Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

We could talk a bit about the mechanism behind the process where aggregating sufficient water molecules creates a liquid. But we can't talk at all about how that same process could ever be responsible for the experience of "wet", because the experience of wet is wholly subjective.

Similarly, even if we were to be able to fully describe the materialist processes taking place in a system that has qualia, nothing in the description can ever explain the experience of having experiences, beyond saying "well look here - see all this stuff going on? that's how qualia are possible", which is not tautological, but not a mechanism for qualia.

Speaking of "thinking" more generally is even worse than focusing on qualia. It's not hard to agree on what qualia are - that it is like something to be something, in Nagel's words - but agreeing on what would count as "thinking" and what wouldn't is not likely to see any agreement at all.

In the same way, if this is a dream of sorts, the fact that certain dream behaviors can trigger certain changes in experience is also internally consistent. Of course, this "dream" has much greater stability to it, but the basic idea holds.

During a psychedelic trip, one might wonder "if I had been like this all my life, I would consider this to be reality, not what I'm used too".

It fundamentally shows you that what you consider reality might be very, very, very wrong. So how can I trust my own senses and perceptions if they can be so powerfully modified by such a simple molecule? What if the actual reality is what you experience during a trip, and what we consider reality is some kind of trip due to the lack of a molecule that allows you to fully experience reality(in the same way that the lack of nutrients and water can lead to mental confusion/delirium)? It opens up a world of possibilities.

Secondly...I don't think beliefs(as in the proper sense) themselves are that easily altered by psychedelics.Psychedelics can and more often than not do induce a very profound spiritual & metaphysical experience, but beliefs are deeper than that,more glued to the "gut" & unconscious: they're constructed in combination to previous experiences usually not by the "self".I guess this study's conclusion comes as a result of the fact that spirituality and belief is still probably at the lowest levels in the west.Thus you have such "conclusions" where people think they believe in something in a spiritual and metaphysical manner just because of stronger trips.From what i recall upon studying this subject, granted about 10 years ago(though that was still when the biggest boom of research about brain & cognition happened), belief is even deeper than cognition, so that's why i'm reluctant to this theory: i think it's universally true that we're aware when we take psychedelics, it affects our unconscious as far as in the cognition we do during the trip triggers it mainly as a way to either glue memories or as a defense mechanism.

Then again i'm probably in the minority to say that belief is in big part mostly unconscious,and predates cognition in the "traditional" sense: i.e thoughts of the usual self. I base this on the fact that memory "indexing & glueing" happens unconsciously, and also that for me anecdotally psychedelics (and very rarely nootropics) usually either reinforced a belief or completed a belief through a new experience.

a different, fresh point of view, a heightened sense of empathy?