Thank you for sharing the paper. It is legit but it's a philosophy paper, not scientific. The authors take this as a starting point and work onwards from there:
If we accept, as a working hypothesis, that consciousness (in the form of interacting
conscious agents) is fundamental and that the world we perceive is a mere interface, an
obvious question arises: Can we see beyond the interface? Our ordinary perceptions only
show us a tiny, filtered slice of reality, populated by those agents that were relevant to
our evolutionary ancestors. Conscious realism predicts that there could exist countless
other conscious agents – potentially of arbitrarily high complexity or completely unfa-
miliar form – that we normally do not perceive at all [20].
They make it even more explicit in the conclusion:
Ultimately, our purpose here is not to claim that DMT entities represent external
conscious agents, but to show that, given a formal theory in which consciousness is
fundamental, such a possibility can be coherently formulated and experimentally inves-
tigated.
So the video title (I haven't watched the video itself) is highly misleading: the paper doesn't state it can "prove that DMT entities are real".
Even the proposed experiments attempt to test something much weaker that doesn't necessarily imply any entity: "designed to test whether DMT experiences exhibit signatures that are difficult to reconcile with entirely hallucinatory perceptions". The authors later act as if some outcomes in those experiments would be evidence of some kind of entity, but that's just not the case. For example, the first experiment involves a computer randomly showing a blue or yellow screen, where the subject would attempt (from another room) to see what state the computer screen is in. The authors assume that this necessitates some kind of "collaborative entity", but this is not the case. One could as easily posit remote viewing through many other means.
The kind of interpretation they propose for the "positive" outcome of their experiments depends entirely on they having already made some assumptions about consciousness and entities.
Personally, I think Gallimore should stop speculating and proposing supposed experiments and start actually experimenting. He has more than enough means to perform some of the experiments he suggests, and if he does find something surprising then we can talk about it. However, for many years already he has preferred to propose hypothetical experiments and speculate. I suspect he may prefer hype to actual research. Who needs data when there is a network of influencers ready to pick any of your speculations and present them as fact? He is aware that this happens and yet not only does he not do anything about it, but he keeps feeding the hype machine.
@laughingcat , if you're reading this, please quit speculating and present some actual data first. It's hard to believe you have the means to offer DMTx experiences but not to have a computer changing screen color and someone in a room next to it taking DMT.
