (and honestly seemed to come out the better for, what a beautiful human being he was in life). His contemporary addition to the ancient literature, as later added to by the analysis and commentary of Wilson, does not fall within science and so has nothing to do with fringe. Randy Kryn (talk) 07:35, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree with most of this, and especially the last point. If we can find a way to leverage our sources (which may be limited in number and scope, but are also not nothing) to frame the rest of the article in this way, focusing on the 8CMoC as a work of mainly esoteric conjecture, pulling in strands of scientific knowledge, but in ways that actual experts in the relevant fields would never consider empirically valid or factually descriptive, I think it would go a long way to potentially bringing the disparate perspectives here together. I've said, and still maintain, there is no harm in discussing Leary's notions on what the 8CMoC consists of. We just have to first make it clear this was a very unique man, in a very unique set of circumstances, conjuring some very unique ideas. If we do that, it is just as you say: WP:FRINGE ceases to be an issue, and suddenly we do not have to wring our hands nearly so much over WP:V, MEDRS, or weight of the sources, relative to others in the related fields that Leary borrowed terminology from. Even heavy reliance on the primary sources becomes of very little concern if we have already framed the topic appropriately in the opening sections. I think some of the sourcing JoelleJay has provided below go a ways to helping us create that context, especially when combined with what we can source from Leary biographies, including those already used in our Leary BLP. Perhaps Joelle knows of more quotes along those lines? SnowRise ^{let's rap} 14:38, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

New Age esotericism is still considered FRINGE regardless of whether it claims to be science (For example, fringe theories in science depart significantly from mainstream science and have little or no scientific support. Other examples include conspiracy theories and esoteric claims about medicine).

Primary sources are still not acceptable as the basis of an article even if the subject is properly framed (The no original research policy strongly encourages the collection and organization of information from existing secondary sources, and allows for careful use of primary sources. [...] the relative space that an article devotes to different aspects of a fringe theory should follow from consideration primarily of the independent sources. Points that are not discussed in independent sources should not be given any space in articles. Independent sources are also necessary to determine the relationship of a fringe theory to mainstream scholarly discourse. Fringe sources can be used to support text that describes fringe theories provided that such sources have been noticed and given proper context with third-party, independent sources. [...] In the case of obscure fringe theories, secondary sources that describe the theories should be carefully vetted for reliability.) Wilson, as a coauthor of Leary and proponent of his ideas, does not qualify as an independent secondary [source] of reasonable reliability and quality.

There may very well be enough material from Higgs and other biographers to describe 8CM with only secondary sources, but it will have far less detail than any prior version of the article and will require secondary sources explicitly characterizing it as a "non-scientific" conjecture if that's the route we want to take. I am not convinced that his model was actually intended or received (by adherents) as a purely psycho-philosophical manifesto. JoelleJay (talk) 19:02, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

> "Wilson, as a coauthor of Leary and proponent of his ideas, does not qualify as an 'independent secondary [source] of reasonable reliability and quality'."

Wilson was coathor with Leary of one book, The Game of Life; another five books he wrote without Leary are in the Bibliography and had been cited in the sections now deleted. It's said that in 1947, Albert Einstein co-authored a paper with J. Robert Oppenheimer; should we therefore conclude that neither was independent of the other in all their separate work? Would that be quantum entanglement? – .Raven  .talk 05:06, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

> "New Age esotericism is still considered FRINGE regardless of whether it claims to be science"

I note that New Age and Western esotericism (found in List of New Age topics as "Esotericism") have no such top-tags nor categories at the bottom;* also, just below the section title of New Age#Beliefs and practices appears the line:

Main articles: Spiritual but not religious and List of New Age topics

Perhaps you might want to read the first-linked article of that line in regard to our previous discussion, as a path to resolution. Recall the phrase "Eastern spiritual traditions" previously mentioned as among Leary's influences, but now deleted from the article.

* However, the category "Perennial philosophy" does appear at the bottom of New Age; attn: @LokiTheLiar: – .Raven  .talk 05:48, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

• Keepish. I'm persuaded by Randy and Raven that this is a topic within New Age mysticism, and that it's therefore a page about spirituality/religion, not about WP:FRINGE science or any other kind of science. However, I don't like the old version of the article because it really didn't make that clear. On other similar religious topics (like New Age or Christian Science), we make very clear that these are religions or spiritual movements. This page is titled like it's a scientific theory, and we write about it in a way that doesn't make clear that it's not a scientific theory. The skeptics attempting to correct this are IMO going in the wrong direction: they're trying to write about it like it's a bad or false scientific theory instead of a concept within New Age mysticism / Leary's assignment of spiritual qualities to psychedelics. Loki (talk) 19:44, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

  Well, I *did* remove "Hypothesis"... sorry, I'm repeating myself. – .Raven  .talk 06:01, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Most recent straw poll discussion

• Please do not post protracted discussions in the ivoting - straw poll area. Such discussions disrupt the area by dissuading editors from participating. Hence I have opened a new section. Thanks. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 20:20, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
• In response to Viriditas's post, diff here at 01:14, 15 June 2023 (UTC) the first comment is below: ---Steve Quinn (talk) 20:24, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

  > "There’s been plenty of time for people to improve this subject, but it hasn’t happened." – Rather, attempts to improve the article have been reverted (and complained about at WP:AN/I!), as deletion after deletion has blanked most of the text and references; in other words, efforts to WP:FIXIT have been heatedly opposed, even lawfared, by those who are doing the opposite. In that situation, to argue that the article should go away because it hasn't been improved is like arguing that an assault victim should be turned away because s/he's a mess. You want to see an improvement? Let's restore the article to this (my earlier suggestion) or this (Randy Krin's suggestion); and then add the more critical viewpoints others have claimed were missing (but not added themselves). That would WP:FIXIT, right? – .Raven  .talk 02:41, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

  That doesn’t change my position, only the redirect target. My interpretation of your response is that this supports merging and redirect to the book article on Prometheus Rising instead of the bio on Leary, as the version you link to cites PR more than any other source. This also hearkens back to my earlier position, which is that we are still free to copy elements of this model to multiple Leary-related articles, leaving the issue of a primary redirect to either a book or the bio, so back to the same conclusion. If you think the primary target should be the book, that’s fine, but as a stand-alone article, it doesn’t really meet secondary source requirements like it should, but again, this could change. I offered Randy one of these sources pointing to Exo-Psychology in the hopes he could start an article on that book, but he declined to pursue it. Viriditas (talk) 03:14, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

  One of the complaints about this article has been "the majority of the sources are from Leary rather than from secondary source coverage. That's the crux of the issue", Leary being a primary source on his own model – while in the version I suggested, Leary's a minority of the refs. Now you suggest redirecting to the article on Wilson's book instead – but Wilson's a secondary source on Leary's work. What's wrong with having a majority of secondary sources? – .Raven  .talk 04:03, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

• The problem as I see it is not sourcing, and I don't think Viriditas (who after all, originally came to this discussion specifically to say that there was more sourcing out there) is saying that either. The issue is with the content itself--the distance between where it is and where it needs to be, and the time it will take to make it even remotely policy compliant. I looked at about thirty different versions of this article while reviewing this dispute, including the two you just cited, and not a single one of them was anywhere near acceptable in terms of how it presents the fringe science involved here. We simply cannot have a live article about a subject that comes down to new age mysticism that says there are circuits in the human brain that anticipate the next step of human evolution (that's the opposite of how evolution works relative to the arrow of time), based on concepts developed by a man in solitary confinement, coming down off of a decade of LSD, while said article fails to provide the appropriate context and presents the resulting concepts as if they are mainstream science. We're just not going to do that--it's WP:UNDUE, WP:UNVERIFIABLE, and insanely WP:FRINGE.

Now Viriditas and I both want this to be a temporary affair, and have expressly said as much in our !votes. I gather from fiveby's comments that they also favour an article here, in theory. I think even Steven would not stand in the way of a large re-expansion of the article, if the right quality controls are met. If Randy, or you, or any other editor wants to sandbox a policy compliant version of the article, I think it is clear there will be strong support for it. Heck, the discussion is not even closed yet: you still have time. But so far, neither Randy nor you have done the necessary legwork to demonstrate what that article would look like, and confirmed that the sourcing and a reasonably verifiable approach to the content does in fact exist. WP:FIXIT/WP:BOLD does not remotely say that content has to be kept live if someone has a theory that it can be improved to be made consistent with policy, when it currently isn't; it merely says that you are encouraged to fix something if you can. So if you can, do.

Now, on arriving here, I pushed hard (against the consensus at that moment) for the position that this was in fact a WP:NOTABLE topic. I stand by that perspective, and I think about 2/3 of the participants in this discussion now support it. But WP:N is not the end of the analysis on whether or not a subject gets a stand-alone article. It is the start. A subject must still meet a feasibility/best approach test, per WP:PAGEDECIDE. That is where the argument for a standalone article is floundering here. If you want to make the showing that the present shortfalls can be remedied, then do it. But Viriditas is right: we've had a decade and a half of the article on the acid-powered space pioneer precog theory of time-travelling neurobiology presenting the concept as legitimate science, and frankly, its not reasonable to expect everyone here to assume that this is going to be immediately rectified if the article is restored to where it was a few weeks back. But you, or Randy, or anyone could still WP:FIXIT in a sandbox tomorrow and, provided basic content policies were followed in the drafting, all evidence is that the consensus here would be behind you and the article could go back up with minimal delay. So do it, or convince Randy to bend his perspectives a little and draft within the consensus conclusions on the sourcing, or WP:DROPTHESTICK: those are really your only options, in light of the current consensus. The thing you're doing now (railing angrily against those who want those basic content guidelines respected) isn't getting us anywhere. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 05:05, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

> "neither Randy nor you have done the necessary legwork" – After watching Randy's work get repeatedly reverted, and a once over-20kb article knocked down to 1kb in repeated lump-deletions of as much as 5kb–11kb at a time, I'm not the least bit surprised that Randy stopped editing. I wouldn't want to waste my time working on edits I was sure would be reverted because people think the article simply shouldn't exist at all; that would be football à la Charlie Brown and Lucy.

If indeed, really truly, "the consensus conclusions on the sourcing" are that it needs MORE sources from a critical viewpoint, then WP:EDITING (notably WP:IMPERFECT, WP:PRESERVE, and WP:CAUTIOUS) and WP:FIXIT would suggest those of that opinion should have added such sources, rather than delete almost all the existing sources, and all but one sentence of the text.

In other words, restore that status quo ante and then add what you insist the article should include. Add, rather than subtract other people's work. – .Raven  .talk 05:37, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't know how many different ways I can say this: the problem is not merely with the sourcing, it's also--in fact, more so--with the content. The "status quo ante" version you want to restore is deeply problematic with regard to multiple core content policies. The next paragraphs after WP:PRESERVE are WP:WONTWORK, which make it expressly clear that minority viewpoints supported by weak sourcing (i.e. at least the majority of what was removed in this instance) are not fit for preservation. WP:IMPERFECT does not require deeply flawed content to be preserved in perpetuum, and in fact implicitly requires that editors feel the article can be improved. WP:CAUTIOUS merely urges us to discuss changes: there has been abundant discussion about what the best approach here is. And your interpretation of WP:FIXIT, as I just mentioned, is clearly nowhere near what that policy actually says: it contains no mandate for other editors to support the preservation of flawed content--it merely authorizes you to fix problems that you feel you can fix, if you wish. And, again, no one is standing in your way.

Now, do I think that some small portion of the version you just linked could have been preserved at the outset of the dispute between randy and others? Maybe a portion. But the majority of it, as written, simply is miles away from compliant with basic content policies. And I certainly at this juncture understand why the consensus is that the only way forward is a redirect for the time being. But for the nth time: if you want to write a version of it that is, just do it. Only one person has shown interest in closing the discussion soon, and even they have said they are going to wait at least seven days before requesting a close. Sandbox it. Hell, if you want to draft and add content to the article right this minute, and it complies with WP:V, WP:WEIGHT, and WP:FRINGE, and someone reflexively removes it, I'll support you. The version you keep citing is clearly not acceptable, in numerous ways. But if you can make a version of it work, more power to you. You'll have my support and my compliments. But if you're not willing to do that, you need to let this go. Because we are going around in circles at this point, and I don't believe I am speaking inaccurately for the majority of editors here when I say patience will eventually run out on the WP:STONEWALLING of what seems to be a firm WP:CONSENSUS. I'm probably the person most sympathetic to your and Randy's take here, and even I'm getting exhausted now. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 06:21, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Okay, first attempt posted. Restored diff 1151305552; converted refs to cite and sfn templates; added a few, including text about reactions from wiki-article Neurologic (book). Incorporated June 2023 edits by @Randy Kryn: and @Lettherebedarklight:. Further references on critical responses welcomed. At some point those who insist this is "fringe science" should take more responsibility for documenting that claim, not WP:CENSORing what they dislike. – .Raven  .talk 19:18, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

That's not drafting and reworking the content: all you did was restore a previous version of the article, comprised only of content already deleted by consensus. This version still is composed almost exclusively of primary, with the only two independent sources being a book by a "modern shaman" and a biography on Leary by a novelist and 'cultural historian', neither of which comes anywhere near satisfying WP:MEDRS requirements. The article still lacks any context whatsoever for the circumstances that give rise to the model, and still presents it as if it is a mainstream scientific concept. I'm sorry, but I can't fathom how you though this would 1) address the exhaustively discussed issues with WP:WEIGHT or WP:FRINGE, 2) qualify as the kind of reworking I was talking about, or 3) be likely to move those forming the standing consensus to change their minds.

I'm afraid that for my part, all you have done is to confirm the consensus perspective of the majority here that the strongest advocates for this article are, with the current sourcing and existing approach to the content, unable or unwilling to present it in a form that anywhere near policy consistent, and harden my support for the position that a redirect is the only way forward at this juncture. This despite my initial and continuing position that there is at least a minimally notable topic in this subject and there should (theoretically) be a way to present it encyclopedically. Because if this is the best that can be generated at present, despite the laborious discussion about the issues above and the tone a policy-based article would have to strike, then no article is by far the more appropriate option, and I have to regrettably align with the consensus, for pragmatic/WP:PAGEDECIDE reasons. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 23:36, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

As I just said above, that (my very first edit to this article), was my first attempt. In my edit-comment there, as here, I welcomed further references on critical responses; since your group's claim has been that science rejects this model, surely you must have seen scientific sources that said so, therefore you could cite them. *I* was able to add a *journalistic* source out of that other wiki-article.

Instead, after I made my very first step to meet your invitation "to draft and add content to the article right this minute", adding citations wherever "citation needed" had been marked, and adding cited critical responses to Leary's work, even adding clarification that Leary blended concepts and metaphors from sources that were other than science – which you folks had complained were absent, but none of you had bothered to add yourselves – rather than ask for further text or documentation after that, or better yet adding it yourselves, all your group has done is delete the first of the very fixes the group of you had requested, indeed demanded; adding only a statement ("The model lacks scientific credibility...") that ironically you have offered no citations to verify – as the only reference you left after it quotes no "scientific" works, i.e. cannot verify that claim.

And that very first edit of mine there, my very first attempt toward addressing your concerns, has been met on my talkpage with an accusation of "STONEWALLING" [emphasis in original] (!!). Now I am forced to doubt the sincerity, the good faith, of both that invitation and those requests/demands, which previously I had assumed to be real. You and your group disappoint me. – .Raven  .talk 00:29, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

See my comments below. You are attempting to reverse the burden necessary on this project to maintain disputed content and change a consensus, particularly in the vein of fringe concepts. I WP:AGF that this is not intentional but I've run out of ways to describe the relevant standards, so I'm afraid I don't see the point in trying to thread the needle between your perspective and the majority's further. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 00:45, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

> "attempting to reverse the burden" – Cute. I cleaned up refs and added some, including not only all the "citations needed", but also one to support your position, which I tied to body text: "This model doesn't restrict its sources to just mainstream psychology or neurology, but uses concepts or metaphors from diverse modern sciences, transpersonal psychology, and Eastern spiritual traditions which perceive all objects and phenomena as various interrelated aspects of a single supreme reality. That blend has sparked criticism from some as "fringe" science or worse.[cited]" — text that, again, supports your position, but got deleted.

If you thought that wasn't enough, you could have said so, specified what else you needed, or yourselves added whatever cites you'd seen to support your position. What? Were there none else? Then on what factual basis do you hold your position at all? Or was it from divine inspiration? Whim? AM talk radio? Clairvoyance? I can't read your mind; neither can the reader. – .Raven  .talk 01:29, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

("The model lacks scientific credibility...") that ironically you have offered no citations to verify – as the only reference you left after it quotes no "scientific" works, i.e. cannot verify that claim. See WP:PARITY. I reused the source you originally cited--which actually did not support the accompanying text in the article--to instead verify that 8CM is indeed not considered scientifically credible and was not explored further by academics. JoelleJay (talk) 01:25, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Also, as regards "Further references on critical responses welcomed. At some point those who insist this is "fringe science" should take more responsibility for documenting that claim, not WP:CENSORing what they dislike.", that's not how this works, as you should well know by this point in your apparent quite lengthy tenure on this project: you bear the burden of making sure any content presented as mainstream science that you introduce/reintroduce/advocate for is consistent with WP:NPOV and WP:FRINGE--especially after you know it has already been challenged. Which includes, at a minimum, making sure that it is supported by reliable, WP:independent sources that meet our WP:MEDRS requirements. You knew that this content, as supported by these sources, had already been found to be deficient by the consensus here, so this is honestly starting to feel WP:disruptive. As far as I am concerned, you squandered an offer of help from the one psuedo-ally you had left on this talk page trying to find a way to maintain the article in the shortterm: reintroducing already completely rejected content was either a knowingly disingenuous response to my suggestion or a massive display of WP:IDHT as to the concerns raised by others here. Either way, you're on your own from here. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 00:39, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

So the people who felt this was fringe can't or won't cite any reliable sources to that effect, even after *I* found one and used it to support the paragraph noting this topic had been criticized along those lines — a paragraph they deleted and replaced with a statement not verified by the remaining citation?

And rather than ASK for any further changes to the text as it stood, they simply blank most of the text again, including text which now had its "needed citations"? I guess those citations weren't really needed after all, since they made no difference to the result.

How can anyone expect their good faith to be assumed after behaving like that? – .Raven  .talk 01:19, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

It is verified by the remaining citation, in fact the passage is quoted in the ref.

And you know full well that the issue with the text you reintroduced was not that it lacked citations. JoelleJay (talk) 01:29, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Here's that ref text: Cultural historian John Higgs argues that Leary's idea of the mindmap exemplified by his book Neurologic is "arguably Leary's most important work", but was greatly diminished by newspaper accounts of his prison escape and related travails. Journalist John Bryan said that Leary sounded "like a Raving Madman from Outer Space. It was at this point that many of his former followers decided that Tim had overdosed—both on acid and on life."

Where does that support the new statement "The model lacks scientific credibility and has largely been ignored in academia." ? Bryan is neither a scientist nor an academician; he speaks for neither community. – .Raven  .talk 01:34, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Read the reference note again. JoelleJay (talk) 01:43, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Oh and if you somehow still cannot understand that a "model" that derives from and relies on pseudoscientific New Age mysticism is obviously fringe, and that the total lack of engagement by academics is additional evidence the scientific community does not consider it worth exploring: here are some more characterizations of Leary's work as "lacking scientific credibility":

• from the very first, [Richard Alpert] and his associate, Timothy F. Leary, have been as much propagandists for the drug experience as investigators of it... The shoddiness of their work as scientists is the result less of incompetence than of a conscious rejection of scientific ways of looking at things.

Timothy Leary: A Biography, Robert Greenfield (quoting Andrew Weil), 2006, pg. 197.

• Leary also wrote [...] extensively about such subjects as exopsychology, neurologic, neuropolitics, neurogeography, and rejuvenation.

From the entry on Leary in the Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience, William F. Williams, 2013, pg. 189.

• A once-promising researcher who abandoned the protocols of mainstream psychology for notoriety...
  
  Neuropolitics and Exo-Psychology were clear signs that Leary had strayed far from O'Neill's comparatively straightforward ideas, which were grounded in optimistic yet measured extrapolations of 1970s technology. It's difficult to determine exactly how people responded to Leary's two books. Contemporary responses were relatively rare and memories today are hazy.
  
  Leary incorporated another fringy ingredient besides space settlements and drug-enhanced mental capacity into his formulation for SMI^2LE.
  
  Was Leary's SMI^2LE program an example of 1970s "groovy science"? Can we even call it "scientific"? Leary presented few technical details, provided no blueprints for its realization, and shrouded his ideas in cryptic references to quantum fields and neurological circuits of consciousness. [...] In these ways, he differs sharply from "visioneers" like O'Neill who grounded their ideas about the technological future on detailed engineering studies and who published and occasionally presented research in professional scientific venues.
  
  Leary's ideas tapped into a potpourri of fringe sciences, including est, quantum consciousness, space habitation, and other topics that spanned physics, psychology, and the paranormal.

Groovy Science, ch. "Timothy Leary's transhumanist SMI^2LE", eds. David Kaiser & W. Patrick McCray, 2016, pgs 238–262.

• We have already noted that nineteenth-century religious movements were developed and systematized by way of evolutionary mythology. The evolutionistic framework has been similarly popular in the twentieth century [...] More importantly, it is a common theme in the literature of the new religious movements, as in Timothy Leary's seminal work The Politics of Ecstasy. Leary repeatedly links the use of LSD, spiritual evolution, the evolution of consciousness [...] He argues that the popular use of LSD heralds the next great evolutionary step for mankind.

Understanding Cults and New Age Religions, Irving Hexham & Karla Poewe, 1998, pg. 43.

JoelleJay (talk) 03:46, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

And what prevented you from adding these to the article, perhaps under "Critical responses", rather than deleting what was already there?

ETA: Your refs are formatted and added.
You're welcome.
Will I now face further accusations? – .Raven  .talk 08:41, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Most of these are descriptions of Leary's proto-transhumanist ideas in general, not specific to 8CM. They demonstrate those concepts comprising what became 8CM were and are considered fringy/pseudoscientific/unscientific, but they are not detailed treatments of 8CM itself. JoelleJay (talk) 22:05, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Oh? They're not relevant to the article? Then should we delete them? – .Raven  .talk 23:58, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes? The ones that are not used in the article should obviously not be in the article? JoelleJay (talk) 00:09, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

So delete the refs along with the text they sourced, and now use that to justify deleting the sources also from the Bibliography which had been linked as "Please refer to the bibliography section for other works on labeling each circuit" (which now is not covered at all in the article)?

My goodness, if I tried that on other articles, how long before I'd get blocked or banned for WP:POINTY? – .Raven  .talk 05:15, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

> "a 'model' that derives from and relies on pseudoscientific New Age mysticism is obviously fringe"

Except the "New Age mysticism" was, as the article had said, "Eastern spiritual traditions which perceive all objects and phenomena as various interrelated aspects of a single supreme reality" – e.g. "the Hindu system of chakras – which were and are not "pseudoscientific" but entirely NON-scientific, even religious.

Christian Science, which likewise makes claims about the nature of human life, is likewise not categorized as "psedoscientific" because it is all too clear that is entirely NON-scientific.

I could go on to truly contentious terrain – is it pseudoscience to claim that people rose from the dead c. 2000 years ago? – but I think my point is made already.

Now if federal dollars were proposed to support a Learyite clinic, there might be some need to debunk that idea. In the meantime, it's a philisophical, quasireligious idea about the psyche – categorized as "spiritual" at the bottom of that linked article Models of consciousness – and that seems like an appropriate category. Readers may even want to learn the details of what all the fuss is about; why shouldn't they learn those details here instead of somewhere else?

Do tell me you plan next to flag as "fringe", then massively blank, both Psychoanalysis and Christian Science, please. – .Raven  .talk 07:08, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

"Eastern spiritual traditions which perceive all objects and phenomena as various interrelated aspects of a single supreme reality" was not supported in the source you linked. In fact, the page cited isn't even in reference to 8CM. But the source later does explicitly describe how 8CM was intentionally less spiritual than his earlier writings--the following passage is directly before the one I cited in the ref note:

Instead he went in the other direction, eradicating any vestiges of spiritual thought from his writing and aiming for a scientific, or pseudo-scientific, approach. This was evident when he attempted to remove religious phrases from reissued past writings. A sentence such as "The relentless web of Karma," for example, was somewhat tortuously rewritten as "The relentless web of Mind Mirror,"" and the meaning of the passage, to the casual reader at least, was lost.

This was evidence of an increasing atheism in Leary's philosophy. For Tim, the brain and nervous system were everything. He had no time for calls to any form of divinity beyond it. This is clearly illustrated in the addition of an eighth level to his consciousness levels mindmap, a system that now became known as the Eight Circuit Theory. People like Brian Barritt believed that beyond the seventh level was a profound experience that stripped you of your identity and merged you with some divine other, a "White Light" or "Godhead" that is familiar from most religious teachings. What Tim was doing with his eighth level was effectively reclaiming this experience as a product of the nervous system, describing it as some barely imaginable shift of consciousness to an atomic level, and thus denying the need for any form of external divinity.

Pinging @Snow Rise too. JoelleJay (talk) 19:37, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

"Atheist" is not "non-religious". Some branches of Buddhism allow the existence of gods, and some do not; none involve their worship. I'm an atheist and (completely consistent with that) a Religious Humanist. Non-theistic religions exist.

In any case, my edit included changing the short description from "Hypothesis..." to "Philosophical concept...", and adding "presented as psychological philosophy (abbreviated 'psy-phi')" to the lede — which you will note did not call it a "religion".

But then some people call Buddhism a philosophy rather than a religion. (Though I disagree.) – .Raven  .talk 19:54, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

You said: "Eastern spiritual traditions which perceive all objects and phenomena as various interrelated aspects of a single supreme reality"

"In the meantime, it's a philisophical, quasireligious idea about the psyche – categorized as "spiritual" at the bottom of that linked article Models of consciousness – and that seems like an appropriate category."

The source says that 8CM was a "scientific, or pseudo-scientific, approach" that disclaimed "spirituality". JoelleJay (talk) 21:05, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

While you quote Hexham & Poewe saying "More importantly, it is a common theme in the literature of the new religious movements, as in Timothy Leary's seminal work The Politics of Ecstasy."

So it seems even your sources' opinions differ on this. – .Raven  .talk 23:35, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

The Politics of Ecstasy was published several years before Neurologic and does not deal with 8CM. JoelleJay (talk) 23:54, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

That must have been a very short-lived "new religious movement", to die in just three years, 1970–1973. – .Raven  .talk 00:22, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

> "... not that it lacked citations." So there weren't "citations needed" tags all over that article? And the text they tagged wasn't originally blanked as unsourced text? Because now you've blanked amply-sourced text. – .Raven  .talk 01:37, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

The issue was and is that those are shitty sources that violate FRINGE. JoelleJay (talk) 01:45, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

But once you define a topic as FRINGE and never look back, automatically any source detailing that topic for the readers' understanding – say, a book on alchemy or phlogiston theory – becomes likewise FRINGE or perhaps PROFRINGE, right? So we can never have articles on those topics, either.

Of course there's no problem for sources that handwave those topics away without telling you any details about them, yeah?

That's the sort of filter or bubble that traps a lot of people. Tsk. – .Raven  .talk 10:14, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not the place for obscure fringe concepts with little secondary independent coverage to be "detailed for the readers' understanding". Notice that the article on alchemy is not based on publications contemporary with alchemy or from modern alchemy adherents, and its status as a historical protoscientific concept is clear from the lead. JoelleJay (talk) 19:48, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

However, the articles on Psychoanalysis, Creation science, and even Scientology, ARE based on contemporary publications — the first example heavily cites Freud, not merely contemporary but the "primary".

I would have thought that changing the scientific-sounding "Hypothesis" in the short description to a blunt "Philosophical concept", and noting in the lede paragraph that Leary himself presented it as "psychological philosophy" (he even used the abbreviation "psy-phi", which when spoken sounds like "sci-fi") and the paragraph that got deleted on Leary's sources (including "Eastern spiritual traditions", just might possibly have conveyed from the start that its status was not science (not even the "fringes" of science) but something else, as "philosophy" does not mean "science".

> "little secondary independent coverage" – It looks like you don't count Wilson and Alli as "secondary" and "independent". They did not come up with the concept, nor originally publish it; they're "secondary". They were not employed by, or otherwise dependent on or controlled by, Leary; they're "independent". Likewise the rest of the References section and Bibliography. – .Raven  .talk 20:13, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

...You're seriously interpreting my statement dismissing sources "contemporary with alchemy" as if I must then dismiss all sources "contemporary" with the topics they cover...

You sourced your attempt at de-sciencifying the article to a quote in Higgs' book that has nothing to do with 8CM, in a passage that does not discuss Eastern spiritual traditions at all but rather immediately follows Wilson's characterization of the proto-8CM ideas in Neurologic as a psychology/neuroscience concept ("I saw that he had synthesized everything of value in most of the major psychological systems of the twentieth century with everything I had ever heard about the current research on brain function, and he made it all suddenly, beautifully, coherent"), in a book that later states 8CM was part of an explicit effort to reject spiritual mechanisms AND that it was intended to reestablish Leary's scientific credibility.

There is a staggering consensus on this page that Wilson, Alli, etc. are not secondary independent RS, as evidenced by the many editors who have advocated removing the content cited to them. Close associates of Leary, like coauthors and friends, are not independent sources. People who contributed novel aspects of 8CM are clearly not secondary sources. People who are proponents of 8CM are not reliable sources. JoelleJay (talk) 21:56, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

> "Close associates of Leary, like coauthors and friends, are not independent sources."

Then no other early sources on Psychoanalysis besides Freud (the primary) can be cited, as he trained them in his system. In fact anyone who was trained in his system is dependent on that training to be able to discuss it, so no psychoanalysts can be cited on psychoanalysis... by that reasoning. – .Raven  .talk 23:51, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

That the article on psychoanalysis is way over-detailed and contains primary sources does not mean that that presentation is acceptable. Primary sources are also fine when contextualized by secondary RS, and the majority of the sources in that article are not from Freud's contemporaries or acolytes. JoelleJay (talk) 00:07, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

But others (including those already cited), would be reporting on Leary's idea (the meaning of "secondary") just like Wilson and Allis, and by your reasoning, if they *favor* his idea they're "acolytes" and shouldn't be cited; but if they report on it while *opposed* to it then they're "independent" and can be cited.

Sounds more like "favorable" vs. "unfavorable" than "dependent" vs. "independent".

So should all Wikipedia articles cite unfavorable sources but not favorable sources? Or only articles whose subjects you disfavor? – .Raven  .talk 01:20, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

The notability of a fringe theory must be judged by statements from verifiable and reliable sources, not 👏 the 👏 proclamations 👏 of 👏 its 👏 adherents. JoelleJay (talk) 01:32, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

IMO, Wilson is not independent, but also your reading of WP:INDY is still way too broad. The opposite of independent on Wikipedia is third-party, not lacking an opinion. Wilson isn't independent because he directly contributed to the idea, and not because he liked the idea. If Wilson just wrote positively about the idea, he'd still be an independent source.

Your reading of that section of WP:FRINGE is also, IMO, tendentious: it's not about what we're talking about right now at all. It's about notability, i.e. which sources count for justifying an article's creation, and not about the content of that article once one exists. Loki (talk) 03:33, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

> "If Wilson just wrote positively about the idea, he'd still be an independent source."

Wilson wrote about a number of things in the books he didn't co-author with Leary:
(1) He wrote positively about Leary's idea; there he was an independent [secondary] source, as you say.
(2) He also wrote on his own ideas; on these he was the primary source, still independent of Leary. (If he'd been "dependent", would he have been permitted to thus deviate from Leary's labels?)

The same would be true if you or I or anyone else here wrote about the ideas of some other writer (not employing us), and then wrote about our own ideas, even if sparked by theirs.

In fact, Wilson wrote about the ideas of a number of other writers, ranging from James Joyce to Albert Einstein to Aleister Crowley, and used them as sparks to his own ideas (not to mention as characters in a novel), which he also wrote about; so was he "dependent" on them all? Not to be cited regarding them? – .Raven  .talk 05:32, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Where did I ever say Wilson was non-independent because he was a proponent? I said he was non-independent because he was a coauthor, and he is additionally not RS for this topic because he is an adherent of it. And what does The opposite of independent on Wikipedia is third-party, not lacking an opinion. even mean?? Independent and third-party are treated as virtually synonymous on wikipedia.

That section of FRINGE is absolutely relevant to what we are talking about right now. The discussion in this subthread is about the large swathes of text sourced only to adherents that were reinstituted by .Raven against consensus. I am reminding him that FRINGE literally says adherents are not RS, regardless of their independence from the author of the topic, and THAT is one major reason alongside non-independence and non-secondariness that Wilson et al are excluded as adequate sourcing for that content. JoelleJay (talk) 06:00, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

> "I said he was non-independent because he was a coauthor"

And I've pointed out that he co-authored one book, but solely authored five in the bibliography. How was he not independent in those five?

> "he is additionally not RS for this topic because he is an adherent of it."

That parses to me as "Favorable writers are not RS thus must not be cited; only unfavorable writers are RS and can be cited" — which is very nice for editors and readers disfavoring the topic, but lacks something for all other editors and readers.

> "FRINGE literally says adherents are not RS"

FRINGE literally says "views of adherents should not be excluded from an article on creation science solely on the basis that their work lacks peer review". [e.a.] – .Raven  .talk 07:35, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

• He was a coauthor and he contributed his own primary FRINGE ideas to the model.
• We don't write articles on FRINGE ideas based on the FRINGE perspective or for FRINGE readers, end of story. The views of adherents can still appear as they are reported in RS, but those views must still be contextualized by the mainstream stance. Claims derived from fringe theories should be carefully attributed to an appropriate source and located within a context. What we cannot have is large sections detailing the model sourced only to uncritical repetition of adherents' views (e.g. the text you earlier reinstituted).

JoelleJay (talk) 18:50, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

That's arguing that "views of adherents should be excluded from an article" on a fringe topic... the opposite of what WP:FRINGE says. – .Raven  .talk 07:28, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Earlier straw poll discussions

A "straw poll" on a talk page is not how deletion of articles at Wikipedia is done. That's at AfD especially for long-term articles. At the barest minimum the page should be brought back to most of this version, at least the short descriptions of each 'circuit' although the present short lead seems fine, for now and for any AfD. Randy Kryn (talk) 09:45, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

The only problem that I can see with that version, is the majority of the sources are from Leary rather than from secondary source coverage. That's the crux of the issue, which is why a redirect to the biography is a good short-term solution until someone can flesh out the article with secondary sources. Another, less popular solution, is to duplicate the eight-circuit model within each article about the five (or more) books which discuss it. I realize this sounds pedantic and confusing, but this problem is quite common. I've created articles that meet or exceed the threshold for secondary source coverage, only to have them deleted. Sometimes, I will leave them deleted, other times I might redirect to a better article, while still other times I will recreate the subject, which can be quite controversial or not, depending on the opposition. All I'm trying to say is that there's no one true way to solve this problem. You can approach it in a seemingly infinite (okay, not infinite, but it sounds good) number of ways. The best way in the interim, is to redirect to the bio. If you think you can do any of the above, then just recreate. This solves the time sink of constantly discussing it (this particular subject has been ongoing since at least 2011, as the talk page shows; that's ridiculous IMO) and gives you all sorts of ways to address it in lieu of having the extant article at this moment. You and I have participated in many, many articles together, in quite a peaceful and cooperative manner, so I hope you can agree that I'm not trying to push a POV one way or the other here, but rather attempting to solve the problem at hand. Viriditas (talk) 10:25, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

The problems with that would be the loss of the bibliography and External links related specifically to this topic. Readers coming here, and there are a lot of them daily, should at least have the brief summary (maybe not full but at least a good summary of the model) and then have the opportunity to become aware of the many books, articles, and other material available on this exact topic. Randy Kryn (talk) 10:27, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Which brings me back to my above point. Would you be interested in helping to create articles about the books, which would preserve the links and replicate the relevant content? I think there's a possibility that you might be able to find the appropriate secondary sources with that approach, perhaps laying the groundwork for a future article. Just something to consider. Like I said, there's no one true way. As cliche as it sounds, there are many paths, all leading to the same or similar outcome. Viriditas (talk) 10:35, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

This section concerns redirecting the page (a "delete from another mother"), which has to be decided by AfD and not here. The "at least keep the page" point I'm making is that this is a well-viewed article, and even a two or three sentence lead, which some editors have trimmed it down to, gives readers would data about the many articles and books which discuss the topic (there are way too many to consider this for a redirect, imo). And redirecting it just to Leary's page leaves out Wilson, who seems to be prominently included with this topic. Agreed about the many paths, yet the path of keeping this article in some form has the benefit of that bibliography, See also, and External links, which are important to this topic. Randy Kryn (talk) 10:44, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Ah, I see you're a gambler! Well, they will probably take this to afd, then. Viriditas (talk) 10:47, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

I'd hope not, as there are at least some sources and, as I mentioned, the bibliogrpahy, See also and External links give it a boost. I don't see why anyone would take it to AfD actually, it is a long term and well written about topic. Not gambling, as at a minimum this would be redirected at AfD (but where, to Leary or Wilson or to one of the books). Randy Kryn (talk) 10:51, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

May the odds be ever in your favour. Viriditas (talk) 10:56, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Sorry to say, but a straw poll is valid for developing consensus about an issue. There is no set in stone rule that says this or any other page has to go to AfD. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 14:48, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Also, a redirect preserves the content of this page, and if deleted, the content will not be preserved. And, Snow is recommending that the content be available for future discussions on other talk pages (from what I gather). ---Steve Quinn (talk) 15:16, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Consensus to redirect from a talk page of a long-term article which has such sources, bibliography, and External links, would be something I haven't run across. Am questioning why you and others are so insistent on destroying this page. You're right that it shouldn't be AfD'd, but there is no reason it should be redirected either. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:27, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Randy. OK. Let's please discuss this on my talk page. See the section entitled "Straw Poll." This same issue seems to be coming up over and over and will dissuade others from participating in this discussion. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 16:02, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

That's a very intuitive read, Steve: I don't think (unless I've forgotten it) that I expressly said as much, but keeping the article history and talk page discussion accessible is indeed a big factor in why I think the merge/redirect has advantages over a formal AfD and delete.

Randy, I really think you ought to view this as a bit of a gimme, all factors considered. This would not only see coverage of this topic expanded in other articles, and substantially ease the technical burdens for you or another editor if this article were to be re-expanded at a later date, but such an outcome would also include a partial existing consensus that there is no prejudice against recreating the article, provided that certain thresholds in sourcing are met, and the content meets certain conditions in terms of neutrality. These are substantial concessions to your position, especially in the light of the fact that you have not exactly shown a willingness to bend towards some clear consensus conclusions here regarding what is and is not due.

Honestly, other than trying to be even-handed in their interpretation of policy and the potential value of this article, there's no reason why the editors in the majority here should not just take this matter to AfD, as you are (perplexing) saying would be required, before a merger can take place. Ok, that's one read on policy, but it's not the best option for you, considering your priorities here. The selection of likely outcomes at an AfD (where you would start with a half dozen editors already prepared to !vote delete or merge), compared against the the likely outcome of a straw poll here (merger with the chance to revive a fuller article down the line, provided you don't base it all on primary sources), strongly militates for choosing the latter as the best way to try to preserve some hope for making a viable article in this space in the future--possibly the near future, if you can accept the agreement of consensus here about where the line between the primary and secondary sources is, and adjust your approach to the content accordingly. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 23:47, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

I for one didn't even know about this issue until car chasm brought the content dispute to AN/I. Now that I do, I'm seeing what Randy Kryn saw, a 20KB article cut down to 2KB, in which only a single sentence is left of the body text, and 95% of the references were deleted... which Boynamedsue called "stealth deletion" and "quite concerning"... and NOW the proposal is to remove what's left by converting it to a redirect. Whereas the option of restoring the full-length article and those deleted references, then adding MORE references (e.g. those JoelleJay snd Steve Quinn saw on Google Scholar) is at least as obvious. If editors feel it needs more refs than it has, adding rather than deleting refs is how to fix that. If editors feel it needs better notice to the reader of being "fringe", why not add that too? Deleting sourced content along with the sources is not WP's preferred methodology, last I heard. "Wikipedia is not censored", anyone? – .Raven  .talk 03:16, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

It seems you are misstating the situation here. Article size has no relevance to notability of the topic. The references have not been deleted. They exist in different version of the page. It's also not about adding more references. It's about adding certain kinds of references that this page did not have in the first place. Saying "stealth deletion" is a mischaracterization. Stealth deletion implies that editors who are engaged in consensus editing are nefariously, intentionally, and underhandedly in the process of deleting this page with an unspoken hidden and cynical agenda. These types of editors would certainly be shirking policies and guidelines - and trying to get away with it. I guess we've finally been exposed. Steve Quinn (talk) 03:48, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

> "The references have not been deleted." – Special:Diff/1151305552 (23 April) has 41 references; Special:Diff/1158062505 (1 June) has 1 reference. If the word "deleted" does not express this change to you, how about "removed"? "erased"? "taken out"?

> "Saying 'stealth deletion' is a mischaracterization." – Really? Not only removing/erasing/taking out all but one reference, but also doing the same to all but one sentence of body text, over the course of five weeks, wasn't blanking out nearly the entire article, along with nearly all its sources? After which converting it to a redirect would be merely the coup de grâce ?

> "These types of editors would certainly be shirking policies and guidelines - and trying to get away with it." – Yes, including the very WP:FRINGE so often thumped in this discussion, e.g.:
Parity of sources may mean that certain fringe theories are only reliably and verifiably reported on, or criticized, in alternative venues from those that are typically considered reliable sources for scientific topics on Wikipedia. For example, the lack of peer-reviewed criticism of creation science should not be used as a justification for marginalizing or removing scientific criticism of creation science, since creation science itself is not published in peer-reviewed journals. Likewise, views of adherents should not be excluded from an article on creation science solely on the basis that their work lacks peer review. Other considerations for notability should be considered as well. Fringe views are properly excluded from articles on mainstream subjects to the extent that they are rarely if ever included by reliable sources on those subjects.   [emphasis added]
That is, creation science shouldn't be covered in articles on mainstream biology such as Evolution, but that's no reason to blank articles ABOUT creation science, or their sources.
Likewise, *** even if the eight-circuit model of consciousness IS declared "fringe" ***, that's no excuse to blank its sources, or body text; only to keep it out of "mainstream" articles.
IOW, the very editors who have been thumping WP:FRINGE have violated it.

> "I guess we've finally been exposed." – Yep. – .Raven  .talk 05:56, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

And perusing your last three posts. I agree with what you said in the second one. You are essentially repeating yourself. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 04:16, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Because I've written to players of WP:ICANTHEARYOU. – .Raven  .talk 05:59, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

My friends and colleagues, as some of you will know happens with me from time to time, I have produced a wall of text below, despite telling myself I would only take time for a paragraph or two. I think it is germane to the subject and a fair summary of the current situation prevailing here, but looking at it, I can't help but think that leaving it unhatted would be problematic to the discussion / page readability, so I've taken the step of voluntarily hatting it. If anyone thinks it is important enough to unhat, I have no objections. And if someone decides to re-hat it after that, I object even less. ;D SnowRise ^{let's rap} 08:12, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Self-hatted, by yours truly, because of the problems my rebellious and indefatigable fingers get me into. Responses (if any) should come outside the hat and at the next level of WP:INDENT. SnowRise let's rap 08:12, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Raven, I too have been in favour of keeping the article in some significant form, and agree that it is important we cover psudeoscientific topics irrespective of their reception in legitimate scientific literature, and even when they just have not been covered in said literature for obvious reasons: that state of affairs does not obviate WP:Notability or our mandate to create some informative content about the subject based on what sources do exist, provided a serviceable number that are WP:RS can be found. In fact, I would go so far as to call that second point an obvious truism resulting from several core policies. I also would have preferred if the removal of content had been restrained, gradual, and generally coming after a solid consensus, rather than before, as I feel somewhat happened here. So in several narrow but fundamentally important ways, I am closer to your and Randy's perspective on the situation than the consensus here. But that's also the key point: there is clearly a consensus now. It kinda developed ad-hoc after the edit war, but it's still pretty robust and obvious at this point. Here's the thing: notability does not guaruntee a standalone article, and the editors here have clearly decided that, at least for the present time, it doesn't make sense to have a standalone article here, until a better showing of sources, and a better application of their use, justifies it. And honestly, though the article getting merged is not my first choice solution here, I entirely understand why it is coming about. See, the problem is, there's only one person who has demonstrated both the motivation and the ability/familiarity to write this article, and that's Randy. Everyone else is at best one or the other (or neither). Even Viriditas, who seems to have detailed understanding of Leary's writings, does not think the independent article is the right approach. I am adequately familiar and would like to see the article expanded, but I don't have the time for that editing, and I have other content priorities when I can eek out some time. So it would be incumbent upon Randy (or you and Randy if your vociferous opinion here indicates a willingness to work on the prose) to construct any sort of article, and the problem with that is that Randy has leaned so absolutely into IDHT on consensus about some very basic policy matters that there's no way forward. He's more interested in contesting these restrictions that writing within them, and the consensus here is not to allow that. So discussion has been stuck in a stalemate, and now the result of that is there is now no shared middle ground to build upon, and those who support the consensus result are just willing to use procedure (quite legitimately, through a WP:PAGEDECIDE analysis) to enshrine the consensus through a merger proposal. If Randy would accept that Wilson is never going to be considered an WP:INDEPENDENT and fully WP:SECONDARY source, that would at least grant room from which to grow a consensus version of the article that maintains some more robust discussion of what the subject purports to be about. But Randy won't give an inch on that question (or on anything, that I have seen anywhere in this discussion, to be quite frank, as someone who arrived here from the ANI thread prepared to defend his approach at first). And I suspect from your comments at ANI that you are at best ambivalent to the question of Wilson's source, and possibly even in Randy's camp there as well. But let me put it this way. There's been about ten editors, give or take, talking about this cluster content disputes at the relevant talk pages and ANI thread. Among them there is a clear consensus that Wilson is unambigously a WP:PRIMARY and non-WP:INDEPENDENT source for this article. If you took another 990 average longterm editors from this project and broke them into cohorts of 10, at least 99 of the total 100 cohorts would agree with those conclusions. It's that much of a WP:SNOW issue. So the obstacles here are practical, and largely the creation of the article's chief advocate. I tried to bridge the gap by getting both sides to concede points they probably should, but the fact of the matter is that one of those sides represents a clear consensus, and they are tired of being stonewalled here, so they've reached the result they can live with. Randy has been determined to play for all the marbles, and that's the real reason why he is going to go home with an empty pouch, and only the second best resolution to this content issue will result. Meanwhile, the editors supporting the consensus outcome here cannot be blamed for choosing what they deem the best result based on the options presented to them.SnowRise let's rap 08:12, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

@Snow Rise: Thanks for your comments (& the hat). I'll try to be brief in reply:

• "the question of Wilson's source": You mean dismissing him as "dependent"? See the @Etippins: comment far up-page (20 Dec 2022): "... it's pretty clear that Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, and Antero Alli are three different people who wrote about this model." For one thing, if Wilson had been merely dependent, would he have made changes to the model in his own works? As for whether he's "primary": not when writing about Leary's original model. As for his own version? I've noted how often Freud is cited on his own idea, Psychoanalysis; why not cite Leary and the others on theirs?
• "If you took another 990 average longterm editors...": Hmm. As mentioned early in the AN/I thread, there seems to be a faction coming from FTN. Are you sure the proportions of opinion would be the same in a wider discussion?
• "... there is clearly a consensus now." Looking at the current !votes, I see 3 'Redirect's (one with a 'Merge' alternative); 2 'Keep's (one with 'indeed Restore'); and 1 'Wait'. By numbers alone, that looks like a 'no consensus'.
• But do "straw polls" follow the same rules as RfCs or AfDs? On those the rule is to weigh not by numbers alone, but also by arguments' fit to policy etc. A very short distance above your hatted comment, I noted that WP:FRINGE, so often thumped by the deletionists, in fact weighs against them. I won't re-quote its paragraph here; please look above. – .Raven  .talk 18:50, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Like space embryos scattered to the stars, we seek a new beginning

Alright, forgive the cheeky analogy, and anyone feel free to change the header to something more practical at some point down the line, but I would like to make one last-ditch effort and finding a way forward here that everyone can live with. I believe there may be potential to build on a core of agreement based around something expressed by Randy in his most recent edit, to the straw poll above. I will recreate those comments and my own response here:

"...[T]his is a model in the company of ancient traditional ways of defining and explaining human consciousness (please read all of the Buddhist, Hindu, and yoga articles etc. concerning the modeling of consciousness, viable stand-alone pages) it does not fit the definition of fringe. The model does not claim to be science or neither proves or asks for the existence or need for experimental replication, thus making no claims based on proof. It simply puts forward a modeling derived from the experiences and thoughts of Leary, and then further built upon ten years later by Wilson (whose writings, as I've discussed, seem applicable enough as a WP:SECONDARY source to fulfill Wikipedia criteria). Leary could be said to be either thousands of years behind or ahead of his time, and his model fits better with the ancient texts as seen through the prism of what he put his brain through (and honestly seemed to come out the better for, what a beautiful human being he was in life). His contemporary addition to the ancient literature, as later added to by the analysis and commentary of Wilson, does not fall within science and so has nothing to do with fringe." -Randy

"I agree with most of this, and especially the last point. If we can find a way to leverage our sources (which may be limited in number and scope, but are also not nothing) to frame the rest of the article in this way, focusing on the 8CMoC as a work of mainly esoteric conjecture, pulling in strands of scientific knowledge, but in ways that actual experts in the relevant fields would never consider empirically valid or factually descriptive, I think it would go a long way to potentially bringing the disparate perspectives here together. I've said, and still maintain, there is no harm in discussing Leary's notions on what the 8CMoC consists of. We just have to first make it clear this was a very unique man, in a very unique set of circumstances, conjuring some very unique ideas. If we do that, it is just as you say: WP:FRINGE ceases to be an issue, and suddenly we do not have to wring our hands nearly so much over WP:V, MEDRS, or weight of the sources, relative to others in the related fields that Leary borrowed terminology from. Even heavy reliance on the primary sources becomes of very little concern if we have already framed the topic appropriately in the opening sections. I think some of the sourcing JoelleJay has provided below go a ways to helping us create that context, especially when combined with what we can source from Leary biographies, including those already used in our Leary BLP. Perhaps Joelle knows of more quotes along those lines? - Snow

Now I obviously cannot speak for everyone here who was prepared to redirect the article, but my impression is that not providing the appropriate encyclopedic context, and the article therefore looking too much like a tacit endorsement of Leary/Wilson's work as science is a big part of why there was so much talk about WP:FRINGE and issues with tone. Now, I do not think it makes sense to have a new straw poll, or even formally cancel the last. But would those who !voted for or contemplated a redirect be willing to temporarily suspend (in the sense of a temporary pause) any implementation of the result, if we created a sandbox version of the article, and worked towards a version like that discussed above? Pinging Steve Quinn, fiveby, Viriditas, carchasm, Shibbolethink, and JoelleJay. Likewise, Randy Kryn, .Raven, could you agree to keep edits to the sandbox for the time being and to work to contextualize this as a non-scientific work, by and large? I'd like to suggest that if a consensus is on board for this, that we try this round robin style: we can't require everyone who wants to contribute ideas to contribute edits, of course, but I think if those who do want to contribute to the content took turns doing full edits, it might be helpful.

I'm also going to ping everyone who previously participated in a discussion on this talk page about the same topics we have been debating here, who also has edited in recent months: something we honestly should have done a while ago in the most recent series of discussions: SMcCandlish, David Gerard, PaleoNeonate, GrandMote, ජපස. I'm going to to call you the Final Five, because talking about the first five members of the group who went before us in this way, on an article about beings evolving into immortal space colonists is *mwa* too good to pass up. :) If the Final Five could please be aware that things have been a little divisive here over the last few weeks, and that we are using an extra dollop of patience and openess for the moment, that would be helpful too. :) SnowRise ^{let's rap} 15:46, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Sandbox

----->Talk:Eight-circuit model of consciousness/Sandbox: June 2023<------

Okay peeps: the Sandbox is open. Please be polite and attempt to edit in an orderly fashion. Edit warring will not of course be the behavioural violation it would be anywhere else but a sandbox, but we will not get very far if we do not approach this in a collaborative fashion. I have taken the liberty of introducing a prototype version of the lead. I believe that it is a fair reflection of the reality of the field, based upon available sources and my own formal background in some of the related fields. It puts heavy influence on the fact that this is not a scientific model tested under empirical rigor, even constructed in an academic context. What remains to be seen is how WP:verifiable it is. It is also markedly overlong for a lead and will need to be parsed down at least 20-30% to what we feel are the most critical elements. That should not be difficult, given I would expect at least a similar proportion will not be sourceable to WP:RS.

For changes to the statements, I would recommend a round robin approach where we create a queue and each person gets a few hours at a time to edit to their heart's content. There is no need to restrict yourself to the lead if you feel you can flesh out a later section or element. However, you will also notice the huge volume of tags: which anyone should feel free to add at any time. In fact, since I have now been up for more than 24 hours straight, and have maybe another 9 worth of actual non-wikipeidia work and home life obligations in this present day, your mission, for each of you who chooses to accept it, is to replace one tag each in the next day or two. Many of these will be easy: some of the statements are internal statements about what the model's own claims, which can be cited to the primary sources. Some are biographical details easily retrieved from our BLP or other biographies--perhaps Viriditas would be particularly helpful with those as an old hand at the BLP. Others are likely to take some time or be lost-causes. We shall have to see. The ratio we hit in this lead section will be a good barometer for just how robust or skimpy the ultimate article may be able to be.

I do not mean to belabor this: I know there is still a lot of division here and there may not be hope in bringing everyone together in the short term with this project. I live in hope, but if this is clearly not getting us anywhere in the next couple of days, I will my meddling and leave the various factions to return to the rhetorical Thunderdome that this page has been the last couple of weeks. However... if this works, you will all arrange to gather together at the same hour some day and each in your respective locations shall intone as simmultaneously as you can: "All hail the Great Uniting! Hallowed is the Middle Path. Blessed are they who seek the Mesh. Theirs is the glory of never having to load ANI on a weekend. Forever and ever. Consense." SnowRise ^{let's rap} 20:55, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Queue for editing of substantive statements

Who would like to go first, and how long would you like (3 hour max, please)? SnowRise ^{let's rap} 21:03, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

If I do, will I get attacked again for reinstating the discussion of the model's details – since that may well be what readers want to know when they look up this subject? – .Raven  .talk 21:06, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Ok, my one rule: aside from any obvious violation of a Wikipedia behavioural policy (something like "The model was not created in 1973 like that long-winded nit said in the previous edit."), no one is to be criticized, lambasted, extolled upon, or castigated for any edit they make to this sandbox, at least for the time being. This is an exercise. If you have something purely constructive/observational to say about someone else's edit, please feel free to do so. If you think someone is screwing the pooch, please keep it to yourself. Each person makes their edits, and then is done until at least two other people have taken a turn. Anybody who comes after them can change any of the content, and then eventually everyone will get a go again. Eventually we will have to shift to a more normal method of rapid fire edits and heavier commentary. For now, please remember, this is a Sandbox, not a public-facing page. There is no harm in temporary changes.

Take it away, Raven--don't forget to say how much time you would like. Anybody can reserve their time next while the current editor is editing. Many thanks in advance to all for making the best effort at making this work. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 21:26, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

3 hours, please. If I finish sooner, I'll mention it. – .Raven  .talk 21:39, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

SnowRise ^{let's rap} 21:44, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I am unable to save the full text. Commenting out the rest of the text after first paragraph, no problem. Full text, I get "Your edit was not saved because it contains a new external link to a site registered on Wikipedia's blacklist or Wikimedia's global blacklist." I added no links that were not in either your draft, my first edit to the article, or JoelleJay's references, which are what I combined, including much text-shuffling in the receptions/overview sections. I tried putting spaces around the final periods in domain names (".com" → " . com"), but no difference. I'm stuck. So if anyone can take my (now-deleted) save, and add -- before the > at the end of lede paragraph to close the comment-out, then find out why the system warning and fix THAT, I'd be grateful. Otherwise, I'm done for now. – .Raven  .talk 23:14, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Has anyone else been able to edit this Sandbox? – .Raven  .talk 05:35, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm able to publish edits normally, though there is something peculiar going on with your one edit: the changelog reflected in the diff reflects your edits, at least in part. This is very likely to do with your setup there: gadget or browser or some combination thereof. I notice you used visual editor for the edit--I would start with trying to introduce the edits through the traditional UI. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 14:35, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Blanking previous comment here. Revised draft POSTED now!

I'd put colons on the templates at the bottom, to keep the categories inactive on the draft (remove them to activate when it becomes a live article!) -- but doing that for the Leary and Wilson templates resulted in transcluding the Leary *article*! There must be blacklisted (but specially permitted) links in that article! Took off those colons, problem fixed! – .Raven  .talk 21:01, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

That's great: I'm glad we have that worked out. :) I don't think I'll have time to give extensive feedback today about my thoughts on the changes, but I'll rapid fire a couple of bullet points. Addition of a reception idea is not a bad idea, and keeping it higher in the order of sections than normal militates against arguments that it buries the lead on the psuedoscientific nature of the model. That said, I do think at least some of the info moved into that section is probably due for the lead, or at least should be summarized there.

Regarding the sections describing the circuits: I think these are too long relative to what we can convince the majority here to accept. As I've said before, I personally think that primary sources can be used to describe these models in their own terms, even if they involve scientifically unsound ideas, provided there is abundant context to frame the fact that we are talking about fringe notions arising out of one man's ideas, not mainstream science arising out of research or academic speculation. In that respect I am closer to your position than that of JoelleJay and some others here. However, there is a limit in how much we can show as both a general WP:WEIGHT matter and also WP:DUE in the specific case of WP:FRINGE topics. I think these sections would go down much smoother if we tried to reduce them in volume a bit. This is also one the few areas where I think compromise would not invalidate anyone's positions on the content and relevant policies, so it's worth trying to move to the middle by deciding what is essential info here. And as a style matter, prose sections should really not be composed of multiple paragraphs of a single or two sentences each, so consolidating those can change the apparent length of a section, so that would be a place to start even before any trimming. More thoughts coming later, but maybe not today. Thank you for your edits, Raven. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 00:01, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Anyone else want to take a crack next? SnowRise ^{let's rap} 00:01, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

> "That said, I do think at least some of the info moved into that section is probably due for the lead, or at least should be summarized there." — Great! I'm at peace with that. You or anyone else can take a stab at that, unless you want specifically me to... but I can't read minds, so I'd need more details, or if you like, I can simply do syntax/spelling/punctuation/etc. cleanup later. It really is time for others to get a turn. – .Raven  .talk 01:52, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

I'll leave that for people to do piecemeal: I'd like to see what people have in mind before I weigh in on what I think might be essential. It will have to change as the article fills out too, so it's meeting criteria for WP:LEAD, of course, so there's no harm in letting it filter back in organically--might even be advantage in it. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 14:59, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

JoelleJay, I know this is a big ask since you aren't even necessarily convinced this article needs to exist and aren't certain how large you think it can be even if it should exist, but I was hoping you could help with something that at least wouldn't require you to put your skepticism aside: you seem to be more familiar with at least some of the sources than most here: could you maybe fill in a few sources, or dare I ask, add to the Reception section one or three of the statements you think are most illustrative of outside reception, be they positive, negative, or ambivalent, dealer's choice? SnowRise ^{let's rap} 14:59, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm not particularly familiar with them, I just have access to some of the full books through...uh...internet methods. I'm also not efficient at summarizing sources, but if it would help (or be legal?) for me to paste the sections of Higgs and Kaiser/McCray that directly discuss the model I could do that in some subpage. JoelleJay (talk) 17:53, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Everyone with WP:Library should have access to McCray. You can mail me if you need Higgs rather than posting long excerpts on a subpage. That's how WP:RX works. fiveby(zero) 18:11, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Great idea! Alas, I only see pdf-code, rather than the pdf. That may just be my system's or browser's problem. Anyone else? – .Raven  .talk 20:49, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Corpus of sources

Now, questioning the appropriateness of additional cites / bibliography entries / external links:

• Alli, Antero (December 31, 2020). "Neuropharmacy of an Eight-Circuit Brain: On the Induction of Eight Different Types of Trance". Talking Raven.
• Alli, Antero (January 1, 2021). "The Eight-Circuit Brain". Vertical Pool Publishing. [webpage related to book]
• Buyukberber, Can (May 2011). "8th Circuit (VIII Circuit)". Bēhance. [Artwork inspired by Leary's concept]
• Clark, Paul (Feb 4, 2015). "The 8-Circuit Model of Consciousness: A Lurker's Guide". Erowid. (Originally published on Hyperreal).
• Ekeberg, Dennis (2012). "Corpus Technologica: En religionshistorisk analys av Robert Anton Wilsons version av The Eight Circuit Model of Consciousness i ljuset av den västerländska esoterismen" [Corpus Technologica: A Religious-Historical Analysis of Robert Anton Wilson's Version of The Eight Circuit Model of Consciousness in the Light of Western Esotericism]. DIVA (Södertörns högskola) (in Swedish). [Thesis.]
• Greathouse, Jay (July 18, 2022). "The Eight-Circuit Consciousness Model". Epoch Eclipse.
• Huguelit, Laurent (January 2014). The Shamanic Path to Quantum Consciousness (PDF). Bear & Company. ISBN 978-1-59143-167-1. [English translation from French original: Les Huit Circuits de Conscience: Chamanisme Cybernétique et Pouvoir Créateur, 2012, Mama Editions.] {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
• Leary, Timothy (2019). Clark, Matthew (ed.). Eight Circuits of the Brain. Psychedelic Press. ISBN 978-0-9928088-9-1.
• Leszai, Nick Leszai (March 7, 2023). "About Fifth Circuit Coaching". Fifth Circuit. [Links to this Wikipedia article for further information on the Eight Circuit Brain Model.]
• Wilson, Robert Anton (2003). "Maybe Logic: Illustrated Interview". American-Buddha.com. Archived from the original on March 17, 2015 – via Wayback Machine.
• Wilson, Robert Anton (June 27, 2013). "Timothy Leary's Eight Circuits of Consciousness". Dharma Overground. [Extended quote from Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati.]
• Wilson, Robert Anton (April 7, 2016). "Sounds True Session 3: Robert Anton Wilson Explains Everything, -or- Old Bob Exposes His Ignorance". HappySleepy.com.

... ranging from web summaries of the books, to a short printed compilation (for sale) of Leary's writings on just this topic, to artwork inspired by it, to a translation of a French book on the topic (and shamanism), to a taped interview with Wilson. Use the links if you like, folks, go there and read/see/hear the materials if you like, and... if you would, please... tell me which of these you find worth posting. For my education in your preferences, so to speak. I'll probably put more here, on the same terms, eventually. I'd rather discuss here than see edit-wars. Thanks! – .Raven  .talk 01:48, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Additional threaded comments / Responses to OP

• There is no commentary on this as a religion, science or whatever. Look at the Buddhism article. It is rife with third party independent sources that discuss Buddhism. And many of the sources are discussed from the perspective of psychology. This eight circuits is not Buddhism. It is Leary and Wilson's good idea and part of the New Age movement. Then Randy defines Eight Circuits as concerned with human consciousness. Well that pertains to psychology. Also, it is not clear what eight circuits is other than made up jargon and unsupported claims. Anyone is welcome to create a sandbox page and then propose that for this article. In any case the burden is on Randy. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 16:13, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

• Thank you Steve: I understand your concerns. Personally, I do not propose to present the subject primarily as a religious work. My personal feeling is that the best descriptor for the 8CMoC is that it is a work of modern day western esotericism. After I first used that term in the post above, I did a quick keyword search of the talk page and found that three other users had invoked similar terminology on this talk page at various points. It makes me wonder: if four of us independently arrived at this description, might there be a source out there that has done so as well? I was actually going to start there: most of us have done independent searches for sources on this topic: has anyone seen something to this effect or in the ballpark? Regardless, I do believe there is a way to describe the topic with a lead based in the sourcing we do have confirmed which makes it clear that this is a non-scientific topic, without the need specifically invoke religion ('mysticism' would probably be involved though). SnowRise ^{let's rap} 16:30, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

No, you didn't present this as a religious work, but Randy has when equating this to Buddhism. So, I wasn't challenging you or your definition. Also, even if you want to define it as western esotericism or anything else, third person independent sources will be needed.

If you want to call it Woo-Woo-Wonka, independent sources are needed. That is the point, in order to qualify for an article on Wikipedia. -Steve Quinn (talk) 16:56, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

You're preaching to the choir, Ste-migo. Thankfully, it does not seem I was barking up the wrong tree: for sources explicitly linking the the 8CMoC and/or Leary and Wilson's collaborations to 'esotericism' I found an encyclopedia entry, a research fellowship that explored this precise link and may have generated some published work product of one form or another for us to track down, an essay, and a corpus on new age philosophies. There were at least a half dozen others I found abstracts for but were either behind paywalls nit amongst the databases I have access to, or documents I was having technical issues loading, but which I think do connect the topics, and my search was far from exhaustive (first three pages on Google and Google Scholar results each, using a conominal search for the model and the term. This seems like a promising start for this descriptor at least. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 17:19, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Many people have referred to Buddhism as a philosophy rather than religion, because it does not involve the worship of any deity/ies. (I tend not to agree with that, being a Religious Humanist myself, and suggest that theism is not a definition of religion.) That Leary has borrowed from "Eastern spiritual traditions which perceive all objects and phenomena as various interrelated aspects of a single supreme reality" makes Randy's comparison apt. – .Raven  .talk 19:38, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

• I think I agree with all of that (SnowRise, RandyKryn) broadly speaking, and I think this topic should be treated about like Freudian/Jungian psychoanalysis. My concerns about redirecting are that it could actually lend more credence to the idea by burying it in squished-down form in Leary's article, with less modern source material making it clear that it's not proper science; and if developed further it could overwhelm Leary's article (thus necessitating a re-split back into separate article); and other writers like Wilson are strongly associated with this topic, which would make the redirect confusing to readers. Even if we wanted to approach this entirely from a FRINGE stance, instead of more anthropologically as an artifact of the "Age of Aquarius", there is no reason to merge it away; lots and lots of fringe topics have their own articles, and they are great loci at which to demonstrate that the topics are pseudo-scientific. I'll remind that all we need for a stand-alone article is in-depth coverage in multiple reliable sources that are independent of the subject. I think this basically makes a stand-alone article inevitable, even if it doesn't end up looking all that much like the exact present text, because various other people will have written about this, even if just to scoff and debunk. E.g., in briefly looking around on Google Scholar, I find (amid some "newage" material) things like an article in Explorations in Media Ecology[17], a chapter in Ketamine for Treatment-resistant Depression[18], a presentation from the International Conference on Arts and Cultural Management[19], books like The New Science of Psychedelics: At the Nexus of Culture, Consciousness, and Spirituality[20], etc., etc. Not sure of the source quality yet, just saying finding independent material to check out is trivially easy. (PS: Yes, there is commentary on this as a religious/spiritual subject; the material I dismiss as "newage", because I'm anti-religious across the board, can also be approached as sincere faith writing.) — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:20, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

• Thank you for this SMcCandlish. For some context, there were a couple of people who !voted to redirect on something along WP:N lines, but others, myself included, originally supported a standalone article and agreed the topic was almost certainly notable, but were persuaded to support a temporary redirect as a WP:PAGEDECIDE matter, because we felt that, although there should be an article ultimately, the recent version of the article was too much of an issue in terms of verifiability/MEDRS, weight, and WP:FRINGE. The idea was to leave the talk page and article history in tact until someone sandboxed a reliable, policy-consistent version. We may yet return to that approach if this discussion fails. However, even more ideal in my opinion would be generating said article now, if we can manage a meeting of the minds that has thus far eluded us. I think you have identified two more descriptors likely to fall into an appropriate lead "New Age" and "spiritual". Though I do think we need to be careful of linking the topic too closely with any particular past spiritual traditions, except in the case of those for which we have a clear attribution in a source for such a connection. Even then, such links would probably better for a lower section than the lead, would you agree? SnowRise ^{let's rap} 16:42, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Regarding rebranding the model as "spiritual" or whatever, I'll note that it's been explicitly characterized both as an effort at abandoning spiritual/religious themes and as Leary's attempt at restoring his scientific credibility. From Higgs pg 236-237:

Instead he went in the other direction, eradicating any vestiges of spiritual thought from his writing and aiming for a scientific, or pseudo-scientific, approach. This was evident when he attempted to remove religious phrases from reissued past writings. A sentence such as "The relentless web of Karma," for example, was somewhat tortuously rewritten as "The relentless web of Mind Mirror,"" and the meaning of the passage, to the casual reader at least, was lost.

This was evidence of an increasing atheism in Leary's philosophy. For Tim, the brain and nervous system were everything. He had no time for calls to any form of divinity beyond it. This is clearly illustrated in the addition of an eighth level to his consciousness levels mindmap, a system that now became known as the Eight Circuit Theory. People like Brian Barritt believed that beyond the seventh level was a profound experience that stripped you of your identity and merged you with some divine other, a "White Light" or "Godhead" that is familiar from most religious teachings. What Tim was doing with his eighth level was effectively reclaiming this experience as a product of the nervous system, describing it as some barely imaginable shift of consciousness to an atomic level, and thus denying the need for any form of external divinity. [...]

This appears to be a product of Leary's main strategy for regaining his credibility: that of seeming to concentrate on issues other than psychedelics. What was controversial, after all, about speculating about the evolution of the human race, both past and future? In this instance his attempt at scientific credibility was doomed to fail, partly because he was the infamous Timothy Leary and his reputation would always tower over him, but mainly because it simply isn't good science to create a theoretical model and claim that it represents different things at the same time. This thinking was, essentially, occult or mystical, and would never be taken seriously by the establishment.

Regarding the other sources brought up:

The Explorations source is probably not RS. The Ketamine piece only has a single sentence on the model: Dr. Timothy Leary, a psychologist and associate of Dr. Lilly, discussed the use of ketamine in his Eight-Circuit Model of Consciousness hypothesis as one of the methods of activating one of the circuits in his book Exo-Psychology, published in 1977. The presentation is also only one sentence The music released under those labels, indeed coined as “cosmic music”, was very influenced by Thimoty [sic] Leary’s “eight-circuit model of consciousness" and shared the distinctive characteristic of relying on repetitive, contemplative music. David Jay Brown is a solidly FRINGE author so wouldn't be an acceptable source.

I do think there's likely enough coverage from Higgs and other biographers to support a reasonably detailed section on the model, but we still need a lot more sourcing providing contextualization re: the mainstream. JoelleJay (talk) 20:26, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

So, this passage is partially convincing but it does still end with the line This thinking was, essentially, occult or mystical, and would never be taken seriously by the establishment. That's my immediate impression of the 8CM: it's a work of obvious mysticism that borrows some secular-sounding vocabulary the same way Christian Science borrows the word "science" for what is essentially faith healing, or the way UFO cults like the Raelians use words like "aliens" and "cloning" to mean something a lot like what Abrahamic religions would call "angels" and "heaven".

Also, that the 8CM is not theistic doesn't mean that it's not occultism or mysticism. There's lots of mystic or occult traditions that don't believe in a god or gods, and even a few atheistic religions (like, hey, Raelianism again). Loki (talk) 02:05, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

For my part, I have not engaged enough with these sources yet to have a very good read on the question of how to frame the amount of mysticism/occultism that should be reflected in our description, and I am happy to defer to the interpretation(s) of those who have for the time being. What I will say though is that what I have read suggests that we will probably want to avoid saying one way or the other in wikivoice and instead include multiple attributed statements that will help the reader contextualize in that way. Not so much in a "teach the controversy" kind of way, because I doubt these sources engage with eachother very much or even necessarily approach the subject from the same disciplines/utilize the same lens/language/framing. But more in a "include a span of voices and hope the collective pastiche presents a fairly accurate picture." kind of way. Does that make any sense to the rest of you? I'm exhausted again, and not trusting my articulation. :) SnowRise ^{let's rap} 10:27, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

One thing which might help would be to first try and describe the history of the "model" from mindmaps to 8-circuits with the changes in between. Maybe due to which sources i read first—or not really having much interest in the subject—i just see the "model" as a vehicle for Leary to express whatever opportunistic idea he had a the time. JoelleJay pointed to some above, and in 1979 Leary was also downplaying the the drug angle and moving from Starseed to O'Neill cylinder space migration, so the description of which drugs activate which circuits are out and we get post-terrestrial levels. Mysticism, philosophy, psychology, scifi, whatever...if someone can read something into a version of Leary's writing then that's what is for them. Telling the story of the versions of the model, what was happening with Leary at the time, and the various notable reactions to each version seems like it could be enough for an article? fiveby(zero) 14:55, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Structuring the middle sections of the article on that rough kind of evolutionary framework would have other advantages too. For example, the current versions of the circuit subdheaders just read like loose conglomerations of facts, without context or reason. Much of it may well be faithful to various versions of the 'model', but it doen't paint a very clear picture of what any one version says. And given the sources we are working from and Leary's own capability for reinvention of his work, we can't always expect it to be rational and straight forward, but the flip side of that is we might occasionally have to lose statements that we can't put in context, for the sake of the prose. Regardless, it's going to take some research. And we'll have to be careful to respect the concerns of those who want the primary sources to not dominate this article. I think that concern will be alleviated some once we have a much higher proportion of reliable secondary sources worked into the article anyway? Not altogether, surely, but there's also the fact that we have some secondary sources now that talk about various versions. Some of it from the new age corners might end up being a little fawny, but might still be useful for the rare confirmation of what this or that version included. Anyway, a psuedo-narrative/timeline would be worth exploring as a possible structure, I agree. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 15:17, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Separating the bibliography and maybe using grouped references could help alleviate concerns with citing primary sources? I'm pretty anti-WP where it comes to use of citations, if it's useful to the reader to point to the location within a work with a citation go ahead, even if that work is "unreliable". But both editors and readers need to be aware of how the citation is being used, in a WP:V sense or just a pointer for the reader. Probably the most useful thing for someone researching Leary/Wilson/model would be to point to which work they should go read if they'd like to learn more. So some citations to those works, but limited, at some point the reader is probably better served by told to read NeuroLogic or Prometheus Rising if they are interested rather than trying to include all the details in an introductory encyclopedia article. fiveby(zero) 16:24, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

I've previously noted that Leary is the only "primary" author on his own idea, while Wilson and Alli are "secondary" on Leary's idea but "primary" on their own changed versions – so the same book might be "primary" or "secondary" depending on what it's being cited for – where would we place them in such a separated bibliography?

> "the reader is probably better served by told to read NeuroLogic or Prometheus Rising" — the Sandbox lede paragraph names several books, three of them wiki-linked to articles. Does this not suggest reading them (the articles and the books)? – .Raven  .talk 17:33, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure that fiveby was suggesting groupings necessarily specifically along the lines the lines of primary/secondary, as that would be atypical for a ref section, so I would recommend we avoid re-igniting that debate needlessly in this context. If we did use that approach, I don't doubt the consensus would be that Wilson and Alli belong in a primary section because even if you can make the argument they are secondary for purpose of review of any one of Leary's works, they are not secondary as to the subject of the article itself, and it is at the article/subject level that we would be sorting. I'd like to hear more from fiveby on the subject, but I suspect they were suggesting sorting by author, which I certainly see no harm in. Three sections for the three authors up top, an amalgamated section for critical commentary and purely secondary below these, maybe? We needn't mark the top three as primary if that matters to anyone, but they should be group together at the least. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 03:23, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

I think organized bibliographies are great for the reader and wish they were more common on WP so thanks .Raven for changing to sfn formatting. Hope this discussion isn't too distracting as i really don't view citations the same way most other editors seem to. I was just trying to address the concerns of those who want the primary sources to not dominate and i agree that they shouldn't for content. Article content should mostly flow from such as Higgs and McCray, but it might be useful for the reader to have quite a few citations to Leary, Wilson, and (maybe) Alli. I don't know if JoelleJay and others would have a problem with a large number of citations to Leary, as long as the bulk of article content were generated from the critical sources? If so, grouped references was just a suggestion for making the use of citations more explicit for the editors and readers. I like the division in the bibliography you've proposed. fiveby(zero) 15:47, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm glad you enjoy sfns. I'd done the same in my (quickly reverted) edit on the main article. I see and understand your revised (separated) bibliography. May I make one suggestion? Have "Original works about the model" (Leary, Wilson, Alli) *first*, and "Other works" second? Does that make sense? – .Raven  .talk 18:07, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

> "as long as the bulk of article content were generated from the critical sources?"

Wow, as much criticism as detailed description? Heavy. Currently we've got the brief "Responses" section moved up right after the lede, which is unusual in itself. If that's expanded to half or more of the total article, we might want to move it after the description, otherwise readers will have to plow through a whole lot of "this is wrong" before they can see what "this" even consists of. Or split it, so that brief notice is up top like now, and full-length debunk-mode comes later. Thoughts? – .Raven  .talk 20:56, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Critical commentary and critical sources do not mean that: a whole lot of "this is wrong". Criticism is detailed analysis and evaluation on the merits, basically shorthand for independent scholarly sources, those taking a critical look an idea or work as opposed to proponents of the idea. fiveby(zero) 13:18, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Again, should that be "before they can see what 'this' even consists of", or after, or a bit before and the rest after? – .Raven  .talk 17:40, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Typically, it's both: at a minimum, the lead needs to frame the critical reception, and often there will be additional contextualization before we get into the weeds of what the proponents of a concept or theory have to say about it in their own terms. Just how much contextualizationis frontended can vary, but for controversial and/or fringe and psuedoscientific topics, it is typically considered prudent to err on the side of caution and make sure there is as much contextualization as necessary to frame anything that follows in the appropriate light, lest we risk presenting fringe notions as legitimate mainstream ideas, once we start talking about them directly in wikivoice.

Further, often we don't like to talk about what proponents have to say about their ideas in their own terms and vastly prefer descriptive sections based primarily on secondary sources, which is part of the pushback here against the previous versions of the article, from what I can tell--which makes a lot of sense. If such a section talking about the topic based primarily upon the works that put those notions out into the world (here, Leary, Wilson, and Alli) is going to be indulged here, it's going to need to come wrapped in a substantial package of critical reception, or else I see no way of selling it to the majority of other editors here who are sketpical that we even have the sourcing to just a policy-consistent article at this time. Despite efforts to bridge the gap between the sides here, there is still a very significant chance of a backslide towards the majority preferring a WP:TNT approach here, if we don't present them something that address the significant issues with WP:FRINGE in previous versions.

In that respect, a lead section that makes the critical takes (critical in the sense that fiveby describes above, whether positive, negative, or mixed) clear (i.e. framing this as esoterism/new age concept/mysticism/psuedoscience/whathaveyou but not science in any event), is the first most important thing. But the concern for context is also why I pointed out that your placing the reception section a little higher than normal, as is sometimes done with other controversial topics, makes a lot of sense too. Wherever it's put though, that section should be made as robust as we can make it, with the current sourcing. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 19:26, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

> "work to contextualize this as a non-scientific work" – I did, with a change to the short description (replacing "Hypothesis" with "Philosophical concept"), adding "as psychological philosophy (abbreviated 'psy-phi')" to the lede paragraph, and revamping another paragraph on Leary's blend of sources including "Eastern spiritual traditions"... which was deleted by others. I've been stressing that here on talk. So has Randy. We've both gotten attacked as PROFRINGE for that, which is bitterly ironic, since calling a religious or philosophical concept even "fringe science", i.e. on the fringes of science, is more promotion of that concept than calling it NON-science. Are you now inviting me to try kicking the football again? – .Raven  .talk 19:33, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

It's probably worth mentioning that this is not even really philosophy, or if it was it would also be WP:FRINGE philosophy. Western esotericism or New Age mysticism is a lot closer to what it seems to be. Leary's intended audience appears to have been people who agreed with him about the spiritual potential of psychedelics, and not academics of any kind. Loki (talk) 19:52, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

> "This is not even really philosophy"
So the sentence that replaced the paragraph about sources should now read:
'The model lacks philosophical credibility....'?
Sources for that, please? – .Raven  .talk 21:11, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Seems like a request to prove a negative. Suffice to say, the citations to this idea do not come from academic philosophy. Probably best not to mention philosophy at all. jps (talk) 22:35, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Are [Western] academicians the only philosophers?

From Timothy Leary: "He took LSD and developed a philosophy of mind expansion and personal truth through LSD.[12][13]"
[12] Isralowitz, Richard (May 14, 2004). Drug Use: A Reference Handbook. ABC-CLIO. p. 183. ISBN 978-1576077085. Retrieved April 1, 2016. Leary explored the cultural and philosophical implications of psychedelic drugs
[13] Donaldson, Robert H. (2015). Modern America: A Documentary History of the Nation Since 1945. Routledge. p. 128. ISBN 978-0765615374. Retrieved April 1, 2016. Leary not only used and distributed the drug, he founded a sort of LSD philosophy of use that involved aspects of mind expansion and the revelation of personal truth through 'dropping acid'.

BTW, please notice that at the top of this page is a link to WikiProject Philosophy / Mind, and (perhaps as a result?) the topic has been mentioned on this page before, e.g. User 1: "Leary did not create the Eight Circuit Model... as it comes from Hindu Tantra philosophy. Therefore, you can call Leary's theory 'pseudoscientific' just as much as you can say that Tantra is pseudoscience. Of course, saying this would be nonsense, because these things are completely unrelated to Cartesian science, both in space and time: which means that you can't say that they pretend to be it." / User 2: "Leary's 8 circuits are a PHILOSOPHY. They may be applicable in psychology, but philosophy's what they are." / User 3: "I think what we are really dealing with is an early form of transhumanist philosophy...." – .Raven  .talk 06:21, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Philosophy is a very broad word and can mean a lot of things. Is the 8CM a personal philosophy? Arguably, sure. But it's definitely not a work of academic philosophy, which is a specific field with standards and journals that Leary never even attempted to publish in.

I think because of this we should avoid saying that the 8CM is a philosophy (outside of quotes), because of the possible confusion with academic philosophy. Loki (talk) 01:47, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

[Western] academic philosophy is only a subset of philosophy overall... unless you're aware of much Western academic coverage of such as Oriental philosophy (Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist), or New Age.

What about saying "New Age philosophy" (of Leary's work generally) or "New Age philosophical concept" (of the 8CM)?

Or perhaps (again of Leary's work generally) "transhumanist philosophy", viz. this saying of an Alphaville album (Afternoons in Utopia): References to the smiles of lovers and friends throughout the album are actually spelled out in the liner notes as an acronym: "SMI²LE," the transhumanist concept of "Space Migration, Increased Intelligence, and Life Extension" made popular by Timothy Leary. [emphasis added] – .Raven  .talk 02:18, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Leary as co-author vs "collaborator"

@Snow Rise: Currently, as in your first draft, the lede paragraph has "... and later expanded upon in collaboration with Robert Anton Wilson, in his books Cosmic Trigger (1977) and Prometheus Rising (1983)..." [emphasis added] — which I left in place rather than change the boldfaced part to "by", because I'm not sure in what sense you mean "collaboration".

Leary and Wilson co-authored The Game of Life together; both names so credited on the book.

However, only Wilson's name is on Cosmic Trigger and Prometheus Rising as author. Whatever conversations the two men may have had, and despite their co-authoring a previous book, Leary is not credited as a writer on these two books.

Have you any source to indicate Leary participated in their writing? Then in what sense were they written "in collaboration"? Please explain. Thank you. – .Raven  .talk 17:51, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Hey Raven: I meant rather that the two collaborated on the development of the model itself, but not necessarily those individual books, but I can see how someone would take the meaning you did from the way it was phrased: please feel free to make whatever adjustments you feel are appropriate to make the relationship more clear, which I adapted a bit from a previous version of the lead in order to get all three authors into the lead sentence. So long as the lead reflects that Leary was the primary author (speaking here in the abstract sense, not in regard to our sourcing policy) and Wilson and Alli the secondary and tertiary respectively, I think just about anything should be fine. We don't even necessarily need to list all the books in the lead, especially those without their own articles: it's maybe not the most essential information there, so long as it is reflected below. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 03:15, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Then "by" instead of "in collaboration with" would probably meet your needs, because then it would be "... and later expanded upon by Robert Anton Wilson [name two books] and by Antero Alli [name two books]" — leaving Leary primary and the other two not. Acceptable? – .Raven  .talk 05:19, 20 June 2023 (UTC)