It’s a shame you didn’t actually read the article. You might have contributed something useful.

For the others who ware intrigued but don’t want to read, the article is mostly about research into the mechanisms creating the hallucinations.

Neuroscientists have known since the 60s that you can make people hallucinate shapes and colours by exposing them to strobing lights. It seems that syncing the lights with some of the rhythms present in the brain changes what people experience but the mechanisms at play are still unclear.

Clearly these things are influencing how the brain process information but much remains to be studied.

I read the whole article and yes the dream machine is interesting. I'm just commenting because there have been multiple articles on front page today about hallucinogens and the standard thought on HN is that these things are beneficial to society. I simply disagree.

Fortunately, we don't have to rely on opinions for things. We have science!

Be careful in presuming that science is capable of revealing the entirety of reality though. Technically, it doesn't even explicitly make that claim, but it seems that its reputation has kind of morphed into something much more than it is.

I sort of understand what you're getting at, but on a surface level, saying that hallucinogenic drugs are boring and played out is like saying music or war is boring and played out. It's a forever topic because it's a static part of the world for every generation of humans since prehistory.

That's very true

I'm curious what you believe makes them a net negative.

Are you saying hallucigens and psychedelics are not enough for you? Maybe you'd prefer deliriants, though that's kind of the dark arts part of the world.

You think? Based on what? Experience, study? It’s much more sophomoric to discount even anecdotal experience based on nothing more than arbitrary armchair inclination.

I have to agree. Been there, done that, tried most of them over a decade ago. Tripped with friends, tripped in nature, tripped alone, read Timothy Leary and Erowid reports, went to music festivals, etc. Guess what, it didn't cure my depression or catapult me into enlightenment. I actually had pretty horrible anxiety in my twenties for quite a while after I stopped taking psychedelics, to the point where I was afraid to fly or be in confined spaces. I still had to deal with all the difficult life transitions that everyone else has to go through. I still had to grapple with the fact that I'm going to die one day. I still had to deal with constant doubts over whether or not I was making the right choices in life, in terms of careers, relationships, and goals.

In short, my interest in psychedelics was nothing more than a phase, and one that many young people go through these days. It gave me some interesting experiences and don't regret doing them, but those experience didn't change me permanently.

I have not been there or done that, but just a normal exposure to popular culture and the history of the 20th century led me to the same conclusion.