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Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics

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637 points robinhouston | 2 comments | 05 Jun 23 07:27 UTC | HN request time: 1.148s | source
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codeflo ◴[06 Jun 23 10:39 UTC] No.36210706[source]▶
All the people in this thread who decoded it used long exposure or faster playback. Using the latter, for me, it starts to become readable at 2.5x and is essentially a clear static image at 4x. (I had to download the video and play it back using VLC.)

Which for me, makes this claim a bit absurd:

> At a theoretical level, this confirmation is significant because it is the first clear demonstration of a real perceptual computational advantage of psychedelic states of consciousness.

LSD fans might hate this conclusion, but there's no "computational advantage" to having a 2.5x to 4x slower processing speed, which his the only thing actually being shown here.

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thumbuddy ◴[06 Jun 23 11:18 UTC] No.36210999[source]▶
You know, according to people who have done buckets of psychedelics, there's an awful lot more to the psychedelic experience than 2.5-4x slower processing speed. I recall reading of numerous people who found they could collectively slow down a wall clock to the point were it didn't move any longer, and people who have experienced what they refer to as "eternity", "multiple life times", "thousands of years", etc.

Also what is being done here isn't simply slower processing speed. It's more like the information from old states persists into new ones. My understanding is that this would be considered low dose territory.

There's more to the story here, and I don't think this test, is even scratching the surface. It is neat though.

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causi ◴[06 Jun 23 11:28 UTC] No.36211075[source]▶
people who have experienced what they refer to as "eternity", "multiple life times", "thousands of years", etc.

They didn't "experience an eternity". They experienced an emotional feeling they likened to an eternity. This is the difference between your computer running a program for a thousand years and you changing the date settings. These people did not go through an eternity of perception, processing, and thought; they had the label on their memories altered.

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LoganDark ◴[06 Jun 23 11:44 UTC] No.36211209[source]▶
> These people did not go through an eternity of perception, processing, and thought; they had the label on their memories altered.

No, psychedelics really can speed up thought. It's not uncommon to experience a lot more in a much shorter amount of time than normal. For example, I've experienced this first-hand where I could not even finish a single sentence before I was so far ahead in thought that I completely forgot what I was originally trying to say.

I used to call it "an entire universe happening between each instant" which, while inaccurate, is an apt enough description of how it feels, but also how it actually is, because the volume of thought is still much higher than normal.

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jabbany ◴[06 Jun 23 12:03 UTC] No.36211375[source]▶
The experience you described is no indicator of whether "volume of thought is still much higher than normal" though? You'd have the exact same experience if the actual mechanism is that "had the label on [your] memories altered".

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).

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LoganDark ◴[06 Jun 23 12:24 UTC] No.36211562[source]▶
> The experience you described is no indicator of whether "volume of thought is still much higher than normal" though? You'd have the exact same experience if the actual mechanism is that "had the label on [your] memories altered".

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).

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1. jabbany ◴[06 Jun 23 12:43 UTC] No.36211773[source]▶
> more distinct experiences

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 :)

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2. LoganDark ◴[06 Jun 23 12:54 UTC] No.36211895[source]▶
> 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.

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).