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If more than one person experience the same exact hallucination..

Yes, simply because 1+ person has a similar drug-induced hallucination does not mean said drug-induced hallucination is based on reality approaching any sort of objective basis.

It's amusing, all I could see regarding the thread title before clicking on it was "if more than one person", and since it was in Psychedelic Drugs I thought, "oh please, for the love of god don't end in 'SEES THE SAME THING WHILE HIGH ON DRUGS, IS IT REAL?' " Lo and behold...
 
person 1: is that a blue elephant smoking a shisha?????

person 2: I dunno man.... wait I see it too!!!!!

>>> is there any way to confirm that what they see is actually the same thing? spoiler: no ;) furthermore, a sober observer probably wouldn't see it at all (allthough suggestibility might make him).
 
If more than one person experiences the same thing sober we should still be sceptical as to its existence, on psychedelics it's far far worse.
 
^ I don't disagree, but if you go down that road you end up at solipsism really fast ;)

What differs reality from a hallucination, in my opinion, is that your brain generates your picture of reality by computing physical input from the outside world (soundwaves, electromagnetic radiation, mechanical (touch) and chemical (smell, taste) interaction). a hallucination is, I believe, generated by brain activity exclusively.
 
You can never verify reality from within consensus reality, but yeah our consensus reality has a lot going for it much like provisional science: in the future something may show things to be incorrect about how we believe they work, but for now the models show overwhelming internal consistency.

Whereas hallucinations, whether shared or private, very often end up being very inconsistent and conflicting. Even if two people hallucinating agree on some of it, I don't think you wanna throw away all the incongruencies just because some of it is congruent.

People are quick to believe just about anything that doesn't really conflict strong enough with something they already know. If you experience vague or esoteric things that are just virtually impossible to completely disprove, it may lead people to believe it might be true. Often regardless of how vague or unlikely it is, or if plenty points to it being random or based on things as unreal as imagination.

I also think that believing in wild possibilities can often feel magical to people whereas they think that a scientific or clinical explanation is disillusioning. There are countless wild ideas and theories, many of which have zero credibility. Don't make a hobby out of entertaining too many, because it's a slippery slope and I don't think blurring the lines between imagination and realistic consistencies (empirical things) is really worth a magical feeling. Especially when science is often plenty wild itself.
I'm not saying don't fantasize, or don't believe anything whatsoever that hasn't been proven... but be very picky about it, it should really make *some* sense and not just be interesting.

Not sure of the exact cognitive tricks involved when people report the same hallucination, but it's important that a third party is able to check that one is not retroactively influencing the other or both influence each other. It's also important to note the circumstances because it's inevitable that some of the time, under identical conditions, people experience the same distortion of the same experience, or close. And what didn't match already can synchronize even more as people influence each other via verbal or non-verbal communication.
Einstein said something about two things being infinite, the universe and human stupidity [and he wasn't sure about the universe]... I think that applies not just for general folly but also for our persistent underestimation of how our mind can play tricks on us, exemplified by our denial of placebo.

@Bagseed:

I think what the brain generates exclusively is the hallucinations from sensory deprivation, and to some extent dissociative holes - in other cases sensory signals also play into it, while some people experience distortion because of psychedelics than others, nobody can perceive without processing or filtering. These experiences are relatively special since the brain has to come up with the entire framework itself, instead of having some actual sensory stimuli to use as a framework. Nevertheless, it's not special in the sense that the brain is so incessant about keeping up a stream of consciousness that it will 'happily' dream up entire fantasies than enduring pure void when self-aware.
Since everything in the body is atrophied and broken down when not used, too long of a void may actually 'rewire' (through de-wire) the brain and/or be detrimental?
Hallucinations is a broad term for seeing or hearing considerably more stimuli than there are signals, so much so that they get their own interpretation or notion, frank hallucinations I believe is the term for e.g. seeing people who are not there whatsoever like on deliriants.
 
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Once a friend wanted to smoke some salvia I grew. That salvia often sent me to a particular place with a species of tiny blue humanoid creatures, showing me their methods of permaculture and how they meditate and cure diseases through sound, stuff like that. I never told anyone about it but I visited several times. Anyways, my friend comes over and I set up a circle and give him some salvia. I don't smoke any, didn't want to trip that day. Instead I just held space for him. When he came back from his trip, he said "Wow, that was like a vacation". I asked him to describe what he saw and he proceeded to tell me about going to the same place I had been, seeing the same people doing the same things. I'm 100% sure I never brought up that place to him, but everything he said was exactly the same as I had experienced it several times before (all trips from leaves off the same single plant I grew).

I offer no explanation for this, only wanted to share it because it was fucking weird and relevant to this thread. Is it a real place? Did he just go there because I was thinking about it while he was tripping? I don't know. I'm sure all the reductionists here will rush to assure me that it's pure coincidence. I think a lot of the value in psychs is that they bring up these questions in the first place. :)
 
Oh I meant to say from what I've heard solipsists believe only they exist. Everyone else is a fabrication of their mind.
 
Haha, no I think philosophers in general give solipsism much credibility at all and it is more typically a stage in the personal development of some young people. I don't believe it, but I like the very general direction of ontological thinking.
(What it means by the way, is not that nothing exists, but that you yourself are the only one that really exists. So I guess that nothing 'else' exists.)

That salvia trip is indeed baffling. I wouldn't dare touch on it, really.. but I remain skeptical that it appears all attempts to approach things like that scientifically have failed. Seems like if you could 'divine' things that are more than hallucination, it would be possible to confirm a thing or two at some point.
 
Yeah, I can't draw any conclusions from that trip, but it sure brings up a lot of questions. One thing I will note, is that I created a sacred circle and asked the salvia to show him the same place it showed me. I didn't vocalize any of this though, it was all in my head, because I wanted to do this experiment to see if he would see what I saw. I was skeptical myself, I certainly didn't expect him to touch down to reality and describe in such detail all the same shit I had experienced and not told anyone about. So then it makes me wonder - is that a place that exists within the salvia plant itself? Is it a fantasy created by me and the salvia plant, and somehow I telepathically sent him the idea while we sat in the same sacred space? Not really sure, like I said, more questions than answers there.

I have accidentally "time-traveled" on DMT and divined an event in the future. I was way off about how far into the future it was, but I was definitely shown a glimpse of what was to come. I don't believe in fate or a pre-determined destiny, so I'm not sure what to make of that vision, but it was extremely vivid and proved to be quite accurate 3 years later, much to my surprise.

edit: I finally said something that baffled Solipsis! Wooooo!
 
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