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Stranger Registered: 05/03/23 Posts: 6 Last seen: 8 months, 16 days |
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Reality modulation model
Ever since my first psychedelic experience, I have had a problem with the classification of psychedelics as hallucinogens. I didn't feel like I had a single hallucination that day, but more real than real experience, but how would that even be possible ? How could anything be more real than usual sober perception ? Ever since then, I have tried to find answer to that question and to question what psychedelic experience even is. Is it an outward projection from the subconscious mind to reality or something else ? I have tried to find answers in models based on Stanislav Grof's work, Freud's and Jung's psychotherapy and understanding of mind, modern psychology and psychiatry principles but none of them could really explain elements of psychedelic experience or even come close to it. However ever since my first trip I had an idea in the back of my mind, idea of multiple subjective realities co-existing while sprouting from the same objective one we are sharing. Could it be that there is a different way to decipher reality and yet remain functionality in it in one way or the other ? The same way we can use different numeral systems and still retain the same objective math while using them, or perhaps even like a change from one key to another in a piece of music ? Most simple representation of this idea I can think of is the following: 5+5=10 V+V=X 101+101=01010 Same addition in three different numeral systems. Those three are all true and useful depending on what you are looking for; they are different interpretations of the same objective math behind them. Same idea here is that psychedelics do not really cause hallucinations, but change of perception from decimal to binary. System different and less functional for things we have evolved for and the system we are not used to effectively work in like we are in a decimal one, but not a hallucination nonetheless. After some time I have found a model called multimodal user interface theory by Donald Hoffman which was quite similar to concept I had in mind, although a bit more expanded and "radical", which I used to expand my idea of explaining psychedelic experience. Subjective vs objective reality Most people, myself included before my psychedelic experiences, think of reality and perception as one and the same. But even basic physics is already in disagreement with that statement. One of the easiest examples to show would be color. What physics tells us about color is that it is the wavelength within the visible spectrum of light. What I experience as color does not look like that, nor is it even close to that description. How can we be so sure of other aspects of reality? Are textures and distances identical in our subjective experience and objective reality, unlike colors? Or are they just concepts of the mind trying to make sense of what objective reality is ? To answer that, the question that should be asked is, why do we see our subjective reality the way we do? Evolutionary pressure. Looking at evolutionary pressure and our view of reality as one of the aspects that is subject to changes caused by evolution, we can look at subjective reality, not as a replication of objective reality, but as the reality we need to see to survive. Some aspects of reality might be overexaggerated, while others may be hidden or ignored if they are of no use to us or even an distraction from the evolutionary perspective, or require too much effort with no valuable payoffs. We know it's not the eyes that create our subjective reality; it is the brain that builds it or makes sense of it. Each species has evolved a unique combination of senses and brains to make sense of them, with each species going through different evolutionary pressures to get to the point they are now at. How do bees subjectively experience color? By studying their eyes, we might know how many variations of color they can detect, but what their colors look like to them, we can't know, at least not yet. But to assume that they see the same color as humans do doesn't seem like a really high chance. How does echolocation feel for bats? Is it more akin to the sound or sight of humans? And if they are not the same as our senses, are they real? Are they hallucinating, or are we? Or should we assume they use different senses and brains and yet see the exact same reality as we do? I don't even want to ponder the question of how animals that can sense electromagnetism experience the world. Reality vs fitness The general population's idea of reality rests on the assumption that our subjective reality is a replication of objective reality. However, based on current understanding of physics, neuroscience and theory of evolution, that is nothing but a wrong assumption. Most people would assume that evolution would drive us toward more objective replications of reality, and that would give us an advantage. In billions of years, we would have come to see objective reality, or at least pretty close to it. However, when doing simulations of evolution by changing the parameters of a) seeing just reality, b) seeing fitness, and c) seeing a mix of reality and fitness, those species that value fitness came out on top, while species that saw reality were going extinct almost every single time. (Donald Hoffman's TED talk and book on this topic are below for those interested in the subject.) Evolution doesn't care about perception of reality; it cares about survival and procreation. We didn't need to evolve to see molecules or atoms, to see million different colors, or to hear every single sound around us, not to mention seeing millions of details in our field of vision. What we needed to evolve was our organization of reality to fit our survival needs: seeing just enough colors, focusing on important sounds, and focusing on the most important details of the textures and objects in our visual field and then organize them in useful way. We do not need to see objects the way they are, but in the way that brings us evolutionary advantage, even if that means reducing reality to a basic and simplified version of itself or changing it to the one that doesn't even resemble the objective one. Multimodal user interface (MUI) theory I'll borrow metaphors from Donald Hoffman's TED Talk and book for this, as I find it quite simple to understand. Imagine objective reality as a computer with its processor, motherboard, wires, and complicated software. Even though that is what reality of a computer is, our subjective reality is just a desktop with a bunch of icons. They are useful for navigation and functionality, but they do not bear any resemblance to the hardware beneath them. If there is a blue rectangular icon on the right side of the desktop, does that mean there is a blue rectangular icon somewhere on the right side of the graphic card as well? Icons are not replications of hardware but are made out of it and simplified to fit our needs. Not only is this organization instead of reality of hardware and electronics useful, but necessary. How does this relate to psychedelic experiences? There is more than one way to organize a desktop, even if there is the same hardware behind it, and to still retain functionality based on the different needs of the users. Evolutionarily speaking, every species went through different needs, got different desktop outcomes, and has different desktop realities. We do not yet know enough about the relation of the brain to subjective experience in the same species or how small changes can create different subjective outcomes. Perhaps if you ever liked someone and your friend didn't see beauty in them and you shrugged it off to "different tastes," it could actually be that you saw two slightly different images/icons of that person. You could see someone more geometrical or their eyes more blue than your friend does without ever having the chance to even explain such subtle changes in your perception of them, just as we have trouble explaining and replicating psychedelic geometry or other subjective phenomena. The whole perception of psychedelics as hallucinogens is based on the premise that you see something less real and lose functionality in a dose‐dependent manner. However, that does not mean you are losing reality but fitness. Even if psychedelic perception brought you more reality, that does not mean it would make you more functional; actually, it would do the opposite if, by increasing reality, you lost fitness and functionality at the same time. The next question is, is it possible to see reality as more real than it usually is in a sober state? To answer this, it is important to remember that eye can't choose which part of the visual spectrum to see. It automatically takes all the information from the species‐dependent color spectrum, with visual acuity greater in the central than peripheral part, at least in humans. It can move around to change which part is central, and pupil size can change to allow more or less light in, but that's pretty much it. It can't just change, group, or ignore parts of reality. The eye is not a limiting part in this case; it is the brain. It decides which information is important enough to use and what to do with it, and which one to ignore and filter out. If we were to remove or mess with the way the brain operates and creates visual images, it could bring more details from objective reality to our subjective reality—information that is usually filtered out as it is not useful to us—or even change the way it interprets and groups certain objects in the visual field, their movement, and every other aspect of perception. In that case, is one more real than the other? Do we base which one is more real only on the amount of available information? Is more necessarily more real? If more does mean real psychedelics really could allow us to see more expanded reality than our sober selves can by loosening filtration of information. If reality does not equal more functionality and fitness, but the loss of it, psychedelics really could be in that sense more real than real, not hallucinogens, and yet not cause us to become more functional as some might assume, but come with the loss of functionality as they do. It all depends on what do we mean by reality, pure number of information available to our subjective experience or the usefulness and organization of it. This desktop reality theory which I have tried to simplify is called multimodal user interface (MUI) theory by Donald Hoffman and is similar to the more popular view of critical realism which states that some aspects of subjective reality , like height and weight are faithful copies of the objective reality, but others aspects like colors and sounds are abstraction. Here is Donald Hoffman's TED talk on the subject of differences of subjective and objective reality (Multimodal user interface (MUI) theory) in more detail: I highly recommend his book "The case against reality "and the podcast he did with Lex Friedman for anyone having some time and interest in the subject. Ego and reality Now, two biggest effects of psychedelics are various changes in sensory experience and ego dissolution, and in this context, ego dissolution is nothing but a loss of brains focus on fitness we have evolved for, and I don't believe that ego dissolution and change in perception of reality are independent of each other, but that psychedelic realities are way of world organization when our ego and fitness are not the main focus anymore and there is more unfiltered information coming to us from reality that causes overload and unfunctionality that grows with dose, which would also explain why there is no good replication of psychedelic visuals to date, even low dose ones. There are some that have similar styles, some specific symbols and patterns to replicate, but I have yet to see a single realistic image of a simple piece of concrete the way you can see it while on LSD and the way it looks more real than real. It might be the case it is impossible to recreate because it is more real than real, maybe not as fit and functional due to overload of evolutionary unneeded stimuli, but a more unfiltered and raw version of reality with way more information than our usual sober mind perception limit allows to get to subjective experience based on the evolutionary usefulness of the information. This extends not only to the basic sensory effects, but other psychedelic effects as well by changing the way our brains constructs other aspects of reality : memory, time perception, thoughts, subconscious availability, imagination, visualization and everything else there is to experience. Physics Now to talk about physics, it is a little bit more complicated and I don't think I can make it shorter than this video does. It's a PBS Space Time YouTube channel video about our brains' role in creating space‐time. Point of the video is that many physicist, Albert Einstein included, believed that our subjective reality is not replication of objective reality but that space‐time is just a most efficient way of our brains to organize objective reality that exists out there into subjective one. "Concepts of space and time are free creations of the human intelligence, tools of thought, which are to serve the purpose of bringing experiences into relation with each other."‐Albert Einstein Neural science About neural science , I don't think there can be a better quote than the next one. The quote is from Principles of Neural Science, Sixth Edition (Eric R. Kandel,Steven A. Siegelbaum,Sarah H. Mack,John Koester). "Contrary to an intuitive analysis of our personal experience, perceptions are not precise copies of the world around us. Sensation is an abstraction, not a replication, of reality. The brain’s circuits construct an internal representation of external physical events after first analyzing various features of those events. When we hold an object in our hands, the shape, movement, and texture of the object are simultaneously analyzed in different brain regions according to the brain’s own rules, and the results are integrated into a conscious experience." Considering this, in my psychedelic journeys I have yet to experience a single hallucination. There was no perception of something not present; there is, however, a different perception of what is there. There is a change in the brain's own rules. And we know the brain has so many rules, categorizations, stabilizations, predictions, and other effects that are core to our subjective perception. There is no reason to believe we could not evolve to see the color red as pink or pink as orange. The same would extend to textures or other psychedelic visual phenomena; they could be our reality if evolutionary pressure has led us that way, but "serotonin reality" was fancied by evolution for its fitness payoffs. Shared experience My next huge problem with the conception of psychedelics as hallucinogens that create random or completely outward hallucinations projected from the subconscious mind is shared experience . When sharing psychedelic experiences with other people, we shared the same effects and could describe the same visuals happening at the same time. If it was hallucination in the form of subconsciousness coming out, it would be reasonable to assume that they would differ and be unique to each of us, but on the same dose of the same compound experiences, they were shared, leading me to think about psychedelic reality as just an alternative way of mind to explain or read the same objective reality using different rules. To try to explain it simply, if objective reality was a reality number 1000 and brain rules divided it by 2 to get us to the reality number 500, we have all evolved to experience. LSD in this example could be 4, and psilocin could be 5. By division, we get to different numbered realities—250 and 200—but we are there together. (There were slight individual differences in effects, so it was more like reality 248 vs. 250 vs. 252 due to individual reactions,metabolism, pharmacodynamics, pharmacokinetics, etc.) Of course, it would be much more complicated than simple division,but there seems to be a pattern to explain brains behavior and shared experiences other than "telepathy" that I have seen mentioned a lot in certain places online and even in classics such as Stanislav Grof's books. Consistency The next problem would be consistency. Ever since my first trip, I have liked to take pictures of things while being under the influence so I can look at them the next time I'm taking psychedelics. After a few trips and looking at the same pictures, I always saw the exact same visuals, patterns, symbols, and faces (the pareidolia effect of psychedelics) at the exact same spots. Either the human mind has exceptional memory for that much detail under the influence of the psychedelic compound to project them outwards, much more than I could ever imagine, which would be an amazing thing anyway, or there is a pattern that creates reality 250 from reality 1000 in a consistent way over a long period of time. One of the most fascinating aspects of the same perception and consistency of effects is that all cultures that have used psychedelics in the past often have similar motifs integrated into their culture. One of my favorite "stereotypical" psychedelic patterns are meander patterns that are seen across the world in their ancient art from the China, Greece,Roman, Mayans,Aztecs and others. Here is my drawing after my first trip versus ancient examples in art. Unfortunately, due to big cultural suppression of psychedelics for a long time now, not only in the modern time of war on drugs but religious suppression for centuries, in some of those cultures there is not much know about their usage of psychedelics but I do believe those patterns are not Mayan, Aztec or Greek and we do not hallucinate them from memory and project them on the outside world when taking psychedelics. What I do believe is happening is that those are not patterns of any culture, but are intrinsic psychedelic patterns that humans have been experiencing for thousands and thousands of years and we have integrated them into our cultures and art since the very first days of culture and continued to carry them on even after suppression of psychedelics in most of the world. How and why do those specific patterns appear so consistently to so many people across different times and cultures, with or without the use of psychedelics, is a big question that will likely not be easy to answer anytime soon. To end this, I think there is a big misunderstanding in both the general and psychonaut public about psychedelic effects due to looking at subjective reality as a copy of an objective one. Many people that know nothing about psychedelics think that they make you think you are being chased by dragons or dinosaurs and similar deliriant type hallucinations, which fulfils its fearmongering mission. However, what I found psychedelics to be are a way to see reality in different way, expanded, organized by different rules and to see that there is more than one way to interpret the same objective reality while, with some experience, even retaining functionality. If psychedelics are ever to get back into medical and legal use, I believe it is time to change the way it is looked upon psychedelic experience, and to look at it as an expanded, different reality, just not as functional and focused on fitness and ego as our sober one. Modulation, not a hallucination.
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