VR is as good as psychedelics at helping people reach transcendence

technologyreview.com

16 points·amynordrum··4 comments

Hmmm, maybe. I like the Thai Chi exercise and the Calm apps on Oculus but I can't say they are life changing. One VR experience that maybe is more life changing is the ability for me to instantly get my head out of whatever I am doing when I put my Oculus on for a 5 minute game of ping-pong. Clears the head and running around for 5 minutes hitting the ball is good after sitting at my desk for a while.

"On key metrics, a VR experience elicited a response indistinguishable from subjects who took medium doses of LSD or magic mushrooms."

"Key metrics"

No idea what that means, article is paywalled. Color me skeptical that it could be meaningfully relevant in treatment of psychological disorders

For whatever reason, it's not paywalled for me. The metrics are:

>For their paper, Glowacki and his collaborators measured the emotional response Isness-D elicited in 75 participants. They based their measurements on four metrics used in psychedelics research—the MEQ30 (a mystical experience questionnaire), the ego dissolution inventory scale, the “communitas” scale, and the “inclusion of community in self” scale. Communitas is defined as an experience of intense shared humanity that transcends social structure. Participants’ responses were then compared with those given in published, double-blind psychedelics studies.

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