DMT also commonly induces visions of elves (the so-called "machine elves"). Having tried DMT several times I can't say it's something that ever happened to me personally but lots of people report seeing elves on DMT.
I wish there was a simple concept to explain this phenomenon: the appearance of widespread unified action (a "conspiracy" in the literal sense of the word), but only because the effects of doing X manifest themselves the same way in different places/people, often for biological reasons but more broadly for structural ones.
I guess you could call it something like, "system-limited emergence," in the sense that different systems can have similar outputs if they are structured the same way.
In other words, the idea is that differing groups of people don't see elves because they are all accessing some hidden reality full of elves, but rather because the drug induces the same reaction in a human body, no matter its location.
This maybe seems obvious for mushrooms or other substances, but I think the same concept applies to other phenomena too: the spread of ideas, political actions, etc. Or maybe I've just been watching too much Ghost in the Shell.
One thing from the article that isn't clear. Do people who see little people actually believe they are real, even when they know about the potential effect of these mushrooms?
This is a fundamental difference between psychedelics such as psilocybin and deliriants like datura. Usually, with psychedelics, you know that what you are seeing is not real, or at least, that it is not normal. With deliriants, even if you know exactly what you took and the effect it has, the crazy things you are seeing feel real and perfectly normal until the effect wears off.
What make me feel goes to the psychedelic side is that description talk about something wonderful, or at least worthy of attention. If it was a hallucination in its purest sense, the presence of little people would be no weirder than that of a cat or a dog.
But the fact that it is generally considered unpleasant and not used for recreational or spiritual purposes is more of a deliriant thing.
Where in the brain do visual hallucinations happen? I remember hearing that we can crudely reconstruct images from live scans of the brain. Does that work with hallucinations?
Mnestics are pharmaceuticals that allow agents to maintain awareness of threats that otherwise erase themselves from human memory. The drugs are used to combat antimemetic entities by enhancing memory and enabling users to perceive or recall information that self-erases.
It's fun to imagine there might be ways to tailor the chemistry to create highly specific imaging and sensations. Probably limited to imagery we have evolved with, because that's what must be embedded in our fundamental brain structure, but intriguing nevertheless.
There's a matching eye/brain condition where older people very rapidly develop cataracts or other eye problems and they spontaneously start seeing little people everywhere.
Usually their vision becomes blurry, but the tiny characters remain in perfect focus.
> The trip can last so long that it’s impractical as a recreational drug, which is why no culture seems to use the mushroom intentionally as a psychedelic. Not yet, at least.
>That’s where researchers investigating “mushroom madness” ultimately dismissed the accounts as cultural myth after chemical tests turned up nothing. Makes sense since the species wasn’t formally described until 2015. [..] Domnauer visited Yunnan’s mushroom markets and asked vendors which of these mushrooms is the one that’s making people see little people? All the vendors said L. asiatica.
This is a surprisingly common research failure mode. Actually talking to people is important.
> Genetic testing confirmed its identity, and lab studies showed that extracts cause dramatic behavioral changes in mice
I would speculate, that the mushroom triggers specifically the pattern-matching for people in the distance. And the center that triggers that motion tracking.
I read about this before and did a some half-assed "research". My understanding is that this is much less fun than it sounds. It isn't people take this mushroom and see elves and have a good time. It is more that people eat this mushroom in food and when it isn't cooked properly, they get violently ill and also happen to see the same elves. So, it does seem consistent, but not something you could do safely recreationally.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 65.3 ms ] threadMore info about what metabolites may be involved.
I sent the Vice article to my girlfriend and she had a good question and wondered if the mice treated with it see even smaller little mice.
I guess you could call it something like, "system-limited emergence," in the sense that different systems can have similar outputs if they are structured the same way.
In other words, the idea is that differing groups of people don't see elves because they are all accessing some hidden reality full of elves, but rather because the drug induces the same reaction in a human body, no matter its location.
This maybe seems obvious for mushrooms or other substances, but I think the same concept applies to other phenomena too: the spread of ideas, political actions, etc. Or maybe I've just been watching too much Ghost in the Shell.
This is a fundamental difference between psychedelics such as psilocybin and deliriants like datura. Usually, with psychedelics, you know that what you are seeing is not real, or at least, that it is not normal. With deliriants, even if you know exactly what you took and the effect it has, the crazy things you are seeing feel real and perfectly normal until the effect wears off.
What make me feel goes to the psychedelic side is that description talk about something wonderful, or at least worthy of attention. If it was a hallucination in its purest sense, the presence of little people would be no weirder than that of a cat or a dog.
But the fact that it is generally considered unpleasant and not used for recreational or spiritual purposes is more of a deliriant thing.
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/p/peyo.htm
Usually their vision becomes blurry, but the tiny characters remain in perfect focus.
Now we just have to wait for a visitor from Proxima with more potent Chew-Z. The grim future is closer than we think...
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/not-imagining-it/
I call those the... "Little Shrooms People".
[1] https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Computer_People#/media/...
NOT YET
This is a surprisingly common research failure mode. Actually talking to people is important.
> Genetic testing confirmed its identity, and lab studies showed that extracts cause dramatic behavioral changes in mice
Presumably, causing them to see little mice.
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Lilliputian-Hallucinat...