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Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics

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637 points robinhouston | 1 comments | 05 Jun 23 07:27 UTC | HN request time: 0.219s | 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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sneak ◴[06 Jun 23 11:39 UTC] No.36211174[source]▶
That's a subjective interpretation, and I say that even as someone who believes in objective reality.

There's no telling what time perception is "correct" or "real". It is actually within the realm of possibility that they did experience an eternity-scale (but sub-infinite, natch) amount of experiences.

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tuyiown ◴[06 Jun 23 12:02 UTC] No.36211364[source]▶
> 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.

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mistermann ◴[06 Jun 23 15:08 UTC] No.36213988[source]▶
> 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.

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tuyiown ◴[06 Jun 23 15:47 UTC] No.36214646[source]▶
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.

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1. mistermann ◴[09 Jun 23 15:32 UTC] No.36259355[source]▶
> 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.