
DMT drug study investigates the ‘entities’ people meet while tripping - jelliclesfarm
https://bigthink.com/mind-brain/dmt-beings
======
lilboiluvr69
Some friends of mine did some tests with DMT entities. Apparently they can't
solve math problems.

I never believed they were anything other than hallucinations, but they were
still some of the most positive and meaningful events in my life. I hope one
day we'll know enough about consciousness to understand why DMT causes the
formation of these seemingly other selves.

~~~
ta1234567890
We are capable of holding more than one identity in our minds and switching
between them. Some people use that ability to create "characters" (tulpas:
[https://www.businessinsider.com/hearing-voices-in-your-
head-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/hearing-voices-in-your-head-real-
life-versus-movies-tulpa-psychiatry-2018-2)) that they interact with or even
allow to take over their bodies. Apparently some people go as far as replacing
themselves with a tulpa they've created (they call this ego-suicide).

~~~
mr_overalls
We are also capable of realizing directly that personal identity itself is
also construct, a mask we put on to make sense of the world. Seeing through
this illusion can be deeply unsettling, as well as deeply liberating. E.g.
Buddhist insight into anatta, or non-self.

Shinzen Young's description on the nuts and bolts of Shingon Buddhist deity
yoga practice is simply fascinating.

[https://alvinalexander.com/personal/shinzen-young-shingon-
sh...](https://alvinalexander.com/personal/shinzen-young-shingon-shinto-
winter-meditation-training/)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_VizlDWcTA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_VizlDWcTA)

~~~
Florin_Andrei
This is cool, but I've always felt buddhists make this too big of an issue.
Yeah, the ego is just a process, like any other, but it was probably created
as a result of some selection mechanism.

I'm pretty sure in a situation of conflict, it's beneficial to kick the ego in
higher gear. Sure, when things calm down, relax that thing. I feel pretty
strongly that's the evolutionary reason for having an ego to begin with.

~~~
emptysongglass
It doesn't matter how it was created, it's still poison. Practicing Buddhists
don't "make a big deal" of the ego out of some neurotic compulsion taken too
far: the ego is seen clearly as an essential link in the chain of suffering
and is dropped, breaking the chain.

I invite you to directly experience it for yourself; come and see.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
I don't think we would have survived as a species in an "egoless" state. It's
very nice while you have it, but it lacks all strength and drive that are
necessary for great achievements or for putting up a good fight when
necessary.

For full perspective: I've practiced various meditation techniques my whole
life - Orthodox Christian, various flavor of yoga (mostly Raja and Kundalini
related stuff), even some Buddhist techniques (mostly Zen). I'm fairly
familiar with the Buddhist doctrine, and Christian, and the Hindu Dharma. I've
had my share of experiences, including some that looked quite ego-free - and
yeah, it's awesome.

I'm just saying, we shouldn't draw absolute lines here, or anywhere. The
danger of narrow dogmatism is always present. And there's room for, and value
in, the inner fire, the energy that builds things up and pushes things
forward. That, too, is what we are.

You live in a wonderful, immense house; don't confine yourself to a couple
rooms only.

~~~
emptysongglass
It doesn't matter if we would have survived as a species or not. Our great
achievements can be summarized as a continuum of suffering done in the name of
I. Even now a billion people live in the most abject daily torment of survival
while the richest of us pack our noses with a stimulant that destroys whole
swaths of the natural world.

You're confusing the relative world with awakening and then making it out for
wisdom. All of man's great achievements can be summarized in a few passages
from "Ozymandias": gone tomorrow.

'Even if a whole mountain were made of gold, not double that would be enough
to satisfy one person. Know this and live accordingly'

We should absolutely make out for wisdom what is wise and point out unskillful
pursuits where we see them. Buddhist teachings aren't a postmodernist mash-up
of whatever you like. It can sound rude, even condescending but it's not what
you make it out to be. The suttas are there to offer wisdom, Right
Understanding.

Practicing various meditation techniques your whole life sounds like you
haven't made up your mind yet or haven't seen one through to the end. I know
exactly how that feels and I'd trade the decade I spent sampling for depth in
any one.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
> _It doesn 't matter if we would have survived as a species or not._

That is a point of view completely detached from reality. Have a nice day.

------
grawprog
I've never tried DMT, though it's something I'd like to try. I did have an
experience with entities and salvia though. I've smoked it a few times and
there was always things there...it always felt like to them I was an ant
they'd suddenly noticed were aware of them and they just seemed kind of
amused.

But one time, I tried smoking a small amout of it while chewing on some
extract. I'd read that south American shamans would chew the leaves rather
than smoking them.

It was a totally different experience. After about ten minutes I had this
extreme sense of derealization, like everything in the world was flat and 2
dimensional the like backdrop of a play and if I tried I could have just
ripped it all down to see everything hidden behind it. It was a really strange
feeling.

Shortly after that though, was when the entity showed up. At the time, I was
fairly addicted to minecraft. Like would spend ally free time playing that
game.

All of a sudden there was a voice screaming in my head that i'm wasting my
time and life...something made...I really don't know how else to describe it,
stand up and start walking into the wall over and over while the voice kept
going see, this is what you've been spending your time doing. If you've ever
played minecraft, it involves a lot of walking into walls to mine blocks.

At that point, I started getting this overwhelming urge to go outside for a
walk. I remember arguing with the thing saying it would be a bad idea to go
outside. It ended up relenting and left.

The whole experience was strange...I swear that must be what it feels like to
be possessed or something. I know it's like just a hallucination, but it sure
felt real and even remembering it it feels real.

Real or not, I stopped playing minecraft after that. Haven't played more than
a few hours since.

~~~
Trasmatta
I have no desire to ever try salvia (heard too many bad things about how
dysphoric it can be), but the 2D nature of it is really fascinating. You hear
that same type of thing from many people. I wonder what the mechanism is that
causes that to happen.

~~~
optimalsolver
>heard too many bad things about how dysphoric it can be

I tried Salvia once (35x extract which, yes, was incredibly dumb for a first
timer), and my experience was so nightmarish and traumatic that I've never
tried anything stronger than coffee since.

Salvia is its own deterrent.

~~~
grawprog
Yeah to agree with you and the parent commenter, salvia's not fun. It's
interesting, but not fun. It can be fairly terrifying and i'm not a big fan of
the body feeling. It's certainly not something you start craving or wanting to
do long term. That was all years ago and when I finished everything I bought,
I never replenished it. But, it was interesting.

And just so I don't have to write a second comment, to the above poster.

The 2d effect was one of the strangest things i've ever experienced. I've
tried my fair share of hallucinogens, but nothing's been quite like that. It
lingered a while longer than everything else. Again though, it wasn't the most
pleasant feeling, my girlfriend and roommate were with me and even they had
that 2d not real seeming look to them which was kind of disconcerting.

Overall it wasn't really something I regretted and feel like breaking my game
addiction was a good outcome, but it's not an experience I'd like to repeat.
Even after years, the memory of it all is still pretty vivid.

------
isoprophlex
From infinity converging onto me: a neon hued triangle. Three beams shoot from
its vertices, which have sprouted eyes. The laser beams scan my body and enter
into my soul through my eyes.

WHO ARE YOU

i'm... me?

WHO IS I?

i am... ?

Reality breaks down as colors rush over me. Intense joy suffuses my hitherto
depressed existence. I return from the trip shivering and crying tears of joy.

Strong shit.

Years later, during a music show, I close the time loop by going out of body
and becoming that triangle, letting my past self know everything will be okay,
and life is worth it.

DMT... yeah.

~~~
carabiner
Mine looked like hanging drapes closing in around me, but completely non-
threatening. They were bright white, green, and brown stripes, and
rhythmically pulsing, like breathing. I had the strongest sense they were non-
threatening and watching over me. I never thought they were anything but
hallucinations though.

~~~
isoprophlex
It's pretty remarkable how overwhelmingly intense and yet benign the
experience can be.

------
motohagiography
The geometric patterns are interesting to me because we can generate them as
the effect of feedback loops, recursion, and iteration in pretty much every
physical and logical domain. When you introduce a delay or discontinuity into
a continuous process, it causes echoes and periodic patterns we would
interpret as "geometric" as well. Think effects pedals on musical sounds, or
modelling queues.

The underlying presumption seems to be that there are barriers to
understanding a truth that can be "unlocked," which seems like a leap fraught
with baggage. Even though using a poison that impairs the ability of our brain
to reconcile its sensory inputs with its memory of itself is an out of "self"
experience, this idea of viewing it through the lens of an enhancement or
impairment yields different interpretations. A functioning society and
civilization requires that people can be acted upon by - and respond to - the
artifacts of language, so something that impairs that is going to raise
hackles among people who think about those sort of things. But to grow it and
survive we also need things that originate outside of it, so the insights
people get from these trips can also be very valuable.

DMT elves I can't explain, but geometric patterns, just generate interrupts on
a signal that has feedback. If they do exist, I'd have to assume they're some
instantiation of tech support, as something is going to detect the signal
jitter and check it.

~~~
meroes
I've seen geometric patterns and it's very similar to tie-dye fractals that
kind of pulse and move among itself. A friend and I had very similar
experience of the patterns (no elves wasn't DMT). You'd see them only when
looking close up at something, not your entire visual field. They conform to
the object you are staring at. A cardboard box wilth all its micro texture and
creases "generated" the patterns and your brain would interpret it moving,
pulsing, distorting, adding color.

(I am not saying this as some kind of allure of the drug's effects, just
interesting to think about why and how the perception change happens).

I think maybe it has to do with your brain trialing new pattern recognition
algorithms.

 _warning more musing below_

I mean what is to say _how_ any signal from our perception should look or feel
internally? Visually the input in just raw EM radiation. And our brain makes
this vivid picture out of basically a field of numbers. In this case you could
argue that the extra pulsing or moving is not from a signal in reality, but we
also can easily be tricked with visual illusions into seeing a static image
move while completely sober.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_motion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_motion).

There is no "right" perception of reality, or at least ours is subjective to
begin with. I think drugs just allow new patterns or patterns recognition
"algorithms" a trial run. Our biology ended up as it is to keep us alive; it
is not "poison" or wrong to try to re-jigger it temporarily to see what else
is possible - as long as you are in a good situation to do so. (Or not, who am
I to judge).

~~~
adriand
You may find that with enough experiences like this, you can perceive the same
type (but not degree) of fluctuations when looking at any kind of textured or
patterned material, such as asphalt or a woven rug. Try gazing at a surface in
a slightly unfocused, highly “relaxed” manner. I expect that to your point,
your brain filters or corrects for this type of perception.

~~~
pea
I actually have this pretty much constantly, as well as after images on lights
and what not.

~~~
Jeff_Brown
Have you had it all your life?

------
AbnoxiousFox
It's so great that there are actually people dedicated in scientific studies
about DMT! I have a degree in CS and work in the field for 10 years. For 6
years now I've been participating in those mediunic rituals with ayahuasca and
everything that comes to me is love, greatefulness and a contact with my inner
self. When it comes to God we are actually talking about a more intense
contact with our inner selves which already can be explained by psychology,
but then it comes the interesting part: it feels like technology is inside my
mind in such a way that when I'm under effect of ayahuasca the "beings" that I
encounter are very much like "elven" machines but I don't see them, I feel an
energic presence and the visual manifestation of that energy in my brain
reflects in the form of patterns thus this "machine" looking visuals.
Something very interesting about me being on DMT is that I'm able to render
those voxels words indefinitely and visualize everything with sound like the
sound is the code behind those renderers in my mind. I believe guys like
Tesla, Einstein and so many others did have this same capacity to interact
with their inner selves / sub consciousness and fully use their mental
capacity in such a way that the "energic entities" (read the energy in your
own brain parts) were able to describe to them the factories of the universe
in the middle of a dream. You may actually follow up on this work with
convicted man in Brazil: [https://revistatrip.uol.com.br/trip/presos-de-
rondonia-usam-...](https://revistatrip.uol.com.br/trip/presos-de-rondonia-
usam-cha-de-santo-daime-e-terapias-alternativas)

~~~
ta1234567890
Thank you for sharing your experience.

> I believe guys like Tesla, Einstein and so many others did have this same
> capacity

Sometimes when reading quotes by people like them, I get a similar impression,
like they were "connected to the source", or "enlightened", and they
intuitively followed that connection towards their achievements.

It also reminds me of a part in a documentary about Steve Jobs when a friend
of his says "Steve was enlightened, and he blew it", hinting at him using that
connection or "power" for what she felt was the wrong purpose.

~~~
ekam
What’s the name of the documentary?

~~~
ta1234567890
Can't remember, it seems like it's "Man in the Machine", and the friend was
also Jobs' former girlfriend and mother of his first daughter:
[https://mashable.com/2015/03/15/steve-jobs-man-
machine/](https://mashable.com/2015/03/15/steve-jobs-man-machine/)

------
donut2d
The most common emotions were "joy (65%), trust (63%), surprise (61%), love
(59%), kindness (56%), friendship (48%), and fear (41%) during the encounter
experience, with smaller proportions reporting emotions such as sadness (13%),
distrust (10%), disgust (4%), or anger (3%)." Interestingly, 58 percent of
respondents said the being also had an emotional response, almost always a
positive one.

Wow!

~~~
non-entity
Wow I wonder if this is just luck in the respondents having a good setting /
proper preparation, etc. or innate effects of the drug. Ive had other
psychedelics kick my ass more than a few times with anxiety / paranoia.

~~~
munchhausen
The difference to other psychedelics is the nature of the DMT trip - it is
extremely "fast", short, and overwhelming. There simply is too little "idle"
time in the trip (none, actually) for the rational mind to start developing
paranoia or anxiety about what is happening.

It also helps that the whole thing is so otherworldly, the thinking mind is
simply awed into silence. It takes a while before you could even begin to
develop a conceptual interpretation of what is happening, and by then the
whole thing is over and you are back to your sober self.

With other, long-acting psychedelics, there is plenty of time and opportunity
for the mind to develop its own "spin" on the experience, and produce anxiety.
Not so with DMT - it's like being shot out of a cannon and then coming back to
earth just as fast.

It sounds terrifying and it is, when you're reflecting on it outside of the
container of the trip. Somehow, while it's happening, you don't even have time
to think about how terrifying it is, and as a result of that it ends up being
OK. Tells you a lot about the nature of anxiety, really.

~~~
gavinray
See, that logically sounds like the outcome you'd expect but the time dilation
from enough DMT can make the experience feel like hours, or potentially even
an eternity if you start looping or time stops.

You are no longer player by the normal rules, so you can throw deterministic
time measurements out of the window lol.

~~~
munchhausen
Might be for someone, but I never had that experience. All my experiences have
been very very rapid, and there was certainly no sense of being somewhere for
hours or even minutes.

Really I can't even speak of time in this context. It felt more like a series
of moment instants, and usually, before I even located "myself" in the
experience, it was over.

I'm going to be bold here and say that if someone speaks of experiencing time
dilation or loops on DMT, it is more of a question of the rational, linear
mind, trying to make sense of a timeless, or non-linear experience of time
(which it is not able to comprehend), by imposing familiar, linear concepts on
it post-facto.

So, someone might speak of a time loop _after the trip_ , but while you're
actually having a DMT breakthrough experience, there simply is no "observer"
there to generate the thought "oh, I am stuck in a time loop here". Therefore,
the feeling of anxiety or terror, which might normally be associated with such
a finding, will not arise.

------
newbie789
I did quite a bit of DMT (smoked) as a teenager and absolutely loved it every
time. Friends of mine also got some of their own at the time, and was REALLY
interesting how similar everyone's experiences were.

At first I thought maybe the whole "friendly elves" (for lack of a better
phrase) thing might just be because my friends and I had read the same things
about the experience and as such were predispositioned to that experience.
However, a few friends that had literally never heard of DMT tried it and had
virtually the same experience. Everyone I know personally that's tried it has
the same "friendly fractal elves trying to show you something" or "fractal
basketball" (that's what we called it) story.

It's a delight and I'd at some point in the future like to try ayahuasca, but
I'm very leery about MAOIs. I think a lot of people may not be aware of the
very real risks associated with them. DMT itself may be relatively safe, but
harmala alkaloids can be incredibly dangerous depending on the person. There
was a Netflix show (I think called Wellness maybe?) that touched on the
possible dangers of ayahuasca but didn't go so far as to describe the possible
problems of inhibiting an enzyme (monoamine oxidase) that performs vital
functions in your brain and body.

I'm really glad that more and more researchers are spending more time and
resources on psychedelics in general and look forward to advances that may be
made in this area.

~~~
sibeliuss
Where did you find DMT as a _teenager_?

~~~
newbie789
The internet. I haven't done any sort of drugs in nearly a decade for personal
reasons and couldn't help you with that.

------
KingFelix
Anyone interested in this should check out Towards a Science of Consciousness
conference going on right now. Selen Atasoy just spoke, Dennis Mckenna, Paul
Stamets, Robin Carhart-Harris, and lots of other really great Psychedelic
scientists. + Many many other avenues of Consciousness
[https://consciousness.arizona.edu/](https://consciousness.arizona.edu/)

------
sidpatil
The study:
[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/02698811209161...](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0269881120916143)

------
1MachineElf
Never encountered a being while using DMT. The closest thing I recall was
looking at the moonlight through clouds and hallucinating that it was all made
out of skulls watching over me.

~~~
colordrops
I had the same experience of skulls on mushrooms. The moon seems to induce the
strongest hallucinations for me for some reason. I've also seen it sprout
wheels and drive down a mountain on acid. On ecstasy I saw perfectly
symmetrical flower petals around the moon.

------
awsanswers
I believe this shared motif is some default mode pattern matching in our
unconscious mind.

i.e. We have a built in "entity" template and DMT puts us in such a state that
we fill in that template

~~~
stinos
Or there is no such template by default, but DMT causes it to be created in a
similar way across people taking it, and the differences in what people
experience are filled in according to their personality/life/...

Sorry, too busy too look up the exact terminology and hypothesis now, but IIRC
there's these 2 major theories on how the mind/drugs work: one camp (a bit
like your statement) says things are built-in and certain
feelings/states/thoughts/.. exist by default but in a 'normal' sober state the
neural pathways to them are not active, and drugs just open the correct gates
to be able to access them; the other camp (more like what I wrote) says drugs
alter enough things in the brain to create those feelings/... from scratch
i.e. not opening a gate, more like creating a gate then opening it and keeping
on creating what lies beyond.

I can recommend the thought experiment of trying to figure it out which one it
is, especially when on drugs, it's rather interesting :) Personally I settled
for believing it's a mixture of the 2, mainly because I find it hard to
believe the circuitry for some of the things I experienced is readily
available whereas at the same time once you have a certain experience it can
have a lasting effect and the neural connections remain somehow, making it
much easier to have a similar experience next time.

------
Stierlitz
Long ago when I used to do maintenence on video consoles and pin-ball
machines. The pin-ball machine was built with a standard desktop motherboard
with additional circuits for the display and sound. If you wetted you finger
and ran it along the tracks on the PCB, the audio circuit emitted strange
avant garde sounding music. I figure it was the machine equivalent of a DMT
trip :]

OH WOW: self-transforming fractal machine elves ;]

~~~
heimatau
This could be a good analogy to what our brain experience. We do
compartmentalize things, for efficiency reasons. (I.e. a book is a book. we
have concrete models of the world to reference; like a PCB board has concrete
functions it performs)

Then...one can swipe the board with a wet finger that produces unintended non-
negative consequences. Same could be said of DMT and the brain. Great
comparison Stierlitz!

------
Shoop
Related fiction: "Universal Love, Said The Cactus Person" [0]

[0] [https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-
th...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-the-cactus-
person/)

------
WarOnPrivacy
I've always wanted a comprehensive entity guide, broken down by drug type.

With that we could schedule PPV events like Mescalito vs ShadowPerson
cagematches.

~~~
pvarangot
In my experience that guide needs a dimension of personality type or at least
character traits. Most papers that analyse psychedelic experiences show that
clustering by personality traits is a better or equal predictor of the type of
experience than dose and (when appropriate) setting.

~~~
smthngwitty
Incredibly interested in diving deeper into this. Can you point me to the best
papers you've read on the topic?

------
crmrc114
Reading the comments on this was thrilling. I don't normally go for hearing
about trip experiences but something DMT stories makes them so much more fun
to read vs. LSD and Psilocybin. Love the comments here.

------
loceng
I would argue Ayahuasca ceremonies, a group setting, with experienced
individuals who are already open and have very heightened senses and higher
than average sensory ability, and cataloguing the experiences individually -
and then matching to see if there were shared experiences with specific
entities or other beings - would be the research necessary to start creating
proof points.

------
johnward
Reminds me of this episode of tales from the trip:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1h9OjS8NTw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1h9OjS8NTw)

This one too (sees the same entity as his friend):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHLpB38LNg4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHLpB38LNg4)

------
peteradio
I would love to read some fiction where a study such as this leads to
discovery that people are encountering the same concrete entity(ies).

~~~
jelliclesfarm
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137697/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137697/)
: meditation probably contributes to mental states that arent unlike DMT
induced ones.

we are chemical soups sloshing around within our meat sacs.

i am interested though.. in the imaginary friends children make...could it be
that when we are children, the brain releases 'DMT like' chemicals or signals
that make them hallucinate our imaginary friends. children lose this ability
when they grow up.

same with ghosts and alien sightings. i think ..on a more diluted
level..people with synesthetic proclivities. many religious and spiritual
experiences can also trigger meeting 'other entities' not from our plane.
angels and such. fairies etc.

finally, could be seizures. certain kinds of epileptic episodes can trigger
hallucinations and visualizations.

~~~
NoOneNew
Do kids really think their imaginary friend is real? When I did it as a kid, I
knew there was no one there, but pretended and in a way role played
situations. Normally this was only in between long gaps where I didnt get to
hang out with other kids. I've never known any kids who truly think their
imaginary friend is real or see them. I thought it was just a lame movie
trope.

------
harel
I remember the entities. Or in my case a singular one. I went into it with
zero expectations or knowledge of what other people experience and I'm glad
for that. It's amazing that the common thread of the descriptions is so
similar.

------
nullsense
The Default Mode Network codes for your sense of self in time and with others.
DMT basically turns it off and that's why you feel that sense of oneness with
everything right?

------
auganov
> The form and nature of these beings vary in reports, but one thing remains
> curiously constant: People tend to rank these encounters among the most
> meaningful experiences of their lives. For some people, these encounters
> change their beliefs about reality, the existence of an afterlife, and God.

Wonder how much of this is simply the fact this is a highly illegal and hard
to obtain drug. By definition it would be an unusual experience for anybody
and people tend to assign more meaning to the not-mundane. I sincerely doubt
you'd be hearing all these stories if you could get these drugs in a grocery
store.

------
antoniuschan99
This is a classic DMT video (starts at 2:00)

[https://youtu.be/awChThLHAKQ](https://youtu.be/awChThLHAKQ)

------
new_guy
There's an interesting book about encounters with the entities:

DMT Dialogues: Encounters with the Spirit Molecule (
[https://b-ok.cc/book/3688170/74a672](https://b-ok.cc/book/3688170/74a672) )

It really does seem like there's whole other levels/dimensions of reality and
these things are real and independent of the person.

~~~
disposekinetics
There are two competing theories: There exists another dimension that can only
be accessed during hallucination, or people hallucinating hallucinate. One of
these requires fewer assumptions.

~~~
jakeva
I know what you're saying, and agree. But I think it's worth pointing out that
the explanation of "people hallucinating hallucinate" doesn't end the
conversation. Can you answer the question of "what is a hallucination?" with
still fewer assumptions?

Maybe you can, but I think if you're acting in good faith you'll find you have
to discuss the nature of consciousness and its relationship with the natural
world. Now, this may still come to a simpler explanation than one involving
extra dimensions but I think it's a lot more complex than "people
hallucinating hallucinate" if you're being fair in your investigation.

~~~
hackinthebochs
>Can you answer the question of "what is a hallucination?" with still fewer
assumptions?

Not the OP, but I think google's deep dream provides a nice analog to the
process of hallucination that goes on within us on psychedelic drugs.
Essentially our brains are wired to detect certain patterns in the world; our
neural wiring is isomorphic to the structure found in the world. What these
drugs do is increase the excitability of some neural structures, which
structures are excited correspond to the kinds of experiences different
psychedelics induce. The fact that DMT seems to universally induce encounters
with "entities" suggests the areas of the brain that are excited.

~~~
jakeva
Yeah, that's true but still doesn't really explain a hallucination. It's like
seeing an infrared video of a complex machine like a car. Ok, so the main heat
seems to happen in the front part. Does that explain it?

As one who has hallucinated intensely, the experience is not just about what
your senses create for you while certain neural structures are excited. Often
times it's about what is left when your senses have gone off the deep end. For
many it's a deeply spiritual experience, some experience a total ego death.
Others experience lifetimes in different bodies, working jobs and having
families that never existed here.

So while it's interesting to know something about what the neurons are doing,
I don't think that gets us any closer to an explanation.

~~~
hackinthebochs
But none of those things you cite are intrinsically outside of neural
structures. To be clear, explaining a hallucination doesn't require that one
explains consciousness. Consciousness is a background assumption. But given
consciousness, hallucinations are merely abnormal patterns of neural
excitations, some of which influence conscious experiences. What is "left
over" after a psychedelic experience could be due to new memories that give
one a fresh interpretation on typical experiences, or new connections made in
the brain from the over excited state that induces new patterns of thinking.

~~~
jakeva
But you don't actually _know_ none of the things I've cited are intrinsically
outside of neural structures. Nobody actually _knows_, except the very
religious. It might be a reasonable assumption, but at that level I'm not sure
it's simpler an assumption than that there are things about the universe we
don't understand that many naively file under "extra dimensions".

If you want to compare two explanations for the experiences of one who is
hallucinating where one invokes extra "dimensions", and the other invokes
"hallucinations mean you hallucinate", and you want to say one is obviously
simpler than the other, from a certain perspective you might be right but from
where I sit you're leaving a lot of potential discussion on the table.

~~~
mistermann
> But you don't actually _know_ ...

An interesting observation I've had is that there seems to be something about
the nature of human consciousness such that people are ~literally not able to
fully grasp the idea that they often/usually don't _actually_ (!) know what
they think they know, with high accuracy. With some people, depending on the
topic (it seems) of conversation, they are sometimes able to switch to an
abstract mode of thinking and realize and admit that yes of course, they do
not _really know with 100% certainty_ that "<X> is True"...but often only if
this abstract notion is pointed out to them by a third party. But upon
resuming the object level discussion, this knowledge that existed mere minutes
ago often seems to once again become inaccessible. And with some people, they
seem unable to accomplish (or at least admit) this _at all_ , and even more
curiously, seem strongly motivated to resist even discussing the idea that
they may have made an error.

On one hand, you might just write this off as people "being people" who want
to "win an argument" and that sort of thing, and surely that's a big part of
it, but _is that all_ there is to it? As a terrible analogy, consider how
difficult it is to say, recite song lyrics while doing mildly complex math in
your head - considering this, is it so hard to imagine that the mind may also
be sub-optimal to an unknown degree when it comes to reckoning about the
complex reality we live in _at the object level_ (physical reality and
events), while concurrently executing a "proper" abstract background process
to do things like evaluate logical consistency and epistemic soundness of the
primary object level processing, particularly on sensitive topics?

Just pondering the general notion, I tend to lean strongly towards the
intuition that I'd be surprised _if we could do this_ in a skillful and
accurate manner, rather than being surprised that we cannot (which seems to be
the overwhelmingly default opinion), and observations of internet discussions
(regardless of community) tend to strongly support this theory as far as I can
tell. Might this help explain how do so many people believe so many
diametrically opposed things (increasingly, as the complexity of the world
increases), while also having an extremely strong self-perception of objective
correctness, even despite objective correctness often being literally
impossible for the topic being discussed?

How this relates back to the original topic, is that a lot of people perceive
a dramatic increase in the ability to think (in more ways than one) deeply
about extremely complex topics while under the influence of psychedelic drugs,
and fMRI tests are now starting to illustrate some changes at the neurological
level that may plausibly explain why this is, at least in part. I think it's
quite philosophically interesting to consider what the real-world consequences
might be if the situation is that our _perception of reality_ is not 100%
consistent with _actual reality_ \- might this possibly result in sub-optimal
decision making at both the individual and societal/national levels from time
to time? And what if it's not off by just a little bit here and there, but by
a lot all over the place? If so, might this perhaps help explain the counter-
intuitive human behavior and general state of world affairs that I've been
reading about on the internet lately?

~~~
jakeva
> is it so hard to imagine that the mind may also be sub-optimal to an unknown
> degree when it comes to reckoning about the complex reality we live in at
> the object level (physical reality and events), while concurrently executing
> a "proper" abstract background process to do things like evaluate logical
> consistency and epistemic soundness of the primary object level processing,
> particularly on sensitive topics?

Agreed. To add to the point, one can't help but consider given what we know of
the evolution of the tree of life of which we are a part the particular
factors that do and do not lend themselves to survival. Namely, "reckoning
about the complex reality we live in at the object level" is probably not a
skill needed for survival in the way that developing hunting, language, and
social skills probably were- not to mention "while concurrently executing a
"proper" abstract background process to do things like evaluate logical
consistency and epistemic soundness of the primary object level processing"

In my own experience, had my experience in a severely altered state of
consciousness persisted for more than maybe a day or two, I would have needed
a lot of assistance for basic survival things. In that state I perceived the
world differently, if not more objectively, but was not well equipped for
survival.

So, no, I see no reason to think the mind is well equipped for that kind of
reasoning when evolution might select against that kind of adaptation.

