Earlier quoted context omitted.
75 is a fairly mild dose, and people can placebo themselves into some pretty extreme states
I disagree about 75 being a fairly mild dose. For a 200lbs male maybe. For a 100lbs female definitely not.
Effect of LSD on reinforcement learning in humans (2022)
51–60 of 103 posts
Re: Effect of LSD on reinforcement learning in humans (2022)
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Placebos in psychedelics studies are rightfully often laughed about, but if the placebo group never took LSD before, it may indeed not be obvious to them if they got the drug or not.
The potency of the placebo effect with psychoactive drugs is pretty remarkable. It also illustrates an interesting effect about the cultural influence on intoxication. It's one of the more easily repeatable placebo experiments. If you give a bunch of young adults who have never drunk alcohol some "alcohol" and then observe them, they both a) act drunk b) act drunk, according to their expectations about alcohol. (Peop…
I have noticed a similar thing in myself. The second I taste alcohol, it is like a switch was flipped, and I am now "drinking mode". Presumably some strong state-dependent learning. On the other hand, if I am physically dehydrated and drink a glass of water, I immediately feel better even though it must surely take several minutes for the water to start being absorbed.
Re: Effect of LSD on reinforcement learning in humans (2022)
#53It's humorous to me that they bothered injecting saline into the control group here. I'm pretty sure anyone on earth would know whether or not they were on 75 micrograms of LSD, and the act of wondering whether you are or not is enough to induce panic. Pretty sure both groups would produce higher quality data in an unblinded study.
I wouldn’t. I have no idea how strong the effects of LSD are supposed to be based on a dose. I suspect only people who have taken LSD know really.
Re: Effect of LSD on reinforcement learning in humans (2022)
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you have any hallucinations at all, you're not microdosing. Microdosing is right before the tipping point of recognizing you took something at all. It should be recognizable from long-term effects, not immediately.
I wonder if there is more data about this. A while ago I've microdosed 1 to 2g of fresh truffles(which should not induce a trip), a few days/weeks after a real trip, and I had some hallucinations, which should not have happened IDK, is it possible that a microdose could trigger some kind of a release of a previous buildup of some hallucinogens?
Re: Effect of LSD on reinforcement learning in humans (2022)
#55Complete BS study. Increased exploration reduces reward learning rate. That’s the whole point of explore-exploit trade off which is at least NP hard. The way they refer to RL dynamics as “RL rates” is also a give away that these people don’t understand RL. I’ll leave the evaluation of their cognitive science merit to people knowledgeable in that area
Excuse me, I have a question. I was under the impression something is either NP hard or it is not. When you say "at least NP hard" it suggests there are levels beyond NP. Am I misinformed, or am I misunderstanding you?
Re: Effect of LSD on reinforcement learning in humans (2022)
#56It's humorous to me that they bothered injecting saline into the control group here. I'm pretty sure anyone on earth would know whether or not they were on 75 micrograms of LSD, and the act of wondering whether you are or not is enough to induce panic. Pretty sure both groups would produce higher quality data in an unblinded study.
> I'm pretty sure anyone on earth would know whether or not they were on 75 micrograms of LSD I wouldn’t. I have no idea how strong the effects of LSD are supposed to be based on a dose. I suspect only people who have taken LSD know really.
In my case (80kg, male, slender/muscular), 75ug is the highest dose I can still, with significant and perpetual effort, appear sober to the uninitiated.
Re: Effect of LSD on reinforcement learning in humans (2022)
#57I'm more scared of LSD than ever before, after hearing about that you see "scanlines" for ever after using it. Anyone got this after? https://www.insider.com/9-years-after-acid-trip-man-has-pers...
* I've also noticed people that are interested in tripping multiple days in a row tend to have worse outcomes than those that pace themselves. He credits the second trip with developing the problems.
* His primary complaint before he started taking drugs is that trauma lead him to become withdrawn. His primary complain now is that he feels a tendency to withdrawal from his family. It sounds like his biggest problem is the same before and after HPPD.
Re: Effect of LSD on reinforcement learning in humans (2022)
#58Complete BS study. Increased exploration reduces reward learning rate. That’s the whole point of explore-exploit trade off which is at least NP hard. The way they refer to RL dynamics as “RL rates” is also a give away that these people don’t understand RL. I’ll leave the evaluation of their cognitive science merit to people knowledgeable in that area
> at least NP hard Excuse me, I have a question. I was under the impression something is either NP hard or it is not. When you say "at least NP hard" it suggests there are levels beyond NP. Am I misinformed, or am I misunderstanding you?
Re: Effect of LSD on reinforcement learning in humans (2022)
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aside from fud the only thing that is known among psychadelic users is visual snow ( one of the hallmarks of HPPD) . this sometimes happens after extremely high doses of psychadelics
It's more than snow. I had years after where walls would breathe. I still (decades later) have issues with black text on white backgrounds.
Re: Effect of LSD on reinforcement learning in humans (2022)
#60> "From an affective neuroscience perspective, our understanding of psychiatric illness may be advanced by neuropsychological test paradigms probing emotional processes. Reversal learning is one such process, whereby subjects must first acquire stimulus/reward and stimulus/punishment associations through trial and error and then reverse them. (2009 Cambridge Pyschological Medicine, Dickstein et al.)"
This is pretty low-level stuff, e.g. 'learning' that red means stop and then 'relearning' that red means go, etc. The authors claim to have developed evidence that LSD is associated with plasticity in healthy humans suffering no psychological disorders.
It's an interesting study, I suppose. Psychedelics are often called 'mind-expanding' and it's possible that the underlying neurochemical mechanism of action facilitates breaking out from fixed behavior patterns. This might also explain some of the reasons why authoritarian governments don't like psychedelics as they might encourage a loss of faith in authorities, or cause religious fundamentalists to reconsider their belief systems etc.
After all, if you can't necessary trust your sensory organs to give you reliable information about the world around you due to the influence of a complex molecule on a receptor protein in your brain, perhaps blind faith in the pronouncements of politicians, priests, and media talking heads is not justified either?
In terms of learning, however, I've always thought that most notable psychedelic effect was the development of good three-dimensional visualization of complex objects, such as electrical fields or proteins and DNA and things like that. Such visual effects are generally associated with higher doses however, which are a bit tricky to manage safely, and so require special attention to optimal set and setting.