Hallucination is a terrible model for LLM factual errors, perhaps as terrible as I could think of. Most pharmacological true hallucinogens are all about the brain not being able to properly receive input (anticholingergics, e.g. diphenhydramine, BZ, cyclizine, etc) and misinterpreting it with additional neuronal functional degradation due to synaptic interference by neurotransmitters (or lack thereof). This isn't really the problem that LLMs have, which in my opinion is much more akin to classical confabulation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation
While I don't think the term will switch at this point, you are dead right. From early on it reminded me of the anecdotes where people with a severed corpus callosum would have their left brain suddenly explain why they had just laughed, completely unaware their right brain has just been shown fake poop.
Confabulation is a great word for it, and has a similar quality.
But I suspect we'll end up having grown past the issue long before we'd see the term switch given the entrenched usage by now.
Thanks, the description as confabulation is helpful, and should be more widely known.
Maybe the current usage of hallucination can be viewed as metonymy or perhaps synecdoche - the untrained observer sees absurd outputs, the description of the phenomenon does not include the reason.
With confabulation it isn’t anthropomophizing but rather drawing a parallel to an information processing approach in brains.
I don’t like hallucination because it implies that it is different from how it normally works. Theories of confabulation suggest that this normal brain behavior. Still not the best word.
To note, hallucinations (actually, they cause delirium) from anticholinergics are very different from hallucinations from psychedelics, which are closer to visual distortions instead.
It's arguable that those are not hallucinations, as there is not normally a misunderstanding about their (physical world) reality, just some amount of acknowledged distortion of perception of the real world.
Yeah, you are right, that is why I said that they are close to visual distortions, rather than hallucinations. To top it up, delirium-induced hallucinations differ from disassociatives (such as ketamine or DXM) as well.
TLDR the brain is complex and while the three main classes of psychosis-inducing drugs have distinct principal mechanisms, there's likely a significant degree of overlap.
> hallucinations may also be triggered by at least three different kinds of drugs: psychostimulants (i.e., cocaine or amphetamine), the so-called “dissociative anesthetics” (i.e., phencyclidine (PCP) or ketamine), and psychedelics, (i.e., lysergic diethylamid (LSD) and psilocybin).
It's my understanding that Psilocybin and LSD do not produce hallucinations (e.g. seeing something which does not exist. I'm aware of the difficulty of qualifying the previous sentence) versus changing your perception of phenomena.
The exceptions to this are that these compounds can trigger an individual to enter a psychotic state in which this then becomes possible. Or that in _extremely_ high doses such as the 'white light' territory of LSD. However the vast majority of those who use these substances do not tend to report, for example, conversations with people whom a sober sitter would state were not in the room (like the effects of dissociatives such as Datura).
The article seems to agree with my understanding of this nuance. I have found this distinction to be relatively uncommon in reporting otherwise.
Initially it was thought that LSD was psychotomimetic (mimicing the symptoms of those with pre-existing psychotic illnesses) and there were hopes that they could be used for study into these conditions. I understand that this is no longer working scientific thinking. A good documentary on these topics is the BBC's LSD The Beyond Within from 1987 [0].
Personally I have reached a personal belief that entheogens allow you traverse the realms of existence [1] within your lifetime. For example, descending into the hell realm or ascending into the deva realm.
I don't see why it needs to be anything so grandiose. I'm not griping at you, per se, I just don't understand why psychedelics enthusiasts consistently bang the metaphysical drum, as opposed to dedicating themselves to a rational and clear-headed understanding of the phenomenon.
Now, obviously, there are various levels of schmess. Many might say, "but look at the complexity of thought of these cultural artifacts surrounding psychedelics!" to which I'd say that, much like St. Anselm's ontological argument (which is poor reasoning, absurd on its face, and yet still more coherent than most psychedelic-induced metaphysical rants), the complexity of thought involved means nothing if it can not be grounded in the everyday experience of a shared, external, objective space.
Let's not reinvent religion and cults with psychedelics; let's look at this pivotal moment in time as a chance for us enthusiasts to encourage society to move beyond such poor modes of reasoning.
Also: I see shit on LSD, but I know it's not real. I'm hallucinating but not delusional, whereas e.g. datura produces both hallucinations and delusion.
> I don't see why it needs to be anything so grandiose. I'm not griping at you, per se, I just don't understand why psychedelics enthusiasts consistently bang the metaphysical drum
It’s really annoying. The truth is, there’s nothing profound about tripping, it’s just a drug that changes your perception. There’s nothing intrinsically magical or spiritual about it. I enjoy tripping once or twice a year because it makes things look amazing and music sound cool, and your thoughts seem super profound (but they aren’t).
I would very much like to try that, as well as DMT itself. I only have experience with LSD (tested with Ehrlich’s reagent) and mushrooms. I will keep my eyes peeled for some.
For those curious, without any nefarious or illegal intent, here is a botanical fun fact: the tree species acacia confusa is native to Australia and produces agriculturally relevant amounts of bufotenine and DMT. This can be a problem since these chemicals are typically expressed in the root bark, which can be exposed to abuse by the elements. In particular, since these compounds are water-soluble and easily leech out of root bark into water (or any suitable polar solvent), this might pose an ecological concern for animals living near these trees.
Thankfully, enterprising botanical entrepreneurs are doing their best to remediate the impact of acacia confusa on the environment, by gathering loose pieces of the root bark, powdering it, and selling the powder online. It makes a quite beautiful red/purple dye. Other interesting material properties include its use as a natural soap, and there appears to be some evidence for its utility as a wound healing agent.
Unfortunately, hooligans on the internet seem to be acquiring this incredible dye for the purpose of drug manufacture. Please do not be like these hooligans. Leave the root bark powder of acacia confusa, commonly abbreviated to ACRB, to those of us using it as a dye.
Even more upsetting is the ritual (ab)use of ACRB or other DMT-containing plants in combination with one of my other favorite dyes: refined harmaline, which is a beautiful yellow under normal light and flouresces brilliantly when exposed to black light. There are some positively in-the-paint ne'er-do-wells that will consume two of these dyes, ACRB (or similar pigment) and refined harmalines, within very quick succession. Usually they will then vomit, which serves them right!
> It's my understanding that Psilocybin and LSD do not produce hallucinations (e.g. seeing something which does not exist. I'm aware of the difficulty of qualifying the previous sentence) versus changing your perception of phenomena.
Your understanding matches my anecdotal experience over a couple dozen LSD and psilocybin experiences. Largest doses for me are 10 ‘tabs’ and 7g shrooms.
The visual effects make colors more vivid, textures will shimmer, objects will morph and warp, some things will have a ‘halo’ around them, things of that nature.
I’ve never seen something that isn’t actually a real object while tripping, just perceptual changes on real objects, and I’ve never forgot that I’m tripping while tripping.
> Personally I have reached a personal belief that entheogens allow you traverse the realms of existence
This I don’t agree with, there’s nothing profound or magical about tripping. It’s just a way to perceive things differently, none of the stuff you think of during a trip is actually profound, it just seems that way. If you don’t believe me, try journaling or recording your thoughts on video while tripping and watch it while sober.
It’s simply a chemical that changes the way you perceive things, that’s all. Nothing spiritual or mystical.
FWIW I’ve done pretty much every common drug aside from MDMA (excluding research chemicals).
I had very little LSD and got very vivid hallucinations out of it. Things like little devils dancing on a normally plain white wall, stick figures running on rooftops...
Oh really you used an ehrlich reagent? I really doubt that:
A. you actually had those types of hallucinations if it was LSD
B. you actually tested your tab
This is because that kind of subjective effect is just not what LSD does. Full stop. It is possible that you have some underlying schizophrenic tendencies that were triggered by LSD though.
Personally I have reached a personal belief that entheogens allow you traverse the realms of existence [1] within your lifetime. For example, descending into the hell realm or ascending into the deva realm
If you take hallucinogen frequently enough (it took me around 150 trips over 2 years) , you began to see how it work behind the curtain, how it pulls your strings and it loose all it's magic forever.
I now "know" that I cannot know anything about the spiritual realm. Spiritual "knowledge" gained by religion, meditation and hallucinogen it's all fake, what we can perceive as spiritual is a distorted projection of the inner working of the mind that gets rationalized as spirituality. That agnosticism is the only rational position.
I don't claim that hallucinogen religion and meditation cannot have positive benefits but don't seek spirutal enlightenment to hard or you will eventually into an hole or join a cult.
I cannot word it coherently but I will try! Succinctly it feels like the scene in The wizard of Oz where Dorothy see that the Wizard himself is nothing more than an ordinary man behind a curtain.
I started an intense spirutal quest after a meditation session¹, that unexpectedly left me disoriented, depressed and generally dysfunctional. My first few trips after that event made me hopeful again but left me curious as I felt that there was a deeper truth to be found.
1-in a college course on meditation (I had the choice between soccer, golf and meditation... in retrospective I should have chosen Golf)
At that time most of the more obscure hallucinogen described in Tikal and Phikal were legal and easy to obtain from Sigma-Aldrich at reasonable price and I knew people who could obtain quality LSD. So I tried almost everything that Shuglin described as +++.
But it's repeated combination of dextromethorphan (a surprisingly complex drug that is mostly a dissociative) and things in Thikal (LSD, 4-AcO-DMT, 5-meo-mipt...) that pulled on the curtain. 350mg of DXM made me prone to recursive toughts without blocking my ability to remember and the tryptamine brought the spiritual aspect. After thinking about thinking that I am thinking for what felt like a thousand years I came to experience the holodeck effect where you can will any scene into "existence", it's my repeated interactions with my "holodeck" that pulled that metaphorical curtain to reveal that the Wizard was nothing more than a physical process inside me.
After that I lost my access to the holodeck, hallucinogens became physically unpleasant and mentally uninteresting. My quest ended as I felt that I had learned what could be learned about spirituality and stopped worrying about a deeper hidden meaning in life. Things happen because they happen and there is no answer to why something instead of nothing (a complete nothingnes, not the nothingnes of a perfect vaccuum) and it doesn't matter!
Thank you for sharing some of your story. It's really wild to imagine a time where Shulgin's 'dirty pictures' were still legal and could be easily ordered.
By the time I got round to PiKHAL and TiKHAL everything was scheduled.
Personally, I disagree with the notion that "it doesn't matter" when reflecting on life. However, I understand the tremendous importance of being able to let go of things and the freedom that comes with that.
I work at a traditional ayahuasca retreat center and have seen a few people who have "holodeck"-like experiences with ayahuasca. In our view it's a bit of a block, or a crutch and way to distract oneself from looking at yourself and doing necessary healing work. I've heard the most fantastic stories but it is all very ungrounded and disconnected from what we actually see in them. DXM is indeed a powerful dissociative and would contribute to that (I believe it's possible to burn yourself out with it; regular users report losing the magic of early experiences fairly quickly). Alas it does look like you've started some great work but may have hit a plateau...as someone who has drank hundreds of times with no plan on stopping any time soon, I'd encourage you to dig deeper :)
Thank you but I feel great and have no interest I digging deeper.
edit:
And to learn what you need to change I never experienced something as effective and as harsh as 2CE, personal problems were magnified front and center and you feel like if you doesn't make a plan to adress those issues and execute that plan you will painfully burst into flame.
Also I don't opposed nor judge the work you do, spiritual beliefs or lack of are deeply personal, that why I put quote around "know" in my post.
>> It's my understanding that Psilocybin and LSD do not produce hallucinations (e.g. seeing something which does not exist. I'm aware of the difficulty of qualifying the previous sentence) versus changing your perception of phenomena.
If you sit in a completely dark room on LSD, you will see something other than a completely dark room. Do those things that you see exist? Maybe there's some technical definition of hallucination that isn't being met, but turning a complete lack of visual stimulus into something sounds like a hallucination to me.
I was always aware at some level that what I was experiencing was due to the drugs I took, so maybe that has something to do with whether it was a hallucination or not?
> There are at least three different pharmacological ways to induce hallucinations: (1) activation of dopamine D2 receptors (D2Rs) with psychostimulants, (2) activation of serotonin 5HT2A receptors (HT2ARs) with psychedelics, and (3) blockage of glutamate NMDA receptors (NMDARs) with dissociative anesthetics.
I’m always surprised when the kappa-opioid pathway (salvinorin A) is overlooked. It produces very distinctive hallucinations. I lack the personal experience to judge, but I think it’s phenomenalogically distinct from other dissociate experiences. It should be easier to research given that Salvia diviniorum and its constituents are not controlled federally nor in many states.
A bit more dangerous recreationally but scopolamine (datura/brugmansia/etc) is hallucinogenic in yet another way (antimuscarinic, blocking acetylcholine receptors).
You can also hallucinate severely (visual and auditory) during the delerium tremens (and alcoholic hallucinosis), which are caused by abrupt alcohol withdrawal after heavy and prolonged use.
What if the brain can perceive more signals but that the most common signals are those that are "known" to be captured by the average of the population?
To put it another way, there could also be cases where what is deemed an hallucination isn't, but it might lead to psychosis if the subject doesn't know how to interpret the new signal.
To reason by analogy, that would be akin to everyone being blind and a couple people developping sight.
Whole point is that unless we can understand what the brain is doing, we simply observe a phenomenon but we don't know what the phenomenon actually is.
(not talking about drug induced hallucinations, just to be clear)
There are plenty of good scientists and engineers who do psychedelics. If what you say were true, I think at least one of them would have figured out what the sense data is caused by in the environment and have set up a demo such that they can reliably react to a signal sent by a skeptical tester who turns the demo device's power switch off and on, in order to provide evidence to skeptics of their superior perception ability.
Related and interesting, there are some common visual patterns across many hallucinogenic experiences, “form constants”. Possibly related somehow to the organization of our visual system.
It blew my mind when I learned these exist, and especially when I learned there has been apparently little research into them. Maybe more informed minds than I have determined there’s nothing to learn from them, but it seems like there would be insights to gain about how we see.
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