https://web.archive.org/web/20261008201251/https://heart.qri...
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.
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.
"i don't believe this is good science"
This is a blog.
This works for me without 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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
Legal, unregulated, and synthetic. But close enough for the moderately-savvy customer.
It's not like those horrible synthetic THC analogues we see in Europe that can kill people.
Also, it is an extremely powerful psychedelic with effects nothing like psilocybin. It’s most likely 4-Aco-DMT
This article also says that 5-MeO-DMT has no psychoactive effects taken orally
[1] https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/OPA/Pages/NR25-024.aspx
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
On that hypothesis, it doesnt really surprise me that illusions based on context clues are interpreted differently.
My brother, that is philosophical position, not a "bet".
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?
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.
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
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.
Most one can do is accept that one is limited by one's perception and then keep that in mind.
So I vibe code one:
https://ebbinghaus-effect.greulen.workers.dev
(a one shot in DeepSeek, with only manual adjustments for the sizes)