This is a pretty clear indication to me that psychedelic inspired insights are merely the concatenation by the mind of unrelated concepts where the result is definitely not more than the sum of the parts.

Some simple refutations that spring easily to mind:

- mushrooms have the same type of DNA as the rest of earth's living creatures, no?

- information cannot be transmitted in a chemical compound. You can have a trip by ingesting the psychoactive compound extracted from magic mushrooms.

- no other animals were enlightened or had their evolution enhanced, why only us?

While it is attractive and intriguing to believe that hallucinogens open the doors to perception and reveal a larger reality, I believe that it is much more likely that the modeling/simulating machine that is your brain is conjuring that impression in a way that is, by definition, seamlessly undetectable and wholly convincing to that same brain.

Because the other states of consciousness, for one reason or another, had disappeared. Though it's entirely possible that many different states of consciousness exist in the human population now.

I interpreted the original post of yours as saying "altered consciousness helps us to see through the smoke of our normal/ordinary consciousness, and help us to perceive reality as it is (or at least, with less smoke)". Hence the reply was concerned with the similar idea. And with this interpretation, the Picasso's analogy doesn't hold: indeed, Picasso painting is great not because it's an accurate depiction of reality, but because it's a different one (in a great way). The value of his works lies in his interpretation of reality, and not the accuracy in replicate reality.

Now, if you meant that no state of consciousness necessary perceives reality objectively better than the others, just merely different, and they would have different values on their own - I certainly can't disagree on this.