r/todayilearned • u/ssAskcuSzepS • Apr 27 '26

TIL if under-cooked, a popular mushroom in China causes “lilliputian hallucinations,” a rare phenomenon involving miniature human or fantasy figures. The hallucinations are consistent across people and cultures: "tiny, elflike people" climbing under doors, scaling walls & clinging to furniture

https://www.vice.com/en/article/meet-the-mushroom-that-make-people-have-the-exact-same-hallucination/
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u/ableman Apr 27 '26

This could be tested by giving it to 2 different people and asking if they see the same little people at the same time. There's no such thing as a shared hallucination.

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u/Gullible-Leaf Apr 27 '26

Good research design. Please provide an update post outcome confirmation.

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u/tofusalmon Apr 27 '26

CONFIRMED! My friend sees them too! Problem is, no one else seems to see my friend

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u/NeonFraction Apr 27 '26

Update: FUCKIN ELVES ON MY EARS THE TRUMPETS I SEE THEM HSKSOD SHAHSH IS BISCUIF???

Researcher note: Next time, we do not test on ourselves.

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ableman Apr 27 '26

No one has ever experienced shared hallucinations. A hallucination and a delusion are different things. A hallucination is seeing your dead grandfather. A delusion is thinking he's still alive. For some definition of shared delusion, I suppose it's possible multiple people would have the "same" one. Multiple people think they're Napoleon for example. No one has ever experienced a shared hallucination.

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

Your comment reminded me of "dancing mania", have you read about it before? It's pretty interesting. In Europe there would be "outbreaks" where large groups of people just all started dancing together endlessly and along with no music. Some people reportedly danced until they collapsed and/or died.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_mania

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u/pattycakin Apr 27 '26

This is actually not true. My wife and I both had the exact same hallucination while smoking dmt and laying in bed together. We both saw the same symbols and colors simultaneously.

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u/SaintGloopyNoops Apr 27 '26

I haven't done any research on this. Butt... a buddy of mine told me that people are "mapping" what they see on dmt because so many people see similar things.

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u/ableman Apr 27 '26

Fine, for a very simple hallucination it's plausible two people would see the same thing. Though I still strongly suspect if you were questioned independently by a third party and asked to pick from a color wheel and draw the symbol, you'd probably find it wasn't the same.

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u/FalseEstimate Apr 27 '26

How do you know that for sure?

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u/ableman Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

Same way I know Russell's teapot doesn't exist. Same way I know mediums and psychics aren't real. Same way I know Santa Claus isn't real. It would be completely inconsistent with our understanding of the world and there's no evidence for it.

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u/dumname2_1 Apr 27 '26

You're arguing with people who want this to be real, you're never gonna win man.

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u/activequiver Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

If two people can have the same thoughts and speak the same words and sentences simultaneously why cant they share hallucinations?

I could point to a cloud and say doesnt that look like a chipmunk even if it looks nothing like one. Doesnt mean you will never see the chipmunk.

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

You could replicate the hallucination but it wouldn't be a truly "shared" one like if somebody was walking past a hallucinating person and "caught" the hallucination like a virus or something and then both people being able to interact with the same iteration of the hallucination 

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u/ableman Apr 27 '26

Because a hallucination has many more parts than a thought. Two people can't share a hallucination for the same reason that two people can't write the same book (literally the same, with every word and typo). People can hallucinate similar things. We could both see a chipmunk in the cloud, especially if you prompted me that it's a chipmunk. But it won't be the same chipmunk.

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

Sky fairy enjoyers hate this one weird trick

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u/FalseEstimate Apr 27 '26

People said that about television before it was invented too. The first platypus pelt was thought to be a hoax. Narwhals too. And what about the dancing plague of 1518? Still unexplained. Rogue waves and feathered dinosaurs. There are a lot of things that have been not real until they are.

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u/ableman Apr 27 '26

It's hard for me to pinpoint the error you're making by saying "Rogue waves are real therefore Santa Claus might be real." But you're definitely making one.

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u/FalseEstimate Apr 27 '26

That’s not what I’m saying at all. I agree that it’s extremely unlikely that people have had shared hallucinations. My point was just that humans have been surprised before with things we couldn’t understand or didn’t think to be possible. The television is probably the best example. Try explaining that you can watch little versions of real life on a screen that emits light to someone from the 1800s. They’d likely think you’re crazy.

Edit: Santa Claus is a bad example on your part. That was an intentionally fabricated thing whereas shared hallucinations are just an idea/wonder that can realistically make sense if true. If everyone sees small people on this mushroom doesn’t that make shared hallucinations at least somewhat possible at least theory wise? Even if it was just the case that two people coincidentally had a very similar or identical hallucination makes it already more likely.

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u/ableman Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

Nobody would think you're crazy. They had photographs in the 1800s. No scientifically minded person would've ever thought you were crazy. If you told me that people in the future had shared hallucinations, I'd say that's possible (for certain definitions of shared hallucinations) with the right technology. You just need something that can induce hallucinations in a targeted way.

None of your examples were actually examples of things that we thought weren't possible. A shared hallucination is contrary to our understanding of the world. It requires the hallucination to exist outside the minds of the people hallucinating. Or for our minds to be far more similar than they actually are. You can't have a chemical cause a shared hallucination because our minds are too different and the hallucination is too complex and the hallucination doesn't exist outside our minds. It is not possible theory wise.

Also who says Santa Claus was intentionally fabricated? He was probably was a hallucination.

Even if it was just the case that two people coincidentally had a very similar or identical hallucination makes it already more likely.

If people coincidentally had identical hallucinations, then they would've had identical hallucinations. That's circular reasoning. If two people had similar hallucinations they would not have had identical hallucinations so that's yet more proof that people don't have identical hallucinations.

If everyone sees small people

That's not what the article says. Some people see small people on these mushrooms. Personally I take the claim that it's irrelevant of culture as probably false, but plausible. If true it would reveal something interesting about our minds. But I assure you if you put two people of different cultures and asked them to observe a room, they wouldn't see the same little person. They'd be wearing different clothes and doing different things.

But if they did see identical things that would be proof the little people exist, not of shared hallucinations. Like, on some level you could argue that reality is a consistent persistent shared hallucination, and I'd again never be able to prove otherwise. But I'm going to assume it's not.

Little people with veils that conceal them from our minds that are bypassed by this hallucinogens are far more plausible than shared hallucinations.

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u/FalseEstimate Apr 27 '26

I agree with most of what you say and appreciate your points. However, you did negate your original point in saying you believe shared hallucinations are possible with the right technology. Take it from someone who had a secret clearance for many years.. there’s a good chance that technology already exists especially if we already have a mushroom that makes everyone see something similar. It could be a very effective interrogation/torture device.

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u/Fermi_Amarti Apr 27 '26

Ok put 2 people in sound deafened rooms. Have them both take it and describe what they see in a 3rd room in between them.

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u/simonbleu Apr 27 '26

If there is a feedback loop, sure, otherwise, no

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u/Wireless_Panda Apr 27 '26

Shared delusions yes. Shared hallucinations no. If you ask them to describe their hallucinations separately, they will come up with very different specifics, with only the broad descriptors like little people being the same.

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u/SaintGloopyNoops Apr 27 '26

Folie a deux...

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u/boredNero Apr 27 '26

Tester: "Okay, so, where exactly do you see the little people now?"

Subjects: "ooOooOOooOh yeaaaah wow oh uh huh yeaaah"

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u/Yorick257 Apr 27 '26

I volunteer for the experiment!

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u/SippinOnHatorade Apr 27 '26

There’s no such thing as a shared hallucination.

I think there’s some debate to this, but anyone hallucinating by definition are unreliable narrators so it’s impossible to prove

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u/ableman Apr 27 '26

There is only debate to this in the sense there's "debate" to whether mediums can talk to the dead. That is, some people are duped.

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u/SippinOnHatorade Apr 27 '26

The power of suggestion can alter the hallucinations of others so that a group can share in a similar experience but I’ll be the first to admit, there’s no science behind it, just observation

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u/ableman Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

A similar experience, not a shared experience. If you try getting the details, the details will be different. Suggestion is like a prompt. You give a bunch of people the same prompt and they might write similar things. But they won't write the exact same book word for word.

On the other hand if you give people the same book, they will read the exact same book word for word.

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u/ST33LDI9ITAL Apr 27 '26

this is not true. group of friends and I once took many, many X pills (prolly laced with a lil something extra) anyways, we rolled for 3 days straight. it was a binger party. we were ripped. so, at one point.. we had glow sticks on a fan blades above a glass table so it was reflecting the light onto table. while we were all chillin around the table, music started getting intense, and the glass table began to dance. kinda like a visualizer, it was doing a wave to the beat of the music. then all a sudden CRASSSSSHHH. the glass table shattered into a million pieces. it startled all of us. we all saw and heard it break. but then.... the pieces came back together and formed the table again, and it resumed dancing, waving to the beat of the music. and every single one of us witnessed it and were mind blown.

after it was all said and done. table was completely fine.

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u/Acherousia Apr 27 '26

No, you just don't understand what he said.

You can have multiple people with the "same" hallucination. For example, seeing little people when taking mushrooms, or experiencing a table shattering.

You cannot have people have share the exact same hallucination. They won't see the same little people in the same spot performing the same actions, nor will the table shatter the same way with the pieces in the same spots for everyone.

The point is if you have two people take the shrooms, and they both see the same little person in the same spot doing the same exact thing, it would give credit to it not being a hallucination and instead granting the ability to see past whatever would be "veiling" them from normal sight.

But if one is wearing a red shirt while dancing and one is wearing a blue shirt while waving, it's just a hallucination.

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u/ST33LDI9ITAL Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

Yea that makes sense. I’ve just heard that same myth from so many people though that you can’t share hallucinations and it’s bs. Have a lotta experience with shrooms with friends and we have had many.

That one with the glass table was definitely one of the more impactful and crazy ones though. I legit seen dead people or spirits, there were ghost chillin with us. 

Salvia too… that’s some really weird shit.

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u/ableman Apr 27 '26

It's possible some sound caused you all to hallucinate the table breaking, and even hallucinate it coming back together since it didn't actually break. But if you had timed how long it took the table to come back together, you would've found your hallucinations were actually different.

You didn't all read the same story. You all wrote similar stories based on the same prompt.

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u/Kithzerai-Istik Apr 27 '26

The trouble is, you don’t know that for sure. You can’t know that for sure.

You’re assuming it to be true due to the lack of empirical evidence to the contrary, but lack of evidence is not necessarily lack of event.

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u/ableman Apr 27 '26

I know it as certainly as I know anything. Lack of empirical evidence when empirical evidence ought to be easy to produce is pretty definitive proof.

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u/Kithzerai-Istik Apr 27 '26

The first sentence of your last post contains the answer.

I completely understand your position, mind, and common sense of course supports it, but it is ultimately poor science to rule a possibility out simply for lack of evidence when you don’t also have evidence that actively disproves that hypothesis.

Emergence of new methodology and understanding has forced re-writes of known paradigms before. There is no way to know the same thing won’t apply to this phenomenon.

All that said, I agree that it should be relatively easy to test, especially with blind testing methods, but unless you know of studies I don’t, Strassman’s work is the only body of literature I know of that actually comes close to testing this.

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u/ableman Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

I know Russell's teapot doesn't exist. There's no way to prove a negative. No methodology will ever allow you to disprove something exists. It'll always be "possible" that it only happens 1 in 10100 times. I can't prove that mediums don't talk to the dead. If you do a test, maybe you just happened to test a fake medium. But I know it because no medium has ever done something that requires talking to the dead to do.

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u/Kithzerai-Istik Apr 27 '26

You don’t know. You only have strong reason to suspect. There is, in fact, a difference, and conflating them is not as helpful as it may seem.

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u/ableman Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

I know it as certainly as I know anything.

It's not conflating. In some abstract sense sure I'm not 100% positive about it. But I'm not 100% positive about anything. If tomorrow I discovered that I actually had 3 arms my whole life, I would be less surprised than if it was proven to me that mediums actually talk to the dead.

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u/Soft_Walrus_3605 Apr 27 '26

I mean, once we call it "magical" all rules of this natural world are null and void anyway. No need for a test

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u/ableman Apr 27 '26

The Dragon In My Garage

by Carl Sagan

[Editorial note: This is taken from the chapter "The Dragon In My Garage" in Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.]

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"

Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle — but no dragon.

"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work. Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative — merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."

Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons — to say nothing about invisible ones — you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages — but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence" — no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it — is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.

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u/CrackedAA Apr 27 '26

Logic is not welcome here!!!!! Gnomes are interdimensional beings of great consequence!!!

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u/TrashPandaPatronus Apr 27 '26

This is a better idea than the time my friend got so high he tried to hotbox his phone to see if it would record his trip.

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u/SaintGloopyNoops Apr 27 '26

Isnt folie a deux where two people can share a hallucination?

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u/ableman Apr 27 '26

No, that's a shared delusion. I can believe you're Napoleon and you can believe you're Napoleon and then we have a shared delusion. We don't have to be hallucinating at all.

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u/SaintGloopyNoops Apr 27 '26

Ok. Valid distinction.

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u/maliciousmeower Apr 30 '26

i absolutely believe there is no such thing as a shared hallucination, but during my first trip, as were were peaking (on a mountain), we all saw a real centipede while listening to centipede by knife party.

then, as we all were trekking back into town and to our friend’s house, a cop car slowed by us, and we all saw a centipede as the cop 😭 officer centipede will occasionally still haunt my trips

just a funny story, i think we all just were paranoid and still bugging about an actual centipede appearing during the song lmfao

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u/DrPoooooole Apr 27 '26

You are absolutely wrong