Scientists Suggest DMT Entities Are Real 

Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.

OKINAWA, Japan — Researchers at two universities and a private institute named after the exact thing they’re trying to prove published a paper this month arguing that the beings people meet while on the psychedelic compound DMT ((N,N-dimethyltryptamine) might be real. The proposed proof: hand one a random number and see if it gives it back.

The paper is called “Traces of the Other,” and it is careful to state that it is not claiming the entities are real, and that it’s “just asking questions.” It also claims that the best way to test this theory is to design an experiment in which a blindfolded volunteer on a controlled DMT infusion relays a randomly generated integer to a four-foot DMT entity made of geometric light, which in turn will relay that number to a second volunteer, dosed separately in another room. Which seems oddly specific, but that’s what they say is required here. The authors concede that the entity’s cooperation is “obviously not guaranteed,” which, to this author’s skeptical read, probably means “we might need enough funding to make multiple runs.” 

Co-author Donald Hoffman writes that physical reality is not fundamental and space-time is something closer to the desktop on a computer: a set of useful icons that hide the actual machinery. The objects we see are folders. The truth is the hard drive. DMT, they propose, briefly opens a different application. Which begs the question: how high was he when he wrote this?  

A survey of 3,778 trip reports found that roughly 45 percent of high-dose DMT experiences involve an encounter with an intelligent non-human entity. The entities appear “human” about 5 percent of the time. The other 95 percent of the time, the entities appear as machine elves, insectoid technicians, reptilian figures, deities, and jesters, many of whom are frequently engaged in manufacturing impossible geometry, and occasionally described as conducting a 76,000-piece orchestra in which each note is its own fully populated universe. The authors point out, reasonably, that if this were merely the brain freed from its filters, it ought to be generating the neighbors, not a hyperdimensional civics lecture delivered by a clown. What in the hell did I just read?

To study any of this, you first need DMTx, the extended-state infusion technique, which uses a target-controlled IV drip to hold a stable brain concentration of DMT for up to 120 minutes. This converts what is normally a fifteen-minute event into something with the runtime of a Broadway musical, during which the subject can, in principle, conduct interviews. The technique has been validated as safe and tolerable in clinical settings and, by all reports, is one hell of a good time, especially when someone else is footing the bill.

Because the experiments depend on an entity that shows up and plays along, the authors suggest selectively enrolling people who report an ongoing relationship with a recurring entity, particularly couples who report visiting the same being together. The paper frames this as improving statistical power. A grant reviewer may frame it completely differently. Also, this sounds a lot like metaphysical unicorning. Don’t Google that.

The researchers repeatedly claim they are not asserting that the machine elves are real, but it really does seem like that’s what they’re trying to prove. They claim they have merely designed, costed, and IRB-readied the apparatus for asking machine elves a question, and would like to remind everyone that asking is not the same as believing in machine elves. Which certainly clears everything up.  

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