(Part 2) Top products from r/RationalPsychonaut

I'll crosspost my comment here: I argue they are real.

Hold on now, I know what you're thinking. But we need to define "real" here first. Just because it's happening in your head doesn't mean it isn't real (after all, you're happening in your head too).

There was a fascinating article about this I read not long ago that discussed this very topic in relationship to voices people hear in their heads unrelated to drugs that really got me thinking about how I interpret such things. It's talking about hallucinated voices, but it applies here as well:

> The second step is to understand that hallucinated voices are as real as just about anything. They aren’t what they purport to be — sounds coming from the external world — but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

> Let’s count the many ways that hallucinated voices are real:

> They are real neurological patterns that exist in real human brains.
> They are subjectively real. The listener actually hears them.
> They satisfy the criterion for reality put forward by David Deutsch in his book The Fabric of Reality: they kick back. You can read the whole argument here.
> They have metaphorical reality. We can reason about the voices the same way we talk about a movie with our friends (discussing the characters’ motivations, their moral worth, etc.).
> * They have real intelligence — because (this is crucial) they’re the products of a bona fide intelligent process. They’re emanating from the same gray matter that we use to perceive the world, make plans, string words together into sentences, etc. The voices talk, say intelligent things, make observations that the hearer might not have noticed, and have personalities (stubborn, encouraging, nasty, etc.). They are, above all, the kinds of things toward which we can take the intentional stance — treating them like agents with motivations, beliefs, and goals. They are things to be reasoned with, placated, ignored, or subverted, but not things whose existence is to be denied.

So are DMT entities "real"? I say yes, just not in the way some people want them to be.

I've read "What the Robin Knows" by this author, it is some really amazing work.

Since reading that book I've spent a long time studying nature and observing, it was one of a few things that came together and really changed my life quite profoundly, especially in regards to listening to nature.

I got that book together with this one. And while this one here is kind of hyped and 'mythologized' it introduces some really helpful concepts for how to move and observe in a natural environment to where you see so much more.

To be honest I never fully went as far into the 'listening to bird language' thing as I originally intended to when I first read this book. I practiced it a lot for about 2 months at first, and the one thing I identified was that the house sparrows in my yard had a specific vocalization which meant "Look out, Incoming Hawk!". It's a quick "Cheep CHEEP!" with a bit of urgency, then all the birds will dive into cover, and if you look up, sure enough, there will be a hawk overhead.

I realized that the yards in my backyard area was like an interconnected multispecies cooperative network, all devoted to warning each other of incoming hawks, which was a near daily occurrence. On a few occasions I'd see a hawk flying overhead from the front window, and then run out into the backyard to find it in a tree with one of the birds clutched in its claw.

All fascinating stuff to observe. I could go on for hours about this sort of thing.

A good book: http://www.amazon.com/Nonzero-The-Logic-Human-Destiny/dp/0679758941

I don't think there's an "equilibrium" - I think there's chaotic directionality. I think equilibrium is just a human concept that attempts to circumscribe "action-reaction".

I'm not sure how I can elaborate really; I just don't agree with the premise. That equilibrium exists outside of anything but physical systems in regards to things like air pressure. IMO, this is really sort of mental detritus from Zoroastrian/Judeo-Christian concepts of Good/Evil. The desire for cosmic justice is strong, but I don't think it exists outside of the context of human consciousness.

The short version might be that you ask:

>Do you think humans are out of equilibrium?

And to begin a serious conversation, the question is simply: out of equilibrium with what? Why? How?

>I strongly believe consciousness is like a WiFi signal, our personalities are like software and our bodies are the computer. I reject with all my being that consciousness is only a program the computer runs.

I'd suggest (and there's good science supporting this) that the body IS the mind, the computer IS the software. I can highly recommend the book Descartes' Error by Antonio Damasio.

>For anyone to say they know for certain is a lier.

Science doesn't deal in certainties. It forms theories (models of reality) that can make accurate predictions given the evidence we have at the time. When new evidence comes to light, old theories can always be disproven. While it cannot provide certainties, it does provide far more accurate predictions about the universe we live in than any system of knowledge we had before science.

Chalmers' philosophical writing on this is actually pretty interesting and accessible, IMO. You might be interested to check out a couple of his classic papers, Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness and Consciousness and its Place in Nature.

The panpsychist view is described in the latter paper under the heading "Type-F Monism." For those interested in this idea, there is a brilliant book length treatment of it by Gregg Rosenberg called A Place for Consciousness.

> "the sound seemed to have additional reverb, especially in the frequencies below 200Hz, with an impulse response characteristic of a long tunnel, such as the reverb filter you can find in ..."

That strikes a nice example as ideally script-modeled hypothetically i.e. not from an actual IRL case (- ?), but approximating comments of some people, sometimes heard.

Going with scenario of someone articulating their trip report as you've well exemplified, with specific technical-sounding details - question:

Suppose someone - some tough-minded 'critic' type (skeptic, doubting Thomas, whatever) who (let's say) has even had psychedelic experience, nobody lacking their own subjective touchstone (for 'independent' reference) - were to suggest that such testimony especially as detailed, whatever dramatic impressions aside, considerations otherwise notwithstanding - actually wouldn't tell us much of anything theoretically valid (nor could it) about the experience itself per se (whatever it was they were experiencing) - but would instead reflect informatively (as a factor intrinsic to this type narrative evidence) - mainly on the person psychologically - directly telling something specifically about the individual so attesting - any ramifications for the experience they're talking about unclear, inconclusive.

Big Framework being a deep dark question (almost beyond reach of any beam to illuminate adequately) - do we see whatever hallucinations as they are mainly, or in some far more essential sense (realized or not) - as we are, in an inescapably subjective fashion - case by case?

Hell, not just hallucinations - even 'reality' itself? I.e. "It all depends on how we look at things, not how [or what?] things are themselves" - Jung (if memory serves).

Or less Jungianly speaking - more thru a Wm Jamesian lens (and this is close to how I might say it - if I were the 'doubting Thomas' type):

"Whatever it was he experienced, this is clearly a subject of particular intellectual disposition, maybe above avg IQ (wouldn't be surprising) - who displays significant interest not only of these personal experiential 'dimensions' but also certain subject fields - topics like acoustics, physics of sound what with 'pitch' and 'tone' (frequencies, amplitude and such, oscilloscope wave forms, all that - whaddya bet?) whether purely amateur interest (a hobbyist?) or professionally as well - and however educated about such stuff (not being expert in all that myself who can tell?)."

How would you counter that (if you would) especially considering - phenomenology of consciousness is nothing new nor exclusive to psychedelic experience - and that indeed dreams and the phenomenon of dreaming provide an extensive prior methodological, theoretical foundation - with well-known pitfalls and issues that carry over for attempts at analysis or interpretation of any specific psychedelic experience - or the phenomenon of such effects and experiences as induced by LSD-like drugs in general?

Just to cite some lit (I been to 'college' - help) it's been widely noted that study of dreams and the phenomenon of dreaming runs into a snag almost foreshadowing the 'witnessing' neotradition of psychedelic subculture's "Trip Report" methodology - in which testimonials like the hypothetical 'richly-detailed' example you've modeled figure (examples of subcultural discourse and discursive processes):

Hobson JA, EF Pace-Schott & R Stickgold ("Dreaming and the brain: Toward a cognitive neuroscience of conscious states") note 5 major methodological problems in attempted study of dreaming. The first one they cite:

2.3.1. The reduction of psychological states to narrative reports ... the most profound problem in studying conscious states [is] reliance on verbal reports - reduction of conscious experience to prose ... To describe mental states closer to dreaming than to waking mentation [e.g. religious conversion, near-death experience, functional psychosis, delirium, drug-induced conditions and other altered states of consciousness] verbal retrospective reports are often considered inadequate. https://www.amazon.com/Sleep-Dreaming-Scientific-Advances-Reconsiderations/dp/0521008697

As usual no obligation and not to prevail upon anyone. Merely idle curiosity on my part - what your rebuttal might be to such basic perspective from phenomenology of consciousness - despite what such did to some cat. Curiosity that is - not phenomenology.

A direct agonist can bypass various feedback loops and interactions that are present with endogenous neurotransmitters. For example, serotonin stimulates 5-HT1A autoreceptors which inhibit further release of serotonin, but LSD isn't dependent on that loop. And there's also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_selectivity.

A lot of visual clues are in intro cogsci, like this book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262514273. But the Psychedelic Information Theory website and book linked later in the thread probably go through most of the relevant bits.

Also linguistics and the self in schizophrenia are relevant to dissociatives, which bear some important similarities to psychosis. And the glutamate hypothesis of schizophrenia.

This thing I made [MASSIVE SEIZURE WARNING] simulates certain aspects of simple CEVs quite well for me when I stare at it for awhile or move my head back/forward: https://gfycat.com/SleepyWigglyAfricanpiedkingfisher

Pressure-induced phosphenes, by pressing your fingers into your eyes, also bear similarities. (If you want to see something really wild, try pressing your eyes as you take a hit of nitrous while tripping on a psychedelic.)

I highly recommend you read The Chemical Muse. It's very much about this subject, and the prevalence of drugs in ancient Greece and Rome. The author asserts that much of the acceptance of drug use in that time has been whitewashed. It's a fascinating and well-researched book.

You might enjoy this book: http://www.amazon.com/Mystical-Mind-Theology-Sciences/dp/0800631633/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413670113&sr=8-1&keywords=the+mystical+mind
There's also a lot of cognitive science research on vision that might be relevant (esp. optical illusions).
The "jump" that you mention is interesting. Maybe when the boundaries we usually draw are reconfigured in unusual ways, people start to feel that how boundaries are drawn is arbitrary, and therefore boundaries are illusory. I think that that is still a jump, but that could be what is going on.

As /u/Das_Erlebnis said, there's tons of literature in the philosophy of mind. Check out some books, e.g. Chalmer's [The Conscious Mind] (https://www.amazon.com/Conscious-Mind-Search-Fundamental-Philosophy/dp/0195117891/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8) and Dennett's [Consciousness Explained] (https://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Explained-Daniel-C-Dennett/dp/0316180661/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=MK07ERGEZ7B8NBW6JBS1).

Edit: I'll add Nagel's essay [What is it like to be a bat?] (http://organizations.utep.edu/portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf) to the list.

See the book The Mind Illuminated, by long-time meditator and neuroscientist John Yates. He explains how meditation exercises your brain so you're like this most of the time, and specifically how to meditate to accomplish that.

>^(~)^(Chaos)^(.)

Entropy: Jeremy Rifkin

The Tao of Physics: Fritjof Capra

These two help with a bit of a framework to ford the physicl/metaphysical gulf.

Very Possible


https://www.amazon.com/Food-Gods-Original-Knowledge-Evolution/dp/0553371304/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=food+of+the+gods&qid=1564689525&s=gateway&sr=8-1

I picked up a used copy of Rational Mysticism at Half priced books but haven't started to read it yet. It might be down your ally. Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks and the Psychedelic Explorers Guide by James Fadiman may also be what you are looking for

Heads: A Biography oh Psychedelic America https://www.amazon.com/Heads-Biography-Psychedelic-Jesse-Jarnow/dp/0306921987/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?keywords=Heads&qid=1571264595&sr=8-4
does much more than repeat the old stories we all know about Hoffman, Kesey, Bear and the rest. Now I know where my blotter was coming from in the late 70’s and early 80’s.

Just wanted to clear something up here, but Hameroff's theory on microtubules is baseless of actual facts and the connection he is making between quantum mechanics (or whatever he interprets it as) and the AC measurements (the vibrations he's talking about) is purely pseudo-science and not grounded on any actual experiments or data, and it also ignores previous criticisms regarding quantum decoherence occurring much too fast to effect nerve impulses. The Orch OR model of "quantum mind" is disregarded by any serious neuroscientists and physicist today, and there's many papers outlining it's many flaws.

>And in the case of those that believe that the brain makes consciousness, we don't have any empirical evidence to substantiate their belief. So it's still just a belief at present, but a very dogmatic one.. which is tantamount to religious conviction.

Where are you coming from with this? The entire field of biology and neurology is based around the fact that consciousness emerges in the brain. If you take a rock you won't find its consciousness because there is no biological space to store the data of any sensory interaction, nor any nervous system to have such sensory input. A rock is just a bunch of minerals/ mineraloid particles, and there's nothing more to "being a rock" than its immediate physical chemical bonds. On the other hand, consciousness can be observed in a myriad of organisms with a biological brain to store the data in and be able to interact with. Just to clear this up, the entirety of neurological evidence suggest that consciousness arises in the brain, as defined by neural correlates throughout hundreds of studies and experiments (Dehaene has a great book on this).

> It's quite clear that whatever consciousness is, it's not purely physical. Consider, do your thoughts and emotions possess physical attributes (mass, velocity, weight, shape, color, etc)? No.

This is simply wrong and a ridiculous claim. Your thoughts and emotions DO have physical attributes as they are physically constituted of neurons which are physical electrically excitable cells interacting across further physical synapses and other nervous system structures. The moment your brain activity is stopped, or certain key parts and functions impaired, your consciousness vanishes, and there is no evidence to support otherwise.

Furthermore, every single behavioral and cognitive attribute you posses is based on the interaction of the instinctual reptilian and mammalian complex and the more complex and abstract functions of the neocortex. In order to talk about consciousness you need to talk about its emergence along phylogenesis in evolution, and more importantly how brain development from species to species constitutes the development of brain functions. Acting overly perplexed and dumbfounded of scientific knowledge regarding consciousness is no different than invoking ideas of intelligent design based around assumptions such as the seeming complexity of eyeballs.

>Thus, when you look at the thoughts and emotions themselves..directly.. experientially, you find that they are distinct from physical objects which possess physical attributes. That's why contemplative neuroscience is a very interesting research field.. because they're looking at how the brain can be modulated by modulating consciousness directly.. subjectively.. and the effects that that has on the brain and biology (e.g., neuroplasticity, palcebo, epigenetics).

You're confused about what you're experiencing during a conscious state. Every single thought, emotion, perception, analysis, instinct, and state of consciousness you experience is manifested as such through the physical networking and cascading information in many different areas of the brain, each in charge of very different tasks that overall attribute a perceptually unified consciousness, which of course is not true at all. Hemispheric lateralization and split brain patient studies clearly demonstrate the division of cognitive perception along networks of individualized mechanisms that have direct psychological correlates. It is entirely possible, and well documented, that certain key functions of consciousness (awareness, memory, perception, self distinction, spatial recognition, internal evaluation, etc.) can be impaired or completely cut off, resulting in a vividly (or not so vivid depending on what function or specific physical network is impaired) different experience, yet still within a conscious perspective. Cut off the corpus callosum that connects the two hemispheres and you end up with two completely separate conscious states depending on which size you find yourself on. A stroke on the left hemisphere will impair language concepts and time perceptions and your perception shifts to the intrinsically broad spectrum of understanding of the right hemisphere which focuses on the present input of information.

>And let's not forget the quantum consciousness model, too, which is just as valid, if not more, than the neuronal theory, since the neuronal theory has no testable predictions, has no theoretical framework to explain how you get "awareness" or "subjectivity" out of matter, and not only that, but it lacks the afforementioned empirical data and cannot even explain "spooky" phenomena that have been consitently reported throughout human history.

Again, there is no real data or grounded study for any of the proposed quantum mind theories. You're literally disregarding the entirety of the very empirical evidence you yourself seem to think is missing, when in actuality neurological theories are entirely grounded, peer-reviewed, well established, highly studied, and rigorously experimented and tested, and there are many emerging studies that discuss consciousness as we should, that being in depth and without linguistic misinterpretations. The vagueness of the term is highly problematic when talking about these topics. A lot of recent studies suggest a global overview of brain activity to build the foundation of consciousness, meaning different aspects of cognition are really just different mechanisms of operation that when complementing each other's outputs allow for the structural emergence of a seemingly unified state of consciousness.

I'm sorry but you don't seem to have much basis and knowledge on this subject unfortunately, please don't act as if you understand these concepts and openly spread misinformation and further strengthen misconceptions if you haven't actually studied these topics extensively, which you obviously haven't as demonstrated by your lack of knowledge of neuroscience, it's bad manner to do so in this subreddit.