piegamesMar 3
Body modding is great and all, but have you tried mind hacking?
XypherMar 3
Show threadpiegames

Now I'm curious. Tell me about the coolest mind hack you've done that isn't just some boring productivity boost or whatever.

I've trained myself to have something close to perfect pitch hearing, by making use of my hyperphantasia for sounds.

Mar 3 at 12:33amWeb
Show threadpiegamesMar 3
Also a thing I'm working on: I do have visual aphantasia, but it is known that some substances can temporarily induce the ability for visualization. Maybe there's a way to make that effect permanent?
Show threadkloenkMar 3
@piegames oh do tell how that is done
Show threadSchrottkatzeMar 3

@piegames kinda boring in comparison but: we perfected internal communication

we self-therapized ourselves out of suicidality and hopelessness etc

Show threadmart-wMar 3

@piegames Moving my post up here because I'm not completely sure if @kloenk referred to the same thing as me.

That sounds very intriguing indeed. Do you have any resources on that?

Show threadpiegamesMar 3

@mart_w @kloenk Well, first of all, researchers still don't know if it's possible in the first place, and also these things are inherently ineffable in nature, so no, no resources unfortunately ^^

But you may want to read https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/11/03/some-people-cant-see-mental-images-the-consequences-are-profound (€, used to be free …)

Some People Can’t See Mental Images. The Consequences Are Profound

Larissa MacFarquhar writes about the recent research into the neurodiverse syndromes known as aphantasia and hyperphantasia, their effects on our experience of trauma and memory, and the sense of identity that has grown up around them.

The New Yorker
Show threadpiegamesMar 3
@mart_w @kloenk What I'm currently trying is to externally induce such states of having images, then paying very close attention to them in the hope of learning to replicate sober. I'm currently at a point where when I close my eyes and concentrate and "relax" a certain mental muscle, I can occasionally get a flash of an image. (Sometimes it also happens randomly, which is a bit startling ^^)
Show threadmart-wMar 3
@piegames @kloenk Fascinating! I seem to have introduced more confusion though. I'd love to hear more about your visual aphantasia as well, but I was actually asking about the thing where you gave yourself perfect pitch. I always believed the only way there were loads of practice, ideally from young age, and a little bit of luck.
Show threadpiegamesMar 3

@mart_w Ah ^^

Well, innate perfect pitch is more akin to "feeling" the pitch of a note, like a hue. Most of the people who learn perfect pitch do this by brute force learning lots of data points. I easily tell pitches that way, but I can load memories of sounds of well-known pitch and then calculate the offset based on the interval (I'm very good at hearing intervals) 

Show threadLeoDJMar 3
@piegames
When I get temporary tinnitus, I'm able to shut it down again by concentrating very hard on the frequency for a few seconds. Works like 70% of the time.
Show threadpiegamesMar 3
@LeoDJ Okay that's fucking cool! Reminds me of the blessed three months where I could suddenly stop hiccups on command. Unfortunately I lost that ability again as abruptly as it came, and haven't figured out how to get it back ever since