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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

#291

Post by nbardy »

roqi wrote: post #190
nbardy wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You admit that there is plenty of recreational and therapeutical use for them and then that leads you to the conclusion that they’re not spiritual gateways. I find this surprising as those are one in the same to me. Spiritual experiences have been about recreation, understanding others, the self, personal growth, coming of age, etc… I feel like your post in general is full of acknowledgment of these drugs capabilitie…

> (...) leads you to the conclusion that they’re not spiritual gateways. I find this surprising as those are one in the same to me. How does that surprise you? I mean do spiritual gateways exist at all? Is there even a concrete definition and concept? Or are they just a conjecture without any basis whatsoever? It seems you start from baseless beliefs and blindly assume they are require no validation and afterwards fe…

My definition would be that spiritual gateways are tools that help you have spiritual experience.

Plenty of people have had that shared effect from psychedelics.

I’m sure what baseless belief you see.

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

#292

Post by anigbrowl »

LastTrain wrote: post #184
di456 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is, of course, you have no idea if that dose is what caused the change What problem exactly? This seems like a dismissive take on someone's positive experience. Are your referring to the scientific problem of studying cause & effect of the psychedelic experience? Science is figuring that out.

No I’m talking about this one’s person’s experience. They are putting out their notion of cause and effect on a public forum and I am questioning it. That is OK, right?

It really isn't. They certainly have more insight into their subjective mental state than you, so basically you're just saying 'coincidence?!' about an unmeasurable phenomenon where the observer has qualia and you do not.

It'd be like if you said 'I had an idea yesterday...' and I responded with 'Did you though? Maybe you just overheard it and thought it was yours! Maybe you just thought of it now and incorrectly associated it with something you did yesterday!' It doesn't add any extra information while dismissing your own conscious experience completely.

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

#293

Post by Aerbil313 »

daef wrote: post #251
Aerbil313 wrote: post #231

For anyone in pursuit of surreal experiences and reality-perspective shifts without using LSD, lucid dreaming works just great. I didn’t use LSD but from what I read, I can tell the experience is very similar. Source: I am a lucid dreamer. It’s totally learnable (if you don’t have aphantasia afaict), although the internet is full of clickbait scammers. I can recommend learning sources if anyone wants.

Recommend already :)

thelucidguide.com and The Lucid Portal YouTube channel. The channel is more of a podcast, but the website contains learning resources and the forum there may help as well.

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

#294

Post by di456 »

LastTrain wrote: post #184
di456 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is, of course, you have no idea if that dose is what caused the change What problem exactly? This seems like a dismissive take on someone's positive experience. Are your referring to the scientific problem of studying cause & effect of the psychedelic experience? Science is figuring that out.

No I’m talking about this one’s person’s experience. They are putting out their notion of cause and effect on a public forum and I am questioning it. That is OK, right?

Sure, but it's your problem, not OP's.

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

#295

Post by di456 »

LastTrain wrote: post #222
unethical_ban wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it isn't. What I mean is, it doesn't seem to be a problem for them. A peer reviewed study of their own life experience isn't necessary for them to be a lot happier post-trip than pre-trip. Correlated with many other peoples' experiences, there is at least strong correlation evidence between certain drug use and epiphanies. Sure, "person ready to take drugs to have epiphany" might mean they were on the cusp of o…

Well I guess I was not very clear with my words then. I didn't say it was a problem for them, and they seem to be perfectly happy at the idea of their big epiphany coming from LSD. But I wasn't taking issue with that, I believe they believe that. I simply meant the "problem" with ascribing the epiphany to LSD is there is no way to know in an individual case if LSD had anything to do at all with it, because we know ve…

That's one of the signatures of a psychedelic experience. There's plenty of research on the subject, this study came up on a quick Google search.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsptsci.0c00194

> Our position contrasts the idea that subjective effects of psychedelics may be irrelevant to their therapeutic effects.

> The meaning and significance attributed to psychedelic experiences has been well established in laboratory settings. Psilocybin administration studies have repeatedly shown that participants frequently rate their psychedelic experiences as among the most meaningful of their entire lives (5,6,8,16−19) and they are sometimes compared to the birth of a first-born child or death of a parent. Due to their salience, such experiences may serve as narrative “inflection points” in one’s life that could provide an impetus for changing one’s identification with certain patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

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

#296

Post by CatWChainsaw »

ChatGTP wrote: post #72
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…

Is life just about "computation advantage" ?

To a lot of people on this site, yes.

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

#297

Post by mistermann »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #168
mistermann wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It may be better for your brain to be in a psychedelic state on certain tasks, but if it was better in the general case evolution would have already made it so. Would the same not be true of delusion, psychopathy, and various other human shortcomings?

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…

> 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.

It varies per delusion - for example, most successful people suffer from the delusion that they have ~omniscient level knowledge of what's going on - if it were not for this misplaced confidence within human consciousness, I suspect it would be much more difficult to get things done (though, a lot of the dumb stuff that's done would get avoided as well, so it's a tough call what's net best).

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

#298

Post by goolz »

thumbuddy wrote: post #282
goolz wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh god mate, I would never hahaha. Not to mention I would never work for the soul-less NSA.

I have nothing against the agency. I know people who used to work for them, and they are alright once you see their soul and not how they operate. But, I also know that you have to offer something more than loyalty to be trusted in groups such as those. Drug traffickers will ask for the names of your kids, the NSA already has that and requires more(is my understanding anyways). me personally, I've given enough in my…

I personally have tons against the agency. The most morally confused people on the face of the earth. To each their own.

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

#299

Post by mistermann »

tuyiown wrote: post #170
mistermann wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 per…

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…

> 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.

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

#300

Post by alecbz »

LoganDark wrote: post #230
alecbz wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda crazy to realize/appreciate how not-depressed some people are.

It depends on your definition of depression. For example I could be either depressed (there are some facts about my life that I've always been unhappy with, even if they don't necessarily distress me every day) or not depressed (I'm pretty happy and can't remember any real recent gripes) depending on how you define depression. By the clinical definition, I don't have depression, because it doesn't impact my enjoyment…

> there are some facts about my life that I've always been unhappy with, even if they don't necessarily distress me every day

I'm not sure anyone would call this depression? I certainly wouldn't.

I think I generally mean anhedonia when I talk about depression.

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