Surprised there's not more skepticism about the "Qualia Research Institute" behind this study. It's funded by the founder of Polychain Capital, which might raise some eyebrows. I also find it amusing that people in tech have a tendency to reject traditional Western religious forms, but readily adopt Eastern ones or modern New Age spinoffs, which are arguably just as bad if not worse in terms of being anti-intellectual, anti-rational, mystical, etc.
Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics
261–270 of 302 posts
Re: Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
> how do you get to this point where you can look at a thing and say “oh yeah, it’s XYZ”? What do you mean exactly?
I think GP meant: how do you go from watching the obfuscated video to going, "To see the message I need to use mix=frames=36 with the following weights..."
Oh, well the weight was going to be 1 since I needed the frames need to be fully overlayed, and I randomly ended up at 36, since I just kept upping the frames until I got a good-enough image via trial & error. Then I had to fix the gamma, because it ended up being "smeared," which is exactly what I wanted, but extremely dark and hard to see.
Re: Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who now occasionally suffers panic attacks due to psychedelic use, I agree: people downplay the risks because it suits their personal narrative and experience. Perhaps as a pushback against years of over-exaggeration re: risks, per another poster, but nevertheless a definite under emphasis on the dangers these drugs pose.
My panic attacks went away because of psychedelics. Sorry yours was the opposite.
Yeah, a reasonable discussion includes both benefits (your experience) and risks (mine). The former has recently been getting all the air time.
This isn’t a “both sides” argument wherein some highly unlikely hypothetical is trotted out to debate the consensus. Plenty of people have had bad experiences with long term ill effects.
Re: Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think GP meant: how do you go from watching the obfuscated video to going, "To see the message I need to use mix=frames=36 with the following weights..."
Oh, well the weight was going to be 1 since I needed the frames need to be fully overlayed, and I randomly ended up at 36, since I just kept upping the frames until I got a good-enough image via trial & error. Then I had to fix the gamma, because it ended up being "smeared," which is exactly what I wanted, but extremely dark and hard to see.
I've learned that a lot of what we think of as art or mastery is just the end result of trying shit and then remembering what works.
Re: Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
The perception as two sides: the signal, and how it's processed. The signal is real and true just by it's existence. Note that this also applies with self-generated signal such as phantom limbs. For the processing, the subjective part of the perception, lot of things falls appart, attaching any notion of reality and trustiness looks like a choice to enable some lines of reflection. A choice heavily oriented by our ow…
I think the point I was making is different. It was that perception and experiences are real, just not necessarily reflective of a shared reality. The state of consciousness is much more than just the processing of external signals. > if you have a solid source or line of thought that manages to explain one's sense of reality being more than «it's how I feel it for me, so that must be true of others, otherwise it's q…
Foreword: I don't wan't to be contrarian or combative, but I see unjustified universal truths laid out in your comment, 2 specifically:
> The state of consciousness is much more than just the processing of external signals.
Complex life evolution is 100% based on best survival interpretation of surrounding environment. I understand how we can try to figure out what is more in the human way of doing it, but I really think that has to hold on something before getting past it.
> It would be absurd to say that you can't have dreams because they aren't perceived by or true for other people.
It is, and yet, if you do the exercise of imagine that dreaming is a social construct that you are the only one to really experience it, discarding that idea is solely based on belief. A belief I share, based on trust in others, and what seems the most probable. If it's absurd, it's only because we can rule it out as highly improbable.
Re: Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 o…
How would you design an experiment to tell whether a perception of love is to be trusted or not?
I would advise others methods to convince the loved one the reality of your love. As for yourself, well, this is some aspect where the brain decides on your behalf, consciousness can be damned.
Re: Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics
#267[deleted]
Re: Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like time goes by “slower” for me ever since I did a heroic dose a few years ago. Used to be stressed the f out all the time. Now I feel like I can enjoy every full second. Crazy how much time we have in life when we just stop paying attention to the negative energies like stress and instead channel them into storage for something positive later. I’ve always been efficient and quick at learning new things and…
The problem is, of course, you have no idea if that dose is what caused the change. That change in personal outlook may have been coming your direction anyway, or you may have experienced it sooner if you hadn't been doing LSD at all.
[deleted]
Re: Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the general case, having delusions and other psychotic issues are not selected for traits with positive outcomes for the individuals having them. Your life is hard if you have them and conventional success is rare. They persist in the general population to an extent for the same reason other hereditary illness persists. "I would die for two brothers or 8 cousins". A gene that is to your detriment in 1/3 cases but…
> We have lots of examples of this in other heritable disease types You're saying that diseases persist in humans because they're selected for, because they're beneficial to others? That's interesting, do you have some examples?
I would phrase it as the genes are selected for, not that the diseases are selected for, but yeah you understand correctly. Others have already filled in examples like you asked for.
Re: Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the general case, having delusions and other psychotic issues are not selected for traits with positive outcomes for the individuals having them. Your life is hard if you have them and conventional success is rare. They persist in the general population to an extent for the same reason other hereditary illness persists. "I would die for two brothers or 8 cousins". A gene that is to your detriment in 1/3 cases but…
Here's a lecture by Robert Sapolsky where he goes into some theories involving schizotypal individuals (and other mental disorders) and culture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WwAQqWUkpI Long story short, the theory goes that being schizotypal (but not full-blown schizophrenic) could be an advantageous trait in human society, usually by filling some spiritual, ritual, or religious role in the group. These people ar…
Yep, that's exactly the lecture I had in mind for my original comment. I decided to shorten down to "no one is sure what the advantage is" rather than try to both explain Sapolsky's conjecture and not mislead people into thinking its an established scientific fact.