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A team from Imperial College London plans to put the 'machine elves' myths to rest

Migrated topic.
blue.magic said:
Doctors are people.
People are biased.
therefore...

Dr. Harris did already a good job - was it him showing that mushrooms induce synesthesia and heightened senses by actually damping default mode network?

A biased opinion does not mean he is biased and wrong across the board.
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"People are biased" ??? Try to use your meditation filter next time to sort out your thoughts and to adjust your "label machine" ;)
DMT can really help you to build a sustainable one:)
 
blue.magic said:
Doctors are people.
People are biased.
therefore...
Click to expand...

Yeah i think that plenty of scientists have an idea of what will work and won't work before doing an experiment. Isn't that the whole idea of doing research and experiments? The data and results will speak for themselves and any decent scientist will accept that their initial hunch was wrong. And i am sorry but i don't think that calling machine elves arguably bullshit is a childish bias because at the end of the day they could be bullshit.

Eaglepath said:
But you know arguably the are all bullshit! And we are going to bring this myth to rest!
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I maybe wrong but think that the writer of the article has taken contextual liberties with regard to his own fixation on machine elves.
Carhart-Harris and his team are continuing their studies on the brain and DMT but i am sure that certain parts of the media just go "Yeah, great! But what about the machine elves?????"


But if, by any chance , they were proven to exist, or proven not to exist. Then , yes, the myth would be put to rest. Either way.
 
I definitely do respect their position and trying to shed light on certain things. I also realize that for them to go through with this study they have to tackle it through a certain lens.

The fact that the studies even happening is awesome to me, I'm intersted to see where they end up.

I know they had said in the article that they're wanting to map brain activity and possibly draw conclusions from that [whatever that even means hahah]. I just don't see much if any conclusion drawn from the method they're employing. Though maybe i'm not seeing something that they are?

I do hope something amazing comes about, some tid bit of meat, enough to satiate the thirst and push things into even deeper understanding. We'll see.. :lol: :p :twisted:
 
self transforming dribbling basketball machine elf w/e the crap is utter nonsense to me. I have taken a lot of DMT and never had experiences that I would describe in that way..nor do I find DMT to be some unique substance apart from psilocybin, LSD and mescaline in the kinds of experiences it producues. The only thing that sets it apart for me is I can smoke it. I do love it.

Terrence had a great way of captivating audiences with his words, some of it probly just talking shit while high..and for myself he had a special way of capturing the mushroom experience-and that is where he still shines ime. Listening to him turned me away from acid which was silly because once I tried it I figured it's just about the best thing ever invented and his views on both LSD and DMT and psychedelics in general are rather different from my own...though I am unsure what he really thought about all this later on in life.

His stoned ape theory is golden, and generally terrence was a winner in my book because he had a pair at least and went beyond the suit and tie bs game and said things most wont..but hey life is a bs game a lot of the time and we all play it..terrence had to sell ideas too..I admire him.

..anyway..never seen an elf.

hyperspace though..I am not about to discredit that one. High doses of these things are no joke.

It's time some of these DMTist ideas are tossed.
 
Interesting study. One of the first things human babies learn to recognize is human faces. Our brains evolved to recognize faces. It is a critical survival mechanism for many species with brains and eyes.

I've thought for a long time one of the major effects DMT has on human consciousness is to make us feel like something is present. On low doses it often feels as if someone or something is present in the place you are taking DMT. You can ascribe "person hood (there is probably a better word for this)" to inanimate objects on DMT. On high doses when visual effects are overwhelming it seems as if your consciousness turns the visual hallucinations into what are commonly called entities. It can even feel as if they are communicating with you. The sense of something or someone being present is so overwhelming at higher doses it makes sense your brain looks for some form of communication signals coming from these patterns you are seeing and experiencing.

There really isn't any evidence for the argument that DMT transports peoples consciousness to other dimensions to communicate with living entities in those dimensions. Its a common subjective experience of the drug but I think that has more to do with common aspects of how our brains work rather then some other reality being out there. Although who knows there is more to the universe (multi-verse) then we can probably ever know.
 
burnt said:
Interesting study. One of the first things human babies learn to recognize is human faces. Our brains evolved to recognize faces. It is a critical survival mechanism for many species with brains and eyes.

I've thought for a long time one of the major effects DMT has on human consciousness is to make us feel like something is present. On low doses it often feels as if someone or something is present in the place you are taking DMT. You can ascribe "person hood (there is probably a better word for this)" to inanimate objects on DMT. On high doses when visual effects are overwhelming it seems as if your consciousness turns the visual hallucinations into what are commonly called entities. It can even feel as if they are communicating with you. The sense of something or someone being present is so overwhelming at higher doses it makes sense your brain looks for some form of communication signals coming from these patterns you are seeing and experiencing.

There really isn't any evidence for the argument that DMT transports peoples consciousness to other dimensions to communicate with living entities in those dimensions. Its a common subjective experience of the drug but I think that has more to do with common aspects of how our brains work rather then some other reality being out there. Although who knows there is more to the universe (multi-verse) then we can probably ever know.
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A way to investigate how much the perception of faces is involved in the DMT experience and to what extent it predicts sensed presences of other components of the experience, would be to give people DMT and use Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to inhibit the "fusiform face area" or other related areas of the brain and see how much the DMT experience changes, compared to a control group. To see how many of the possible components of the DMT experience depend, or are related to the perception of faces.
 
Eaglepath said:
Jees said:
Btw this thread title:
EaglePath said:
A team from Imperial College London plans to put the 'machine elves' myths to rest
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was the whole setup really a plan to put entities as a myth to rest it? No.
Even when a potential myth was to debunk after all, the plan was to monitor effects.

Article:
Carhart-Harris is part of a team of researchers at Imperial College London on a mission to trap the machine elves.

Trapping is not like saying its BS. It can go either way. The trapping is like making measurements, nothing else.
Click to expand...

You have just an other article my friend.:)
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This is the article that I read:
Title:
The brain on DMT: mapping the psychedelic drug's effects.
In the text:
The primary goal is to map brain activity during the experience.

They have the right to see arguments (that famous word 'arguably' in the text) that the entities are mirages (yeah they better used the word mirages than bulls*t) and say that out loud. For example: I feel fear and know that I feel fear, for sure, still I feel open to ask myself maybe my fear is just a mirage, perhaps bulls*t?
I love to question in the face of something, it gave me a lot so far. It doesn't promote the questioning into truth by default, but sometimes it does, and when it does it's usually big news/transformative.

For the record I think also that they are over optimistic by studying ongoing electronics inside a radio to get a feel for the music's induced emotions, it's far fetched.
Perhaps the electronic wave patterns inside the radio differ between Bach versus Punk after all, which does not say anything about the music's emotions, but is "something" more than nothing. I am against bias that nothing of value can come out of measuring signals.

I clearly see the difference between [paper & ink] and the written poems ability to move your hart. Yet the calligraphic properties contain information that is not seldom in line with the emotions expressed.

Your footsteps in the sand reveal the way you walk, your walk reveal about yourself.
Were you stepping slowly or running, the print tells. The print might reveal a spine issue.

Let them study ink, paper and footsteps :love:
 
..i feel i need to try to clarify if that's possible the 'machine elf' 'myth', as Terence spent a couple of days as my guest in Australia years ago, and i hear him laughing in Hyperspace..

'self transforming jewelled dribbling basketballs' presenting objects, 'machine elves'..i asked him about this in detail..it emerged that what he was describing here was his first ever DMT experience.. since then, he admitted, he had had all different kinds of experiences, nothing like that at all (he didn't actually smoke that often either)..what he chose to present to the public was that first trip, which astonished him..and he agreed he didn't have the language to describe what they were that he experienced..machine elf was what came to him..and no he didn't expect other people would automatically see these things, but was curious if anyone had..

he also called them 'fractal denizens of the unconscious' 'communicating in a visual 3D language'..

i think both the study and the DMT world are in error if just specifically looking for machine elves..it was a figure of his very poetic speech to describe the entities that were his guides when first exposed to DMT.. some people see similar entities, many don't..and do we even have the language to describe if we are seeing similar things half the time in this context..

Entities communicating (and self transforming) was his point really, of high dose (stress high dose) smoked crystal..what to call them he admitted he didn't really know..he also described other experiences which were more like photo reality, in contrast, but kept them private.

he was seeding the investigation of entities, not any specific kind, with his own experience..that i think is one of his major modern cultural contributions..

the study i think would be better to consult the DMT Nexus wiki entries on Entities, which starts to paint a broader picture, and i think would be on sounder ground looking at apparent communication with discarnate entities in general..whatever their 'reality'

the 'myth' of the machine elf is mistaking a single DMT trip report as some kind of definition of what people are expected to see..even Terence, at least in person, didn't expect most people to see his 'elves'...just more likely entities..at high dose
 
I think people are really misunderstanding the goals of the research due to the clickbait title of this thread.

The primary goal is to map brain activity during the experience.
Click to expand...
Just like they did with Psilocybin, and with LSD, they are going to see how DMT effects the brain via fMRI.

Beyond that it's speculation, they are hoping that measuring brain activity of people on high doses of DMT will give us some insight into the otherworldly breakthroughs and entity encounters we experience, but that's just a working hypothesis that will either be born out or invalidated by the research. All vice magazine hype aside, this is no moar controversial than the previous two studies measuring brain activity under the influence of LSD and Psilocybin.
 
No worries, I always appreciate your interesting input and insights good sir. :thumb_up:

It is a shame people got so hung up on the machine elf meme, people tend to take Terence's ideas way too literally sometimes.

In any case, really looking forward to the results of this study, I expect they will look really similar to the previous psilocybin study, but there may yet be some surprises in there. 8)
 
I'm betting the first thing they do after completing the testing phase of their research is to compare those DMT fMRI's to the ones they collected doing the LSD research. Definitely something interesting that I wouldn't mind knowing about. But the research is just that. I didn't get the impression that theories were being tested - just a little brain-poke for the fun of it to better understand what makes us tick. And who doesn't want to know that?!?
 
..thank you dreamer042, i always appreciate your balanced knowing, and efforts to bring some clarity and accuracy to this colourful DMT circus complete with elves and clowns ;)

ps. some good points in this thread on brain activity vs subjective effects and how to differentiate quality of experience through brain imaging etc..
 
the article said:
A team from Imperial College London plans to put the 'machine elves' myths to rest
Click to expand...
This is the interpretation brought forth by a WIRED journalist and got reproduced here. These were not the team's words. The journalist's emphasis and the team's emphasis differ from each other, fundamentally imho.

the article said:
Carhart-Harris and the rest of the team may be calling out the falsehoods people project onto the DMT experience.
Click to expand...
Oh look here the "the plan" in the click-bait has already changed in "may be" :?:

Eaglepath said:
...And we are going to bring this myth to rest!
Click to expand...
This quote, as if spoken out of the teams mouth, I find nowhere in the entire article, please correct me if I missed it.
 
nen888 said:
..i feel i need to try to clarify if that's possible the 'machine elf' 'myth', as Terence spent a couple of days as my guest in Australia years ago, and i hear him laughing in Hyperspace..

'self transforming jewelled dribbling basketballs' presenting objects, 'machine elves'..i asked him about this in detail..it emerged that what he was describing here was his first ever DMT experience.. since then, he admitted, he had had all different kinds of experiences, nothing like that at all (he didn't actually smoke that often either)..what he chose to present to the public was that first trip, which astonished him..and he agreed he didn't have the language to describe what they were that he experienced..machine elf was what came to him..and no he didn't expect other people would automatically see these things, but was curious if anyone had..

he also called them 'fractal denizens of the unconscious' 'communicating in a visual 3D language'..

i think both the study and the DMT world are in error if just specifically looking for machine elves..it was a figure of his very poetic speech to describe the entities that were his guides when first exposed to DMT.. some people see similar entities, many don't..and do we even have the language to describe if we are seeing similar things half the time in this context..

Entities communicating (and self transforming) was his point really, of high dose (stress high dose) smoked crystal..what to call them he admitted he didn't really know..he also described other experiences which were more like photo reality, in contrast, but kept them private.

he was seeding the investigation of entities, not any specific kind, with his own experience..that i think is one of his major modern cultural contributions..

the study i think would be better to consult the DMT Nexus wiki entries on Entities, which starts to paint a broader picture, and i think would be on sounder ground looking at apparent communication with discarnate entities in general..whatever their 'reality'

the 'myth' of the machine elf is mistaking a single DMT trip report as some kind of definition of what people are expected to see..even Terence, at least in person, didn't expect most people to see his 'elves'...just more likely entities..at high dose
Click to expand...

Exactly nen [regarding the whole 'machine elves' bit]. :)

Mckenna even stated in several of his talks [he has manyyyy talks] that the term -machine elves- is 'just a gloss', those were his words. That term I feel had gotten so far out of context. He never meant literal 'elves' or 'machines' or whatever else that term seemed to have brought about. I think many people took those words far farrr too literally. It was essentially his best guess at the time, best wordage available for him to describe these various intelligences that seemed to permeate the experience.

Elf/elven - 'i.e: trickster, sneaky, playful, underground-feeling, making objects, etc' - this is what he was getting at with that term. People read into the word 'elves' too much, too literally, took it for face value [which I feel was a mistake]. Same goes for the word 'machine' in the context of this experience - i.e: topological/everchanging forms/structures/objects in perpetual transformation/motion. You pair these two descriptions together and 'imo' its much closer to the actual thing than just taking the words 'machine elves' at face value.

Mckenna even stated on several occasions that that was his best guess at the time, though it had definitely fallen short of its actuality. He never meant these words to be literal. You really do have to think on these terms a bit deeper within the context of the dmt experience, imo, not just look at the words 'machine elves' and say 'oop machine elves, never experienced elves or machines literally, so that ain't true' :d These were always meant to be loose descriptions of something that isn't necessarily bound by description. Mckenna did his best, and I respect that. :)
 
Terrence was such a rare person speaking publicly about DMT it's not a surprise that his original account has become such an iconic and contentious description of the DMT experience. I think his description is responsible for many people wanting to try DMT including myself. Personally I've never seen a jeweled basketball but I have seen quite a lot of other unimaginable things.
I think he gets a bum rap sometimes. I've listened to many many hours of his lectures and he never describes any of his talks or concepts as the final word on anything.

Any research into this stuff is valuable regardless of what you believe .
 
The DMT experience vs a-brain-map seems to have a non bridgeable gap. This leads to critics like 'impossible'. For science to say anything reasonable, is it mandatory that this gap is fully covered/bridged?

Science has still gaps to overcome with energy, gravity, thermodynamics, magnetism, ... it looks disappointing sometimes. But science was able to find correlations and get to work with those to amazing results. To find correlations, the size of the gap is not actually that much important, it just needs enough matching points across that gap to validate a workable theory. Lets hope they find matching data. It's not going to be easy as on one side of the gap is data flavored with subjectivity. High repetition/redundancy might help.
 
I was a participant in a pilot EEG study of this DMT brain imaging research at Imperial College. It was a great experience and I was very impressed by the conduct of all the researchers involved. I've met Robin Carhart-Harris a few times, he's a good chap doing excellent research. Beware science journalism, it will always present a distorted picture of the actual science in question to attract attention. The researchers here didn't strike me as biased in any way, and I don't really get those accusations. Surely it would be more biased to go into a study like this on the assumption that DMT entities are "real" in that they have an independent existence from the experiencer in some way? Taking an Occam's razor approach, surely it is more logical to take the view they are arguably figments (pigments) of one's projected subconscious mind that one mistakenly perceives as real and independent. The limits of fMRI brain imaging in verifying the existence or non-existence of DMT entities have already been made, but the good thing about well conducted science is that one can accept or reject their prior hypothesis or view, based on the data they obtain. I see this DMT research as simply following on from the prior Imperial brain imaging on psilocybin and LSD which was ground-breaking.

Robin is a neuroscientist and psychologist, and he doesn't like magical or hippie thinking when it comes to psychedelics. Given that such thinking kinda ruined the scientific respectability of studying psychedelics in past decades, I think this is a good thing, we need more rigorous no BS scientists researching these things. He has a deep reverence for psychedelics but in his view all the effects are generated by the brain and nothing beyond or outside that, which I don't think is an unreasonable view. While he doesn't like to comment on personal use (due to issues of objectivity) I happen to know he recently attended an ayahuasca retreat in Peru so yes he definitely has personal experience with both DMT and psychedelic states.
 
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