No, eliminating the photon count filter would just make your vision look noisy/staticky in dark conditions. Most of the effects of LSD (patterns etc) are actua

No, eliminating the photon count filter would just make your vision look noisy/staticky in dark conditions. Most of the effects of LSD (patterns etc) are actually pretty well understood. It's probably caused by a stable geometric pattern generated by a reaction-diffusion process in your visual cortex. https://plus.maths.org/content/uncoiling-spiral-maths-and-hallucinations https://plus.maths.org/content/uncoiling-spiral-maths-and-ha... Related to your question (although minus drugs) - I very recently figured out how to "turn off" shot noise suppression in my visual processing. I woke up a few months ago and was struggling to understand something I was looking at in the room (it was a low-contrast scene with confusing shadows) and something clicked, and all of a sudden I could see the shot noise from my eyes. Very bizarre! I can now detect it just by paying close attention in moderately dim conditions.