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This is very cool. I have never been on drugs and don't plan to ever change that, but it's very interesting to get an impression of the experience. I have to s

by sho_hn 1y ago

This is very cool. I have never been on drugs and don't plan to ever change that, but it's very interesting to get an impression of the experience. I have to say it's a bit underwhelming. It's interesting how the closest analog I can think lf is early generative image AI hallucinatory stuff.

gyomu 1y ago
> I have to say it's a bit underwhelming Well, yeah. It’s like watching a video of a rollercoaster on your phone, vs riding in one.
- sho_hn 1y ago
  It's not that it didn't occur to me. Sure I understand I'm missing the immediacy and the visceral effect here, and I presume the parallel impact on other senses. But then again if I was the sort of person that mattered to, my outlook would probably be different. I'm fine with others having different preferences. I would say to me these videos work wonders in confirming a little bit that I'm not really missing out. There's a lot of FOMO and myth-making around drugs, I think experience reports and replications are a pretty good way to make everyone's decisions more informed whether it's "for them". This could totally be some form of confirmation bias at work, but it works for me ...
  - throwforfeds 1y ago
    The visuals are like a fraction of the experience. Personally, I get very little in terms of visuals. It’s insight, wisdom, love, and the releasing of emotional holding patterns that is the most prominent thing for me. You can read about ego death all you want, but until you actually experience that sort of thing it’s just nice words on a page. It’s why Buddha would say don’t take my word for it, do the practice and have the experience yourself. My first LSD trip is probably the most important experience of my life, and sure I saw some fractals in the clouds, but that’s close to zero percent of what was important during it.
    - shayway 1y ago
      One of my favorite quotes, and why I don't bother trying to explain psychedelic experiences any more - "To him who has had the experience no explanation is necessary, to him who has not, none is possible."
      - throwforfeds 1y ago
        Absolutely. I've heard some Tibetan Buddhist teachers say you have to taste the chocolate for yourself, which is exactly the same sentiment.
      - CuriousSkeptic 1y ago
        This exchange reminds me a bit of the experience of becoming a parent. The permanent reconfiguration of priorities from the intense oxytocin high is also quite impossible to explain to non-parents.
    - autop0ietic 1y ago
      It is interesting to me as my first acid trip was 30 years ago but I have never gained anything profound from the experience. My best trips were at psytrance parties as peak experiences in terms of fun. I have tripped many times alone in a dark room and basically gained nothing from the experience besides falling into an existential void. Personally, from so much experiences, reading thousands of trip reports, most the psychedelic literature up to about 2005, I think the psychedelic experience is like a blank white canvas. Some people end up with a Monet painting experience and some people end up with a Dali painting experience. Some run into a Hieronymus Bosch the first time and never try it again. You can't really make overall statements about what the blank canvas is going to be before someone starts to paint. For me, my best psychedelic experiences were better versions of my most fun nights drunk. Anything I have learned that is all that deep though I have learned from reading books. Never having a psychedelic experience I think is like never being drunk. It is really missing out on an interesting life experience but at the same time it is not this profound loss. Working out all these life problems like some kind of pyschotherapy session is for sure something that never happened to me. That just lead me to the existential void when attempted.
  - bongodongobob 1y ago
    The type of person who is arrogant enough to read some trip reports on the internet and look at a couple gifs and thinks "yeah I totally get this" is exactly the type of person a trip will benefit the most.
    - sho_hn 1y ago
      The problem with the whole "tripping has made me wiser and more kind and loving" type stuff is that it's self-serving and doesn't really stand up to Occam's Razor. It's a bit like that xkcd post on homeopathy: If it actually worked at scale, health insurers would be doing it. Experience has taught me to be wary of identity-conferring stuff that's easy and not hard to do. Taking drugs is not difficult.
      - Codazoa 1y ago
        That could be down to the fact that homeopathic treatments have largely been legal. The studies have been done and showed that a lot of it doesn't work so it isn't offered in traditional medicine. There were a lot of promising studies into the effects of LSD and Psilocybin before they were made illegal. Now with the loosening of restrictions we are able to get more research into the potential uses of psychedelics and there have been a lot of positive results. The research into MDMA for PTSD is really exciting, as well as Ketamine, LSD, and Psilocybin for different forms of depression for example. They will never be a solution for every problem like some people evangelize but where they work, they give people with these conditions another avenue to try when other "legal" drugs have failed.
        listenallyall 1y ago
        > more research into the potential uses of psychedelics and there have been a lot of positive results You'd have to agree, the types of people who choose to research psychedelics professionally, are the types of people who want to see, and demonstrate, positive results. These aren't unbiased research outcomes.
        1y ago
  - theragra 1y ago
    Nah, you may be missing or may be not, but there no way ay to explain psychedelic feelings. Just not possible. Sometimes world changes to wonder full or curiosity, and you think why, or why I cannot live like that always. Extent of this is not possible to experience without psychedelics or other strong mind altering practises.
margalabargala 1y ago
> I have to say it's a bit underwhelming. I mean, yeah, you're looking at an image on your computer screen. Seeing a video of Niagara Falls or a photo of a person at the Grand Canyon similarly capture the difference to the real thing.
gchamonlive 1y ago
Our culture is very image-centric. You have to understand that the drug induced image distortions are just a very specific side-effect that is part of a larger whole. Hallucinogens act on deeper mechanisms that control from visual perception all the way to the sense of self. It can fundamentally change during the experience the way you see yourself and the world. It's not uncommon for users of LSD or DMT and psilocybin to describe the experience as getting in touch with the interconnectedness of all things. Also bad trips can be very terrifying because of how much you are exposed to the experience. Like dying or feeling the fleeting nature of existence very present in your skin. All this to say that videos don't do any of this justice. It's just a fun way to represent the image distortions.
- sho_hn 1y ago
  I get that, and I guess I try to extrapolate from the image-based examples to other senses and congnition in general. The image replications give me the idea that there is some generative extrapolation based on actual sensory input a seed going on, like the brain circuitry that goes and re-imagines the input consciously going haywire and growing and extrapolating into overdriven, bizarre directions. I recently read "A Brief History of Intelligence" by Bennet which spends quite a bit of time dwelling on "generative" simulation mechanisms in brain function and their role in cognition from prediction to mentalizing, and I think I can get a rough sense of how this would all click together. It makes sense why creative/artistic people may be drawn to this and could consider it a heightened form or a letting loose of their normal processes, etc. But to me it's still not that attractive. I can never shake the idea that it's a bit like driving a system past specifications and assigning meaning to malfunctions, and essentially lying to yourself. I get it's not black and white, and obviously philosophy is rife with arguments and takes on what is true experience and cognition, but given the risks and downsides I'd rather not. I'm very fine with other people occupying different points on the spectrum.
  - gchamonlive 1y ago
    Ever heard of "The Doors of Perception" by Aldous Huxley?
  - 1y ago
nowittyusername 1y ago
I was using stable diffusion 1.5 when it came out and had my first LSD trip shortly after that, prolly like a few months. Anyways, what struck me was how similar the closed eyes visuals were on LSD compared to the generated images from stable diffusion when i was using it on low CFG and also some of my poorly trained textual inversions at the time. Watching the "training process" of the textual inversion in the early epochs made a lot of such images before the TI finally completed. Makes me think if the processes are somehow related, like if in human brains the reason we don't have experience seeing these "hallucinations" is because we have many robust subsystems that filter out the noise and make the mental model cohere on a stable world view.
tgv 1y ago
It looks like visual migraine to me.
- lostlogin 1y ago
  Having just had a migraine end, why can’t I have this, rather than pain and vomiting?
  - tgv 1y ago
    They're not the same thing, although visual migraines can appear at the start of a "real" migraine. It's a distortion of vision with glitchy geometric patterns that pulsate and move a bit. Here are some attempts to recreate them: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=visual+migraine+&ia=images&iax=images https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=visual+migraine+&ia=images&...
DontchaKnowit 1y ago
The visuals are like 10% of the experience. The last thing you could describe psychedelics as is underwhelming. It is not possible for you to understand what the experience is like without trying it for yourself. And I am not advocating for trying them. Im not one of these evangelists. But replication images are a very weak simulacrum of what the experience is actually like.
- andrei_says_ 1y ago
  Exactly. Shifts in perspective, including ones embedded in beliefs, trauma patterns, habitual mental models. Thinking, perceiving, remembering out of the box… the box one does not know they are in. Here on HN we tend to be habituated in perceiving the thinking mind as correct, rational, in our control. What if it’s none of these things?
BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
It’s kinda like if the feeling you see in the videos were replicated across all of your senses. Your senses kinda blur together in an indescribable way, and it’s extremely intense, kinda all consuming.

by sho_hn 1y ago

gyomu 1y ago

> I have to say it's a bit underwhelming Well, yeah. It’s like watching a video of a rollercoaster on your phone, vs riding in one.

sho_hn 1y ago
It's not that it didn't occur to me. Sure I understand I'm missing the immediacy and the visceral effect here, and I presume the parallel impact on other senses. But then again if I was the sort of person that mattered to, my outlook would probably be different. I'm fine with others having different preferences. I would say to me these videos work wonders in confirming a little bit that I'm not really missing out. There's a lot of FOMO and myth-making around drugs, I think experience reports and replications are a pretty good way to make everyone's decisions more informed whether it's "for them". This could totally be some form of confirmation bias at work, but it works for me ...
- throwforfeds 1y ago
  The visuals are like a fraction of the experience. Personally, I get very little in terms of visuals. It’s insight, wisdom, love, and the releasing of emotional holding patterns that is the most prominent thing for me. You can read about ego death all you want, but until you actually experience that sort of thing it’s just nice words on a page. It’s why Buddha would say don’t take my word for it, do the practice and have the experience yourself. My first LSD trip is probably the most important experience of my life, and sure I saw some fractals in the clouds, but that’s close to zero percent of what was important during it.
  - shayway 1y ago
    One of my favorite quotes, and why I don't bother trying to explain psychedelic experiences any more - "To him who has had the experience no explanation is necessary, to him who has not, none is possible."
    - throwforfeds 1y ago
      Absolutely. I've heard some Tibetan Buddhist teachers say you have to taste the chocolate for yourself, which is exactly the same sentiment.
    - CuriousSkeptic 1y ago
      This exchange reminds me a bit of the experience of becoming a parent. The permanent reconfiguration of priorities from the intense oxytocin high is also quite impossible to explain to non-parents.
  - autop0ietic 1y ago
    It is interesting to me as my first acid trip was 30 years ago but I have never gained anything profound from the experience. My best trips were at psytrance parties as peak experiences in terms of fun. I have tripped many times alone in a dark room and basically gained nothing from the experience besides falling into an existential void. Personally, from so much experiences, reading thousands of trip reports, most the psychedelic literature up to about 2005, I think the psychedelic experience is like a blank white canvas. Some people end up with a Monet painting experience and some people end up with a Dali painting experience. Some run into a Hieronymus Bosch the first time and never try it again. You can't really make overall statements about what the blank canvas is going to be before someone starts to paint. For me, my best psychedelic experiences were better versions of my most fun nights drunk. Anything I have learned that is all that deep though I have learned from reading books. Never having a psychedelic experience I think is like never being drunk. It is really missing out on an interesting life experience but at the same time it is not this profound loss. Working out all these life problems like some kind of pyschotherapy session is for sure something that never happened to me. That just lead me to the existential void when attempted.
- bongodongobob 1y ago
  The type of person who is arrogant enough to read some trip reports on the internet and look at a couple gifs and thinks "yeah I totally get this" is exactly the type of person a trip will benefit the most.
  - sho_hn 1y ago
    The problem with the whole "tripping has made me wiser and more kind and loving" type stuff is that it's self-serving and doesn't really stand up to Occam's Razor. It's a bit like that xkcd post on homeopathy: If it actually worked at scale, health insurers would be doing it. Experience has taught me to be wary of identity-conferring stuff that's easy and not hard to do. Taking drugs is not difficult.
    - Codazoa 1y ago
      That could be down to the fact that homeopathic treatments have largely been legal. The studies have been done and showed that a lot of it doesn't work so it isn't offered in traditional medicine. There were a lot of promising studies into the effects of LSD and Psilocybin before they were made illegal. Now with the loosening of restrictions we are able to get more research into the potential uses of psychedelics and there have been a lot of positive results. The research into MDMA for PTSD is really exciting, as well as Ketamine, LSD, and Psilocybin for different forms of depression for example. They will never be a solution for every problem like some people evangelize but where they work, they give people with these conditions another avenue to try when other "legal" drugs have failed.
      - listenallyall 1y ago
        > more research into the potential uses of psychedelics and there have been a lot of positive results You'd have to agree, the types of people who choose to research psychedelics professionally, are the types of people who want to see, and demonstrate, positive results. These aren't unbiased research outcomes.
        1y ago
- theragra 1y ago
  Nah, you may be missing or may be not, but there no way ay to explain psychedelic feelings. Just not possible. Sometimes world changes to wonder full or curiosity, and you think why, or why I cannot live like that always. Extent of this is not possible to experience without psychedelics or other strong mind altering practises.

margalabargala 1y ago

> I have to say it's a bit underwhelming. I mean, yeah, you're looking at an image on your computer screen. Seeing a video of Niagara Falls or a photo of a person at the Grand Canyon similarly capture the difference to the real thing.

gchamonlive 1y ago

Our culture is very image-centric. You have to understand that the drug induced image distortions are just a very specific side-effect that is part of a larger whole. Hallucinogens act on deeper mechanisms that control from visual perception all the way to the sense of self. It can fundamentally change during the experience the way you see yourself and the world. It's not uncommon for users of LSD or DMT and psilocybin to describe the experience as getting in touch with the interconnectedness of all things. Also bad trips can be very terrifying because of how much you are exposed to the experience. Like dying or feeling the fleeting nature of existence very present in your skin. All this to say that videos don't do any of this justice. It's just a fun way to represent the image distortions.

sho_hn 1y ago
I get that, and I guess I try to extrapolate from the image-based examples to other senses and congnition in general. The image replications give me the idea that there is some generative extrapolation based on actual sensory input a seed going on, like the brain circuitry that goes and re-imagines the input consciously going haywire and growing and extrapolating into overdriven, bizarre directions. I recently read "A Brief History of Intelligence" by Bennet which spends quite a bit of time dwelling on "generative" simulation mechanisms in brain function and their role in cognition from prediction to mentalizing, and I think I can get a rough sense of how this would all click together. It makes sense why creative/artistic people may be drawn to this and could consider it a heightened form or a letting loose of their normal processes, etc. But to me it's still not that attractive. I can never shake the idea that it's a bit like driving a system past specifications and assigning meaning to malfunctions, and essentially lying to yourself. I get it's not black and white, and obviously philosophy is rife with arguments and takes on what is true experience and cognition, but given the risks and downsides I'd rather not. I'm very fine with other people occupying different points on the spectrum.
- gchamonlive 1y ago
  Ever heard of "The Doors of Perception" by Aldous Huxley?
- 1y ago

nowittyusername 1y ago

I was using stable diffusion 1.5 when it came out and had my first LSD trip shortly after that, prolly like a few months. Anyways, what struck me was how similar the closed eyes visuals were on LSD compared to the generated images from stable diffusion when i was using it on low CFG and also some of my poorly trained textual inversions at the time. Watching the "training process" of the textual inversion in the early epochs made a lot of such images before the TI finally completed. Makes me think if the processes are somehow related, like if in human brains the reason we don't have experience seeing these "hallucinations" is because we have many robust subsystems that filter out the noise and make the mental model cohere on a stable world view.

tgv 1y ago

It looks like visual migraine to me.

lostlogin 1y ago
Having just had a migraine end, why can’t I have this, rather than pain and vomiting?
- tgv 1y ago
  They're not the same thing, although visual migraines can appear at the start of a "real" migraine. It's a distortion of vision with glitchy geometric patterns that pulsate and move a bit. Here are some attempts to recreate them: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=visual+migraine+&ia=images&iax=images https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=visual+migraine+&ia=images&...

DontchaKnowit 1y ago

The visuals are like 10% of the experience. The last thing you could describe psychedelics as is underwhelming. It is not possible for you to understand what the experience is like without trying it for yourself. And I am not advocating for trying them. Im not one of these evangelists. But replication images are a very weak simulacrum of what the experience is actually like.

andrei_says_ 1y ago
Exactly. Shifts in perspective, including ones embedded in beliefs, trauma patterns, habitual mental models. Thinking, perceiving, remembering out of the box… the box one does not know they are in. Here on HN we tend to be habituated in perceiving the thinking mind as correct, rational, in our control. What if it’s none of these things?

BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago

It’s kinda like if the feeling you see in the videos were replicated across all of your senses. Your senses kinda blur together in an indescribable way, and it’s extremely intense, kinda all consuming.