Hallucinogens and stuff

anotherusername

@obeselymorbid said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

Whoa! I still can't decide whether I believe that or there was a massive conspiracy and all his friends decided to prank him by pretending they do see shit in their head.

I do. I can picture a scene.

@obeselymorbid said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

You know these "Read it in Morgan Freeman's voice." I can't do this but I never thought anyone could, not that I gave it much thought.

Yes. I can literally imagine that I hear his voice reading it. I can imagine music... full orchestral music, not his do-do-do "milk voice". Quite frankly, it's pretty awesome, and I feel sorry for anyone who can't. I can literally give myself goosebumps just by imagining something spectacular. In fact, I can give myself goosebumps even without imagining anything.

obeselymorbid

@Zecc said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

Kind of like people who have aphantasia and didn't realize because they thought everyone else was talking metaphorically.

Whoa! I still can't decide whether I believe that or there was a massive conspiracy and all his friends decided to prank him by pretending they do see shit in their head.

This pretty much describes my experience exactly:

Descriptive language in novels was important to her but impotent to me; I skip it as reflexively as you skip the iTunes Terms of Service. Instead, I scour fiction like an archaeologist: Find the bones.
The slender, olive-skinned man brushed the golden locks out of his hazel eyes. He was so focused on preparing for the assassination that he burned his tongue on the scalding cuppa joe (hazelnut, light cream).
That becomes: There’s an assassin.

If it's true that most people do have these mental pictures, you people are seriously weird.

Jaloopa

@obeselymorbid can you imagine something you smelled or tasted? What about sounds, can you hear people's voices or do you just hear yourself saying what they would say?

I assume you think in words rather than pictures?

obeselymorbid

@Jaloopa said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

can you imagine something you smelled or tasted?

I cannot even imagine "imagining smell or taste". I can remember that shit smells bad and perfume smells nice. I remember how some things I've eaten tasted but I cannot feel the taste when thinking about those things if that's what you mean.

What about sounds, can you hear people's voices or do you just hear yourself saying what they would say?

You know these "Read it in Morgan Freeman's voice." I can't do this but I never thought anyone could, not that I gave it much thought.

I assume you think in words rather than pictures?

Words, concepts. Now, that I think of it, I cannot even see a face of people I meet every day. I mean, I remember what they look like but I don't see the picture as apparently people do.

Jaloopa

@obeselymorbid It's really interesting how people's experiences vary, and you just kind of assume other people are like you.

I can picture an image if I concentrate but it doesn't come naturally, isn't particularly clear and slips away if I stop focussing. OTOH, I almost always have a song playing in my head, sounding exactly as I heard it, and if I think of someone I hear their voice before I see them.

obeselymorbid

@anotherusername said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

Quite frankly, it's pretty awesome, and I feel sorry for anyone who can't.

Meh, if that's the price I have to pay for not seeing dreams while sleeping, it's fine with me.

As far as I see it, both from reading that article and my own experiences, the only real downside is the need to have some visual aids while wanking, while for people not suffering of aphantasia, it's apparently not strictly required.

Jaloopa

@obeselymorbid have you ever taken hallucinogenics? I'd be interested to know if they had any effect on aphantasiacs.

obeselymorbid

@Jaloopa No. I'm not radically opposed to such experiments, I guess the opportunity just never presented itself.
I'm not going to spend money and risk problems with the law obtaining hallucinogenics, but if you have some to spare, feel free to send them my way and I'll report my findings :)

anotherusername

@obeselymorbid said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

Meh, if that's the price I have to pay for not seeing dreams while sleeping, it's fine with me.

Funny you should mention that... I hardly ever dream, actually. Sometimes, but it's rare that I remember dreaming, and even rarer that I remember what it was about. Of course it's possible that I dream and just don't remember it, but from my perspective that's no different than just not dreaming at all.

I wouldn't describe dreaming as a bad thing, either.

obeselymorbid

@anotherusername said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

Of course it's possible that I dream and just don't remember it, but from my perspective that's no different than just not dreaming at all.

Well, yes, in that sense I'm not sure I don't dream either. The only thing that matters is I don't wake up remembering dreams and I certainly would describe that as a good thing.

anotherusername

@obeselymorbid said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

Well, yes, in that sense I'm not sure I don't dream either. The only thing that matters is I don't wake up remembering dreams

Right. For all intents and purposes, not remembering them is the same as not having them.

and I certainly would describe that as a good thing.

Why? Some of the ones I've had were pretty... fun. And I can't say I remember ever having a really unpleasant one. Maybe I'm just lucky.

obeselymorbid

@anotherusername said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

Why not?

I've only had one occurrence where I remembered the dream pretty clearly and it wasn't a pleasant one. When I was younger I had a few mornings I woke up with the vague recollection of some dream - some more pleasant than others, but ultimately I'm thankful I don't have them as generally it's useless information at best and potentially harmful if people tend to pay too close attention to their dreams, be they good or bad.

Onyx

@anotherusername said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

In fact, I can give myself goosebumps even without imagining anything.

Effortless ? I'm slightly

anotherusername

@Onyx I said goosebumps, not orgasms. I wish... then again, that might just take most of the fun out of it.

aliceif

@anotherusername said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

@Onyx I said goosebumps, not orgasms. I wish... then again, that might just take most of the fun out of it.

I'm sure doing the thing with an Asari could be plenty fun.

Filed under: I should play that again

Tsaukpaetra

@obeselymorbid said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

I cannot

@Jaloopa said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

but it doesn't come naturally

@anotherusername said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

who can't

OOC: It's really sad that we can't actually assimilate people into a collective. Distributed Resources could let others without the ability to have a Stage all their own to experience it with...

@Jaloopa said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

if they had any effect on aphantasiacs.

IIRC they usually affects active perceptions and enhances interpretations of those perceptions. So, @obeselymorbid's experience will likely be something like "confusing things are happening around me, colors are wrong, sounds are wrong, but nothing seems downright crazy so far..."
Well, after the fact. Maybe he should interactively record the experience so those who can might be able to imagine it?

@anotherusername said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

I hardly ever dream, actually.

Most of the time I only actively dream when I fail to properly sleep, or intentionally populate the Stage (I guess it would be termed "seeding") prior to sleeping.

My problem is, dreaming takes place only on the Stage, and wakeup procedures typically reinitialize the Stage to default unless I specifically hook a callback to prevent full wakeup so I can transfer information back into low memory (and a second hook to keep it there until after wake so I can make use of it, possibly transferring it back to the Stage for analysis).

@anotherusername said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

For all intents and purposes, not remembering them is the same as not having them.

Those who experience unrecalled nightmares or wet dreams would beg the differ. Especially recurrent ones...

In any case, has this side discussion gained worthiness of a jeffing yet? What say you, @mods ?

Tsaukpaetra

@Tsaukpaetra said in Hallucinogens and stuff:

worthiness of a jeffing yet?

... Well, it doesn't go back to the original post, but well enough for something I guess. ;)

For context, the original post is here in case it doesn't get jeffed too. ;)

Zecc

I get the feeling I should be reporting bugs on the What bugs? tracker.

Tsaukpaetra

@Zecc said in Hallucinogens and stuff:

I get the feeling

Topic relevant interrogation: Do you actually feel that, or is it an abstraction of metaphoricality?

sloosecannon

@Tsaukpaetra slightly curious as to whether @Tsaukpaetra actually thinks about his brain like a computer or if it's just a persona. Because tbh, the metaphor fits more often than it doesn't....

Tsaukpaetra

@sloosecannon said in Hallucinogens and stuff:

whether @Tsaukpaetra actually thinks about his brain like a computer or if it's just a persona

I would say persona based on dynamic interpretation of an active IRL entity. No analogy is perfect, but I think my translations are accurate enough for the discussions I participate in.

For example, though there isn't actually a Stage "executable" per se running on my system; no, it's rather more complicated than that. Due to the high level of abstraction that my system is based on, it's rather difficult to really explain how it all works (Even I don't know all of it, really), since almost everything is connected to everything else, and oftentimes data movement is equivalent to data processing/calculation, but not necessarily using arithmetic or other standard calculation algorithms (which is part of why I can't crunch numbers in the same way binary computers can).

I'm open to questions if anyone's interested in asking, but I would warn that (due to the vagueness of interpretation) answers may not necessarily be consistent or 100% accurate (for example, "how many neurons do you have currently" it not a measurable metric due to no low-level access in that manner).

With regards to this thread, I found one of my posts that didn't get jeffed:

@Zecc said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

aphantasia

Well, my world would be a very different place if the Stage was disabled or otherwise inoperable. So many things have dependency hooks to it...

That actually worries me a bit, almost enough to see about crafting Stage-less as an emergency operation mode...

I mean, it does take a lot of resources, but allows parallelization of so many tasks so the benefits outweigh the costs, but, what would happen if it was suddenly gone? I don't currently have a fallback to that (well, at least in the same way I have a fallback for massively-reduced short-term memory condition 1 through 5)!

@mott555 said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

I also have a lot of trouble filtering through background noise.

So you suffer the same issues as modern Speech-to-text recognition/transcription programs?

I'll admit, for example, the Three Voices experiment (apparently it's for immersive VR things, YMMV running it) was a little confusing, since it has three clear and distinct voices narrating conversation. Anticipating the conversation flow definitely helped stay focused on the desired speaker, but when I was centered inside the circle, not even that could truly stop overlap...

Virtual Reality and ChatGPT

@chozang said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

I remember my meditation instructor telling me that she thinks in images. She said that some people think in paragraphs. I remember thinking, "Doesn't everyone?"

Depends on the mode I'm in.

When the Stage is set for standard operation, there are sections for IRL object mapping, timescale anticipation, and real-time representation of tasks and other things (for example, "that song stuck in my head" is represented by Generic Media Player (Streaming NoControl NoMeta)). There is a section allocated for arbitrary imagination, but it's not typically very large or fully featured.
When set for Programming, active code constructs abound! Those are... a little more difficult to describe. other than vague things like "objects are objects".
When set for Imaginarium, very little external input is typically represented, all objects are references to complex library item types, which are typically represented by referenced references to other library objects (it... gets complicated), but those aspects that have physically representable attributes usually appear in accordance to whatever is being visualized. Songs are fun! Stories are fun! Unfortunately, limited memory and the way objects are represented (links upon links) usually means details that aren't being paid attention to are "lost" temporarily until queried for rendering, and due to the nature of the library, this often doesn't complete in a timely manner.

Hmm...