Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics

> There's no telling what time perception is "correct" or "real".

Perception is always, always false, the same way that our internal reality is imperfect. The only way to trust perception is to go through repeatable experiment and see that results conforms to prediction, eg. science.

Science is the only and sole way to determine our shared reality, anything else is literally lucky heuristics, including the behavior of scientists. The worst deceit from those heuristics being our conviction that there is any kind of truth in what we think, preventing the whole thing to fall appart.

I feel like the statement only holds true if you are trying to learn about shared reality.

Perception Isn't false, it's subjective. It's real in its own domain, but that domain may not generalize or overlap with a shared physical reality or perceptions made by other people.

> The only way to trust perception is to go through repeatable experiment and see that results conforms to prediction, eg. science.

Is this claim not self-referential? Did you apply its ~~recommended~~ necessary methodology to itself?

> Science is the only and sole way to determine our shared reality, anything else is literally lucky heuristics, including the behavior of scientists.

This too...plus, who will be performing these experiments if scientists are not trustworthy?

Maybe this is brand new territory and we need new theories (&/or revisit old ones) and techniques.

The perception as two sides: the signal, and how it's processed. The signal is real and true just by it's existence. Note that this also applies with self-generated signal such as phantom limbs.

For the processing, the subjective part of the perception, lot of things falls appart, attaching any notion of reality and trustiness looks like a choice to enable some lines of reflection. A choice heavily oriented by our own experience of existence, nobody wants to see themselves as a bag of more or less working heuristics with conscience as meta processing and data acquisition for self-correction mechanism.

But if you have a solid source or line of thought that manages to explain one's sense of reality being more than «it's how I feel it for me, so that must be true of others, otherwise it's quite scary», I'm really (really) interested.

I don't think it's self referential, the whole idea holds on that if you manage to do predictions that are confirmed, you still have to assume that your perceptions are consistent across time. As an individual you can check you perceptions across time, with several people you remove yourself as a variable.

I've been extreme in the formulations, but no, you don't need other methods, repeatable experiment with accurate predictions is enough. The heuristics are quite reliable. It's just that we tend to forget/ignore that everything that what we think of being true is just a large compound of beliefs, and that the only way to validate those beliefs is to use them to make prediction, and validate it through experiments.

I think the point I was making is different. It was that perception and experiences are real, just not necessarily reflective of a shared reality. The state of consciousness is much more than just the processing of external signals.

> if you have a solid source or line of thought that manages to explain one's sense of reality being more than «it's how I feel it for me, so that must be true of others, otherwise it's quite scary», I'm really (really) interested.

The best example I can think of is a dream. Dreams are real experiences despite not being shared with any other human. It would be absurd to say that you can't have dreams because they aren't perceived by or true for other people. The same holds true for thoughts and feelings.

People don't get sent into an existential crisis because they feel happy while someone somewhere is unhappy. Having a feeling is a real experience, despite being personal and subjective.

How would you design an experiment to tell whether a perception of love is to be trusted or not?

Foreword: I don't wan't to be contrarian or combative, but I see unjustified universal truths laid out in your comment, 2 specifically:

> The state of consciousness is much more than just the processing of external signals.

Complex life evolution is 100% based on best survival interpretation of surrounding environment. I understand how we can try to figure out what is more in the human way of doing it, but I really think that has to hold on something before getting past it.

> It would be absurd to say that you can't have dreams because they aren't perceived by or true for other people.

It is, and yet, if you do the exercise of imagine that dreaming is a social construct that you are the only one to really experience it, discarding that idea is solely based on belief. A belief I share, based on trust in others, and what seems the most probable. If it's absurd, it's only because we can rule it out as highly improbable.

I would advise others methods to convince the loved one the reality of your love. As for yourself, well, this is some aspect where the brain decides on your behalf, consciousness can be damned.

I'm not sure I understand your statements or how it relates to the things that I said, but I'll try my best to respond

>Complex life evolution is 100% based on best survival interpretation of surrounding environment. I understand how we can try to figure out what is more in the human way of doing it, but I really think that has to hold on something before getting past it.

I agree that evolution is driven by Fitness, and a large part of Fitness is understanding the world around you. That doesn't mean 100% of behavior, or especially experience, serves a purpose of advancing Fitness. Evolution is messy. It has mistakes, byproducts, artifacts, and maladaptive traits. Not everything done is done with a purpose.

>It is, and yet, if you do the exercise of imagine that dreaming is a social construct that you are the only one to really experience it, discarding that idea is solely based on belief. A belief I share, based on trust in others, and what seems the most probable. If it's absurd, it's only because we can rule it out as highly improbable.

Really struggle to grasp your meaning on this one. It seems that the existence of belief itself, independent of social truth, and contrary to trust in others, is evidence to the contrary. Are you saying that humans wouldn't have feelings, thoughts, or dreams, unless they have a social expectation to do so?

As Sam Harris has discussed several times, if you run the thought experiment of what is definitely real and not to its conclusion, subjective experience is the only thing that cannot be faked as it does not make any claim beyond the experience itself. Even if there is no real world out there, you're just sitting on a hard drive in a super computer being simulated, your subjective experience was proven to be true the moment you experienced it.

There is a distance between your experience and the shared reality (a bunch of signals, perception and processing) that we use science to try to overcome

Thanks, this is another way of explaining what I was trying to convey.

> I don't think it's self referential

It involves perception, and you believe it despite not having gone through what you claim is necessary to acquire the knowledge.

> the whole idea holds on that if you manage to do predictions that are confirmed, you still have to assume that your perceptions are consistent across time.

YOu may have to do this, but I certainly don't - in fact, I believe essentially the opposite of this!

> As an individual you can check you perceptions across time, with several people you remove yourself as a variable.

That could depend on the nature of your relationship with the people - it's possible, but not guaranteed (and knowing which situation you're in isn't easy).

> I've been extreme in the formulations, but no, you don't need other methods, repeatable experiment with accurate predictions is enough.

This is only true if it is actually true though - how do you confirm that it is true?

> The heuristics are quite reliable.

...the heuristic process suggests.

> It's just that we tend to forget/ignore that everything that what we think of being true is just a large compound of beliefs, and that the only way to validate those beliefs is to use them to make prediction, and validate it through experiments.

It is true that there is value in science, but there is also risk.