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For some ppl, psychedelics sort of 'erase' beliefs from your mind; the question is, is your brain the kind to fill in the erased gaps with anything (e.g., "i lost belief in materialism... so there *must* be the supernatural!") or is it the kind of brain to let them stay erased?

9:03 PM · Jan 8, 2022

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My theory is this is the thing that differentiates harmful experiences vs really wonderful experiences like I happened to have. Imo the benefit of starting doses real small and slow is you can figure out which type of brain you have before you hit big doses.

Idk if there's techniques you can learn that have meaningful impacts on this. If you haven't done psychedelics, they can be fucking intense and deity-levels of strong and if you think you can control the experience in any way you're probably gonna have an interesting time

So I'm skeptical (but not fully ruling out!) that certain strategies can prevent filling in your erased-belief gaps with anything else in order to preserve your brain's feeling of control. I do wonder if very gradual 'practice' with the slowly increasing dose strategy can help

I also sorta doubt that there's much in the realm of conscious judgment about a person that predicts psychedelic response; my guess is this is closer to a "is your brain wired in a way such that cilantro tastes like soap" thing than a "you have unresolved trauma" thing.

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When you see someone start to fill in the lost beliefs, what does that look like? Is it simply finding supernatural things more plausible, or are there signs to look for?

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uh imo its believing things they wouldn't ordinarily believe had they not taken psychs? this isn't a hard rule though; i think its very plausible for psychs to rearrange your brain in a way that actually does cause more accurate beliefs, but i'd start out with a skeptic lens

@vlad_avy

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