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I'll admit I'm pretty skeptical that the psychedelic drug experience is actually putting people in touch with any kind of external experience that is otherwise

I'll admit I'm pretty skeptical that the psychedelic drug experience is actually putting people in touch with any kind of external experience that is otherwise hidden to us, but at the very least tripping like this puts people into an internal experience that is otherwise hidden from us, and has some fascinating common patterns like a new perception of inter-connectedness. And having spent a long time immersed in fields related to computability and information theory, I'm not so sure that it's reasonable to say that if something "only" exists in the minds of a large network of humans, then it is not real.

tempsy 5y ago
It's the ego crush that is the most fascinating. Most of us bury trauma deep inside and do a pretty good job automatically keeping those thoughts from resurfacing. With psychedelics it's as if you're powerless to keep those hidden which is why they work well in a therapy setting.
mettamage 5y ago
> at the very least tripping like this puts people into an internal experience that is otherwise hidden from us Oh yes, I had a fun one on truffles. There were a few minutes (or more) where I couldn't parse the world anymore. All I knew and understood was "don't move and you'll be safe" (I was on a bed). I was so scared of everything beyond the bed! I could barely understand the bed itself, so I knew being on there was safe. Everything else felt so terrifying, because I had no understanding of what I was looking at. Were the objects in the room friend or foe? What happens when you fall of the bed? Do you fall in a dark pit, does your reality change, or do you simply fall 0.5 meters? I don't know. Heck, even describing this assumes much more knowledge than I had back then. But it did teach me something: when I don't know something, it seems that one of my base emotions is fear. And I've seen it at certain moments when I've been sober as well (like not knowing what's going on). Since then I've told myself: "Mettamage, whatever you don't understand, you're gonna be fine." And that helps :)
Taylor_OD 5y ago
Tripping wasnt life altering for me for the first time because of some universal or god realization. It was just a headspace that I had never been in before and I did not feel entirely in control of that headspace. It was interesting, and scary, because of that.
pmoriarty 5y ago
"I'm not so sure that it's reasonable to say that if something "only" exists in the minds of a large network of humans, then it is not real." What is the mind? What are its boundaries? Does the mind only exist in the brain or as an epiphenomenon of the brain? Many scientifically-minded people think so, and it's often an unstated assumption among them, but it's an open and highly debatable subject among philosophers, as is the question of what is reality, what are human beings, and so on -- questions again, that many people consider settled and decided in favor of a materialist/physicalist, internal/external, dualist viewpoint. But for many philosophers it's not so clear, and many people in this world have a very different world view, where the boundaries of the mind extend beyond the individual, where people have non-material souls, where spirit being exist, where (for some religions) the individual is (in some sense) god, or at least has something divine in them, where lives are predetermined or perhaps directed from outside by some entity (like god or the devil), etc, etc... These sorts of accounts are usually dismissed by the scientific-minded, or (even more commonly) not even given any sort of consideration or acknowledgement, yet they are quite common among huge portion of humanity (including some scientists, who themselves can be and often are believers in one or more of such "unscientific" beliefs about the mind, humanity, or reality). So, what is really going on? I don't pretend to know, but I consider it far from a settled question, and suspect if there is any single, stable "truth" about the world, it's much stranger than any "scientific" explanation currently in fashion. Psychedelics tend to put such questions right in front of one's nose, front and center, as they pull the rug of certainty out from under the most dogmatic of us as we realize we're not in Kansas any more. This I consider one of the potentially most valuable psychedelic effects, if it can be greeted with openness, wonder and curiosity, instead of closing down, running away, or doubling down on dogmatic certainty.

tempsy 5y ago

It's the ego crush that is the most fascinating. Most of us bury trauma deep inside and do a pretty good job automatically keeping those thoughts from resurfacing. With psychedelics it's as if you're powerless to keep those hidden which is why they work well in a therapy setting.

mettamage 5y ago

> at the very least tripping like this puts people into an internal experience that is otherwise hidden from us Oh yes, I had a fun one on truffles. There were a few minutes (or more) where I couldn't parse the world anymore. All I knew and understood was "don't move and you'll be safe" (I was on a bed). I was so scared of everything beyond the bed! I could barely understand the bed itself, so I knew being on there was safe. Everything else felt so terrifying, because I had no understanding of what I was looking at. Were the objects in the room friend or foe? What happens when you fall of the bed? Do you fall in a dark pit, does your reality change, or do you simply fall 0.5 meters? I don't know. Heck, even describing this assumes much more knowledge than I had back then. But it did teach me something: when I don't know something, it seems that one of my base emotions is fear. And I've seen it at certain moments when I've been sober as well (like not knowing what's going on). Since then I've told myself: "Mettamage, whatever you don't understand, you're gonna be fine." And that helps :)

Taylor_OD 5y ago

Tripping wasnt life altering for me for the first time because of some universal or god realization. It was just a headspace that I had never been in before and I did not feel entirely in control of that headspace. It was interesting, and scary, because of that.

pmoriarty 5y ago

"I'm not so sure that it's reasonable to say that if something "only" exists in the minds of a large network of humans, then it is not real." What is the mind? What are its boundaries? Does the mind only exist in the brain or as an epiphenomenon of the brain? Many scientifically-minded people think so, and it's often an unstated assumption among them, but it's an open and highly debatable subject among philosophers, as is the question of what is reality, what are human beings, and so on -- questions again, that many people consider settled and decided in favor of a materialist/physicalist, internal/external, dualist viewpoint. But for many philosophers it's not so clear, and many people in this world have a very different world view, where the boundaries of the mind extend beyond the individual, where people have non-material souls, where spirit being exist, where (for some religions) the individual is (in some sense) god, or at least has something divine in them, where lives are predetermined or perhaps directed from outside by some entity (like god or the devil), etc, etc... These sorts of accounts are usually dismissed by the scientific-minded, or (even more commonly) not even given any sort of consideration or acknowledgement, yet they are quite common among huge portion of humanity (including some scientists, who themselves can be and often are believers in one or more of such "unscientific" beliefs about the mind, humanity, or reality). So, what is really going on? I don't pretend to know, but I consider it far from a settled question, and suspect if there is any single, stable "truth" about the world, it's much stranger than any "scientific" explanation currently in fashion. Psychedelics tend to put such questions right in front of one's nose, front and center, as they pull the rug of certainty out from under the most dogmatic of us as we realize we're not in Kansas any more. This I consider one of the potentially most valuable psychedelic effects, if it can be greeted with openness, wonder and curiosity, instead of closing down, running away, or doubling down on dogmatic certainty.