Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics

To scientifically test this, you'd need some normalized "benchmark task" of thought, and then compare the difference in progress on such a thought task between the control and psychedelic cases given the same amount of "real time".

IIRC earlier papers (that I am too lazy to find) shared on HN that have done this seem to show the opposite, that there is no measurable difference on the task yet the participants reported a difference in their label of the experience. (I think the paper then was related to some form of creativity and showed that there was no post-hoc measured difference despite a significant reported experiential difference).

It's not the only evidence I have, but one of the main problems with trying to describe psychedelics is that the experience is... well, indescribable. As in, when I'm not on LSD, I can't even properly decode most of the memories I made with it.

> To scientifically test this, you'd need some normalized "benchmark task" of thought, and then compare the difference in progress on such a thought task between the control and psychedelic cases given the same amount of "real time".

LSD probably doesn't make it faster for me to process things. It just makes me jump between things more quickly so I have more distinct experiences at any given time. I know that while in voice chat with people, I would have moments where I would have a bunch of thoughts, completely forget what just happened, and only a couple seconds of real-world time had passed. In that scenario the other person is my time reference but I've also checked actual clocks and observed that effect.

I don't think LSD makes me better at computation at all (in fact, it probably makes me a bit worse at computation).

If well formulated I suppose this could be scientifically tested too. Given the right kind of task and measurement. My earlier point is only to tie to the parent about differentiating actually having "more distinct experiences" with just _feeling like_ you had them. This is something that, as the subject and knowing the intervention, you cannot determine by yourself. You'd need an experimenter doing a double-blind experiment to really test this out.

As an anecdote there's nothing wrong --- subjective experiences aren't any less "real" to the experiencer --- just that claims about the mechanism and effect are probably not generalizable.

> As in, when I'm not on LSD, I can't even properly decode most of the memories I made with it.

There's also lots of metaphysical questions about whether indescribable experiences are "real" or not that are probably too long to get into on HN :)

This can honestly be applied to basically anything about thought. I sort of get it though, because claiming a difference implies "citation needed". I would just feel weird if I wasn't really having all the thoughts that I thought I had.

It's not exactly possible to communicate exactly what validation I've done over those memories, especially since my brain could have fixed stuff after the fact (as brains do). I just can't find anything that would suggest it was modified after the fact, since even my behavior at the time would support the theory.

Worth noting that I have a lot of experience with things that my brain simply makes me think are happening, because I have Dissociative Identity Disorder and that happens with all sorts of things all the time. (That's not to say I can completely rule it out, rather that I know it happens and roughly how un-rule-out-able it can be.)

My brain will simulate something happening and then also create the memory of it happening, which becomes almost indistinguishable from it actually having happened. I would say I can usually tell those memories apart if I really study them, but whether I am correct or not, it is objectively impossible to know or say for sure, because if I missed something it would simply be missing from my knowledge (to the point where I wouldn't know something was missed).

Sounds identical to me on a bad ADHD day.

I swear, you people turn science into a religious ritual.

First-hand observation (which we have here) is the gold standard for knowledge-derivation. Science is just a method for ensuring that our models hew close to that.

What you assert here is mere convention.

It's not the only tool available though. You could also use other tools like coercion, intimidation, violence, negotiation, etc. to also arrive at a single conclusion. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

After every instance of that, it felt like I had spent so much time in that fractal that it was difficult to recall what had happened previously. It's not like ADHD where I get distracted and lose something from my short-term memory—it's that I had so many other thoughts that it was difficult to backtrack past them all.

Since we're talking about things that happened inside my own head, how can I know whether I actually experienced a certain period of time, or only created a memory of having experienced that time? My own recollection of it may be flawed, so it logically follows that in order to know for sure, I have to find some way to objectively quantify it. I don't know how I'd objectively quantify the number of thoughts I'm having, though, lol.

Well no, it is not. If you spot an UFO, chances are your "first-hand observation" is lying to you.

It's just a trick your brain is playing on you man. I was playing Rainbow Six Siege with friends, and during the 30 second setup phase I played for what was surely several minutes doing all the things you do with the drone and looking everywhere and planning all sorts of things, and then I looked at the timer and only 5 seconds had passed.

Your brain's interpretation of time passing is a completely made up fiction for it's own benefit. Police officers report seeing shootings going down in slow motion, watching individual shell casings drop to the floor and reading the numbers stamped on the bottom.

When this kind of time dilation was scientifically investigated, we found that what actually changed was your MEMORY of that time, not your cognition during the dilation itself. You aren't actually experiencing things quicker, your brain is just timestamping stuff poorly. Your brain's time tracking system just gets out of whack, and that screws with your consciousness because it relies heavily on timestamping of things.

Humans are TERRIBLE at knowing reality. That's like the whole point of the scientific process. People's self reports are literally the worst evidence ever used in science, and you have to actively work against your subjects and their brains to tease any actual signal out of that noise.

Consider for example, many airplane accidents have people reporting the plane was hit by a missile, even though we can have independent evidence that they weren't even looking in the direction until after the event.

We KNOW the brain lies to you as a matter of course, and makes up pretty much everything it can for the purpose of being lazy. Your entire consciousness is a fiction, vulnerable to all the normal human biases. We KNOW it is incredibly easy to mangle, twist, modify, and combine memories, and that pretty much everyone has memories that don't match reality.

You see how that is rather inconsistent.

How about this instead.

We can offer, in addition to our observation, the method by which we arrived at the observation. The method of our "experiment".

We might also compare our observation with that of our "peers".

(And we might also cultivate ourselves, to make better observations. If you think such a thing is possible)

But however you slice it, the validity of the observation stands upon the authority of the observer. There's no getting around that.

It's funny. You distrust your eyes but trust your thoughts.