Way back in 2000 at the Foresight Associates conference, Eliezer stood his ground against Marvin Minsky calling his ideas "rubbish". I was impressed by how Eliezer answered each objection with deep insights into the nature of AI.

Minksy is no dummy, but his ideas about AI and cognition are dated (though I admit it's been a while since I've read anything he's had to say on the subject).

In 1987 Peter Molzberger did a series of interesting experiments combining programming with MDMA and NLP at the University of the Armed Forces in Munich (Universitaet der Bundeswehr).