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5-MeO-DMT sometimes cancels the Ebbinghaus illusion

23 points surprisetalk 2 hours ago 20 comments

drcongo 1 hour ago | parent

> But then I notice that when I move my attention to the centre of the picture — to the space between the two groups of circles — their apparent sizes begin to rebalance[...]

This works for me without DMT.

superb-owl 59 minutes ago | parent

same!

lstodd 16 minutes ago | parent

It also won't work on DMT. Because when you take DMT, whatever variety, you will not be able to look at a monitor, a picture or anything really. The whole concept of "looking at something" is inapplicable then.

throwup238 36 minutes ago | parent

Some family recently visited from out of state and we went to Venice Beach, where there is now tons of stores selling “magic mushrooms” along the boardwalk.

To my knowledge shrooms haven’t been legalized in California so I was curious what they sold (but not enough to try it). Turns out California state regulators have been surreptitiously testing the product from time to time and most of it is 5-MeO-DMT… and they don’t do anything about it despite being schedule I.

Venice Beach, leading the way in “medical” research!

yieldcrv 24 minutes ago | parent

This is the second time I’ve heard that but my Google search isn’t yielding results, can you link me to the tests from California regulators?

This article also says that 5-MeO-DMT has no psychoactive effects taken orally

throwup238 11 minutes ago | parent

I misremembered! It was 4-AcO-DMT not 5-MeO [1].

[1] https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/OPA/Pages/NR25-024.aspx

ews 4 minutes ago | parent

they are very VERY different substances, the subjective experience of 4-AcO is actually very similar to Psilocybin.

tgtweak 13 minutes ago | parent

Very fitting that California be at the forefront of narcotic research

quesera 6 minutes ago | parent

I'd be astonished if any of what you wrote above is true.

State regulators do not "surreptitiously test" Schedule I drugs on the public via retail sale. That's just inane.

There is no legal classification for "magic mushrooms", but I am willing to bet that the products for sale are legal, and do not contain psilocybin or psilocin.

They're just some unregulated compound that might have come from mushrooms, but is more likely made in a lab, and may or may not be mildly psychoactive.

And they'll probably add some caffeine and theobromine, which boardwalk denizens will feel the effects of and not know precisely how to categorize.

axblount 31 minutes ago | parent

It's really hard to take stuff like this seriously. 5-MeO-DMT helped you see something you knew was true? (the red circles are the same size) Shocking.

I'm really confused by the idea that we're at some kind of evolutionary local minimum and psychidelics are going to push us out.

I'm not up on the biology, but don't our bodies produce DMT (I realize that's not the compund from the article) and/or analogues? If psychdelics allow us to see the truth, why isn't my brain upping the dose?

lstodd 22 minutes ago | parent

> why isn't my brain upping the dose?

because you are not stressing it in the right way.

PS. idk where you got the idea of 'we're at some kind of evolutionary local minimum'. it was never about that.

axblount 17 minutes ago | parent

The article implies that our sober brains are susceptible to illusion where as the 5-MeO-DMT brain sees things more truthfully.

lstodd 10 minutes ago | parent

Hah, yes and no. What we see sober is an illusion, and etheogens just show us other illusions, so that with some effort we can cross-correlate them and hopefully arrive at The Truth. It being that there is no such thing.

Most one can do is accept that one is limited by one's perception and then keep that in mind.

ricardobeat 5 minutes ago | parent

> 5-MeO-DMT helped you see something you knew was true? (the red circles are the same size)

You may be an exception here?

Most humans, me included, see the right circle as larger than the left one, regardless of how strongly you know they are the same size. This is the basis for a lot of design theory.

If the drug cancels this effect it is doing something significant to the brain.

cj 23 minutes ago | parent

I can also eliminate the illusion by covering up the blue circles and only looking at the orange circles.

Maybe that's what the DMT is doing? ... perhaps it gives you tunnel vision (or tunnels your attention) such that you only "see" (or are paying attention to) the orange and blocking out the blue from your mind.

thewillowcat 15 minutes ago | parent

> QRI is a non-profit building a new science of consciousness. Its central bet is that: Consciousness is a relatively simple property of our universe — simple enough for evolution to discover it. Consciousness has useful computational properties — otherwise evolution would not have come to rely on it.

My brother, that is philosophical position, not a "bet".

ricardobeat 7 minutes ago | parent

It is a bet if they are trying to build a business, or do research, on top of that position.

functionmouse 14 minutes ago | parent

I mean. So would looking through cardboard tubes. In this context, cardboard tubes are at least as cool.