And people experiencing DTs from alcohol withdrawal say nonexistent entities are present too. The brain is merely capable of processing its inputs based on the laws of physics, and considering the complexity of a functioning mind, we shouldn't be too surprised when abnormal inputs cause abnormal outputs, nor should we necessarily hold much stock in the matter. Certainly, though, the tales are interesting if nothing else.
I will say prior to experiencing this myself I felt 100% certain that what you said is the truth. It just makes sense.
Now that I've had these experiences, I'm more like 90% certain that what you said is true. These experiences add a certain humility to the way I experience the world.
So in all likelihood, molecules like dmt will bind to certain serotonin receptors in the brain that cause strong and repeatable distortions in the visual field (even with eyes closed).
The human mind is great at picking out patterns and assigning meaning to them based on our experiences. So that shifting pattern in my visual space kinda looks like a face, I'm going to assign trickster machine elf to that visual pattern.
More likely than not that's what's going on. But there is probably some value in experiencing that.
Having said all that, the subjective experience of living that is very different. This feels incredibly real. As crazy as it sounds, it genuinely feels like blasting into a hyper-dimensional space and encountering a population of sentient entities.
That feeling is so real, that it leaves just the tiniest gap of "hmm, maybe I don't know everything after all. Maybe there's more to this story than I could've previously comprehended".
All to say is that while you're most likely right, I think it could be healthy to acknowledge that you're not definitely right. And leaving some room for uncertainty and exploration could prove beneficial, even for the skeptics among us.
I've done DMT a handful of times, and experienced the "entities" in several of them. After the trips ended I did not have any particular feeling that these entities were real, though the experiences were strange in a way that was quite wonderful.
One trip lacked any of these entities, but the time dilation is something that I still contemplate today, a decade or so later. It literally felt like hundreds or thousands of years had passed, with clear memory of all sorts of mundane days, etc., along with more memorable ones, particularly in the days following the trip. It had a pretty profound impact on my worldview, particularly in the few months following it, though those memories faded faster than real memories would. Feeling like I had lived for so long did make a lot of my day-to-day worries seem far less significant.
Also not anything I ascribe to any sort of mystical or extra-planar root-cause, but the ability for the brain to invent such a huge quantity of information over a ~15 minute trip is crazy to me, in the "man brains are weird" sense.
So, I think that is too dismissive, while I think the psychedelic proponents are too exuberant
Basically, I don't think the categorization matters. Like are these entities things always here and perceived if we access a certain plane, or are these mere configurations and figments of our brain that can be repeated. To me, thats not important. Its important if the reconfiguration of the brain is useful, therapeutic, repeatable, what side effects are there, whats going on with people predisposed to schizophrenia that psychedelics seem to exacerbate permanently. What’s going on with floaters/HPPD.
Can LSD be refined for the parts that are useful for us, or do we simply slap fine print about potential side effects for those with a family history of schizophrenia on it like …. every other FDA approved drug.
I think fawning over something in the 1950s is juvenile, when there probably are advances possible since then to that substance.
But I would like it to at least reach parity with Big Pharma’s designer drugs with clinical trials and listed side effects, instead of just anecdotes percolating rave communities.
> we shouldn't be too surprised when abnormal inputs cause abnormal outputs, nor should we necessarily hold much stock in the matter.
While my scientific mind wants to agree with you, that same scientific mind can't help but wonder...why similar experiences are being triggered on totally unrelated people.[0]
Here's a simpler explanation that fits the facts. Humans are practically genetically identical, are raised in roughly similar cultures with similar expectations of reality, and are being dosed with drugs generally assumed to be chemically similar (in this case) paired with the experiences that are reported. So while it's imperative to keep an open mind, it's also important to keep it closed enough that your brains don't leak out.
Totally unrelated is relative (ha ha). We are all the same species after all. Why wouldn't we respond similarly to similar inputs? Especally with something very different to our everyday experiences.
Mass media tends to follow a lot of common themes and often they are proxies for other general societal attitudes? Many of us grew up reading at least some books in common?
Interplanetary aliens always being more developed than us (and usually hostile) is a direct proxy for xenophobia to people from other countries.
Ever wonder why there's so much hand-waving about immigrants stealin' our jerbs?
SWIM may or may not have confided to me experiences with a variety of compounds purported to induce a wide range of subjective internal experiences upon their various methods of consumption. At any rate, I've certainly read (and donated to) Erowid.
Not OC, and I've never tried psychedelics, but even a strong fever will make you hallucinate, and I've had a couple of those. You mind closes up into itself, and the world it creates, while extremely simplistic, feels very real.
We don’t have any way of determining whether these experiences are purely generated by the brain, and it’s not smart to claim it’s one way or the other without further evidence.
> it’s not smart to claim it’s one way or the other without further evidence
It's perfectly smart to claim Hoffman did not make "contact with external entities on a trip (eyeball with wings)" with zero evidence because the status quo is not having conversations with eyeballs with wings. Herego, the burden of proof is on the eyballs-with-wings guy.
For what it's worth, I don't have evidence that you are conscious (and I never can; your qualia of the concept of the color red and your other internal world-state representations are solely yours, assuming you are not a P-zombie). For the record, I also do not make magic claims of free will nor assume there are laws outside known physics. If you wish to call in dark matter as a potential agent of causal change, then you can propose your theories backed by evidence and we'll continue as the evidence leads. But as far as my own existence, well, cogito ergo sum and all
This is an absurdly credulous take. If we took this face value, then we'd have assume that Carl Sagan really did keep an invisible flying dragon his garage.[0] This position is the exact opposite of rational thought.
Say it with me, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."
Even famed psychonaut, and inventor of the self-transforming machine elves meme, Terance McKenna said the only way to prove that it wasn't all in your head was to ask the elves a question that was easily and objectively verifiable, but you didn't know the answer.
He couldn't do that. He said so. He still publicly said that he believed they were real transdimensional intelligences, but he made no qualms about the fact that he had no proof, they're just a hallucination was very real possibility. (They are.)
>>Say it with me, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."
Let's be honest with it. So someone is experiencing the self-transforming machine elves.
Please provide the exact description of neuronal circuitry (numbers of neurons, network architectures, interconnectivity patterns, amounts of neurotransmitters used, spike patterns and the resulting EEGs etc) which generates this exact experience. Ask a distinguished professor of neuroscience. Use integrated information theory, emergent properties, quantum collapse in microtubules, whatever currently established paradigm - and provide the exact, 100% comprehensive and full description of the brain state that presumably generates this exact experience, also allowing to differentiate from all other experiences like just "machine elves", "non-self-transforming machine elves" or elves with any other properties. Or just begin with the 100% comprehensive and full description of the brain state/circuitry generating the taste of vanilla, which would be distinctly differentiable from the state/circuitry generating a taste of chocolate or garlic.
We communicate with other people and entities in dreams as well, and they seem completely convincing during the experience. While its not impossible for the self-replicating machine elves from the 5th dimension to actually exist, I think its more likely they're reflections of our psyche or something like that
I don't know about you, but I have studied reality pretty extensively over the years. I have yet to come across evidence that I would submit to a court of law regarding the existence of winged eyeballs, or other products of a hallucination. Having said that, several lawyers seem to be submitting such hallucinations in court thanks to AI, so maybe that technology can help us investigate this possibility of extracorporeal entities.
People don't see self-replicating machine elves if they have no idea who Terence McKenna is.
Ultimately, these are easily programmed experiences by people good at creating mythology. The more pseudoscientific one makes the mythology the better too of course or at least some loose connection to pseudoscience.
If we just say elves then it is obviously ridiculous. Self-replicating machines sounds STEM enough.
That was McKenna's brilliant con-artistry. Painting a STEM varnish on centuries old bullshit that no one would have bothered reading about otherwise.
Actually, the people who are making the claim that the hallucinations are external entities are asserting a position. And with a quick application of Hitchens' Razor, that which is claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
They do have evidence - their own experiences! It’s not very convincing evidence, to be sure, but as the replication crisis shows, even “objective” evidence can fail to be convincing or demonstrative for various reasons.
And what evidence do you actually have for your position? Your position is tailored to make subjects better taxpayers, rather than understanding how the brain/mind actually works. That's ok, than just assert this, that it is just a position amongst an infinity of other positions, rather than claiming that your position is the ultimate truth.
So someone is experiencing the self-transforming machine elves. Please provide the exact description of neuronal circuitry (numbers of neurons, network architectures, interconnectivity patterns, amounts of neurotransmitters used, spike patterns and the resulting EEGs etc) which generates this exact experience. Ask a distinguished professor of neuroscience. Use integrated information theory, emergent properties, quantum collapse in microtubules, whatever currently established paradigm - and provide the exact, 100% comprehensive and full description of the brain state that presumably generates this exact experience, also allowing to differentiate from all other experiences like just "machine elves", "non-self-transforming machine elves" or elves with any other properties. Or just begin with the 100% comprehensive and full description of the brain state/circuitry generating the taste of vanilla, which would be distinctly differentiable from the state/circuitry generating a taste of chocolate or garlic.
>>People totally blind from birth taking hallucinogens don't see entities
So these people do not trip at all on hallucinogens? Sounds like rather improbable.
~70% of what you call "visual experience" is driven by non-visual cortices,
like anterior cingulate, for example. And even before the visual cortex, even
on the thalamus level, the thalamus receives up to ~60% of top-down connections from non-visual cortices. You do not need to literally see anything in order to get the information about it. Get your potato, monkey.
That is easy to check if you measure the amount of light reaching the eyes of the patient while the experience is happening. Without even checking, I am already quite confident that no extra light will be reaching their eyes because they took some drug, but it's easy to measure.
You are constantly being bombarded with sensory phenomena that your nerves detect but your brain ignores. For example, you smell almost nothing, nearly all the time, despite being able to smell those scents occasionally, such as when you move to a different environment. Changing your brain somehow to notice those phenomena would not change the physical phenomena.
The claim was that some external entity was communicating with the people taking DMT. However, others in the room did not detect that entity, so it can't be made up of normal matter, or at least not at normal sizes. It is possible that the entity detected the person taking DMT somehow and started contacting them from far away, but then an instrument could detect the change after the DMT is consumed.
The alternative is that the entity is communicating in some way that is neither electromagnetic nor gravitational nor the weak or strong interactions, which would require new physics, and it would also require some explanation of why our brains would have evolved to capture this fifth force of nature that somehow doesn't have any measurable effects outside of DMT.
Of course we do, what do you mean? We can obviously check if there is anyone else in the room, with various instruments, and if there isn't, we obviously know for certain that the experience was purely generated by the brain. What else could it even be?
We need to account for the odd similarity of experience across users, which leads to two most probable explanations. First, the brain generates the experience, and the patterns are a consequence of structural similarities across human brains. Second, these entities actually exist somehow and we can’t yet observe them with our modern instruments. I certainly think that the first is more likely, but I think we need to do more work to reduce the probability of the second, likely by recording the brain activity similarities we would expect to see if it were a generated experience or by finding a number of individuals who don’t have the same experiences. We can also have people undergo extended trips, as is being tested currently, and see if the characteristics of the entities or the world indicate a generated experience. My only point was that, since this is a matter that depends entirely upon subjective conscious experience, a phenomenon we lack tools to measure and understand somewhat poorly, and since this substance is majorly understudied, it isn’t smart to simply assume that the first explanation is the correct one.
The second "explanation" requires a fundamental upending of basic physics research that is confirmed to higher degrees of accuracy than any direct experience we have ever had. The first explanation, while slightly handwavy, perfectly fits all established models of physics, chemistry, biology, neuroscience, and psychology.
I think even mentioning the second explanation is entirely splitting hairs. It's like reminding everyone that physics can't rule out that God could have created the world with its apparent 8 billion year history 2 hours ago.
This is called Bayesian reasoning, BTW, and you subconsciously do it all the time. Your entire life would be almost completely incomprehensible otherwise.
Give the extreme level at which we understand the basic functioning of the physical world (the Standard Model), yes, absence of evidence for a phenomenon that would contradict this model constitutes evidence of absence of such a phenomenon.
That is, since the only possible known interactions that the brain could pick up are electrical in nature, and given that no external electrical field changes are observed, that constitutes evidence that no external signal is being received by the person. The weak and strong forces don't work at such distances, so they are out of the question, and gravitational waves or neutrinos are far too weak to be detected by our brains, and impossible to make so targeted that only a single individual would receive the signal.
Now, is it conceivable that a different fundamental interaction that mammalian brains can detect but that none of our experiments have ever found could exist? Yes, but it is so extraordinarily unlikely that it can be dismissed out of hand, absent any proof. And the memories of people experiencing hallucinations are certainly not proof.
> ... constitutes evidence of absence of such a phenomenon.
Mostly everyone prefers that easy version of the question, but that isn't the one I asked.
The one I asked is:
Is it scientific consensus that an absence of evidence is proof of absence? ("proof" vs "evidence")
(Note also my question was about scientific consensus, but you are welcome to choose either version.)
> That is, since the only possible known interactions that the brain could pick up are electrical in nature
This seems "off" to me..."the only know to be possible" seems perfectly logical, whereas your wording almost sounds like you determine how Mother Nature runs the show. Granted, that's how it intuitively seems, but still. Regardless, for clarity: are you asserting that the final answered has been reached here, in fact?
Still outstanding (for bonus points):
>> And even if so: is it necessarily true?
>> PS: did you notice you're using the same methodology "believers" use: it's obvious?
For your troubles, an extra bonus question:
Did atoms exist before they were discovered to exist?
Proof and strong evidence are the same thing in my view of the world, for everything outside of pure mathematics. Of course, this means that even a previously "proven" fact can turn out to be wrong later on. But the alternative is that "proof" simply doesn't exist, as nothing about the physical world can be "proven" to the extent that 2+2=4 can be.
And yes, atoms have of course always existed. As the other poster points out, even before we could even understand the concept, we could detect them. Cats can detect them.
The thing about this posited entity that makes me so certain it is not an external phenomenon (or, if you prefer being mathematically pedantic, that gives me such a high degree of confidence that the probability of that is very very low) is that it is not detectable at all in many other experiments you can run. None of our finest instruments would pick up any increase or decrease in the physical quantities they can measure in the room with the person on psychedelics, if we were to waste money looking for this signal. And then, if they don't, then how could the brain of this person pick up such a weak signal? Why would it even have evolved to be able to detect this fifth fundamental force if it's so weak it can't even be detected by devices that are affected by a single atom passing them by?
"The" alternative is an interesting way to "think".
Psychedelics are a hell of a drug. So too is culture, and the conditioning of consciousness that comes with it. It starts the day you were born, and it never stops. This indoctrination is like the background noise of a city....you've never experienced it not being there, so you don't even notice it.
Many here seem to disagree with you, at least if one interprets their words literally. It's hard to know what they mean they since getting anyone to answer a question directly is typically not possible.
> ...so go away if that's the only standard you will allow discussion of.
What does "if that's the only standard you will allow discussion of" refer to?
>> Did atoms exist before they were discovered to exist?
> We were certainly able to detect atoms before we figured out the exact details.
Did atoms exist before they were discovered to exist?
No obligation to answer the question that is asked, just thought it would be fun to see if you have the ability.
> What does "if that's the only standard you will allow discussion of" refer to?
The way you blocked out everything else in the post to reiterate your question, which they had already answered fine unless you are doing the thing I accused you of, in which case I reiterate: go away
> Did atoms exist before they were discovered to exist?
Hmm, I think you misunderstood my previous answer. I'll try again.
We knew about the existence of atomic matter since humans have been a species, with overwhelming amounts of evidence. There is no "before" in that sense.
(If you mean "before humans and the concept of science existed" then the answer is yes but it has no relevance to a question of whether science is missing anything.)
> The way you blocked out everything else in the post to reiterate your question...
"Blocked out"? I didn't block out anything, I quoted specific text. Quoting specific text in no way disallows discussion of other things, which is what you accused me of.
> ...which they had already answered fine...
No, they answered a question more to their liking - they didn't answer mine at all. They, like many others, seem to have an aversion to discussing certain aspects of reality, so they chose to opt out of the conversation, a right which you too have.
> in which case I reiterate: go away
Why? Are there certain aspects of reality that you have an aversion to being pointed out? Well, simply click the X in your browser window and all this harshness can disappear.
> Hmm, I think you misunderstood my previous answer.
I understood it perfectly well, it is a highly predictable response to that class of prompt, one of three or so responses.
> We knew about the existence of atomic matter since humans have been a species, with overwhelming amounts of evidence. There is no "before" in that sense.
Humans knew about the existence of atomic matter since they've been a species?
>>> The concept of the atom that Western scientists accepted in broad outline from the 1600s until about 1900 originated with Greek philosophers in the 5th century BCE. Their speculation [1] about a hard, indivisible fundamental particle of nature was replaced slowly by a scientific theory supported by experiment and mathematical deduction.
Could you possibly share even one piece of evidence of this (you don't even need to link to it, quoting it from memory is fine, provided you include some detail)?
It sounds like I broke your prediction if you're this confused.
Atomic matter is right there and everywhere. We didn't know about the structural details of atoms, but we knew about the bulk effects.
When the topic of discussion is signals that no current equipment can measure, there are some pretty direct analogues that might be convincing in some ways, but when it comes to something as fundamental as atoms, we were only ever lacking nuance in our knowledge. Signals like that would be a lot bigger than nuance, and our physics experiments leave a lot less room for it.
I'll add to it that there's a wide range of documented cases of humans experiencing all sorts of weird phenomena when their brains are being physically poked at. A drug chemically circuit-bending your brain therefore seems much more likely explanation than opening it to perceive an extra dimension of reality.
I think the preponderance of evidence points strongly to these phenomena being purely mental - in particular the vast majority of conscious behaving entities which we encounter on a regular basis are physical objects with certain properties (having a brain is the big one) and what we know about physics, biology, computation, and neuroscience makes a pretty compelling case that the physical object in question (the brain) is intimately, probably one to one, connected with the phenomenon we identify as the entity. It would be very strange if we found evidence of non-material entities given this context. And in the case of the self-transforming machine elves we very clearly have a compatible alternate hypothesis: they are generated by the brain which we are mucking around in with chemicals which are known to disrupt its behavior.
>>And in the case of the self-transforming machine elves we very clearly have a compatible alternate hypothesis: they are generated by the brain
And what is the actual evidence for this alternate hypothesis? Please provide the exact description of neuronal circuitry (numbers of neurons, network architectures, interconnectivity patterns, amounts of neurotransmitters used, spike patterns and the resulting EEGs etc) which generates this exact experience. Ask a distinguished professor of neuroscience. Use integrated information theory, emergent properties, quantum collapse in microtubules, whatever currently established paradigm - and provide the exact, 100% comprehensive and full description of the brain state that presumably generates this exact experience, also allowing to differentiate from all other experiences like just "machine elves", "non-self-transforming machine elves" or elves with any other properties. Or just begin with the 100% comprehensive and full description of the brain state/circuitry generating the taste of vanilla, which would be distinctly differentiable from the state/circuitry generating a taste of chocolate or garlic.
You don't need a perfect account to have a reasonable account. You've set up an absurd standard which essentially no knowledge could reasonably meet. I'm not a distinguished neuroscientist, but I've published papers in neuroscience and while we certainly can't provide a full account of the precise details of these brain states, the balance of the physical sciences, including neuroscience, leads me to strongly favor the "machine elves aren't real" hypothesis.
Sorry, dude, but your behavior can be formally comparable to a grandma's at a bazaar selling potatoes rather than someone with a slight quest for fundamental science. Obviously her potatoes are the best, *just because* they're reasonably the best and reasonable resources have been invested in them, and all other potatoes are absurd.
Here're the schematics of some modern computer electronics [1], [2]. Every element, every connection is described in detail and in place. Is this absurd?
Under the hood you consider the brain a similar type of computing machine, a bit more complicated, but fundamentally it should be the same. So the relevant schematics should be available.
Yet, instead of acknowledging that in order to obtain 90% of information I requested with modern neuroscience methods a person should be effectively dead or brain damaged, you just call it absurd. So have a reasonable way to the bazaar.
Recent advances in physical science [3],[4] have effectively shown that local realism is false. And there is a corpus of research in neuroscience, which I won't discuss here, as well as developed instrumentation and theory in physics (like field theory) which can allow to test these alternative hypotheses, rather than just bluntly stick to one's important subjectively reasonable opinion.
If you are an expert on how the brain generates what's reasonable and unreasonble, do you have queues of developers, chemists, mathematicians, any other types of technologists, who are developing technologies which actually contribute to human civilization, obviously using their brains for this and asking your recommendations on how to tune their technology generation engine(=brain) to generate more and faster? I doubt that even Huberman has any.
I think you may have touched on the actual lesson of psychedelics:
"I think the preponderance of evidence points strongly to these phenomena being purely mental"
Agreed. Along with all phenomena anyone experiences in general.
We all create reality strictly in our heads which corresponds, with varying degrees of accuracy, to external phenomena.
We like to think this is not the case and we are in possession of "objective fact", or maybe we are not at this moment, but objective reality certainly is out there and we are on track to get it.
But maybe it's really just mental abstractions all the way down. All the way down into the earliest evolutionary days of perceiving distinction between light and dark.
We cannot see certain wavelengths of light for example. But butterflies can. So when I look at a flower with UV markings and a butterfly looks at the same flower, who is right? How much more "information" is available about (for instance) this flower if we could only perceive it? How much magnesium is in it? How about if we couldn't see things that were not static for more then a day just like we can't see sub-millisecond motion with our eyes and have to measure it with instruments? Would the flower even exist for us in casual every day life at that point?
We have monkey eyes for the most part. We see what a highly evolved monkey would need to see, no less, no more. This in my opinion is what is so startling (and potentially therapeutic) about psychedelics. It awakens us to the fact that perception, which we firmly believed to be unassailable reality, is just perception and there exists the possibility to think about things in new ways, to create a new reality in a manner of speaking.
There is a huge difference between believing "perception is possession of objective fact" and "its mental abstractions all the way down," but I think a reasonable appraisal of the world makes both almost certainly equally wrong. My assertion that the machine elves are mental phenomena should not be taken to mean that I think everything is, which I think is a pretty silly idea.
When we perceive something, anything, it comes to us strictly as a mental (or emotional or sensational if you like) projection.
In other words, our perception is inevitably subjective and personalized.
Now most of us can agree on many things, but this is because we have the same frames of reference (as modern humans etc). Under normal circumstances we have similar mental models and similar perceptive facilities which given similar phenomena produce agreement.
But this agreement doesn't doesn't necessarily tell us what a phenomena actually "is" in objective fact, nor give us all available information about the phenomena. It only means we agree on a picture of objective reality (which is important for our species) and that our mental models more or less work to guide us around. But that in no way implies we are, nor are necessarily capable of being, in full possession of actual objective reality.
If we were an gnat 1/2 mm in length with a 3 day lifespan and many less neurons we would probably perceive things very differently. Or (as a thought experiment) if we were Lord God of the universe, immortal creator of time and space.
Point being, all reality we experience goes through our minds, our experiences, our filters and the picture at the end corresponds roughly with something we call "objective reality".
This isn't to bash on objective science nor promote superstition or argue for the objective physical existence of machine elves either. Some models and perceptional frameworks work better then others when you are trying to survive as a species and rational measurable science is pretty powerful tool. But sometimes, maybe especially with therapy issues it could be useful to back up and remember we have a frame of reference. It can be changed to some extent.
When someone sees a "machine elf" yes they are hallucinating, we can agree on that and we sober people don't see the elf nor can we measure it with instruments so it's reasonable to say it's simply a mirage or a mental trick.
But is there perhaps some underlying "reality" to machine elves that is translated as a "machine elf" because what the hell else could you call it? Maybe not an external sentient being, but part of a collective unconscious we share as humans? Or maybe (less probably imo) there is more sentience in the universe then we currently understand? I don't really know, but that so many people have similar experiences is interesting and perhaps worth exploring to better understand what we as humans are underneath this superficial top floor of consciousness.
I'm not saying that machine elves definitely don't exist and I'm certainly not saying that my collection of things I think are true are objectively true. I'm simply saying that from my point of view its very unlikely that machine elves being real is the explanation for people reporting interactions with machine elves.
I believe its important to explore these experiences and I think people should do so, both under the aegis of science and less formal self exploration. But in the end we cannot just accept mere perception as naively correlated with reality. The process of connecting perception to reality is one of the great works of human beings and, from where I am sitting, that great work seems pretty definitively negative on machine elves.
