10 ms·

I believe it's because it shows you that reality is not actually real. It's just a product of your senses. During a psychedelic trip, one might wonder "if I ha

I believe it's because it shows you that reality is not actually real. It's just a product of your senses. 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.

bobthechef 5y ago
How is the self-defeating skepticism lost on you? What reality? What molecules? The only explanation that doesn't lead to absurdity is that drugs corrupt your perception. They interfere with and frustrate the healthy and proper operation of the brain and in doing so distort perception.
- badtuple 5y ago
  I guess one question I'd have is why you think your brain is "operating properly". It's definitely perceiving and constructing a narrative out of those perceptions, but that happens differently for every brain and it really doesn't seem like there's a perfect version of it that's "correct". If you're willing to accept that you can't really rank or judge modes of mental experience quantitatively on some kind of non-relative scale (which would require access to a "reality" outside yourself), then it shouldn't be too much of a leap to say messing with how it functions within tolerable bounds could be more of an optimization (or equal but just different) to your experience.
  - bobthechef 5y ago
    You're still not seeing the contradiction between making truth claims and having beliefs and the skeptical position you're entertaining. By your own standards, I could ask how you know there's something called a brain, that it has something to do with perception, etc. Maybe you hallucinated the brain? Maybe it's just some weird belief you have? Maybe hallucinations aren't a thing? How do you know what other brains do or don't do differently? And why can't some of them be wrong? Attaching doubt to things "just because" isn't rational and cannot be resolved rationally precisely because such doubts are not rationally motivated. If I say to you "I doubt that you are here", for no reason other than some arbitrary skepticism about my perceptual faculties, then there is no way that that doubt can rationally be resolved. The very idea of hallucination presumes a normative perception. That we can know that we can misperceive or be subject to illusions itself presumes that we can tell the difference. Otherwise, we are just positing idle and detached possibilities while tacitly, and paradoxically, drawing on various convictions about the real.
    - toomanydoubts 5y ago
      There's no truth claims. The point is that under the influence of psychedelics, you realize you can't know the truth. I understand you're looking at it from a scientific point of view, but the discussion is not scientific. Consciousness is probably the hardest body of knowledge to integrate with science. Nobody knows where consciousness comes from. Nobody knows how to measure it. I can tell you: "I'm conscious and aware", but there's no way I can prove to you I'm not a philosophical zombie(someone that acts like it's conscious, but isn't). Currently, there's no way to measure consciousness. >By your own standards, I could ask how you know there's something called a brain, that it has something to do with perception, etc. Maybe you hallucinated the brain? Maybe it's just some weird belief you have? Maybe hallucinations aren't a thing? How do you know what other brains do or don't do differently? And why can't some of them be wrong? I think you nailed it. I don't know whether there's a brain, or if there is something else, and this something else is hallucinating this reality where there is a brain, or maybe something else entirely. Sure, we can make scientific claims about stuff when analyzing the reality within the bounds of our perception, but if you try to go beyondg that, you're own your own.
      - GoblinSlayer 5y ago
        >I can tell you: "I'm conscious and aware", but there's no way I can prove to you I'm not a philosophical zombie(someone that acts like it's conscious, but isn't). You can't prove that to yourself either, because a zombie has the same thoughts as you. You can't differentiate even subjectively whether you're a zombie or not.
        TchoBeer 5y ago
        If you have thoughts, you can't doubt whether or not you have thoughts. In order to do so you need to doubt yourself, which is a thought.
        GoblinSlayer 5y ago
        Did you answer to the right comment? I mean you can't prove you're not a zombie, thoughts don't help with this, because a zombie has all the same thoughts.
ggpsv 5y ago
> What if the actual reality is what you experience during a trip Aldous Huxley touched on this idea of the brain acting as a valve or filter, wherein psychedelics loosen it and let through the stream of consciousness that you're alluding to.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rednerrus 5y ago
  Michael Pollan talks a lot about this in "Changing Your Mind".
jklinger410 5y ago
You've got it backwards. Reality does not change due to hallucination, only my perception of it. I've tripped many times and none of what I saw was real, and everything I saw when I wasn't tripping was real. It's good as therapy, and reveals a lot about perception and thoughts, but nothing else.
- e40 5y ago
  I don't think that's what the GP meant. I think they meant your perception of reality can take more than one form. Often people fall into the trap of thinking their current perception of reality must be The One, but clearly what many people believe is very much not reality. It's just their current feeling about what their senses are telling them. In fact, in many cases, said perception is created from very little data. The older I get the more I see this in operation. Changing perspective, which can be instantaneous, is just shifting your view of reality.
  - jklinger410 5y ago
    Sorry, that's not what they mean. My carpet is not changing color, my mother's face isn't melting. That's not happening on a physical level. My sober perception is repeatable and verifiable. It exists no matter my state of mind. It's novel to make yourself see things that are unreal. It's novel to have your emotions fluctuate wildly. But it's just novel, and unreal, and nothing more.
    - mostertoaster 5y ago
      [flagged]
      - dang 5y ago
        Personal attacks, flamebait, snark, and ideological battle—which I think this manages to be all 4 of!—are not allowed on HN. If you'd please review the rules and not post like that, we'd appreciate it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dwabyick 5y ago
This resonates with me. A massive change in perspective. A second reason. Supposedly under very strong doses, psychedelics can result in massive reduction of the ego-centric systems in your brain, so you can experience life / nature “beyond” yourself and feel more connection. Some people can do this naturally and thus maybe don’t psychedelics. For others it’s very insightful.
danbruc 5y ago
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 [...]? At first glance this might sound like a reasonable thought but I have never been convinced by this idea. The mistake is to think about you in isolation. You alone might be unable to tell whether reality is like your normal perception or like your perception under the influence of psychedelics, but you are not alone, you can compare what different people perceive. You will probably find that normal perception mostly agrees while perception under the influence of psychedelics varies. Why would that be if psychedelics allow you to perceive true reality? And you do not have to stop there, maybe all humans have the same kind of distortions in their perception of reality anchored deeply in our DNA. But we do not have to rely on human perception, we have invented devices to measure and quantify about everything we know of. You can just point a camera at a wall and figure out if it solid white or if it is covered in moving color-changing fractal patterns. Sure, it might be possible that our perception is warpend in such a strange way that even devices we build would be unable to make this difference noticeable, but that seems really unlikely to me. So for all the agreement we have between our perception and what our measuring devices report, I would say our perception of reality is pretty accurate, at least within the limits of the capabilities of our senses.

bobthechef 5y ago

How is the self-defeating skepticism lost on you? What reality? What molecules? The only explanation that doesn't lead to absurdity is that drugs corrupt your perception. They interfere with and frustrate the healthy and proper operation of the brain and in doing so distort perception.

badtuple 5y ago
I guess one question I'd have is why you think your brain is "operating properly". It's definitely perceiving and constructing a narrative out of those perceptions, but that happens differently for every brain and it really doesn't seem like there's a perfect version of it that's "correct". If you're willing to accept that you can't really rank or judge modes of mental experience quantitatively on some kind of non-relative scale (which would require access to a "reality" outside yourself), then it shouldn't be too much of a leap to say messing with how it functions within tolerable bounds could be more of an optimization (or equal but just different) to your experience.
- bobthechef 5y ago
  You're still not seeing the contradiction between making truth claims and having beliefs and the skeptical position you're entertaining. By your own standards, I could ask how you know there's something called a brain, that it has something to do with perception, etc. Maybe you hallucinated the brain? Maybe it's just some weird belief you have? Maybe hallucinations aren't a thing? How do you know what other brains do or don't do differently? And why can't some of them be wrong? Attaching doubt to things "just because" isn't rational and cannot be resolved rationally precisely because such doubts are not rationally motivated. If I say to you "I doubt that you are here", for no reason other than some arbitrary skepticism about my perceptual faculties, then there is no way that that doubt can rationally be resolved. The very idea of hallucination presumes a normative perception. That we can know that we can misperceive or be subject to illusions itself presumes that we can tell the difference. Otherwise, we are just positing idle and detached possibilities while tacitly, and paradoxically, drawing on various convictions about the real.
  - toomanydoubts 5y ago
    There's no truth claims. The point is that under the influence of psychedelics, you realize you can't know the truth. I understand you're looking at it from a scientific point of view, but the discussion is not scientific. Consciousness is probably the hardest body of knowledge to integrate with science. Nobody knows where consciousness comes from. Nobody knows how to measure it. I can tell you: "I'm conscious and aware", but there's no way I can prove to you I'm not a philosophical zombie(someone that acts like it's conscious, but isn't). Currently, there's no way to measure consciousness. >By your own standards, I could ask how you know there's something called a brain, that it has something to do with perception, etc. Maybe you hallucinated the brain? Maybe it's just some weird belief you have? Maybe hallucinations aren't a thing? How do you know what other brains do or don't do differently? And why can't some of them be wrong? I think you nailed it. I don't know whether there's a brain, or if there is something else, and this something else is hallucinating this reality where there is a brain, or maybe something else entirely. Sure, we can make scientific claims about stuff when analyzing the reality within the bounds of our perception, but if you try to go beyondg that, you're own your own.
    - GoblinSlayer 5y ago
      >I can tell you: "I'm conscious and aware", but there's no way I can prove to you I'm not a philosophical zombie(someone that acts like it's conscious, but isn't). You can't prove that to yourself either, because a zombie has the same thoughts as you. You can't differentiate even subjectively whether you're a zombie or not.
      - TchoBeer 5y ago
        If you have thoughts, you can't doubt whether or not you have thoughts. In order to do so you need to doubt yourself, which is a thought.
        GoblinSlayer 5y ago
        Did you answer to the right comment? I mean you can't prove you're not a zombie, thoughts don't help with this, because a zombie has all the same thoughts.

ggpsv 5y ago

> What if the actual reality is what you experience during a trip Aldous Huxley touched on this idea of the brain acting as a valve or filter, wherein psychedelics loosen it and let through the stream of consciousness that you're alluding to.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rednerrus 5y ago
Michael Pollan talks a lot about this in "Changing Your Mind".

jklinger410 5y ago

You've got it backwards. Reality does not change due to hallucination, only my perception of it. I've tripped many times and none of what I saw was real, and everything I saw when I wasn't tripping was real. It's good as therapy, and reveals a lot about perception and thoughts, but nothing else.

e40 5y ago
I don't think that's what the GP meant. I think they meant your perception of reality can take more than one form. Often people fall into the trap of thinking their current perception of reality must be The One, but clearly what many people believe is very much not reality. It's just their current feeling about what their senses are telling them. In fact, in many cases, said perception is created from very little data. The older I get the more I see this in operation. Changing perspective, which can be instantaneous, is just shifting your view of reality.
- jklinger410 5y ago
  Sorry, that's not what they mean. My carpet is not changing color, my mother's face isn't melting. That's not happening on a physical level. My sober perception is repeatable and verifiable. It exists no matter my state of mind. It's novel to make yourself see things that are unreal. It's novel to have your emotions fluctuate wildly. But it's just novel, and unreal, and nothing more.
  - mostertoaster 5y ago
    [flagged]
    - dang 5y ago
      Personal attacks, flamebait, snark, and ideological battle—which I think this manages to be all 4 of!—are not allowed on HN. If you'd please review the rules and not post like that, we'd appreciate it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dwabyick 5y ago

This resonates with me. A massive change in perspective. A second reason. Supposedly under very strong doses, psychedelics can result in massive reduction of the ego-centric systems in your brain, so you can experience life / nature “beyond” yourself and feel more connection. Some people can do this naturally and thus maybe don’t psychedelics. For others it’s very insightful.

danbruc 5y ago

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 [...]? At first glance this might sound like a reasonable thought but I have never been convinced by this idea. The mistake is to think about you in isolation. You alone might be unable to tell whether reality is like your normal perception or like your perception under the influence of psychedelics, but you are not alone, you can compare what different people perceive. You will probably find that normal perception mostly agrees while perception under the influence of psychedelics varies. Why would that be if psychedelics allow you to perceive true reality? And you do not have to stop there, maybe all humans have the same kind of distortions in their perception of reality anchored deeply in our DNA. But we do not have to rely on human perception, we have invented devices to measure and quantify about everything we know of. You can just point a camera at a wall and figure out if it solid white or if it is covered in moving color-changing fractal patterns. Sure, it might be possible that our perception is warpend in such a strange way that even devices we build would be unable to make this difference noticeable, but that seems really unlikely to me. So for all the agreement we have between our perception and what our measuring devices report, I would say our perception of reality is pretty accurate, at least within the limits of the capabilities of our senses.