141–150 of 188 posts
The whole "You should not be down here, but hello" at a very very self macro level? Maybe even at the atomic level?
Datura users are also commonly reported by observers to act out hallucinations involving insects. While the user often recalls an entirely different mental experience, it's common for their physical selves to be seen picking at imaginary bugs on the floor in a primal manner (among other reflexive actions, such as convincingly smoking imaginary cigarettes). It is interesting and darkly humorous (keep in mind that datu…
People don't bother making this important distinction anymore and end up foolishly taking the more common D. stramonium. This is probably why Datura has become so infamous, not that D. wrightii is "safe", but it certainly appears to be safer than D. stramonium.
From the Native American Ethnobotany Database:
Datura wrightii: http://naeb.brit.org/uses/species/1244/
Datura stramonium: http://naeb.brit.org/uses/species/1243/
My 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…
I saw these weird drapes folded around me that were brown, green, and white stripes. They were gently heaving, and I knew that they were living creatures that were watching over me. I didn't take enough to have a full breakthrough, but in that moment I was certain that I was dying, with all of my consciousness welled up into my head, as if that's all I was. When I came to and regained awareness of my limbs, I was rel…
> 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…
Looking at a wall, I thought "ha, I can't see what color it is", only to realize it was actually a vivid shade of golden-yellow, feeling the color on my retinas. Impressed, I walked over toward a door with a crash bar on it, challenging once again "ok, I can never really feel anything in dreams, so I'll just have a vague sense of touching the crash bar", only to actually feel the heft of the door, and the cast steel on my fingertips.
But as I felt the crash bar, my visual sense of the scene collapsed again, as if all the processing power had just been redirected to haptic from visual. The room and the hallway were just vague ideas drawn once again from a trickle of sensory information. This was amusing enough to wake me up.
Now of course, I don't know if this was actually an insight into how the mind dreams – it's entirely possible that the mechanics themselves were something I dreamed.
I saw these weird drapes folded around me that were brown, green, and white stripes. They were gently heaving, and I knew that they were living creatures that were watching over me. I didn't take enough to have a full breakthrough, but in that moment I was certain that I was dying, with all of my consciousness welled up into my head, as if that's all I was. When I came to and regained awareness of my limbs, I was rel…
>The lesson learned was that I needed to start questioning my convictions more. Just "feeling sure" isn't enough to certain of something. Well, that's the life lesson I learned in the maths lectures and exercise sessions I attended. Seems like drugs are not required to understand this ;)
We live in a world of gray areas, not black and white.
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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.
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> 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…
Best tests. Easily done in the waking world (which is which?) Without looking like an idiot. 1. Lightswitches, they dont work right in dreams, shading is hard. 2. Clocks, or digital readouts. Time has no refrence and displays are oddly hard. 3. Hands. You do not know the back of your hand. Might be why so many people stare at their hands on psychedelics.
I've used the light switch thing to trigger a number of lucid dreams too, I always assumed that your brain just doesn't bother wiring things like that up, rather than the complexity of shading being an issue.
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Occam's razor is a guideline, not an immutable law.
Occam's razor would immediately discard quantum theory. Does that make it false?
No, it to wouldn't; quantum theory is quite plausibly the most parsimonious explanation consistent with the evidence.