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Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics

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Re: Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics

#51

Post by codeflo »

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.

Re: Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics

#52

Post by DonHopkins »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #43
DonHopkins wrote: post #32

People who haven't used psychedelics don't tend to get or appreciate The Congress as much as those who have. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPGhw4nACfk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPAl5GwvdY8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pqzaZcivh4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMMI8HWhqEc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHBl43lMJY0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_(2013_film)

This is absolutely amazing to me -how would one go about finding more gems like that?

It's well worth reading the book by Stanislaw Lem that it's based on, The Futurological Congress!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Futurological_Congress

>The book opens at the eponymous congress. A riot breaks out, and the hero, Ijon Tichy, is hit by various psychoactive drugs that were put into the drinking water supply lines by the government to pacify the riots. Ijon and a few others escape to the safety of a sewer beneath the Hilton where the congress was being held, and in the sewer he goes through a series of hallucinations and false awakenings, which cause him to be confused about whether or not what's happening around him is real. Finally, he believes that he falls asleep and wakes up many years later. The main part of the book follows Ijon's adventures in the future world — a world where everyone takes hallucinogenic drugs, and hallucinations have replaced reality.

In the same way that the epic movie Blade Runner was based on Philip K Dick's classic book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, both movies are deeply inspired by but quite different than the books, so they both have unique important things to say and are worth reading and seeing.

Both pairs of movies and books are among my top favorites!

Many of Lem's books and stories are also excellent mind bending gems -- especially The Cyberiad!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cyberiad

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Lem

>[...] The Cyberiad (Cyberiada) provide a commentary on humanity in the form of a series of grotesque, humorous, fairytale-like short stories about a mechanical universe inhabited by robots (who have occasional contact with biological "slimies" and human "palefaces").[11][35] Lem also underlines the uncertainties of evolution, including that it might not progress upwards in intelligence.[36]

Re: Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics

#53

Post by GolDDranks »

Retr0id wrote: post #18

I can see the first one fairly clearly in my default state of consciousness, which I suppose confirms my theory that I have higher-than-average vision persistence. (I have never used psychedelics, and do not plan to) Tips to make it stand out more: HDR monitor at max brightness, increase playback speed to 2x Try not to follow the movement, but keep your eyes on a fixed location (e.g. a speck of dust on your screen)

> I have higher-than-average vision persistence

First time heard about this. Do you think that you have more "buffer space" for past visual input than average, or do the older and newer visual input "merge together" in the same "buffer space"? What I'm trying to get at is that does this come at cost of blurring vision or reaction speed, or do you have no problems related to those?

Re: Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics

#55

Post by Archelaos »

wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #30
stavros wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, thanks! I can't make out anything resembling a lion, but I imagine I need to be higher for that.

Haha yeah it's harder for me to see now also. Two of the leaves of the lotus are darker those are his eyes, the white flower & female buddha are his tongue. The white skin of people are his hairs. When sober it feels farfetched, but it's all much clearer on a substance :)

It is easier to spot when the details become blurred. So either zoom out of the image or look at your screen from afar. Because I am shortsighted, I am also able to see it easily when I remove my glasses and move back somewhat from the screen. I get the best result when I am just a bit outside the range were the image is sharp. Then I still have something like a 3-D effect from the potest. -- So no substance needed to see it.

Re: Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics

#56

Post by goolz »

heisenbit wrote: post #50

Have we all misunderstood the function of drug screening job applicants by the NSA?

This gave me a good chuckle. I remember at school once there was a shadowy entity that I came to understand was NSA recruiters (think big engineering school, big Military budget, not atypical for students to have high clearance). If you signed away a couple years they gave you some cash, I remember that, but what made me laugh was the thought of those bland recruiters surreptitiously whispering, “Now look, the LSD is supposed to HELP you see the code, go on try some!”.

Re: Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics

#57

Post by heavyset_go »

wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #35
stavros wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahhh I kind of see what you mean! Very interesting, I wonder if this was on purpose or if the mind is just great at seeing things in shapes when on drugs.

Thangka's are always filled with symbols. And the Tibetans have a strong culture of visions in dreams and real life. For instance they often meditate long times without food & water, and they speak about how to protect against "demons" persuading you to jump of cliffs. Although most or much more positives, projections of buddha forms appearing next to teachers etc. There are also some shamanistic leftovers from the B…

People throughout time and culture have described the experience of seeing auras, and I believe that's a result of peeling back inhibitory responses to really "see" what the eye and mind see without too much heavy filtering.

Like today there are people who experience things like psychedelic flashbacks or HPPD, many report being able to trigger those experiences willingly, and sometimes uncontrollably.

I think you can train yourself to see this way, and meditation is a great way of peeling back your brains' pattern matching and assumption making to do it. It's similar to learning to "see" as an artist, or the artist's eye. When you first start out, you have to learn to look past the generalizations your mind fills in for what you think you're looking at to actually "see" what needs to be seen to capture what you want in art. It's a different type of perception.

For that reason, I don't think drugs need to be involved at all to make art like this, just a different way of perceiving things.

Re: Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics

#58

Post by brutusborn »

codeflo wrote: post #51

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…

You are probably right that having a slower processing speed isn’t an advantage overall, but being able to perceive patterns like this may be advantageous in some situations.

Maybe the slower processing speed is the cost of better processing power? Kinda like the tradeoff between high torque and high speed for gearboxes.

Some tribes use psychedelics for hunting, and others that use psychedelics for introspection: maybe they are perceiving something that we ignore during normal processing modes.

Re: Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics

#59

Post by arunix »

kfrzcode wrote: post #29
pbj1968 wrote: post #28

None of this is real. Don’t fuck with your brain, pal, it ain’t worth it.

Arguable. Entheogenic drugs are likely a significant driver behind human cognitive evolution. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entheogenic_drugs_and_the_arch...

Are you referring to the Stoned Ape hypothesis? I couldn't find any mention of evolution in the linked article.

Re: Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics

#60

Post by brutusborn »

liampulles wrote: post #38

Is there a way to make some psychedelic LLM middleware to translate any new breaking API changes down into an acceptable format? High-level abstractions...

The phrase “psychedelic LLM” reminded me of this paper.

This is your neural net on drugs! https://academic.oup.com/nc/article/2020/1/niaa024/6032852?l...

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