> 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[...]
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.
Same. When I read that line my first thought was "ok, but have you tried that sober?" It seems like a rather intuitive way to counter the illusion without the need for DMT.
It's pretty easy for me to replicate the balanced circles by gazing at the center point. However, I can't say whether that would've held true had I not been predisposed to the possibility via the article.
It does require me to slightly "space out", for lack of a better way of putting. Not defocus, more like downshifting my visual cortex a notch.
For whatever it's worth, I was a college kid in the 90s, and I can induce a wavy effect on patterned walls and floors via a similar spacing out.
Author of the article here! Yes, of course, I've tried this sober — merely shifting attention does not work.
Thanks for the report. Some people do report being able to cancel it while sober. For most of them, defocusing their vision is required, which is not particularly surprising - you are removing the surrounding context.
Could you please tell me more about downshifting the visual cortex? I am planning to publish an update on this illusion, with various sober attention techniques to establish a baseline for future research.
I don’t find the illusion to be very effective in a sober state, so I’m not really sure what to think of the idea that 5-MeO “cancels” it. The one on the right barely seems bigger if at all, and I feel like I can context switch it similar to the Necker cube you mentioned. I guess I’m not impressed :)
At least I learned 5-MeO isn’t a song visual experience, I thought it was for some reason. On N, N-DMT you wouldn’t be able to look at anything.
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!
Yup, it’s a prodrug. Some people prefer it to the real thing because it has fewer GI side effects, although one study has said it has more adverse events (particularly cardiovascular stress) associated with it as well
I’m glad they are testing them and it demystifies a lot.
Of note the legal status in that state regulator’s article is misleading
4-Acetoxy-DET And 4-Acetoxy-DMT are not on any schedule, but could be subjected to the Analog Act, which itself has unresolved legal status per substance
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.
It's almost the same thing. Both psilocybin and 4-aco-dmt are just (?) prodrugs for psilocin which is the psychoactive compound associated with magic mushrooms.
It's not like those horrible synthetic THC analogues we see in Europe that can kill people.
Having done 4-AcO-DMT and Psilocybin (4-HO-DMT), I would not be able to distinguish them in a blind test.
I actually prefer 4-AcO because it's easier to get a consistent dose with (mushrooms vary in potency) and doesn't cause the nausea that consuming dried mushrooms sometimes causes.
I get how you could misread it, given his use of the word surreptitiously, but OP is not suggesting that the state is testing the products on consumers, but instead that they occasionally test the products to identify what they contain and what is being sold.
You're right, I definitely misread that part. Apologies!
FWIW, OP's framing is still misleading though. Regulators do not test retail product as part of some kind of surreptitious sting operation, which they then do not bother to follow through on.
The Department of Public Health responds to complaints, and patterns of medical reporting to find a cause and determine whether there are legal or health code violations. The sale of 5-MeO-DMT (or psilocybin or psilocin) would be shut down, and charges filed.
The sale of 4-Aco-DMT would be legal, so instead they issue warnings that amount to "That thing you bought that was sold with claims of similarity to an illegal drug does actually have physiological effects even though it's legal, so be careful.". Which is fair enough!
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?
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.
> 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, myself included, see the right circle as larger than the left one, regardless of how strongly you know they are the same size. Perception quirks like these are the basis for a lot of graphic design theory.
If the drug cancels this effect, it is doing something significant to the brain.
As someone who has done plenty of 5-meo-dmt and bufo I find this silly. Yes, something significant is happening...how could anyone really care about an optical illusion on your laptop when you're dissolving into God?
Anyways my guess is that his pupils were the size of dinner plates and I'd wonder if having your eyes dilated by other means would have a similar effect
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.
> 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".
The "I measured my own susceptibility using an app I vibe-coded with GPT-5.6 Sol: I dragged a slider until the two circles appeared equal in size." is available on IA:
i find this whole blog very dubious, with apologies to the author.
a bunch of people did psychedelics and then found that reality seemed more inclined to listen to their volition and respond to their intention or attention.
this was an n of some small number, and the original person who reported it could not reproduce it.
i don't believe this is good science.
the test is self made by the subject while under the affect of the drug.
the subject has a bias as well.
This sentence, from the article, is one of the most conceptually broken sentences I have ever encountered: "Consciousness has useful computational properties — otherwise evolution would not have come to rely on it." If you grant evolution teleology, a serious chickenegg emerges, and the recursion shatters the "logic". And the other reading... how does a computational property manifest as an abstract goal on to itself without the pre-existence of consciousness? Another chickenegg. I wonder if this article was originally translated from another language or was created with inference. The author conflates design and evolution without providing any projection for their orthogonality. In other words, you need some kind of God to infuse a priori consciousness onto this evolution process. Otherwise consciousness is simply emergent.
drcongo | 19 hours ago
This works for me without DMT.
superb-owl | 19 hours ago
lstodd | 18 hours ago
drcongo | 18 hours ago
marssaxman | 18 hours ago
bitbuilder | 18 hours ago
It's pretty easy for me to replicate the balanced circles by gazing at the center point. However, I can't say whether that would've held true had I not been predisposed to the possibility via the article.
It does require me to slightly "space out", for lack of a better way of putting. Not defocus, more like downshifting my visual cortex a notch.
For whatever it's worth, I was a college kid in the 90s, and I can induce a wavy effect on patterned walls and floors via a similar spacing out.
eatitraw | 17 hours ago
Thanks for the report. Some people do report being able to cancel it while sober. For most of them, defocusing their vision is required, which is not particularly surprising - you are removing the surrounding context.
Could you please tell me more about downshifting the visual cortex? I am planning to publish an update on this illusion, with various sober attention techniques to establish a baseline for future research.
40four | 6 hours ago
At least I learned 5-MeO isn’t a song visual experience, I thought it was for some reason. On N, N-DMT you wouldn’t be able to look at anything.
throwup238 | 19 hours ago
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 | 18 hours ago
This article also says that 5-MeO-DMT has no psychoactive effects taken orally
throwup238 | 18 hours ago
[1] https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/OPA/Pages/NR25-024.aspx
ews | 18 hours ago
Jerrrrrrrrry | 18 hours ago
radicaldreamer | 18 hours ago
yieldcrv | 17 hours ago
Of note the legal status in that state regulator’s article is misleading
4-Acetoxy-DET And 4-Acetoxy-DMT are not on any schedule, but could be subjected to the Analog Act, which itself has unresolved legal status per substance
tgtweak | 18 hours ago
quesera | 18 hours ago
Apparently it feeds your biases though. Check your filters, perhaps?
riffic | 18 hours ago
quesera | 18 hours ago
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.
radicaldreamer | 18 hours ago
quesera | 18 hours ago
Legal, unregulated, and synthetic. But close enough for the moderately-savvy customer.
dns_snek | 16 hours ago
It's not like those horrible synthetic THC analogues we see in Europe that can kill people.
gavinray | 16 hours ago
I actually prefer 4-AcO because it's easier to get a consistent dose with (mushrooms vary in potency) and doesn't cause the nausea that consuming dried mushrooms sometimes causes.
csh0 | 18 hours ago
quesera | 17 hours ago
FWIW, OP's framing is still misleading though. Regulators do not test retail product as part of some kind of surreptitious sting operation, which they then do not bother to follow through on.
The Department of Public Health responds to complaints, and patterns of medical reporting to find a cause and determine whether there are legal or health code violations. The sale of 5-MeO-DMT (or psilocybin or psilocin) would be shut down, and charges filed.
The sale of 4-Aco-DMT would be legal, so instead they issue warnings that amount to "That thing you bought that was sold with claims of similarity to an illegal drug does actually have physiological effects even though it's legal, so be careful.". Which is fair enough!
radicaldreamer | 18 hours ago
Also, it is an extremely powerful psychedelic with effects nothing like psilocybin. It’s most likely 4-Aco-DMT
AngryData | 15 hours ago
axblount | 19 hours ago
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 | 18 hours ago
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 | 18 hours ago
lstodd | 18 hours ago
Most one can do is accept that one is limited by one's perception and then keep that in mind.
quesera | 18 hours ago
We're all blind, and that might be an elephant.
ricardobeat | 18 hours ago
You may be an exception here?
Most humans, myself included, see the right circle as larger than the left one, regardless of how strongly you know they are the same size. Perception quirks like these are the basis for a lot of graphic design theory.
If the drug cancels this effect, it is doing something significant to the brain.
temp0826 | 18 hours ago
Anyways my guess is that his pupils were the size of dinner plates and I'd wonder if having your eyes dilated by other means would have a similar effect
yfontana | 18 hours ago
cj | 18 hours ago
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 | 18 hours ago
My brother, that is philosophical position, not a "bet".
ricardobeat | 18 hours ago
bawolff | 18 hours ago
WASDx | 18 hours ago
functionmouse | 18 hours ago
Gys | 18 hours ago
So I vibe code one:
https://ebbinghaus-effect.greulen.workers.dev
(a one shot in DeepSeek, with only manual adjustments for the sizes)
bawolff | 18 hours ago
On that hypothesis, it doesnt really surprise me that illusions based on context clues are interpreted differently.
mmsc | 18 hours ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20261008201251/https://heart.qri...
tim-star | 18 hours ago
a bunch of people did psychedelics and then found that reality seemed more inclined to listen to their volition and respond to their intention or attention.
this was an n of some small number, and the original person who reported it could not reproduce it.
i don't believe this is good science. the test is self made by the subject while under the affect of the drug. the subject has a bias as well.
this is a trip report.
vablings | 16 hours ago
"i don't believe this is good science"
This is a blog.
ForHackernews | 18 hours ago
suoloordi | 18 hours ago
waffletower | 16 hours ago
kouru225 | 15 hours ago