Site replicates effects of psychedelic drugs | Hacker News Reader

Site replicates effects of psychedelic drugs

squareeater.com

74 pointsSquareOne29 comments

I've never done any sort of drug. I was skeptical that this would do anything. Having just cancelled my cable (because, you know, fuck TV and its rot...)

-- I decided to test this out. My procedure was to turn off all of the lights in my apartment, put on my headphones, and set this short 'Lucid' to full screen.

Here are my results: No hallucinations or anything, I do feel very calm. This may be because I was just sitting there not thinking for a while. No seizures either, thanks creator.

It is a very interesting effect as the flashes from the screen end up taking up your entire field of view, not just the screen. Also if you close your eyes a bit, you can see the flashes on your eyelids quite clearly, kind of in reverse.

If you kind of let go a little bit, and let your eyes loose focus, the effect gets a bit more intense. I had this really deep scared feeling at one moment towards the end, because the feeling was so novel to me (the screen was starting to consume my whole field of vision... it was really weird).

Altogether, however, nothing particularly unexpected in terms of results I don't think. I suspect you could stare at any flashing screen with random patterns and achieve a similar effect. (Perhaps that is the point?)

Also, I'm glad this didn't turn out like Snow Crash where the white noise causes the programmers to

Never taken good psychoactives have you?!

You cannot simulate the solvency of consciousness and ego.

If you experiment with psychoactives don't do so alone and make sure you are in a safe secure environment with people you trust and preferable have experience with psychoactives themselves.

Tread carefully - a full on trip is a VERY confronting experience if you don't know what to expect.

You might just as well trawl http://www.pown.it/ - but 9.5 points for the link bait

Site attempts to replicate the effects of psychedelic drugs. It's mildly effective, but no more effective than listening to dubstep with a subwoofer.

Actually, a bit less effective than the latter.

But the music in the squares is better than your average dubstep track.

After staring at 'Deep Down' for a couple minutes, then at the rest of the room, it does kind of look like my houseplants are waving around. It's a start!

I have found a few uses for binaural beats such as power napping, stimulation for studying, and meditation/relaxation/anti-anxiety.

For psychedelic effects...meh

One interesting experiment I have tried is looking at brain wave recording of monks in pubmed and trying to recreate the frequencies, with mixed results.

This week, I am blindfolding myself for a few days and expect interesting results.

Brian Dunning, of Skeptoid fame, has written an article/podcast about 'Digital Drugs':

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4147

"[...] while the claimed science behind binaural beats is unfounded, this doesn't mean that the effect isn't real and simply unexplained. Maybe you can listen to a certain binaural beat and induce a desired state, but for reasons we don't yet understand. So let's take a look at the research, and see if such an effect has actually been observed. [...]"

..follows a lot of background info, with references, and at the end of the article he comes to the conclusion:

"So, in summary, binaural beats certainly do not work the way the sellers claim, but there's no reason to think they're any less effective than any other music track you might listen to that effects you in a way you like. If they make you sleepy (like they all do for me), use them to go to sleep. If they relax you or get you amped, use them for that. But don't expect them to be any more effective than regular music. If someone you know claims that they are, put them to the test, and bust the myth."

Squareeater has a page about the science from real journals: http://squareeater.com/howitworks.html

From that page: <i>We are often asked "aren't the effects just placebo?". While there certainly have been users whose response is largely imagined, there have been a number of studies (see research below) published in legitimate scientific journals drawing a correlation between binaural beats and brainwave functions. While the research is insufficient at this point to fully understand how the brain reacts with entrainment, a variety of responses have been well documented.</i>

I had an idea like this a while back, but I tried to go with less flashy and more interesting patterns. I was making a website for stoners who were up late at night. The plan was to sell them pizza and other munchies.

http://www.treeowls.com

Navigation is rough but click on "content" and then the picture of what you want to view. Some of them move along with the mouse, most don't. It never got much further than how it is now because I felt guilty selling things to people who were chemically dependent on drugs. Still a pretty good idea though.

Ever since I saw this webcomic, I knew that was a great idea! http://www.octopuspie.com/2007-07-09/025-well-duh/

"Site replicates effects of psychedelic drugs"

No, it doesn't.

I still can't wait for the day I can simply lick my choice-of-screen-at-the-time to get a high, akin to LSD. :P

ponders whether licking an image of blotter paper works just as well

I am unsure what these things are intended to induce, but I mostly find the flashy bits annoying at best. The sound by itself can be soothing, but combined with the flashes, it just stresses me out.

edit: I should probably note that my brain is not exactly wired 'right'. So that may have some mitigating consequences.

In my case it induced a sweet end of the workday headache.

Thanks for the head's up...

For me, it induced a pleasant, mild hypnotic trance after about 5-7 minutes. Then, mild visual "floaties" dancing around in psychedelic patterns.

I imagine this wouldn't be any good for people who are light-sensitive in negative ways (e.g. prone to migraines).

I think the goal is to replicate the mild hallucinations that accompany certain psychedelics, such as the "breathing" of textures.

This is like trying to replicate the effect of food by looking at pictures of spinning donuts.

Make sure you're following the instructions before you criticize the site. Being as near to the monitor as possible (moving it half and inch or less in front of your face) is really important.

Well, here's my first criticism of the site: I could not find instructions anywhere.

http://squareeater.com/howtouse.html

Very, very cool, for what it is. After about 7 minutes, I begin to see fairly interesting evolving kaleidoscopic patterns that are in my mind, and not actually on the screen. I'd like to go further, but the sound stops randomly after 3-7 minutes, which is the only thing seriously limiting my enjoyment of it.

Of course, this has very little in common with a real psychedelic experience. It's more trance-like, and somewhat meditative, which is still neat.

Not as good as the real thing. Don't visit if you are epileptic.

Weird. I've never had any problem with visuals inducing nausea or motion sickness, but that (Deep Down, short) made me feel very unwell. Interesting part is the nausea only came on 5-10min later (I'm assuming it was that... aside from HN/Google News and a glass of water, that has been my only stimulus so far today).

real disruptors. They might take drug dealers out of business in a matter of months considering the fact that it's an easy scalable idea. If you add bitcoins they might take over the world. Unless someone from Mexico will buy them out.

Funny thing. Site supports it's claims by referencing 3 articles, whilst there are 10^2 articles claiming the opposite. Good old TV-shop marketing trick.

It's an interesting idea, but after 10 minutes of staring at the flashing screen, the only thing I got out of it was a headache.

There were no leaves on the bed, so I turned it off.

Doesn't work at all for me, and it introduced me to a whole new failure mode for Flash: They load to the initial screen, which flickers like mad and would likely induce a seizure were I prone to them at all. My mouse cursor changes to a 'hand' when it's over the play button, but when I click it doesn't register at all. No sound, no change.

(Firefox 4.0.1 from the repos on Natty x86_64 with flashplugin-installer 10.3.181.14ubuntu0.11.04.1 from the repos (latest; installed just this evening). I can do things like YouTube just fine; this is the only site I have Flash problems on. It is, in fact, the only site I've ever had Flash problems on in many years with Ubuntu.)

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