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Why Do DMT Users See Insects from a Parallel Universe?
- swayvil 10y agoMaybe they visit a parallel universe where they meet insects.
- colordrops 10y agoFunny how most in this thread are unwilling to interpret the experience at face value, probably because of certain taboos among scientific and technically minded types.
- JabavuAdams 10y agoMaybe people here have more knowledge of neuroscience, and physics, than the general population? Knowledge brings biases, of course. But those biases aren't necessarily wrong. You have a blind-spot (at least one) on each retina that you never see. Does this mean that there is a secret hole in reality, just out of sight, that science won't accept? Or does it mean that there's an area on your retina with no visual sensors, and that the brain fills in the gaps?
- colordrops 10y agoI'm not saying that the experience is not likely an illusion. But its funny that you mention a blind spot, because why entertain every theory except the most obvious one?
- krapp 10y agoWhen you try to apply supernatural concepts to the natural world, you either have to dismiss the relevance of the body of scientific knowledge which contradicts the premises of magical thinking, and assume that the universe doesn't actually follow any knowable physical laws, or explain it within the constraints of what is known to be true in the universe in which we live. There is no scientifically credible evidence that the mind exists as a coherent entity outside of the brain - and there is evidence that the mind and the brain are the same thing, or at least, that the latter cannot exist outside the former. There is also no scientifically credible evidence that arbitrary and instantaneous travel to parallel universes is possible. Rather, it appears to either be impossible, or at least, infeasible without burning entire galaxies to a cinder - about as difficult a problem as traveling faster than lightspeed. One can credibly dismiss this theory because it requires astral projection and ESP to be true, despite there being no evidence of truth behind either, and the laws of physics (in particular, the laws of thermodynamics) to be false, despite the evidence in their favor.
- colordrops 10y agoYou are making far too many assumptions here. I said nothing of "supernatural" or "unscientific" ideas, and "magical thinking" is an insult in my opinion. I said nothing of the mind and brain being separate entities or astral projection or ESP. You are applying your own failure of imagination in explaining the concept within your limited realm of knowledge and projecting it onto me. You are mistaking explanation for reality. Your ability to explain something using whatever mental tools you happen to possess at the moment doesn't make that the truth. People three thousand years ago explained things with the tools they had, and ended up creating religions, which are in all likelihood not very accurate representations of reality. In the cosmic scale, our knowledge of reality now will probably look more primitive to humans in 10k years, than humans of 3k years ago look to us. It's needlessly self centered to think otherwise, and we are probably wrong about almost everything we know.
- krapp 10y agoYou're essentially claiming that "the map is not the territory," which is correct and, indeed, a fundamental scientific premise. However, for the models that science provides to be useful, they need to appear, predictably and repeatably, to describe the real world. I don't know what science will look like in ten thousand years (and neither do you) but given that current knowledge of physics, biology, neuroscience, etc do seem true to a reasonable degree, it seems unlikely that the science of the future would somehow discredit modern science entirely, while coincidentally validating a more primitive, shamanic point of view regarding altered states of consciousness. Accusing me of being ignorant and self-centered in defense of a premise you can't support beyond faith and personal belief seems hypocritical. And as far as imagination goes, accepting altered states at face value is literally the least amount of imagination or intellectual effort one can expend in attempting to understand them.
- colordrops 10y agoOnce again, assumptions. "A more primitive, shamanic point of view". "faith, personal belief". This is quite the opposite. No one is asking you to believe anything. There is no presumption of human-like deities without a shred I'd evidence. There is just direct, personal observation of phenomena. Choosing the most obvious explanation for it doesn't make it pseudoscientific crankery. It is just a first pass of a hypothesis without much evidence for anything else. And it is no more or less valid than other hypothesis.
- JabavuAdams 10y agoWhat is obvious depends on your prior beliefs. To me, it's a lot more obvious that messing with your brain causes hallucinations, especially when we can program similar hallucinations in neural-inspired programs.
- remir 10y agoHow would you define reality?
- swayvil 10y agoI doubt it's a conscious thing. Some kind of explaining reflex.
- 6stringmerc 10y agoConsidering what Humans understand about time and space - at least for now - travel between X & Y probably is going to take a different form than filling up rockets or using nuclear power to slog through the ether to...wherever...
- api 10y agohttps://www.quantamagazine.org/20150820-the-case-for-complex-dark-matter/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150820-the-case-for-complex... Sorry had to do it.
- leavinit 10y agoLol, no apologies needed. Unless you're Canadian, in which case it's customary. Wonder what those scientists would have to say about dark matter in the midst of a DMT bender. Can they get NSF funds for that?
- quakeguy 10y agoNo apologies needed, we get it right. :)
- brianberns 10y agoSo, assuming you mean to imply that DMT "insects" are real creatures composed of dark matter, such a being would still be affected by Earth's gravity if it was nearby, even if it couldn't interact with our "normal" matter at all. This seems to imply that it would be pulled through the surface of the earth, towards the center. So if any of you see intelligent insects walking around on your next DMT trip, ask them how they keep from being sucked into the planet.
- aoeuasdf1 10y agoEasy, they live on a planet of dark matter :)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- nether 10y agoI 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 relieved to feel tears on my face because I guess that meant I was still alive. For a couple of weeks I wondered if I really had died. The feeling was that strong. Now, I think that's absurd, but still a tiny part wonders... The lesson learned was that I needed to start questioning my convictions more. Just "feeling sure" isn't enough to certain of something. I try to maintain a little bit of skepticism and doubt toward every thing these days.
- unixhero 10y agoI really think that's walking a very fine line. You may benefit from finding a counselor for periodic visits in the near future.
- aerique 10y agoYou talk like someone who has never used hallucinogens.
- SturgeonsLaw 10y ago> Just "feeling sure" isn't enough to certain of something. This, I believe, is one of the most powerful and profound lessons hallucinogens can teach us. If you can experience, first hand, that even the sensory input from your eyes and ears can not always be trusted, then it tends to make you very, very skeptical of things that are held as immutably true beliefs.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y agoIt would be hilarious if math, science, and logic turned out to be consensus hallucinations that were not only incomplete but could not make more than limited patches of sense.
- splitdisk 10y agoThe more common term is "entities" or "elves"-and I can't really say I've ever seen them.
- DaiPlusPlus 10y agoI read that "The Machine Elves" are more associated with LSD than DMT. Perhaps they activate different parts of the brain associated with object recognition - LSD for humans and faces, and DMT for insects/reptiles as other comments have speculated - it makes me wonder what myriad other substances out there that we haven't discovered yet and what otherworldly effects they could have.
- notmarkus 10y ago"Machine Elves" was coined by Terence McKenna to describe the beings in the DMT world. He didn't do much LSD and wasn't a big fan of it. Maybe others have had different experiences but at the very least the origins of the term are tied to DMT.
- Lapsa 10y ago^_^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9z4uYEKvJw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9z4uYEKvJw
- oh_sigh 10y agoDo people of all cultures see insects, or is it just westerners on DMT? For example, I've heard that schizophrenia manifests itself in different ways across cultures. Voices are almost always negative/destructive in western cultures, but often times take on playful manners in non-western cultures.
- robertk 10y agoWhat if someone was raised without ever having seen an insect?
- Synaesthesia 10y agoFrom what I've heard they are rather abstract, unidentifiable (or indescribable) entities. Terrence Mackenna called them "machine elves".
- burgerdev 10y agoIt is most prevalent among westerners writing fiction novels about alien praying mantis entities[1]. Jokes aside, as far as I know DMT is not the only compound that makes you see insects. For me, it kinda makes sense to interpret little 'irregularities' in your visual / tactile perceptions as, say, ants. [1] http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/neoreality.html http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/neoreality.html
- burgerdev 10y agoOn the other hand, perhaps insects are ideal for (subconsciously) describing alien encounters. The mind has a good understanding about how insects look like (not like us), but it can barely imagine how it feels to be an insect.
- oh_sigh 10y agoDo people of all cultures see insects, or is it just westerners on DMT? For example, I've heard that schizophrenia manifests itself in different ways across cultures. Voices are almost always negative in western cultu
- omio 10y agoSG-1 fixed this once...
- qtrain 10y agoWow. You people are such druggie douchebags masquerading as professionals.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- qtrain 10y agoDude. Go back to reddit.
- dang 10y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13620744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13620744 and marked it off-topic.
- wmccullough 10y agoYou've had nothing constructive to say in this thread. Why don't you chill? No one is causing any harm here except you.
- GuiA 10y agoThere is some evidence that seems to indicate that the humans have an evolved "built in" reaction to snake/snake like patterns: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/cd/12_1/Ohman.cfm http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/cd/12_1/Ohman.c... As reptiles, snakes may have signified deadly threats in the environment of early mammals. We review findings suggesting that snakes remain special stimuli for humans. Intense snake fear is prevalent in both humans and other primates. Humans and monkeys learn snake fear more easily than fear of most other stimuli through direct or vicarious conditioning. Neither the elicitation nor the conditioning of snake fear in humans requires that snakes be consciously perceived; rather, both processes can occur with masked stimuli. Humans tend to perceive illusory correlations between snakes and aversive stimuli, and their attention is automatically captured by snakes in complex visual displays. Together, these and other findings delineate an evolved fear module in the brain. This module is selectively and automatically activated by once-threatening stimuli, is relatively encapsulated from cognition, and derives from specialized neural circuitry. This makes sense, as humans have evolved along venomous snakes for presumably a very long time. Is it possible that when drug users of a wide variety of backgrounds report similar hallucinations (here insects), it taps into similar mechanisms, activating neural pathways that deal with the recognition of insects?
- always_good 10y agoInteresting. On larger doses of acid where I'm suffering immense mental agitation, the common visions are spirals, coils, and snakes. In particular, a snake with no head, but rather attached to itself to form a hula hoop. Trying to turn over, but it can't. So it's there writhing infinitely. The futility of it is a good representation of the abject overstimulation I'm feeling in my head. And, of course, a nice feeling of terror to go along with it. Whenever snakey things are on the mind, I know that it was a bigger dose than I intended, and I'll soon be holding on to a panicking brain.
- madaxe_again 10y agoI wonder if the ororobous imagery has an origin in this variety of experience...
- 10y ago
- caretStick 10y agoDrugs are illegal because the illuminati don't want humans to know of the lizard pope. That was in years past. The pope is human and the president is a turd. But look at that law and order suddenly raining down... DMT users right now can't even report their visions because of the power of the state and who want's to tell people about the turd-human they saw while tripping?
- codq 10y agoI'll take what you're having.
- krapp 10y ago>DMT users right now can't even report their visions because of the power of the state and who want's to tell people about the turd-human they saw while tripping? ESR, is that you?
- westmeal 10y ago>ICARUS HAS FOUND YOU! >>ICARUS HAS FOUND YOU! >>>ICARUS HAS FOUND YOU!
- nhaliday 10y agoI have no idea what a DMT trip is actually like but I liked the depiction in Enter the Void: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCIe9gh84NE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCIe9gh84NE.
- krylon 10y agoThat movie was very exhausting to watch, but it was well worth it!
- anigbrowl 10y agoVisually it's not dissimilar. But this is kinda like the difference between looking at a postcard and actually going somewhere.
- nol13 10y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFCvkkDSfIU&t=8m5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFCvkkDSfIU&t=8m5s ^My favorite way I've seen it described, and also a really cool video even without the subtext. (but ya this is one rabbit hole that I've yet to travel down. guess i took the blue pill, but more pills just seemed unnecessary at the time)
- Alex3917 10y agoThis video is a better depiction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpCqOPFG6V4&list=FLugyqeLh8eaCVUlJaQPhdbw&index=3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpCqOPFG6V4&list=FLugyqeLh8e... That's not to say it's more 'accurate' than the other, but rather I think it more fully captures the impossibility of the experience.
- atom-morgan 10y agoThank you for introducing me to a great channel.
- colordrops 10y agoThis scene from Renegade recreating an ayahuasca trip is amazing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxtkoE-HV-k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxtkoE-HV-k
- 3131s 10y agoDatura 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 datura is very dangerous) to read the Erowid trip reports for datura. Quite a few of them are along the lines of "I took datura, I had vivid hallucinations for three days with no relation to reality, and then I woke up naked in a hospital / jail". https://erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Datura.shtml https://erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Datura.shtml
- krylon 10y agoWhen I was 17, I had a cold and the doctor prescribed some homeopathic remedy containing Atropine. Now, the whole point of homeopathy, of course, is to dilute any ingredients to the point where you are lucky to find even a single molecule of it in a given pill. (In my defense, I did not know anything about medicine back then.) But I think I must have gotten a package from a batch where they forgot a couple of dilution steps or something. Also I may have misread the instructions. Anyway, it took me about six days to go through the pills, and during that whole time, I could not help but grin almost the entire time. Also, two or three times, I very clearly heard someone talking to me who was not there. I did recognize the voices, they belonged to people I knew. Then again, I looked around, did not see the person and figured that it must have been in my head, which apparently people hallucinating from Atropine are rather incapable of. OTOH, I had none of the side effects Atropine has according to Wikipedia, so who knows what was going on with me back then. But I understood something was off, and the only thing that had changed from the weeks before were those homeopathic pills. (Just to be clear, all in all the experience was pleasant.)
- simonh 10y agoThere's bee a bit of fuss over here in the UK recently about homeopathic medicines, which are supposed to be ridiculously over-diluted, containing dangerous amounts of various substances. The basic idea that tiny amounts of substances that harm you in various ways might benefit you in a related way is magical thinking. But when you can't rely on the 'tiny amounts' part, you're in pretty nasty territory.
- ge96 10y agowow this website is like a trip in time back to the 90's like that internet explorer website that depicts Bill Gates as a devil hahaha
- ge96 10y agonot related, it annoys me that hackernews.com is not part of this site (I don't think so) it reminds me of that guy that wouldn't let go of dropbox.com and put ads on it... again did not research... but I'd think that url redirects here. Oh well. Pretty sweet that ycombinator seeds startups... was not aware, just came here for tech/code stuff.
- toruk_makto 10y agothis explains mr. mime in my visuals
- boatroad 10y agoI haven't met anyone who described insects. Most of the entities experienced seem to be abstract, with the possibility of focusing it into an object but not a negative one. DMT seems to be generally a positive euphoric experience filled with geometric shapes of love. Although a mild dose can be unpleasant. What I've experience sometimes looked like UFOs, that when you focused on them would burst into the sky far away. Like a ship taking off in a rapid dimensional-type shift. Similar to the graphics in the movie Dr. Strange. The presence is more like feeling the wind, and getting a sense that the wind itself is saying hello and making fun of you.
- dboreham 10y agoHmm...I've never tried psychoactive drugs but way back when I worked on hardware I was debugging a board in a lab that had poor ventilation, cleaning flux off it with Freon when I saw a little green Dragon rise out of the green solder resist film and breathe the tiniest lick of fire at me.
- anigbrowl 10y agoI believe this world is basically a playpen in a universe having 5 spatial dimensions. I've had a very interesting side-effect immediately after coming back from a DMT trip of being able to see around things. Like you look at a box on the table in front of you and you can see the side facing away from you. Faded gradually after 5 minutes. This seems like extremely fruitful territory for trying with ESP test cards, MRI imaging and more.
- ajkjk 10y agoWhy would you believe that?
- colordrops 10y agoWhy not?
- michaelmrose 10y agoMainly because most people lack the capacity to invent sound new theoretical models of the universe to believing whatever interesting idea springs to mind is 99.9999999% likely to be wrong.
- anigbrowl 10y agoBecause that's my experience. I investigate theoretical models but I don't have the math skills to develop the idea more rigorously at present.
- michaelmrose 10y agoCan you elaborate on "I investigate theoretical models"? Are you involved in some branch of math or science?
- anigbrowl 10y agoNo this is strictly amateur hour and most of my ideas are probably not even wrong. If I went into any more detail I'd feel like a crank, though :)
- tudorw 10y ago"CYP2D6 is therefore a relatively highly specific, high-affinity, high-capacity 5-methoxyindolethylamine O-demethylase. Polymorphic cytochrome CYP2D6 may therefore exert an influence on mood and behavior by the O-demethylation of these 5-methoxyindolethylamines found in the brain and pineal gland." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12777961 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12777961
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- junkyarddog 10y agoSix to seven foot tall praying mantis like entities are a common element in many alien abduction accounts. They're typically in the background, silently watching the proceedings while letting the little greys carry out the examinations. In "DMT: The Spirit Molecule" author Rick Strassman theorises that DMT enables the brain to tune in to other parallel realities beyond "channel-normal". If the interdimensional hypothesis for alien abductions is correct, perhaps DMT allows one to occasionally tune into the source of this mysterious phenomenon.
- benevol 10y agoI've seen the roots of a tree (at at distance of about 300 feet) through the ground, while on LSD (about 500ug). I'm sure those really were the roots, because the visible part of the tree (the trunk and the roots that came up above ground again at a few spots) matched completely with roots in the ground I was seeing. The image was stable and lasted for about 45 seconds. Something (not like an external voice, more like an internal voice/thought/intuition told me "yes, of course, you just need to tune into the frequency of the thing you want to see"). As soon as I tried thinking/questioning, the view vanished, and I guess it was because of the ego starting to interfere. Conclusion: We still have no clue what reality really holds and how to use our brain in order to access our real potential. Interesting times to come, stay tuned.
- JabavuAdams 10y agoGenerative Adversarial Networks (GANs) can fill-out missing parts of images that fit plausibly into the existing scene. These are computer programs that are much less complicated than our brains. So, you have one interpretation, but there's no reason to think it's more likely than the fact that your brain is really good at filling in missing details.
- benevol 10y agoThat was my first thought, too. But there are other elements which are relevant: I could literally walk my eyes along the roots, up and down, they were static and didn't move an inch. And during an earlier experience (and to a good extent during the 2-3 following days), using about 150ug only, I felt something like a strong connection with the tree I was standing in front of. It was like we were communicating (for as long as I wanted), but not like an exchange of sentences, rather like a constant bi-directional stream of information, or better: a "mutual understanding without speaking/thinking". This "shared state of being/feeling" was extended to the roots of the tree: I could feel their presence in the ground (but not see them yet, which changed later, as stated above). And I had that feeling whenever I passed a tree during the 2-3 following days. There is definitely a lot going on (or possible) between humans and other forms of life, which we are currently missing. And I'm sure our spiritual dimension is definitely part of the mix. So if you're into meditation, keep it up.
- nsxwolf 10y agoWhat if it's real? What if the DMT is disabling some kind of filter that normally keeps this reality hidden?
- scrollaway 10y agoOccam's razor says no.
- axefrog 10y agoOccam's razor is a guideline, not an immutable law.
- oniMaker 10y agoOccam's razor would immediately discard quantum theory. Does that make it false?
- dragonwriter 10y ago> Occam's razor would immediately discard quantum theory No, it to wouldn't; quantum theory is quite plausibly the most parsimonious explanation consistent with the evidence.
- oniMaker 10y agoThe point is that it would seem ridiculous to start from nothing and jump to such a counter-intuitive theory.
- dragonwriter 10y agoOccam's Razor has nothing to do with starting from nothing, it has to do with selecting among competing explanations for a set of known facts.
- collyw 10y ago
- nsxwolf 10y agoWhat if it's real? What if the DMT is disabling some kind of filter that normally keeps this reality hidden?
- hanibash 10y agoMy 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-deeper-into-neural.html 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 very complex things such as entire buildings or trees." I'm not an expert, but from the little I know of neuroscience, the human brain also has higher level interpreters inside of it. It is why, for example, that pareidolia (seeing faces in objects) is a thing (https://www.reddit.com/r/Pareidolia/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Pareidolia/). "So here’s one surprise: neural networks that were trained to discriminate between different kinds of images have quite a bit of the information needed to generate images too" "One way to visualize what goes on is to turn the network upside down and ask it to enhance an input image in such a way as to elicit a particular interpretation" So I believe that what DMT is doing is triggering our high level interpreters to make sense of thoughts and emotions that we have. We do the same thing when we dream, where we interpret an event of the day in a very vivid, novel fashion, sometimes even creating story arcs around it.
- RobertoG 10y ago"We do the same thing when we dream [..]" I think you don't go far enough: We do the same thing when we are awake, too. I tend to agree with your interpretation. This plays good also with the other post in the first page about the possibility of visual grammars ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13615273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13615273 ). If you play with your grammar you get strange languages.
- pault 10y agoI had the same thought when I first saw deep dream (which look exactly like drug hallucinations) and read the explanation behind it. That's when I first had my "oh shit" moment, realizing that DNN researchers really are onto something. I started taking discussions about AI a lot more seriously after that.
- egypturnash 10y ago
- wyck 10y agoIs there a theory that the DMT "beings" are actually your bodies cells and proteins visualised and communicating as different entities? The whole "You should not be down here, but hello" at a very very self macro level? Maybe even at the atomic level?
- waqas- 10y ago> "You should not be down here, but hello" this line sent shudders down my spine. does this happen to everyone?
- coldtea 10y agoBecause they read about others seeing them, so they already have an expectation of what to see in their minds.
- BrailleHunting 10y agoThis is either a joke or a bunch of conspiracy theorists of the trippy-dippy sort.