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Whenever I hear these stories about multiple cultures having the same hallucination, I think that we have to give some weight to the possibility that the little
by jsw97 1mo ago
Whenever I hear these stories about multiple cultures having the same hallucination, I think that we have to give some weight to the possibility that the little people are real and the mushrooms just let us see them.
- eqmvii 1mo agosomething something machine elves...
- teddyh 1mo ago<https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=On_the_Origin_of_the_%22Influencing_Machine%22_in_Schizophrenia&oldid=1345146294 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=On_the_Origin_of_...>
- xgkickt 1mo ago>They believed their thoughts and bodily sensations were controlled by a machine that defied their technical comprehension and secretly influenced them from a distance, often claiming that it was operated by a group of people who were persecuting them. That also describes data centers ;)
- teddyh 1mo agoIt’s the Torment Nexus.
- elwell 1mo agoWhy do people say "something something...", and why does it irk me?
- Yiin 1mo agothink of it like a placeholder for a great argument/explanation that doesn't necessarily exist, but would be funny if it did and would aledge whatever follows (in this case mechanical elfs) as being highly relevant to the topic at hand.
- x______________ 1mo agoNo tv and no beer make Homer something something [0] 0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=ufDqfQxPnJo https://youtube.com/watch?v=ufDqfQxPnJo
- MichaelZuo 1mo agoYeah if it’s literally 90%+ people report the same thing… that seems impossible to explain even with a novel psychoactive substance… How can chemical compounds contain an entire script of what the little people can and cannot do?
- devmor 1mo ago> How can chemical compounds contain an entire script of what the little people can and cannot do? I understand what you’re trying to say, but this sentence could be an argument against DNA. It’s also chemical compounds that contain an entire script of what our species can and cannot do - and much more.
- MichaelZuo 1mo agoDNA operates on a much lower level than large scale macro behavior such as 3cm to 30cm tall beings visually phasing through walls, or not… unless you think DNA does somehow directly affect it?
- devmor 1mo agoDNA operates at vast spans of different scales - from the efficiency of your mitochondria all the way up to your preference for certain foods.
- MichaelZuo 1mo agoYes indirectly… it doesnt directly determine whether you literally see things phasing through walls or not? Did you not read the article?
- devmor 1mo agoIt absolutely does. People with genetic schizophrenia often experience the exact same type of hallucinations as their relatives. Please stop attempting to flame/throw petty shade because you don't like that I disagreed with you.
- unsupp0rted 1mo agoWhat's more likely: 1. There are invisible tiny people that only a specific mushroom that hits your brain in a very specific way can let you see 2. There aren't invisible tiny people but a specific mushroom that hits your brain in a very specific way makes you hallucinate a specific thing
- hmokiguess 1mo ago3. Both, it’s schroedinger tiny people enabled by quantum mushroom gateways
- tzs 1mo agoYou have missed a case: 0. There are tiny people who are not invisible but there is something that makes it so humans ignore them. That specific mushroom interfered with whatever that is so that we can see them. An argument for #0 and in favor of #2 is the #2 requires the mushroom to cause an hallucination that includes a lot of generated detail to be realistic and consistent with how an actual tiny person would behave and affect the world. #0 on the other hand is just turning something off. An argument for #0 over #1 is that #0 does not require actual invisibility. If there were actually invisible tiny people we still probably would have discovered by now the physical mechanism that can make things invisible, which w e have not. Unless we are going to consider magic or psychic powers or some other such thing completely beyond known physics we can almost certainly rule out actual invisibility.
- hnbad 1mo agoThe empirical solution would be to administer the mushroom to people who are not equipped to correctly predict how an actual tiny person would physically interact with certain situations (idk maybe something involving surface tension and liquids of different viscuousities) and instruct them to report their observations. This would then either demonstrate that the tiny people do not obey the laws of physics or that they follow the subject's imagined laws of physics and are therefore hallucinations. Also of course the tiny people do not seem to causally interact with their physical environment in any measurable way (at least to observers of the test subject) so that already strongly points towards hallucinations but that kind of thinking isn't how you get a grant.
- fhdkweig 1mo agoI believe that it is because we all have the same basic brain structure. The part of the brain that controls speech is in the same location in each person. So is motor control, vision, etc. Maybe having the same chemical stimulants going through the same basic processing hardware causes the same outputs. But that's just like my opinion man.
- culi 1mo agoSome would say all of our consciousness is a hallucination. > It doesn't matter which side of the road you drive on. It matters that everyone else is also driving on that side. I bet if all our brains were wired to constantly see little people, we would adapt and eventually pick up on subtle cues related to the environment or our emotions. Some student taking an intro to cultural anthropology course would be shocked to find out that some culture has a very different relationship to their little people as she does to her little people. Strangers making small talk on the subway would ask each other what their little people have been up to today. Someone on Hackernews would be reading an article about an herb that can make the little people completely invisible for days.
- gwbas1c 1mo agoThe article explains that other medical phenomenon cause the same hallucinations, such as macular degeneration.
- dreamcompiler 1mo agoPokemon Go figured out how to do this without the mushrooms.
- culi 1mo agoMushroom foragers are forever grateful to Pokemon Go for normalizing adults wandering into random bushes
- _alternator_ 1mo agoDepends on your definition of what "real" means. Does it mean that people really have the experience of seeing little people? If so, then in that sense it's real. Or does it mean that these little people exist in some other way, outside of the mind and potentially accessible to other physical means of intervention? Probably not.
- elwell 1mo agoThird question: Is there a difference?
- russdill 1mo agoThis would be laughably easy to disprove. Just put multiple people in the same room and have them privately describe what they see.
- ryantgtg 1mo agoI misread the title at first and thought it was the little people that had been identified.
- culi 1mo agoI fully support your decision to live in a world of whimsy and wonder
- dennis_jeeves2 1mo agoThere are some thinkers (IMHO) who do think it's real possibility. These thinkers are well aware of hallucinations and have accounted for it.