Expectation and Priming
From the public record
Proposed by: Community skeptics; anonymous replication author
Where this comes from
- Kind of claim: Psychological. A shared feature of mind, not of the world.
- Framework by: Community skeptics and the anonymous replication author
- Applied to this phenomenon by: Community skeptics and the anonymous replication author (2026)
- Written about this phenomenon: yes, the source material is itself about the 650 nm laser observation.
Once a person has heard that others see code, seeing code becomes far more likely. Culture writes the caption before the experience arrives.
Psychedelic states are exceptionally suggestible, and the code framing is now globally famous, which means new observers arrive pre-loaded. A published attempt reports code-like percepts with no laser and no DMT at all, which puts real weight on expectation as a driver. The honest response is not to dismiss the phenomenon but to design studies where priming is controlled, including naive participants and free-report formats scored blind.
Source: Detecting Code of Reality with No Lasers and No Dimethyltryptamine (2026) (academic)
Tags: skeptical, priming, expectation