11 ms·

All the people in this thread who decoded it used long exposure or faster playback. Using the latter, for me, it starts to become readable at 2.5x and is essent

All the people in this thread who decoded it used long exposure or faster playback. Using the latter, for me, it starts to become readable at 2.5x and is essentially a clear static image at 4x. (I had to download the video and play it back using VLC.) Which for me, makes this claim a bit absurd: > At a theoretical level, this confirmation is significant because it is the first clear demonstration of a real perceptual computational advantage of psychedelic states of consciousness. LSD fans might hate this conclusion, but there's no "computational advantage" to having a 2.5x to 4x slower processing speed, which his the only thing actually being shown here.

brutusborn 3y ago
You are probably right that having a slower processing speed isn’t an advantage overall, but being able to perceive patterns like this may be advantageous in some situations. Maybe the slower processing speed is the cost of better processing power? Kinda like the tradeoff between high torque and high speed for gearboxes. Some tribes use psychedelics for hunting, and others that use psychedelics for introspection: maybe they are perceiving something that we ignore during normal processing modes.
- carlmr 3y ago
  >Some tribes use psychedelics for hunting OP saying slow doesn't mean that it's actually slower. If you process more information time _appears_ more slowly, but you're processing more, i.e. faster. In hunting it might be good to have improved pattern matching abilities at the cost of a higher false-positive rate.
  - batty_alex 3y ago
    Yeah, it's very hard to describe. Almost like you perceive the present moment and the past couple seconds at the same time. Time seems to pass by you very quickly but, then you look at the clock, and it's only been 5 minutes That being said, I can't imagine having to hunt while on a lot of psychedelics
elif 3y ago
Being able to see that which our perception actively suppresses because it is hyper-focused on a certain cadence is indeed a gift. If you believe that our perceptive filters, evolved over millennia of survival requirements, is the only or even best way to perceive our reality, I would invite you to consider that hummingbirds will never enjoy Mozart, and you will never be as relaxed as a sloth.
- jabbany 3y ago
  Isn't the parent's point that, you don't necessarily need to use psychedelics but can use other technology to simulate the perception of different cadence or scale...? (E.g. A similar experiment https://xkcd.com/941/ https://xkcd.com/941/) > and you will never be as relaxed as a sloth. Also FWIW, does the sloth also consider itself to be relaxed or rather just "normal" ;-) Isn't the perception of being relaxed itself exactly reflective of how artificial* the experience actually is. *: With the context that I have no intention of prescribing whether it is positive or enjoyable.
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    I’d note that the technological filter only works on captured stuff. Filtering reality like this isn’t technically feasible with external devices alone. Whether that’s useful or not seems fairly subjective, though. People find utility in all sorts of things I don’t.
    - jabbany 3y ago
      Of course. I'm assuming this discussion is all within the context of the original article "Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics" --- in which case understanding these specific messages actually don't require psychedelics. Not implying psychedelics have no utility, just that whatever utility they have probably doesn't lie in interpreting these "slowed down scan" animations.
      - fnordpiglet 3y ago
pera 3y ago
What do you mean by "processing speed"? I think you are interpreting this experiment as if our brains worked like digital computers doing signal processing in some buffer in the visual cortex :p
thumbuddy 3y ago
You know, according to people who have done buckets of psychedelics, there's an awful lot more to the psychedelic experience than 2.5-4x slower processing speed. I recall reading of numerous people who found they could collectively slow down a wall clock to the point were it didn't move any longer, and people who have experienced what they refer to as "eternity", "multiple life times", "thousands of years", etc. Also what is being done here isn't simply slower processing speed. It's more like the information from old states persists into new ones. My understanding is that this would be considered low dose territory. There's more to the story here, and I don't think this test, is even scratching the surface. It is neat though.
- causi 3y ago
  people who have experienced what they refer to as "eternity", "multiple life times", "thousands of years", etc. They didn't "experience an eternity". They experienced an emotional feeling they likened to an eternity. This is the difference between your computer running a program for a thousand years and you changing the date settings. These people did not go through an eternity of perception, processing, and thought; they had the label on their memories altered.
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    > These people did not go through an eternity of perception, processing, and thought; they had the label on their memories altered. No, psychedelics really can speed up thought. It's not uncommon to experience a lot more in a much shorter amount of time than normal. For example, I've experienced this first-hand where I could not even finish a single sentence before I was so far ahead in thought that I completely forgot what I was originally trying to say. I used to call it "an entire universe happening between each instant" which, while inaccurate, is an apt enough description of how it feels, but also how it actually is, because the volume of thought is still much higher than normal.
    - jabbany 3y ago
      The experience you described is no indicator of whether "volume of thought is still much higher than normal" though? You'd have the exact same experience if the actual mechanism is that "had the label on [your] memories altered". To scientifically test this, you'd need some normalized "benchmark task" of thought, and then compare the difference in progress on such a thought task between the control and psychedelic cases given the same amount of "real time". IIRC earlier papers (that I am too lazy to find) shared on HN that have done this seem to show the opposite, that there is no measurable difference on the task yet the participants reported a difference in their label of the experience. (I think the paper then was related to some form of creativity and showed that there was no post-hoc measured difference despite a significant reported experiential difference).
ChatGTP 3y ago
Is life just about "computation advantage" ?
- CatWChainsaw 3y ago
  To a lot of people on this site, yes.
jcims 3y ago
It's opening up a perceptual time domain that is not available in a sober state. That's not 'slower processing speed'.
- red75prime 3y ago
  I quickly looked up research and, yeah, while LSD does impair many cognitive functions, reaction time seems to be unaffected.
  - Retric 3y ago
    It’s presumably extending persistence of vision not slowing reaction time. Seems easy enough to test with revolving wheel/stroboscopic discs. Which if true, sounds like an artifact from less processing power to me.
BiteCode_dev 3y ago
Some subtle things can only be perceived as you slow down. Under mushroom, food tastes amazing, because you can suddenly perceived a lot more details.
jovial_cavalier 3y ago
Do you think people have CPUs in their brains? There isn't a clock rate knob that LSD goes and turns all the way down. As another commenter said, this is about being able to correlate events across time, and distinguish patterns in a way that you would not normally be able to. Also, I think if you'd ever used LSD, you would never think it was "slowing your thoughts down".
ilyt 3y ago
.
- rhaps0dy 3y ago
  I think you need to accelerate it more / aren't high enough. If you persist the white dots, you'll see letters.
motohagiography 3y ago
This is consistent with the idea that the geometric patterns of hallucinogenic drugs are just feedback artifacts in an analog system of your senses, and by imparing its 'clock' signal chemically, you get periodic noise whose geometry is proportional to the signalling frequency and its failures. No higher dimensions, just maybe a lower, impaired, fractal dimension. There are still theraputic uses for this impairment, and definitely a lot of recreational ones that allow you to discover things about yourself like any other testing or resistance, but hallucinogens are at best biohacking via chemical glitching, not spiritual gateways.
- Spkeat17 3y ago
  It is that when you realize that they are conveniently created with your own mind, they disappear immediately, you become tolerant because you have learned not to lose track of reality. I do not recommend it at all, meditation is preferable in all its aspects.
- MAGZine 3y ago
  that is a pretty sweeping claim given the limitation of science when it comes to understanding the psychoactive effects of entheogens. Especially for something like spirituality, which is almost by definition something experienced within.
  - sayanwita 3y ago
    That's true! But, don't you think that our inner state can be correctly described in terms of electrochemical activities inside the brain, including spirituality?
    - bannedbybros 3y ago
      [dead]
    - roughly 3y ago
      In the same way that the current state of a computer can be described by the position of electrons within its components or a party can be described by the relative position and density of various types of atoms in the room, sure.
generalizations 3y ago
> it starts to become readable at 2.5x and is essentially a clear static image at 4x > having a 2.5x to 4x slower processing speed I'm confused. Wouldn't this imply a 2.5x to 4x faster processing speed?
- Georgelemental 3y ago
  No. The world is moving 2.5x to 4x faster relative to your perception.
moomoo11 3y ago
I feel like time goes by “slower” for me ever since I did a heroic dose a few years ago. Used to be stressed the f out all the time. Now I feel like I can enjoy every full second. Crazy how much time we have in life when we just stop paying attention to the negative energies like stress and instead channel them into storage for something positive later. I’ve always been efficient and quick at learning new things and doing work. So it’s like being given a superpower to “slow” time. (Obviously time hasn’t slowed down only for me. It’s just how I personally perceive it now.)
- LastTrain 3y ago
  The problem is, of course, you have no idea if that dose is what caused the change. That change in personal outlook may have been coming your direction anyway, or you may have experienced it sooner if you hadn't been doing LSD at all.
  - di456 3y ago
    > The problem is, of course, you have no idea if that dose is what caused the change What problem exactly? This seems like a dismissive take on someone's positive experience. Are your referring to the scientific problem of studying cause & effect of the psychedelic experience? Science is figuring that out.
    - LastTrain 3y ago
      No I’m talking about this one’s person’s experience. They are putting out their notion of cause and effect on a public forum and I am questioning it. That is OK, right?
      - hutzlibu 3y ago
        "That is OK, right?" The way you are doing it, could maybe be improved. "The problem is, of course, you have no idea if that dose is what caused the change" You clearly judged here based on little information. How do you know, that he cannot know? (Unless you argue about philosophical limits of "knowing") When till time X there was behavior Y and at time X there was a strong trip - and afterwards differences,then it seems pretty linked to me.
whynaut 3y ago
Shameful such a short-sighted conclusion sits at the top of HN.
s1artibartfast 3y ago
This example is basically adding a low pass signal filter on a signal, not processing speed. Every electronic device you use requires low pass signal processing to function and transfer information. It isn't just about speed. A clear image on your TV is a clear advantage over static. Similarly, there is a clear "computational advantage" to processing data at the right rate it is being transmitted. You can process a binary signal at faster rate than transmission, but 100% of your data will be lost.
sayanwita 3y ago
There's a book called "Thinking fast and slow". It is a bestseller and that very clearly tells how thinking in different speeds helps particular tasks. Will you disagree with that?
rileyphone 3y ago
Andres posted a reply on Twitter: https://twitter.com/algekalipso/status/1666091889500758016 https://twitter.com/algekalipso/status/1666091889500758016
rvcdbn 3y ago
I agree that “computational advantage” is probably too strong a conclusion. However, it is intriguing to think about how this general effect (increasing the time span over which data are integrated) could extend to more abstract reasoning. Subjectively it certainly feels like when on these substances I am aware of more at once but perhaps with the loss of some focus.
c7DJTLrn 3y ago
there's some seriously Joe Rogan-esque horseshit on that page.
dylan604 3y ago
I downloaded and played back at higher speeds as well after your suggestion. Using the same technique to view the 3D image in those "posters from the 90s", I could make out the messages too. Persistence of vision type of tricks/effects have always been a favorite of mine. Even without LSD, I still enjoy finding ways to "trip" the mind. I have a ceiling fan with dark tone blades hanging from a white ceiling. When laying down in bed, I can stare at the ceiling fan for a couple of seconds, and then when I close my eyes, I still "see" the ceiling fan but in a negative view where the ceiling is now dark and the blades are light color. Cheap LEDs and fluorescent lights with cheap ballasts also cause me to see weird flickering when using averted vision or by turning my head back and forth in a rapid manner. Maybe it's because of the training my brain has undergone from using psychedelics, but I've tried to get other people that have never used psychedelics to see the same things without success.

brutusborn 3y ago

You are probably right that having a slower processing speed isn’t an advantage overall, but being able to perceive patterns like this may be advantageous in some situations. Maybe the slower processing speed is the cost of better processing power? Kinda like the tradeoff between high torque and high speed for gearboxes. Some tribes use psychedelics for hunting, and others that use psychedelics for introspection: maybe they are perceiving something that we ignore during normal processing modes.

carlmr 3y ago
>Some tribes use psychedelics for hunting OP saying slow doesn't mean that it's actually slower. If you process more information time _appears_ more slowly, but you're processing more, i.e. faster. In hunting it might be good to have improved pattern matching abilities at the cost of a higher false-positive rate.
- batty_alex 3y ago
  Yeah, it's very hard to describe. Almost like you perceive the present moment and the past couple seconds at the same time. Time seems to pass by you very quickly but, then you look at the clock, and it's only been 5 minutes That being said, I can't imagine having to hunt while on a lot of psychedelics

elif 3y ago

Being able to see that which our perception actively suppresses because it is hyper-focused on a certain cadence is indeed a gift. If you believe that our perceptive filters, evolved over millennia of survival requirements, is the only or even best way to perceive our reality, I would invite you to consider that hummingbirds will never enjoy Mozart, and you will never be as relaxed as a sloth.

jabbany 3y ago
Isn't the parent's point that, you don't necessarily need to use psychedelics but can use other technology to simulate the perception of different cadence or scale...? (E.g. A similar experiment https://xkcd.com/941/ https://xkcd.com/941/) > and you will never be as relaxed as a sloth. Also FWIW, does the sloth also consider itself to be relaxed or rather just "normal" ;-) Isn't the perception of being relaxed itself exactly reflective of how artificial* the experience actually is. *: With the context that I have no intention of prescribing whether it is positive or enjoyable.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  I’d note that the technological filter only works on captured stuff. Filtering reality like this isn’t technically feasible with external devices alone. Whether that’s useful or not seems fairly subjective, though. People find utility in all sorts of things I don’t.
  - jabbany 3y ago
    Of course. I'm assuming this discussion is all within the context of the original article "Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics" --- in which case understanding these specific messages actually don't require psychedelics. Not implying psychedelics have no utility, just that whatever utility they have probably doesn't lie in interpreting these "slowed down scan" animations.
    - fnordpiglet 3y ago

pera 3y ago

What do you mean by "processing speed"? I think you are interpreting this experiment as if our brains worked like digital computers doing signal processing in some buffer in the visual cortex :p

thumbuddy 3y ago

You know, according to people who have done buckets of psychedelics, there's an awful lot more to the psychedelic experience than 2.5-4x slower processing speed. I recall reading of numerous people who found they could collectively slow down a wall clock to the point were it didn't move any longer, and people who have experienced what they refer to as "eternity", "multiple life times", "thousands of years", etc. Also what is being done here isn't simply slower processing speed. It's more like the information from old states persists into new ones. My understanding is that this would be considered low dose territory. There's more to the story here, and I don't think this test, is even scratching the surface. It is neat though.

causi 3y ago
people who have experienced what they refer to as "eternity", "multiple life times", "thousands of years", etc. They didn't "experience an eternity". They experienced an emotional feeling they likened to an eternity. This is the difference between your computer running a program for a thousand years and you changing the date settings. These people did not go through an eternity of perception, processing, and thought; they had the label on their memories altered.
- LoganDark 3y ago
  > These people did not go through an eternity of perception, processing, and thought; they had the label on their memories altered. No, psychedelics really can speed up thought. It's not uncommon to experience a lot more in a much shorter amount of time than normal. For example, I've experienced this first-hand where I could not even finish a single sentence before I was so far ahead in thought that I completely forgot what I was originally trying to say. I used to call it "an entire universe happening between each instant" which, while inaccurate, is an apt enough description of how it feels, but also how it actually is, because the volume of thought is still much higher than normal.
  - jabbany 3y ago
    The experience you described is no indicator of whether "volume of thought is still much higher than normal" though? You'd have the exact same experience if the actual mechanism is that "had the label on [your] memories altered". To scientifically test this, you'd need some normalized "benchmark task" of thought, and then compare the difference in progress on such a thought task between the control and psychedelic cases given the same amount of "real time". IIRC earlier papers (that I am too lazy to find) shared on HN that have done this seem to show the opposite, that there is no measurable difference on the task yet the participants reported a difference in their label of the experience. (I think the paper then was related to some form of creativity and showed that there was no post-hoc measured difference despite a significant reported experiential difference).

ChatGTP 3y ago

Is life just about "computation advantage" ?

CatWChainsaw 3y ago
To a lot of people on this site, yes.

jcims 3y ago

It's opening up a perceptual time domain that is not available in a sober state. That's not 'slower processing speed'.

red75prime 3y ago
I quickly looked up research and, yeah, while LSD does impair many cognitive functions, reaction time seems to be unaffected.
- Retric 3y ago
  It’s presumably extending persistence of vision not slowing reaction time. Seems easy enough to test with revolving wheel/stroboscopic discs. Which if true, sounds like an artifact from less processing power to me.

BiteCode_dev 3y ago

Some subtle things can only be perceived as you slow down. Under mushroom, food tastes amazing, because you can suddenly perceived a lot more details.

jovial_cavalier 3y ago

Do you think people have CPUs in their brains? There isn't a clock rate knob that LSD goes and turns all the way down. As another commenter said, this is about being able to correlate events across time, and distinguish patterns in a way that you would not normally be able to. Also, I think if you'd ever used LSD, you would never think it was "slowing your thoughts down".

ilyt 3y ago

rhaps0dy 3y ago
I think you need to accelerate it more / aren't high enough. If you persist the white dots, you'll see letters.

motohagiography 3y ago

This is consistent with the idea that the geometric patterns of hallucinogenic drugs are just feedback artifacts in an analog system of your senses, and by imparing its 'clock' signal chemically, you get periodic noise whose geometry is proportional to the signalling frequency and its failures. No higher dimensions, just maybe a lower, impaired, fractal dimension. There are still theraputic uses for this impairment, and definitely a lot of recreational ones that allow you to discover things about yourself like any other testing or resistance, but hallucinogens are at best biohacking via chemical glitching, not spiritual gateways.

Spkeat17 3y ago
It is that when you realize that they are conveniently created with your own mind, they disappear immediately, you become tolerant because you have learned not to lose track of reality. I do not recommend it at all, meditation is preferable in all its aspects.
MAGZine 3y ago
that is a pretty sweeping claim given the limitation of science when it comes to understanding the psychoactive effects of entheogens. Especially for something like spirituality, which is almost by definition something experienced within.
- sayanwita 3y ago
  That's true! But, don't you think that our inner state can be correctly described in terms of electrochemical activities inside the brain, including spirituality?
  - bannedbybros 3y ago
    [dead]
  - roughly 3y ago
    In the same way that the current state of a computer can be described by the position of electrons within its components or a party can be described by the relative position and density of various types of atoms in the room, sure.

generalizations 3y ago

> it starts to become readable at 2.5x and is essentially a clear static image at 4x > having a 2.5x to 4x slower processing speed I'm confused. Wouldn't this imply a 2.5x to 4x faster processing speed?

Georgelemental 3y ago
No. The world is moving 2.5x to 4x faster relative to your perception.

moomoo11 3y ago

I feel like time goes by “slower” for me ever since I did a heroic dose a few years ago. Used to be stressed the f out all the time. Now I feel like I can enjoy every full second. Crazy how much time we have in life when we just stop paying attention to the negative energies like stress and instead channel them into storage for something positive later. I’ve always been efficient and quick at learning new things and doing work. So it’s like being given a superpower to “slow” time. (Obviously time hasn’t slowed down only for me. It’s just how I personally perceive it now.)

LastTrain 3y ago
The problem is, of course, you have no idea if that dose is what caused the change. That change in personal outlook may have been coming your direction anyway, or you may have experienced it sooner if you hadn't been doing LSD at all.
- di456 3y ago
  > The problem is, of course, you have no idea if that dose is what caused the change What problem exactly? This seems like a dismissive take on someone's positive experience. Are your referring to the scientific problem of studying cause & effect of the psychedelic experience? Science is figuring that out.
  - LastTrain 3y ago
    No I’m talking about this one’s person’s experience. They are putting out their notion of cause and effect on a public forum and I am questioning it. That is OK, right?
    - hutzlibu 3y ago
      "That is OK, right?" The way you are doing it, could maybe be improved. "The problem is, of course, you have no idea if that dose is what caused the change" You clearly judged here based on little information. How do you know, that he cannot know? (Unless you argue about philosophical limits of "knowing") When till time X there was behavior Y and at time X there was a strong trip - and afterwards differences,then it seems pretty linked to me.

whynaut 3y ago

Shameful such a short-sighted conclusion sits at the top of HN.

s1artibartfast 3y ago

This example is basically adding a low pass signal filter on a signal, not processing speed. Every electronic device you use requires low pass signal processing to function and transfer information. It isn't just about speed. A clear image on your TV is a clear advantage over static. Similarly, there is a clear "computational advantage" to processing data at the right rate it is being transmitted. You can process a binary signal at faster rate than transmission, but 100% of your data will be lost.

sayanwita 3y ago

There's a book called "Thinking fast and slow". It is a bestseller and that very clearly tells how thinking in different speeds helps particular tasks. Will you disagree with that?

rileyphone 3y ago

Andres posted a reply on Twitter: https://twitter.com/algekalipso/status/1666091889500758016 https://twitter.com/algekalipso/status/1666091889500758016

rvcdbn 3y ago

I agree that “computational advantage” is probably too strong a conclusion. However, it is intriguing to think about how this general effect (increasing the time span over which data are integrated) could extend to more abstract reasoning. Subjectively it certainly feels like when on these substances I am aware of more at once but perhaps with the loss of some focus.

c7DJTLrn 3y ago

there's some seriously Joe Rogan-esque horseshit on that page.

dylan604 3y ago

I downloaded and played back at higher speeds as well after your suggestion. Using the same technique to view the 3D image in those "posters from the 90s", I could make out the messages too. Persistence of vision type of tricks/effects have always been a favorite of mine. Even without LSD, I still enjoy finding ways to "trip" the mind. I have a ceiling fan with dark tone blades hanging from a white ceiling. When laying down in bed, I can stare at the ceiling fan for a couple of seconds, and then when I close my eyes, I still "see" the ceiling fan but in a negative view where the ceiling is now dark and the blades are light color. Cheap LEDs and fluorescent lights with cheap ballasts also cause me to see weird flickering when using averted vision or by turning my head back and forth in a rapid manner. Maybe it's because of the training my brain has undergone from using psychedelics, but I've tried to get other people that have never used psychedelics to see the same things without success.