What if it's real? What if the DMT is disabling some kind of filter that normally keeps this reality hidden?
Why Do DMT Users See Insects from a Parallel Universe?
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Re: Why Do DMT Users See Insects from a Parallel Universe?
#122What if it's real? What if the DMT is disabling some kind of filter that normally keeps this reality hidden?
Re: Why Do DMT Users See Insects from a Parallel Universe?
#123What if it's real? What if the DMT is disabling some kind of filter that normally keeps this reality hidden?
Occam's razor says no.
Re: Why Do DMT Users See Insects from a Parallel Universe?
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
With the same skepticism you could also ask yourself to which extent the hallucinations were actually due to subconscious recall of all kinds of memes surrounding hallucinogens like "out-of-body experience", "consciousness", "parallel worlds", "breakthrough", "feeling like dying", as well as imagery from all kinds of drug films and literature etc.
It's a good point, but I had a similar experience in my teens, before I'd been exposed to any such influences.
Humans are however very bad at retrospectively telling which memes they were exposed to in the past and which not. That is basically the reason why highly specialized people in academia are often bad teachers if they didn't practice teaching a lot. The inferential distance between expert and novice (i.e. the difference in knowledge) simply becomes so large and complex, that the expert forgets what the actual gap is.
We basically have to distrust our memories all the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHd_TNHsyVA
Re: Why Do DMT Users See Insects from a Parallel Universe?
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe people here have more knowledge of neuroscience, and physics, than the general population? Knowledge brings biases, of course. But those biases aren't necessarily wrong. You have a blind-spot (at least one) on each retina that you never see. Does this mean that there is a secret hole in reality, just out of sight, that science won't accept? Or does it mean that there's an area on your retina with no visual sens…
I'm not saying that the experience is not likely an illusion. But its funny that you mention a blind spot, because why entertain every theory except the most obvious one?
When you try to apply supernatural concepts to the natural world, you either have to dismiss the relevance of the body of scientific knowledge which contradicts the premises of magical thinking, and assume that the universe doesn't actually follow any knowable physical laws, or explain it within the constraints of what is known to be true in the universe in which we live.
There is no scientifically credible evidence that the mind exists as a coherent entity outside of the brain - and there is evidence that the mind and the brain are the same thing, or at least, that the latter cannot exist outside the former.
There is also no scientifically credible evidence that arbitrary and instantaneous travel to parallel universes is possible. Rather, it appears to either be impossible, or at least, infeasible without burning entire galaxies to a cinder - about as difficult a problem as traveling faster than lightspeed.
One can credibly dismiss this theory because it requires astral projection and ESP to be true, despite there being no evidence of truth behind either, and the laws of physics (in particular, the laws of thermodynamics) to be false, despite the evidence in their favor.
Re: Why Do DMT Users See Insects from a Parallel Universe?
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Just "feeling sure" isn't enough to certain of something. Back when I was a teenager, I got interested in the idea of lucid dreaming. One of the suggested ways I'd read of gaining awareness that you are in a dream is to habitually ask yourself if you're dreaming -- sooner or later, you'll do it in a dream. I tried that for a while, and sure enough, I did actually ask myself if I was dreaming while in a dream, and c…
The book Art of Dreaming has some good tips... Such as remembering to look at your hands. That action for some reason if performed in a dream will help you realize you're dreaming. The other thing is there's two factors of realization (according to the book), the first is realizing you're dreaming. The second is realizing you are asleep in your bed right now. Surprisingly, it helps to realize and acknowledge these in…
Looking at your hands doesn't seem like enough a test to me. I think you need something more convincing.
My reality test when I was interested in lucid dreaming was to count my fingers, and one day I happened to count to 6, and was then pretty sure it was normal and went on with my day. When I woke up, I couldn't believe how easily I convinced myself that I wasn't dreaming
Re: Why Do DMT Users See Insects from a Parallel Universe?
#127I believe this world is basically a playpen in a universe having 5 spatial dimensions. I've had a very interesting side-effect immediately after coming back from a DMT trip of being able to see around things. Like you look at a box on the table in front of you and you can see the side facing away from you. Faded gradually after 5 minutes. This seems like extremely fruitful territory for trying with ESP test cards, MR…
Why would you believe that?
Because that's my experience. I investigate theoretical models but I don't have the math skills to develop the idea more rigorously at present.
Re: Why Do DMT Users See Insects from a Parallel Universe?
#128My latest working theory for why DMT elicits similar experiences across different users was actually inspired by Google's "Deep Dream" art: https://research.googleblog.com/2015/06/inceptionism-going-d...
"We know that after training, each layer progressively extracts higher and higher-level features of the image... The final few layers assemble those into complete interpretations—these neurons activate in response to very complex things such as entire buildings or trees."
I'm not an expert, but from the little I know of neuroscience, the human brain also has higher level interpreters inside of it. It is why, for example, that pareidolia (seeing faces in objects) is a thing (https://www.reddit.com/r/Pareidolia/).
"So here’s one surprise: neural networks that were trained to discriminate between different kinds of images have quite a bit of the information needed to generate images too"
"One way to visualize what goes on is to turn the network upside down and ask it to enhance an input image in such a way as to elicit a particular interpretation"
So I believe that what DMT is doing is triggering our high level interpreters to make sense of thoughts and emotions that we have. We do the same thing when we dream, where we interpret an event of the day in a very vivid, novel fashion, sometimes even creating story arcs around it.
Re: Why Do DMT Users See Insects from a Parallel Universe?
#129There is some evidence that seems to indicate that the humans have an evolved "built in" reaction to snake/snake like patterns: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/cd/12_1/Ohman.c... As reptiles, snakes may have signified deadly threats in the environment of early mammals. We review findings suggesting that snakes remain special stimuli for humans. Intense snake fear is prevalent in both humans and other pri…
Cats display what appears to be an instinctual (and often hilarious) fear of some snake-shaped objects, like cucumbers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNycdfFEgBc
As a cat owner, I recently heard about this phenomenon and looked it up. Many of the Quora answers [1] seem to concur that cats would be startled by the sudden appearance of any novel/unusual object in their vicinity.
Re: Why Do DMT Users See Insects from a Parallel Universe?
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's a fun question... If it has a such a profound change in consciousness, would it be easy for a non-DMT user to identify someone who has used DMT, albeit with some training?
I'm curious whether or not there's even a test for the presence of this drug or it's metabolites in the blood of a user who has taken it within say even just the past hour , due to its purportedly short lived effects... Not curious enough to consult the literature, but curious.
Its naturally occurring in the body, and quickly broken down by mono-amine oxidase enzymes (taking MAOI's, mono-amine oxidase inhibitors, with it extends the duration of the trip).